Too bad the civil rights movement and the end of DADT have nothing in common. When blacks were allowed to integrate, they went into places where they weren't allowed previously. With DADT, there are already gays in the military - there is no integration involved. The only thing that changes now is that they're allowed to be open about it.

the backlash from the WL episode will be a push for laws and technology to control communications at the direct expense of democratic ideals which require free speech

And you can thank that fucking tool Julian Assange for it. He's like a kid that found a $100 bill - he knows he has something very valuable but has no clue of how to use it.

I'm out in California after much time in the East and would completely love it if California where to leave the union.

I suspect many parts of the US have wanted California to leave the Union since they found out its slogan was "California: the land of fruits and nuts".

And to complete the MUD experience, the Kindle has a refresh rate equivalent to a 1200 baud modem. You know, where you can read faster than text can appear on the screen.

Who's the retard modding this as "informative"? It wouldn't be informative even if the poster's name was CrystalBall.

Dude, what are you doing on Slashdot with this precious information?? Hurry up and edit the Wikipedia page!

I'm just not seeing it -- what does a stylus buy you, that you can't get just using your finger(s)?

You get a real speed advantage with a stylus when precision is required. It also doesn't smudge the screen and doesn't cover as much of the screen as a finger does. However, a stylus sucks for typing - you're pecking with the equivalent of a single finger.

If you want to experience this, try playing a card game like solitaire on the Nintendo DS with a stylus and then try playing it on an iPod Touch or an iPhone (obviously two different game versions). Dragging the small cards around the screen is much easier on the DS.

Dr. Mario will be "administrating" the cure.

Sorry for the delay, I was away for a few days.

What I have trouble with is your unequivocal claim of ALL of the Bible being a hoax. There are plenty of contradictions in it, but it's no reason to discount all of it as false. For example, Genesis has two stories of creation, one following the other (one is a "small scale" description, the other is a "large scale"). If it's such a great hoax, wouldn't the authors make sure that there were no contradictions, especially in the first chapter? The proper way to read it is to take this story as an attempt to understand the world around us.

There's also the fact that major religions cross-reference each other. The story of a giant flood has been around since Mesopotamia and is referenced by religions all over the world. The description presented in the Bible is in all likelihood not accurate, but it is representative of a historical event (global or local, take your pick) that affected the people enough to pass the story along for thousands of years.

The stories in the Bible get more and more accurate as you read on. They go from universal myths to pretty accurate historical accounts, with real people whose existence can be verified through various documents. There are other documents, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, which prove that the stories have not changed over time. It is therefore reasonable to believe that Jesus did exist, and that the accounts of his life are somewhat accurate.

By the way, your original post makes reference to Jesus performing magic. There are a LOT of texts that didn't make it into the Bible, some of which have Jesus fighting dragons, making clay pigeons and bringing them to life with his breath and all sorts of other nonsense. They were left out because Jesus was not a magician, or a superhero. His miracles were recorded by ordinary people. There's two possibilities here: the first is that the miracles were true, the work of God. The other is that the miracles were based on science, unknown to people who were witnessing them. Neither possibility disproves the existence of Jesus, nor the fact that he did something that was considered incredible.

Your proposal that all religions are hoaxes is astounding. I could believe that at some point in time, a person or a group of people managed to impress enough followers to start a religion. (S)he or they perpetrated some hoaxes, fooled some simple minds and started a legend. But your suggestion that this is how ALL the major religions of the world started is simply absurd. The amount of complexity involved with creating deceptions of this scale is too big to have succeeded so many times.

Again, please stop spreading false conspiracy theories and state something that's actually believable.

Assuming Jesus didn't exist, how did Christianity start?

Are you seriously proposing that a bunch of people got together, invented a story about a man who could do magic and believed it so much that they were willing to be burned on crosses and get eaten by lions before admitting that it was a hoax? Please abandon this conspiracy theory in favor of a more plausible one.

The dirty hippies will argue that reducing consumption is the real alternative.

You completely missed the point of my original post.

I called your assertion that

everyone is a wrongdoer by someone's definition.

wrong because a person's actions can only have consequences under the letter of the law.

If I am speeding and get caught, I am a wrongdoer under the law. If I'm on a bus and don't offer my seat to a 90 year old lady, I am a wrongdoer in someone's books.

One action has consequences, the other has none (ignoring any beliefs in karma etc). Thus, the law's definition of wrongdoer is the only one that matters here.

If you break the law, you should expect consequences. You should expect that your trial will be unfair. You should expect Google (or anyone else) to provide evidence about your crime. You should expect to get the maximum penalty.

Similarly, if you do something that's legal in your jurisdiction but offends someone, their opinion of your actions is ultimately inconsequential.

(By the way, the fact that people regularly break laws simply means that the benefits outweigh the risks. They don't do it to stick it to The Man, who enforces the law "capriciously and inconsistently".)

Please stop spewing out ridiculous maxims. There is only one definition of a wrongdoer that matters here, and it's defined by the law. You break the law and you can expect some consequences, especially if you leave a record of it. It's simple enough.