Cue the slashdot Apologists who will tell you that any conversation and any activity you engage in outside of your own private home off-the-internet with your shades drawn is "public" and has no expectation of "privacy" and therefore it is completely fair to be eavesdropped on, recorded, and archived.

I remember the "replacements for google reader" thread here, on Slashdot at the beginning of 2013 and I was shocked at how many people claimed to use iGoogle as their main page. I tried using that for awhile, but it was such an ugly clunky pile of crap. It felt incredibly dated and if they weren't going to renovate it, ditching it seems to make the most sense.

Not saying it had no value -- just my opinion of iGoogle when I tried to use it for a few months. It really was quite a surprise to hear so many here upset that it was being yanked.

Likewise, you wouldn't confuse two groups with "scouts" in their name, when one is for making stuff and the other is for camping in the woods and survival stuff (well, theoretically -- when I was in scouts, we had women den leaders and we spent our time making christmas ornaments and mother's day cards).

There is no confusion to be had and confusion only to be *asserted* by a biased affinity for the BSA.

I completely agree. They have a legitimate concern that someone might confuse boys building 3D printers and setting up wireless networks for the homophobic religious organization full of child molesters. They are obligated by law to defend their bigoted child-fiddling reputation.

You can usually accomplish this with Adblock, too. I block out anything using disqus or similar commenting systems (which seemed to hit mass popularity about the time that discussion on the internet hit the absolute lowest, ever).

You're nuts. You really don't have anything to gain from insane discussions with lunatics and when the foundation of their points are fanatical, you might as well be talking to a brick wall. I mean, really, who around here is thinking "what I need is another abortion/gun/immigration/gay-marriage/climate discussion"? Even a child's incessant "why?" to every sentence is more informative and produces better results.

I think there are places to have discussions and places not to have them.

I can't imagine why, for example, CBS affiliate's would have comment sections on their news articles. What is the point? I don't understand why the NYT or Washington Post would, either. That isn't to say the content is not worth discussing, but why does it have to be *there*? And why does it have to be directly on the same page as the actual article? It detracts from the content and refocuses it to anything *but* the content.

I am put off by "use your real identity", but I have no problem with "fuck it, we're not having comments at all, then". In fact, when your site (Yahoo!, CBS, etc) is almost nothing but "Durr durr, republithugs and libtards durr durr durr!" or "this news article involves a non-white person, therefore they are all monkeys and should be kicked out of the country and let the race wars begin you guys! also, fuck all the atheists and non-Christians and you too whatever political affiliation you have that is not mine!" . . . . then it's probably the best decision you can ever make.

A better moderation system is only useful if the people on your site have a long-term vested interest in the site. This is why comments at the bottom of a CBS article, linked to by Matt Drudge, requiring no sign-up for posting are so hideous and always will be.

The only thing requiring identities for posting accomplishes is pushing the agenda of forcing people to use their identity online while silencing those who, you know, don't want the fact that they commented on a youtube video with a reporter who fell out of a barrel of grapes and onto the ground below to be part of search results and something that everyone in the world (including employers, future mates, friends, in-laws, family, etc) might come across.

Google, Facebook, and others want you to use your real identity online because they want to be the hub facilitating all your identity needs.

When you hear pushes to "end internet bullying" and other bullshit, it would do well to remember that these are all ultimately efforts to eradicate anonymity from the internet and little more.

I guess I don't understand this point. I mean, I understand that parents might not want to deal with their kids waking up from nightmares and that is fine, but how is a nightmare somehow inherently bad and must be avoided? I had nightmares as a child from all sorts of strange shit and very little of it ever having anything to do with entertainment. The one thing I *can* remember is watching Nightmare on Elm Street and Poltergeist as a child. Also, I remember the Monty Python Mr. Creosote sketch. All three of these things, at the age of four, somehow terrified me with occasional nightmares for years. Even to this day, I don't like to think about those particular movies.

But . . . having nightmares about a bed eating me alive, a television coming alive and murdering me, a tree outside my window consuming me, or the white noise on the television entrancing me and taking me away . . . in no way did any damage to me. Other than having shitty nightmares, in and of themselves. I understand "I don't want you to watch that, because you'll wake me up with your stupid nightmares all week", but I don't understand "you can't watch that, because you'll have nightmares" . . .?

In other words, if your child turns out to be an asshole, you want it to be because they were inherently and naturally an asshole and not because you nurtured the asshole in them? :P

I think everyone needs to calm the fuck down and focus on the important thing, here: HOW TALL ARE THE COUNTERS?!

Walmart has been doing that for ages. They censor the titles of songs, the content of songs, sometimes even the content of movies.

This is because people have no fucking clue what they're ranting about. The club scenes involve a stripper wiggling back and forth with her goofy polygonal body with her breasts occasionally in your face. The sex scenes involve you taking her back to your home, the lights turning off as you watch from outside the building, the girl moaning once, and the scene ending.

The game consists of some sexual references (like that poor teddy bear with its eye-socket fucked out and covered completely in jizz), but they make it sound like you're playing BrazzersHD mini-games or something.

This game's content is probably entirely fine for many people much younger than the suggested 17 and probably not even remotely appropriate for most pre-teens. That doesn't change how ignorant most people speaking about it are. It's hypocritical that they're getting angry at parents being "ignorant of the content of this game" and buying it for their kids, when the reasons they're giving for the kids not being allowed to by it are based on ignorance (things which are simply not in the game or not in the context they describe it in).

I mean, seriously, how many times do we need to hear some fuckwad go on about "and then there are missions where you fuck a prostitute and murder her so you can get points".

Points... GTA doesn't fucking *have* points. And there are no such missions as this.

I don't think fucking Goofy's brains out and then splattering them all over the Disneyland parade route and thieving all of his dog biscuits before fleeing the scene is really the answer, here.

Didn't he advocate the opposite?

Censoring would be saying "you can't determine what you and your children can read/watch/hear/say/play". This is "here's some information and you can choose what you want for yourself and your children" . . . which is . . . well, the opposite of censoring. :)