If it's not targeted at them but they're the only ones getting hit, then the people deploying the DRM have really shitty aim.

TL;DR: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak! Whoosh!

Ah, but proper, intelligent communication, both written and spoken, are. Knowledge of usage, syntax, and grammar are necessary to be able to decode what the other person is saying and contribute intelligently to a conversation, unlike, say, dropping the word linguistics in a totally off-topic, tangential response and using meaningless junk phrases.

Attacking what someone says as a "meaningless junk phrase" is hardly conducive to fostering discussion, especially when one uses meaningless junk phrases, too. When was the last time you waved your hand in someone's face and said "Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!" and got anything close to resembling a meaningful response? Did your calendar list "idiolect" as your word for the day and made it so that you had to find any way at all to inject it into a conversation?

If you're trying to get your posts modded Informative or Interesting, the least you can do is use a proper a href reference instead of leaving people wondering if you're using some made-up word from your idiolect and having to use the autodetect feature of the google translator. Oh, and drop the ad-hominem attacks, too. Attacking a poster does not make up for a lack of relevant content in a post.

That's the thing, though: the "rights-owners" act as if the people who want to pay are pirates themselves, or potential pirates. DRM doesn't convince people to pay for a product; rather, it's more likely to convince people that it's not worth the hassle of trying to be good, and end up pirating anyway. DRM is targeted at the people who are paying for the product, rather than the pirates who are going to hack the product anyway and never would have bought it in the first place.

"So does this mean I'm pregnant?"

...and how exactly do you know this? Watch a Powerpoint presentation somewhere?

I am not your brother. I am quite certain of my parentage, thank you, and I rather doubt that I am in any way related to you as I've never had to utilize critical faculties to distinguish between my mother and sister.

As to not having any arguments, perhaps I did not present my points in the form of a bulleted list, but have you ever heard of the phrase "reading and comprehension?" I know that heavy dependence on letting some hate-mongering bible-thumping preacher do your thinking for you generally renders you unable to derive ideas from context, but this is slashdot. At any rate, I shall restate my arguments, in the form of nested comments, carefully indicating the actual questions raised (though they may not necessarily be in the form of a question) in an attempt to see if you have any form of analytical thinking ability left:

Obviously, you read a slashdot headline and felt it attacked your religion, so you broke out your colors and attacked atheism. Nowhere, at any time, does the article mention atheism in the specific context (yeah, yeah, I know, it's not your thing) of atheism ("cool and analytical") versus religion ("superstition and general dumbassery"). Nor, for that matter, does it mention anything about failing to distinguish between your mother and your sister, but then again that particular failing may be yours in particular. Rather, it posits opposition between analytical thinking and religion. If your arguments so far are any indication, however, it is proof of the study's thesis.

Just in case you don't get it yet, which I fear is a virtual certainty, I am not calling you an idiot. I am merely implying it. I am also implying that I would like to see you make an even bigger fool of yourself than you already have. Your knee-jerk reaction at what you perceive to be an attack on religion is so tragically pathetic, it's funny.

So, what do you fear?

I assume you mean "analytic," but hey, that's okay. The whole "suffer not a witch to live thing" probably hampers you when it comes to proper spelling.

I'm really curious, though: what do religion and thinking, intuitive or otherwise, have to do with distinguishing your mother from your sister? Not that I'm implying that you would need to be able to do so as a matter of life, death, or proper informed choice when it came to deciding on a boudoir to enter, but inquiring minds would like to know why this is so obviously important in your belief system that you would feel the pressing need to share that with us.

I hope you mean "atheists," or otherwise we're going to be stuck here in an endless loop trying to resolve a definition error. That's okay, though: endless unresolved loops, like singing hallelujah forever at the foot of your imaginary patriarchal deity-figure, virtually guarantee your immortality. That is, until the eternal unceasing ennui causes you to jump into the nearest black hole.

It is quite obvious, however, that you are attempting to assert via intuitive leap that, as analytic thinking decreases religious belief (and vice-versa, as is obviously the case with you), atheism reduces intuition. That is sadly, however, not the case as far as I can tell, especially since atheists in general tend to do more thinking, analytical or intuitive, than the merely religious.

Ah, ending a statement with prayer, a classically religious way to end. I shall do the same: may the Flying Spaghetti Monster bless you with a sense of the ridiculous, especially since a levitating ball of pasta and marinara sauce is so much more palatable a deity than an infantile murdering sociopath who always needs money.

The liberty you cite, which you also seem to value as much as I, is worthless if one is not willing to die to preserve it. Life, similarly, is valueless without the dignity and pride that is part and parcel of being a free, thinking, rational creature. To allow tyranny to flourish, to, as you suggest, avoid airports in order to avoid confrontation, only enables the tyranny, unthinking cruelty, and oppression perpetrated by these people.

To die in the defense of one's beliefs is never of no consequence. It is your unwillingness to die for your beliefs or, perhaps, your lack of any beliefs that you feel willing to hazard your life for, that is truly distressing and sad.

While I do not condone inciting confrontation for the sake of inciting confrontation, when you come to that crossroads and the only choice is to submit and let one you love be violated, or to fight, and possibly fall, to the tyrants, your choices will govern whether or not you will be able to look back at your life in pride, no matter how short that may be, or if for the rest of your life you will look at yourself in the mirror and hate that when you had the chance you did not stand up and fight for what is right.

That is not proportionate. Having them arrested and prosecuted leaves it in their minds, and that of people like them, that it's possible to get away with it, because they get to wait for the slow process of "justice" to give them, or the organization they belong to, a chance to lie and bully and bribe their way out of it.

A proportionate response involves blood and death. Someone assaults your daughter, they die. You might die, too, but that's the price you pay for justice that is swift and final. When asshole tards begin to realize that acting like asshole tards will get them killed (not you, they don't care about you), then asshole tards will remember what courtesy and gentility is for: it's not so that you can impress people with your manners, but rather it's so that you can interact with people in a meaningful manner without someone deciding that you've been an asshole tard and need to die.

With people like these, you can only interact with them in a language they understand. They don't understand your "rights" or their "responsibilities" and "obligations;" heck, you're lucky if they can speak English well enough to string two _complete_ sentences together and can type in other than textspeak; they probably can't even write out a simple letter or report longhand. "How to act like a decent human being?" Nah, that might as well be Martian to them. "Or die" and "and die," however, speak to their sense of self-preservation and should be simple enough for them. "Touch my daughter and die" only has one word over one syllable and should be fine. Similarly, "let go of my daughter or die" should be simple enough for them to process before your proper parental instincts kick in and you tear their throat out with your bare hands.

Let's just hope we don't turn up any black monoliths.

Boo! Rubbish! Filth! Slime! Muck! Boo!

Remember what Uncle George said: "God loves you! He loves you and he needs money!"

From the article:

'Since then, the Vatican has instead focused on finding out who leaked the letters, which it describes as "biased and trivial".'

Yup, instead of focusing on the problem at hand, or hell, even trying to determine if there really is one, they go looking to punish whoever failed to keep the information under the skirt. Or cassock. Or whatever they call that ugly black dress they wear.

But I guess that's religion for you. Think with your dogma, not your brain, and there is no problem a little reflexive unthinking punishment can't solve.

You, sir, are obviously an iDiot.