Big Brother Big Business

[decidence]

http://googlonymous.com/


Goooo Technology.

 

[Arctyrael]

Surprised no one has replied to this...

So what is this site supposed to be? Someone else doing the data collection now?

 

[Elemmire]

Honestly, I'd have no problem with this if it wasn't for the people in power being immoral and corrupt. Do you honestly think they'll use the info properly? No, they'll use it to increase their power and wealth.. they'll use it to keep the "supposed" threats to their money and power down. And do you HONESTLY think they'll use it to harm their own? That the bad shit those that control the info and such do? No.. the douches.. I really wish something would happen to drastically make a change to our society and world for the better -_-

 

[Arctyrael]

Honestly, I'd have no problem with this if it wasn't for the people in power being immoral and corrupt. Do you honestly think they'll use the info properly? No, they'll use it to increase their power and wealth.. they'll use it to keep the "supposed" threats to their money and power down. And do you HONESTLY think they'll use it to harm their own? That the bad shit those that control the info and such do? No.. the douches.. I really wish something would happen to drastically make a change to our society and world for the better -_-

Are you religious? You could always pray for the rapture. Then in 7 years, the world would be better ^_^

 

[Elemmire]

Not really religious.. but I really hope there is a God :\ specially at this point.

I would love for religion to come back in strong. Because it really was a great way to help people control themselves and be ethical and moral people.

 

[Arctyrael]

Not really religious.. but I really hope there is a God :\ specially at this point.

I would love for religion to come back in strong. Because it really was a great way to help people control themselves and be ethical and moral people.

It is just my opinion, but that logic is full of holes. Religion only helps the truly devout control themselves. Otherwise, it's a tool to be used opportunistically. Another thread, for another time.

Still my question stands. Who's to say that service isn't collecting your search information? More pertinently, why doesn't google protect their assets -- more companies need to be like Qwest, and deny the government when it comes knocking. There are proper channels for information gathering, and all to often, companies have to hand over records improperly for fear of costly court processing.

 

[Valandil]

Not really religious.. but I really hope there is a God :\ specially at this point.

I would love for religion to come back in strong. Because it really was a great way to help people control themselves and be ethical and moral people.

Go go Crusades!

 

[Elemmire]

hey, I never said it was perfect but it did control quite a few. And we always haven't had corrupt leaders in the past.. while there were many, we had good ones. Do you think religion didn't have a part in that (being it was way back when society was more traditional )

 

[Romper]

Not really religious.. but I really hope there is a God :\ specially at this point.

I would love for religion to come back in strong. Because it really was a great way to help people control themselves and be ethical and moral people.

Arthur: A duck
(crowd turns)
Bedevere: Exactly. So... logically ...
Some villager: If she ... weighs the same as a duck ... she's made of wood.
Bedevere: And therefore?
Vllagers: A witch! A duck! A duck! Fetch a duck.
Some villager: Here is a duck, Sir Bedevere.
Bedevere: We shall use my largest scales.

I think we know where the movie goes from there. lol Ethically moral people is hysterical seeing as though people wanting more land to move up in society would claim <insert neighbor> has been acting suspicious, and been dancing so they must be a witch. Got to love them Puritans.

 

[Negorissimo]

O man, all that info gathering is big business indeed. If you can be monitored almost by anything, that iPhone is gonna oWn a lot of people...

 

[Bustaballs]

So if I search for "How to be a terrorist in America", I can go to gitmo? ; ;

 

[prydaddy]

So if I search for "How to be a terrorist in America", I can go to gitmo? ; ;

The bright side to that working is you would not have to worry about healthcare (B/C it's free, er or so says SiCkO).

 

[Romper]

Go go Crusades!

 

[Elemmire]

Arthur: A duck
(crowd turns)
Bedevere: Exactly. So... logically ...
Some villager: If she ... weighs the same as a duck ... she's made of wood.
Bedevere: And therefore?
Vllagers: A witch! A duck! A duck! Fetch a duck.
Some villager: Here is a duck, Sir Bedevere.
Bedevere: We shall use my largest scales.

I think we know where the movie goes from there. lol Ethically moral people is hysterical seeing as though people wanting more land to move up in society would claim <insert neighbor> has been acting suspicious, and been dancing so they must be a witch. Got to love them Puritans.

hehe, well religion has been shown to help lower crime rates. For example, India has 70% less crime than America (granted they are far poorer..) and that's generally because of their religious beliefs (as well as tight family and community which is something our country lacks).

 

[Tristam Green]

Not really religious.. but I really hope there is a God :\ specially at this point.

You get a massive rateup for this remark, because you said it for the right reasons.

Religion only helps the truly devout control themselves. Otherwise, it's a tool to be used opportunistically.

Likewise, so do you. That's the sad situation about religion in general is that it's far too easy for anyone to twist it for their own means; which of course is NOT what any kind of faith, religion, or spirituality should be about. It's about betterment for all, not to advance one's own agenda.

Go go Crusades!

This is quite possibly one of the least-educated rebuttals I've ever heard. Yes, there have been persecutions in the name of the Christian God. Yes, there have been murders. Yes, there have been atrocities. But on the flipside, there were centuries of documented, countless persecutions, genocides, and the like in the name of other religions.

And let's never forget, dammit: The Crusades brought you the following modern things:

- modern banking, with checking accounts and credit
- entire schools of thought brought out of arabic culture (see: algebraic theory)
- militaristic advances as in the restructuring of entire fortresses
- imported goods such as precious gems, produce of tropical fruits

 

[Bustaballs]

The bright side to that working is you would not have to worry about healthcare (B/C it's free, er or so says SiCkO).

Sweet! I can't afford health insurance and I need to get my foot taken care of. I know the next thing to search for on google!

 

[Arctyrael]

You know... Jails are such a anomoly in a capitalistic society. A very large group of people, that if paid, could pay for their necessities in jail.

You have a huge untapped labor source, that makes like $0.40/hour. Jail's, that have model inmates produce furniture, make crazy profit margins. The inmates don't see much more than a dime.

If we paid jailbirds, and made them pay for their shit - it wouldn't be the complaint of 'free healthcare.' We would just have a bunch of people claiming 'inhumane treatment.' (The inmates would have a very unlikely chance of choosing their own doctor...) As well, you would probably have people bitching that we shouldn't 'reward' prisoner's with decent pay and work... (The people that don't want free healthcare to inmates, as well as don't want the jail to spend money on them... can't have it both ways)

So I really can't complain about free healthcare in our jail system - it keeps it as simple as it can with minimal complaints.

 

[Valandil]

This is quite possibly one of the least-educated rebuttals I've ever heard. Yes, there have been persecutions in the name of the Christian God. Yes, there have been murders. Yes, there have been atrocities. But on the flipside, there were centuries of documented, countless persecutions, genocides, and the like in the name of other religions.

And let's never forget, dammit: The Crusades brought you the following modern things:

- modern banking, with checking accounts and credit
- entire schools of thought brought out of arabic culture (see: algebraic theory)
- militaristic advances as in the restructuring of entire fortresses
- imported goods such as precious gems, produce of tropical fruits

Ah where to begin...

Your conclusion seems to imply that the religious sanctioned slaughter of millions of people is okay because it brought us such things as banking, intellectual tradition, advancements in military technology, and more exotic imported goods. I suppose you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, right?

So banking never existed before the the period of 1085 CE ~1200 CE? Hmmm I guess those loan records from ancient Babylonia that date back to second millenia BCE should not be considered banking records. I think we should also ignore the fact that the ancient Greeks conducted modern banking transactions at early at the 5th century BCE. Now that I think about it, we should also disregard the precepts in the Torah, Holy Bible, and Qu'ran that expressly forbid the act a usury. Especially since you can't have usury without banking transactions am I right?

One point I will concede to you is that the Crusades did help bring Europe out of the Dark Ages. However, the Dark Ages wouldn't have been quite so dark if the Roman Catholic Church had not such a thorough job of destroying virtually every intellectual work that didn't jive with their point of view on the world. Thankfully, there were a great deal of Muslim thinkers that recognized the importance of the works of men such as Aristotle, Plato, Archimedes, Galen, et al. Even more fortuitous that there were a handful of rebel European monks who copied down these texts and translated them from Arabic into Latin and maintain very illegal and very heretical personal libraries in the face of almost certain death and torture if discovered. I suppose we shouldn't feel too bad though, I mean the Roman Catholic Church only set the Western world back by about a 1000 years, no big deal. I mean we do have modern banking now, right?!

I assume that your third point refers to the explosion of castle-building that went on in Europe post-Crusades since walled cities had been around for at least three millenia at this point. I will agree somewhat with that point. I mean after all those holy knights and warriors returned to Europe a wealthy person better have a strong fortification to defend himself with. Oh there's one thing I forgot to mention about your castle theory. The First Crusade was from 1095 CE - 1099 CE. The first ear of castle building in Europe began around 870 CE. Meh, no biggie, it only predates the Crusades by two centuries.

So I guess all of these "exotic" items were virtually nonexistent to the West prior to ~1100 CE? Forget the fact that Alexander's Macedonian stretched from present-day Italy to India during the 4th century BCE. Also ignore that little detail that Romans imported silk from China that came along trade routes that cut right through the heart of the Middle East.

Now, onto the larger topic at hand. You called my rebuttal one of the "least educated rebuttals you had ever heard," yet you don't seem to know much about the actual history of the events I mention. Elemmire claims that if religion were to "come back in strong," as she put it, then the world would be a much more moral and ethical place. I suppose that's true, if you were to ignore the countless atrocities committed in the name of religion over the past 4000 years.

For example, Hebrew invasion and slaughter of the Canaanites. That would include the murder of every man, woman, and child in each conquered city.
The ~1300 year war between Sunni and Shi'a Muslims. The ethnic cleansing of Kosovo. The slaughter of Jews & Muslims by Christians during the Crusades era. The slaughter of Christians and Jews by Muslims post-Crusades. And let us not forget the demonification of outsiders that has been promoted by the three monotheistic religions since their inceptions.

There are several reasons why I specifically brought up the Crusades as a counterpoint to Elemmire's comment that a strong religious presence equates to a more moral society.

- The Church condoned murder of Jews & Muslims during the First Crusade, specifically during the capture of Jerusalem in 1099.
- The massacre of Jews in European communities, most notably in Germany, that accompanied virtually every Crusade during this era.
- The massacre of Greek Orthodox Christians by Roman Catholic Christians, specifially the sacking/burning/looting of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade.
- The slaughter of Christians by Muslims during and after the Second Crusade.
- The papal sanctioned killing of European pagans and non-Catholic Christians during the Crusades era. (Albigensian Crusade, Northern Crusades, Swedish Crusades, et al)

The Crusades era also laid the groundwork for the following highpoints of human ethics:

- Ottoman invasion of Europe
- Spanish Inquisition and massacre of Jewish and Muslim converso in southern Spain
- European land-grab wars resulting from various political alliances/marriages that took place during the Crusades era
- strained (at best) Christian-Muslim relations in the modern era

It is also important to point out that prior to Pop Urban II's speech at Clermont in 1095, the killing of another human being and warfare in general were highly frowned upon by the Church. However, Urban was able to use bloodshed and warfare to somewhat unite and direct the rampant feudal violence against a "common enemy:" Islam. This suddenly made the Church's position one which justified killing, so long as it was the killing of non-Christians "for the sake of Christ." Later popes and bishops were able to use this new position to further justify wars against Jews in Europe, pagans, and those they considered to be heretics. This religious justification of homicide also laid the foundation for later genocides such as the Native American Wars, the Holocaust, and Kosovo.

I suppose after educating myself and looking at the evidence a strong religious prescence really does lead to a better world! I don't know how I ever doubted such an unmistakable conclusion. /sarcasm off

Religion is nothing more than a political tool used to varying degrees of effectiveness by charismatic individuals to either 1) justify their position of power 2) strengthen their position of power 3) overthrow a position of power 4) control the populus, 5) murder other homo sapiens.

To quote Nietzsche: "God is dead," and religion is holding the bloody knife.

 

[Tristam Green]

A whole lot of shit, that I summed up already in this:

But on the flipside, there were centuries of documented, countless persecutions, genocides, and the like in the name of other religions.

Don't give me the horse-shit retort "your conclusion says it's okay, because it gave us X items." I never said the Crusades were okay, but dammit, people sure as fuck turn a blind-eye to anything else in history when the Crusades are mentioned; and THAT is what's wrong.

And I'd like to see you make an omelette without breaking eggs. Go try walking on some water while you're at it.

I applaud your candor in debate, Valandil, but read before replying.

Ah, where to begin...

 

[Valandil]

Don't give me the horse-shit retort "your conclusion says it's okay, because it gave us X items." I never said the Crusades were okay, but dammit, people sure as fuck turn a blind-eye to anything else in history when the Crusades are mentioned; and THAT is what's wrong.

Kind of like what you're doing when I provided evidence that the Crusades did NOT, in fact, bring about all the things you brought up.

And I'd like to see you make an omelette without breaking eggs. Go try walking on some water while you're at it.

I applaud your candor in debate, Valandil, but read before replying.

Ah, where to begin...

Perhaps you should take your own advice.