Many anti-GM people are ignorant idiots - anti-science hippies and other woo-believing fuckwits. They are, however, useful idiots because the problem with GM foods is *not*, in most cases, the fact that they are genetically modified or what the modification is, but that the modifications are patented by corporations like Monsanto.

The issue is that GM foods are an attempt by corporations to establish an "intellectual property" monopoly on the world's food supply. THAT must be resisted by any means possible....this is more than just the *control* of the food supply that corporations have now, it will be an actual monopoly where it isn't legally possible to have any alternative (like growing your own or buying from small, independant farmers) because it will be impossible to do so without infringing their patents.

If simpletons need simple reasons to be against the corporate monopolisation of food, then so be it. they may not know exactly why and how their opposition benefits them, but they still reap the benefits anyway.

a bakery business might have some limited right to refuse to, e.g. bake cakes with a message that they personally consider offensive ("suck my cock" or "kill all blacks", for example) but they don't have the right to refuse service to people just because they're gay or a member of the KKK or some other group.

It was you that said that bitcoins are a commodity and have intrinsic value because you can make them at home - here's what you said:

Bitcoins, unlike dollars, are a commodity. You can literally create them at home. That is why they have an intrinsic value

my point was that this is complete and utter bullshit because i could make turd sculptures at home...this fact does not magically imbue them with intrinsic value or with commodity status. like your argument, they're still just worthless shit.

but I think businesses should have the freedom to refuse service.

why, exactly, should they have that right? it's fair enough for a business to exclude particular individuals who have caused problems in the past (e.g. shoplifiting or being an annoying PITA), but to exclude people simply because they are a member of a particular group ("women", "gays", "blacks", "teenagers", whatever) - or *appear* to be a member of such a group - is discrimination....and that's definitely unethical and almost certainly illegal.

On the other hand, I think this law may open the door to "no hispanics or negroes allowed" signs going up, because someone could claim its their religious belief...

that door is already wide open - "no gays" is no different to "no blacks". it's the same fucking thing.

i could make turd sculptures at home too - that doesn't mean they have any intrinsic value. certainly no more or less than the bitcoins i could make at home.

bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies are the ultimate in fiat currencies - there is no intrinsic value or worth in the fact that some calculation has been performed. proof of worthless work is just as worthless as the work.

they only have any "value" because it's a ponzi scheme of people pretending they have value.

but unlike nicotine, which actually enhances concentration, on meth/ heroin/ coke, your focus is for shit. so you can't hold a job/ maintain a relationship

you have no fucking idea what you are talking about.

1. meth, or methamphetamine, aka ice or speed is well known for its ability to enhance focus and concentration. it's focusing effects are far more powerful than that of the rather feeble nicotine.

2. many users with clean, reliable supplies of heroin and similarly poweful opiates have no trouble holding down jobs - even difficult jobs with lare amounts of autonomy and responsibility. many doctors, nurses, and paramedics have opiate addictions that have minimal or zero impact on their ability to do their jobs because they have a safe, clean supply and don't live the fucked up junkie lifestyle.

3. not all use is abuse. most people use their drugs with moderation and restraint, in the same the way that most people won't gobble down an entire chocolate cake by themselves or eat a block of chocolate every day. they'll have small amounts at appropriate times and places (i.e. on their time off on the weekend, and not halfway into their shift at work).

Your post should have been moderated Ignorant, not Insightful.
it's the same old half-truths, lies and prejudice masquerading as information.

the best response at a system-wide level is universal unemployment benefits - the dole. as a right, not as some form of time-limited insurance based on their previous employment. ditto for universal health care, socialised health care, not private insurance.

in short, the things that civilised western democracies have but the USA does not.

people who have a minimal regular income, and are able to feed, house, and clothe themselves and their families are less desperate and less likely to commit crimes to get some cash. same if they are able to access medical services *without* going tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt.

it's cheaper to society than the cost of crime, the cost of unsafe streets, the cost of police, the cost of hospitalisations or death when muggings go wrong, and it's cheaper than the cost of prison.

there will, of course, still be a tiny handful of crazies who prefer the criminal life, or are incapable of anything else, but there's nowhere near enough people like that for it to be a serious concern...easily handled by police. most people would rather not be criminals, or to be so desperate that they have no other choice but to threaten others.

H1B visa fees are not a broader tax base.

To bring back the war analogy, we were allies with Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden once, because we didn't know any better.

the american people may have been ignorant about the nature of these people, but the american government and the corporations they work for knew exactly what kind of puppets they were hiring. they didn't give a fuck about anything but the oil and the fact that they were anti-communist or at least anti-russian.

America has a many decades-long habit of setting up and/or supporting/propping up puppet dictatorships all around the world - evil scumbags who loot their countries and murder the civilian population. and it's all fine as US corporate profits keep flowing. Hussein, Pinochet, and Marcos, just to name a few. Even the Iranian revolution of 1979 was due to the americans - the puppet. ie. the Shah, they supported was so bad that the religious loonies overthrew him.

No, really, it does - for the websites that I absolutely have to access no matter what, I've already whitelisted them. For everything else, I couldn't care less.

yep, me too.

sites that insist on having javascript enabled before displaying any useful information or having functional navigation just guarantee that I won't bother returning...the close tab button is ever-present. I'll never get to find out if the site is one that i'd end up really liking. and i'm fine with that. more than fine.

it may be that i'm missing out on the greatest web site in the world, but i just don't give a fuck because a) my time is valuable, b) my privacy and security are also valuable, and c) there are millions of other web sites out there that aren't as annoying or demanding.

yep.

and one of the other reasons i run noscript and adblock is because I want my computer to idle at 0% CPU usage when i'm not using it, rather than with all six cores of my AMD 1090T running at 100% (which is what happens whenever i browse without noscript and adblock, e.g. in a different browser like midori or epiphany that doesn't have them installed - i use them to browse sites that require javascript because i don't want to whitelist youtube or google or other huge sites in my main browser).

you're making things too hard for yourself.

the correct way to render a page is however the user wants it rendered at that moment in time. this may vary based on the device they're using, the time of day, how tired their eyes are, arbitrary whim, and thousands of other factors - almost none of which can be anticipated or predicted by you.

amongst other things, that means web sites should emit just plain xhtml with simple css and don't do any fucking with the DOM with javascript. if the client's renderer is broken, then it's their problem, not yours. don't try to fix it or work around it with js or stupid hacks - it's just fucking broken and will never get fixed as long as people like you keep making work-arounds.

and nobody ever wants a mobile app. no user does, anyway. it's arsehole companies and marketing vermin who want users to be running their own special purpose spyware app rather than just visit a web site.

What we *do* have is a clusterfuck of technology that developed from an interesting idea to effectively share a word processing screen at universities that is fundamentally toxic to us.

no. the toxicity comes from the advertising and the insistence on javascript (and flash and java etc applets).

just displaying documents is harmless. it's the fact that web-dev fuckers (and worse, "designers") want to run arbitrary code on millions of computers belonging to other people that is the source of the harm.

So many of the "shiny" features out there only work in an event based framework where I can modify the DOM without reloading the entire page.

you're making the mistake of assuming those "shiny" features are essential. they're not. in fact, more often than not, they're a PITA and end up being a reason not to return to the site.

if a web site or even just a web page doesn't work without javascript, then it is broken. js can be useful to *optionally* enhance a page, but the page should work (i.e. display the important information and navigation controls) without javascript.

BTW:

CDN's should be registered in the browser as an alternative for any file that needs to be downloaded for a "page".

so CDNs become a back door for malware because they're all whitelisted/trusted. what's the point of managing permissions for a site if that site can just bypass restrictions by uploading their scripts and malware to a popular CDN?

doing that would also allow CDNs to spy on users as they browse from site to site, linking accounts and IDs and activities - same as ad networks now (which is yet another reason to run adblock).

if ads were just static graphics without any animation and without spyware/tracking and without javascript then most people wouldn't give a shit about ads and wouldn't bother blocking them (it was animated GIFs that motivated me to write my first ad blocker in the mid 90s...the text and static GIFs that were common before then didn't annoy me enough to be worth the bother of eliminating)

Socialist is the original - and still global - meaning of the term Libertarian, before american anarcho-capitalists co-opted the term. Until the internet spread american right-wing libertarianism far and wide, 'lefty socialist anarchist' was how most of the world understood the term. Now there's confusion and you either have to avoid the term entirely or preface it with a qualifier like "US" or "right-wing"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism

one of the huge differences (compared to US libertarianism) is that libertarian socialists don't fetishise or worship private property as THE single most important foundational doctrine, transcending *everything* else.

Libertarian propagandists and their useful idiots manage to twist any fact and every event so that everything is always the government's fault. Government can do no good, ever, and has no purpose other than to steal your property.

a conman rips off hundreds of millions? re-frame it as the "government wants their cut", so they're the ones to blame. then you can get on with that vile american habit of *admiring* successful con-men rather than hating and despising them.

do you american morons even realise that the rich, the 1%, the billionares and corporate CEOs are the modern day equivalents (and in many cases the descendants and heirs) of the aristocrats and kings that your revolutionary war was fought against? It wasn't "government" that they fought - your government is the thing your revolutionaries set up to protect themselves from a return of the kings and aristocrats, to limit and regulate their power.

(which is, of course, why you've had decades of well-funded anti-government and anti-regulation propaganda. the wealthy don't want to be limited or regulated)

and who is it that's calling for a return to monarchy, to aristocracy? why, it's the latest fad in libertarian thought.
American Libertarianism has always been about promoting the interests of the extremely wealthy over those of everyone else, and now they're pushing to have themselves raised to a new version of "nobility", but (in perfect accord with the libertarian principle - the libertarian prime directive, really - of "fuck everyone else") without even a hint of any "nobless oblige" baggage.