If you think relying on judges is such a better alternative, I suggest you do some research into Japan's legal system.

Imagine this scenario.

Iranians are using Haystack to avoid an oppressive government. The creator says "stop using Haystack, there's a weakness - if the government does X they can see your traffic!" The government hears this, does X, and promptly arrests and kills every Iranian who used it.

I think it's clear that keeping their mouth shut just in case the government hasn't figured out what X is is the wise decision here.

Or better still, completely eschew all forms of religion and live in the real world :)

For some stores you DO have to buy 10. It's often something like $1.19 for 1, $10 for 10, so the difference is miminal, but at least one store in my area does that.

> Most of the PS/2 items I've seen don't have EULAs that I've seen.

I agree, none of my keyboards or mice have had EULAs.

> How can Rackspace refuse service to a crazy Christian because of what he believes in?

That's not what's happening at all. They're refusing service to a client who violated their contract with them...when they signed up for hosting, they signed a contract that included an agreement not to post hate speech on their servers. Now they are posting hate speech. It's not rocket science. The fact that they are Christians has nothing to do with it.

> False analogy. It's more like you demanding back a megaphone you rented me because you decide you don't like what I'm saying.

So what? I'll make it even more accurate of an analogy for you. I own a megaphone. You want to use it. We agree on a contract that states, among other things, that you will pay me $X for use of my megaphone, that you will not use it to broadcast hate speech, etc. You then turn around and broadcast hate speech, so I say "give me back my megaphone." Don't like my terms? Get your own megaphone or use someone else's.

That's pretty much exactly what's going on here, and there is no violation of free speech or any other right.

There are situations where this does not hold up - for example, if I had a monopoly (especially a government-subsidized monopoly) on megaphones and you couldn't get one from anyone else. But that is not what's going on here - there are dozens if not hundreds of hosting providers out there that this church can choose to do business with instead.

> The problem is, of course, that rackspace, isn't "refusing to distribute" it's blocking distribution. If you wrote, say, a book on evolution, and I used force (as rackspace did) to prevent you from doing this, surely you'd agree I'm suppressing your free speech. The same is going on here.

I'm not sure I follow you. Rackspace is a hosting provider that is choosing not to host a website that violates its policies. That is entirely different from being, for example, an ISP that is blocking traffic to their site. To expand on your book analogy, they are a publisher choosing not to publish your manuscript...they aren't going into bookstores and libraries and pulling it from the shelves.

>college textbooks
>not a target for theft

That sounds like the exact opposite of my experience. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I went to a state school, or the average income in my area, or some other factor, but textbooks are a very common target of theft here due mostly to their fairly high resale value and relative difficulty tracking.

>it would be astounding if students (parents!) didn't sell them off immediately.

Assuming sane policies in place by the school (yes I know that's a stretch, but if they don't take a step like this it's their own fault) students/families would be responsible for replacing lost or stolen devices, so selling them would leave them with a best case net gain of zero, most likely a loss as they won't be able to sell for full price. That or the student has no textbook, which will have repercussions itself (and likely won't go unnoticed by staff)

When you upload the video, if it finds a content match it tells you and explains what that means for you. I did a music video for "Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley and it identified the audio track, told me that it identified the audio track, and placed a link to buy the song under the video. I assume had it been from an artist/label/etc who doesn't want any unauthorized use of their content, it would have blocked the audio (or entire video) and notified me in the same way that it had done so.

Basic reading comprehension is a useful skill. You may want to consider learning it. Allow me to break this down a bit more for you, since I apparently assumed too much.

>As a gnostic atheist myself,
>So you also deny the existance of people who claim to know there's no God?

Brief English lesson. Gnosticism is the claim that it is possible to know the truth about the existence of God or gods. Agnosticism is the claim that that truth is unknowable. A gnostic theist believes there is a god and believes it is possible to know this to be true. An agnostic theist believes there is a god but does not believe that it is possible to know for sure. An agnostic atheist ("weak atheism", often incorrectly referred to simply as agnosticism) does not believe in god and believes it is not possible to know for sure. A gnostic atheist ("strong atheism") does not believe in god and believes it is possible to know this to be true.

I do not deny the existance of people who claim to know there is no god - gnostic atheists - in part because I AM one.

Now let's look at what I was replying to, and I will explain my response in greater detail.

>And ironically, atheism is also the vanity of those who cannot answer 'I do not know'.

Agnostic atheists are essentially making the claim "I do not believe it is possible to know if there is a god or not, but I do not believe there is." Clearly this comment does not apply to them, but I did not believe it was meant to, so I didn't bother spelling it out.

Gnostic atheists, strong atheists, whatever you want to call us, those seem to be the target of the original post's claim, as we are at least making some kind of positive claim - that it is possible to know whether there is a god. If you are agnostic (whether you are an agnostic theist or agnostic atheist), that may seem to be a vain claim. However, we are completely capable of answering "I do not know" and will do so when appropriate. My post provided examples - we don't claim to know what happened before the big bang or if the concept of 'before the big bang' is even valid. We claim we do know on the god issue specifically, but not on any of the multitude of related questions.

The reasons for making a gnostic claim vary from person to person - in my case, the argument is simple. Every claim of a deity that actually does something, has some kind of effect on the world beyond making it in the first place, can and has been disproven. We cannot disprove a god who does not influence the world any more than we can disprove there is an invisible, intangible pink unicorn who lives in my basement and leaves no trail of it's passing and doesn't touch or influence anything. However, I feel we can safely disregard these claims because they are meaningless and worthless. They add complexity without providing new information or allowing for predictions of anything. If you take a model of the universe based on only observable data and one that is identical except that there's also something we can't detect that doesn't affect anything, and both make exactly the same predictions, there is no reason to bother with that invisible entity in our model - Occam's razor applies here.

If you can give me an experimentally sound model of a god who has some kind of influence in the workings of the universe, that is detectable and allows us to make some kind of prediction about something not explained by the naturalistic model, I'd be willing to reconsider my stance. But based on all evidence currently available, I believe such a god does not exist.

No. Even strong atheism merely claims "I don't know what the answer is, but I believe your explanation is incorrect."

As a gnostic atheist myself, I don't pretend to know what happened before the big bang - or even if there was a 'before', or if that question is even meaningful or sensical. I will claim that a god as usually described by the Abrahamic faiths is nonsensical, however, as are most other specific claims about deities or other supernatural entities/phenomena. There are a few exceptions, like the deistic idea of god, that cannot be disproven - but I do not believe in them either, for a number of reasons.

That would be a median, not a turning lane. Assuming you're in the US, the turn lanes being referenced are for RIGHT turns, not left.

Snooptisserie Oven? That actually sounds pretty awesome...

Turns out this already exists in many forms...it's called fraud. This doesn't change that except maybe making it marginally harder.