First, we aren't talking about corporate porn filters on their own networks. In fact, at no point in the article or the summary is such a thing even mentioned. This is about the big technology companies that run the major sites used throughout the world: Facebook, Google, Twitter, Youtube, Amazon, and how they used filters and censorship on the customer facing side of their network (not their internal networks), despite their vocal public appeals for the net to be free and open. I don't see how you can possibly miss the hypocrisy. I'm not saying they're wrong, I'm not saying that some level of censorship is not probably necessary for them to dodge regulators, concerned parents, and prudes, I'm just saying there's a level of hypocrisy.

Doesn't bother you? Fine. It really doesn't bother me either, though there are a few places in which a few of these companies are skirting a line close to something that would bother me. Do I care that Google's predictive text searches won't complete the word "penis" for me? No, not at all. Would I care if Goggle simply wouldn't search for "penis"? Yes, I would and I'd start looking for alternatives.

Which is fine if you concentrate on the parts of the New Testament that focus on Jesus himself (or at least mostly so, every so often Jesus gets all "I am the Son of God, cower before me!", but I tend to think those might have been later edits), but honestly that's less than half of the New Testament. Once Paul, to a lesser extent Peter, and to great extent John of the Apocalypse, get their say things get a lot murkier. One could certainly argue that since Christianity is about Christ, we should ignore the bits where Peter, Paul, and John get extremely un-Christ-like, but that's pretty much flying in the face of the last 2000 years of mainstream Christian tradition.

This guy isn't saying that these companies are violating the law, or that they should be somehow forced to change their algorithms. He's simply pointing out the hypocrisy of their advocating for free access to information while simultaneously directly and indirectly censoring the content they present. Whether the hypocrisy is a problem or not probably depends on who your are, what your goals are, and what level of censorship the company is presenting you with. Google for instance doesn't censor its results (except in rare cases where it's required to by law), but does censor indirectly through blocking certain search terms in auto-complete. Arguably that's a pretty mild and indirect form of censorship (you can after all simply type the your search terms out completely), and it may not bother many people. Facebook is more explicit in its censorship, but also arguably has a greater legal compliance requirement.

It's a discussion that's worth having, even if the most we can do about it is avoid or support companies that either support or reject our own opinions on the matter. It's certainly not as important a subject as some others, but it's not trivial either. It's worth looking at.

Not that I agree with your parent; I've met prickly people of almost every faith and creed who can become unreasonable at the least provocation. That said, your reply is a pretty poor counter. Such a "No True Scotsman" argument can be applied to almost anything: "No true Muslim would be so offended, after all Islam means "peace"", "No true liberal would be so offended, we're all about inclusiveness of ideas", "No true conservative would be so offended, we always argue from a position of logic", No true Buddhist..." etc.

"Love thy neighbor as thyself" is only one line from one Testament, from one half of the book. There's plenty of arguments in Christian scripture for being an asshole too, and lots of Christians use those to justify the very behavior you say they shouldn't engage in. There are lots of Christians in the world. There are lots of prickly easily offended people in the world. The intersection of those two sets is also quite large.

I screamed my head off in the trash compactor scene when I first saw Episode IV, but I was 3. I think my parents may have been slightly over enthusiastic about "family friendly". Certainly any kid older than 7 or 8 could easily watch the original trilogy, follow the major plot points, and not be scared or upset.

New stories don't, by default, throw out the expanded universe. The characters in the Expanded Universe are approximately the age of the actors, and efforts have even been made by the EU authors to make Luke kinda beat up and looking like Mark Hamill (whether consciously hoping he might one day reprise the role, or just unconsciously making him look like his template.) The biggest obstacle to using the three original actors in a film that takes the EU into account is Carrie Fisher. She'd need to get in shape (not that's she's hideously fat or anything, just not Jedi Knight fit.) Last I saw Hamill and Ford they could believably play an aging Luke and Han in the EU assuming lots of special effects for Luke's more athletic capabilities (but that would be required no matter what).

So your computer is so close to minimum spec that you can't run the login screen for a game and the simulator simultaneously? I mean, sure, a lot of these games are somewhat resource intensive during actual play, especially if you have the settings turned way up, but if you can't run the login screen at the same time as an Android emulator, chances are the game will be unplayable anyway.

But there's free options for authenticators. You can use a phone app. If you don't have a smart phone, the phone apps work on the iPod Touch, the iPad, or any Android tablet or "smart" MP3 player; they even work in the phone simulators that Apple and Google provide for free with their developer kits. Granted installing a phone simulator to run an authenticator is a pain in the ass, but it is free.

No, she gets recognition because she won her election after her opponent tried to use her WoW playing against her. Given that most of us here have played games at one point or another, it annoys us when some tries to imply that doing so is disqualification for "important" jobs. It's vindicating that the voters did not agree. It's true that her playing WoW doesn't make her a better person of a better politician, but it the point is that it doesn't inherently make her a worse person or politician.

The 50's were, assuming you were a white male of at least the "skilled working class" level of society, a great time. By feat of chance there was a conjunction of postwar prosperity, an entrepreneurial boom, and a government willing to invest in big things. It was a time when a man could, with a high school education, get a good job and support a family with a single income. For a good chunk of America it was a real golden age. It was also a time of tremendous racism, Cold War, and overt sexism, but those parts don't bother a lot of the more outer fringe of the right wing. There's several problems with trying to return to the 50's though.

First, the circumstances that created the incredible boom were not exactly pleasant. A good chunk of the reason for the insatiable consumer demand of the time was that the preceding decade and half had been dominated by war and depression... Eight years of not being able to afford anything followed by six years of not being able to get anything leaves people in the mood to spend. On top of that, the War had resulted in the creation or refinement of all kinds of new technology that people wanted to buy. People had money, both because they'd been saving during the War (when there was nothing to spend on), and because the boom created tons of jobs for them to come home to. It was a perfect storm of incredible pent up demand coinciding with equally incredible new products.

Second, and this is a real pisser, the government was a huge driver of the economy with spending in the 50's. Conservatives recall the social conservatism of the era, but for get the fact that government was a lot less afraid to spend money. Things like the Apollo project and the Interstate Highway project were hugely expensive government programs that employed tens or hundreds of thousands and pumped tons of money into suppliers and ancillary businesses. Sure, these were primarily Cold War defense or prestige projects, not "entitlement spending", but they were huge wealth redistribution engines regardless. They put a lot of money in the hands of working people.

We can't policy our way back to the 50's, they were a unique time with a unique set of very advantageous circumstances. Certainly we can't let our blinders tell us that all we gotta do is throw the women back in the kitchen, the gays back in the closet, and blacks back in the ghetto to bring them back. Those were the downsides of the 50's not the cause of the upsides. We can, perhaps, try to bring back some of the big government projects that helped drive the economy, but we'll need more tax revenue to do it (taxes were considerably higher by percentage in the 50's), and even with that we won't be able to manufacture the kind of boom caused by postwar euphoria and pent up demand. Looking to the past for inspiration to solve problems is one thing, but you can't ever bring it back.

The court typically rule that our right to a free and fair election trumps our right to speech in this case. There's very good reasons for these laws. Because, you know, that's a very nice house you have there an it'd be a shame if something happened to it. Voting for candidate "a" is a great way to protect your investment, why don't you bring me a picture of your ballot?

You're completely correct up to here, but I kind of disagree with this bit. I think a receipt you take home is a bad idea, but a paper receipt you can review and stuff into a physical ballot box for use in situations when there's a discrepancy in electronic totals makes a lot of sense to me.

It's treatable now. People rarely die of it if they can get treatment. It was mostly fatal 100 years ago. It doesn't fit as well as some of the others, but Malaria is much less scary than it once was, even if it isn't "defeated".

Yeah: Polio, Smallpox, Scarlet Fever, Malaria, Plague, Anthrax; all of those have historically been defeated by "exercise and vitamins and good food". That's why hardly anyone dies from them anymore. No, wait, sorry, my bad. It's because of vaccines, antibiotics, and sanitation. I always get those mixed up too.

Probably make your arm sore for four or five days? It's not like they're going to be any bigger, it's just changing the composition of the payload.