The social nature can go many ways. It has often become ugly throughout history, but it can be a beautiful thing too. I know quite a few people whose beliefs I may not share (but then, beliefs are private), whose outlook on life and most importantly, the deeds of whom I greatly admire. Happily, they seem content to take strength from their faith in private without the need to ostracise.

My personal epiphany was the observation that religion and place of birth are highly correlated. It seemed fairly arbitrary at the age of 10 and still does. It has not made me into an atheist though. People from many walks of life are on a righteous road.

The focal question in your previous post seemed to be At what point, exactly, do I cross the line on what I say?. That is an impossible question to answer. Libel and slander and parody and indeed abusive verbiage cannot be unambiguously defined, they need to be seen in context, and yes, a lot of that is and will (especially when concerning online behaviour) be tackled in common law. That is an ongoing process, but will never lead to a nice leaflet of bullet points to guide one through lilfe. One needs to be a fairly abusive person however to cross enough gray area in order to go to jail. So, it is not about crossing a line, it is about crossing a sufficient amount of gray area. Similar arguments can be made regarding stalking. When is behaviour stalking? There is no straight answer. And no, you would never go to jail for saying that Clegg is a bastard. On Slashdot there seems to be a sentiment that any repercussions following from abusive online behaviour somehow represent an assault on free speech. It seems to be a geek impediment of all-or-nothing binary thinking. I am not equating your post with this view, but it ties in with the gray areas. It is OK to protest/get angry/slam/mock/whatnot online. But downright abusiveness and targeted bullying is not. As an aside, my remark "how hard is that grasp" did not contribute to the debate - apology.

Yes, there are gray areas. How hard is that to grasp? In the very dark-gray areas one is bound go get in trouble, in the light-gray areas one is not. The light-gray area is likely a waste of the judicial process, the dark-gray area quite likely is not. It's just like real life, no wait, it is real life. Parody and mockery are allowed. Abuse is something else. Slander and libel are something else. There is no hard-cast algorithm to decide which is which, that's why people get involved.

If you are a weirdo disturbing a memorial in a public square, you might be held accountable and face the consequences. Seriously, why do people assume a right to behave like a dog on the internet?

Can someone mod parent down and troll ASAP please.

Mod parent up. The LWN link illuminates the agenda Florian Mueller is incessantly pushing. To give an idea of his style:

How will you separate this special case from other cases of copyright laundering? Are you sure Google hasn't already done this in other cases, too?Are you sure nobody else has done or will now consider doing this, following Google's example?

He is throwing mud under the assumption some of it will stick in the reader's mind. It's a veritable litany of "you cannot be sure", "X must have an agenda to do Y", "we need a reasonable degree of certainty" plus a few other standard debating tricks. It's not even done particuarly well when faced with astute responses.

Thank you for ruining a small part of my day. My visit to crackpotopia quickly yielded

It takes only one "counterexample" to disprove the theory of an Old Earth.[1] As with any logical proposition, one contradiction disproves the proposed rule. If each of 33 counterexamples has merely a 10% chance of being valid -- an underestimate -- then the probability that the Earth is billions of years old is less than 3.8%. With the total of these counterexamples at 33, they demonstrate that the Earth must be young with a likelihood of greater than 96%.

The list of counterexamples is ... amusing.

Here is some very interesting coverage regarding one of the incidents that you mention:

"Mommy has dirty chest bumps," said a 5-year-old boy quoted in one of the thousands of case studies compiled by the FCC. "She's like the bad lady on TV. I'm afraid Mommy will take off her shirt and scare everyone. I hate Mommy." Girls were traumatized as well, often expressing apprehensions about sexual development. According to Wasserbaum, one 8-year-old girl told her parents that she didn't "want to get evil breasts."

This publication is a welcome voice of reason.

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. — Albert Einstein

The scientist has a lot of experience with ignorance and doubt and uncertainty, and this experience is of great importance, I think. When a scientist doesn't know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty darn sure of what the result is going to be, he is in some doubt. We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress we must recognize the ignorance and leave room for doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty - some most unsure, some nearly sure, none absolutely certain. Now, we scientists are used to this, and we take it for granted that it is perfectly consistent to be unsure - that it is possible to live and not know. But I don't know everybody realizes that this is true. Our freedom to doubt was born of a struggle against authority in the early days of science. It was a very deep and very strong struggle. Permit us to question - to doubt, that's all - not to be sure. And I think it is important that we do not forget the importance of this struggle and thus perhaps lose what we have gained. — Richard Feynman

Uberhackers are killed by urging/social engineering them to press a certain key, which then causes explosives within the computer to detonate. And that was the best bit.

Deus ex machina. As a plot device, it is insipid. As a causative force for life, it is the stuff of dreams. As a comment on Slasdhot, it is pure genius.

I am on a mission to demote usage of the word 'consumer'. Interestingly, in your quotation Henry Ford uses the much more apt term 'customer'. The word consumer, to my mind, is degrading. A consumer sits at the end of a tube. A customer is someone who might walk through the door of your shop if you go about your business right.