> st3fan: Because that library is there does not mean that we are giving data to Google. It does not even mean that it is active or that it is sending anything.

Having gone through the comment chain in other places it seems like your entire position in the debate between you and st3fan is based on ignoring what he's actually saying in general. In response to their request for evidence your responded

>That's pretty simple. Don't use proprietary software.

which sidesteps the query entirely and does nothing to lend credibility to your original position.

I don't expect to change your mind and frankly I don't have a reason to, but if your goal is to have productive or persuasive conversations then you may want to evaluate your current communication strategy.

It's at that point of incremental innovation for web-tech where I think little guys become competitive because that's where they can start smaller businesses running cheap but 'good enough' hardware and premade open-source software to provide similar services to the big players albeit at smaller margins to provide comparable but less comprehensive products for cheaper. These smaller businesses are where I imagine the decentralization manifesting. Especially if some of those businesses are things like "Join our regional hardware co-op and contribute your unused processing power to our service in exchange for a share of the profit". That would be huge on its own for de-centralization, if a profitable service could bring anybody and everybody a worthwhile amount of money for simply running their web-service software during downtime.

If neither of those things are attainable I should be sticking with just using the library's computers to try and manage to produce some form of profit I can put towards eventually getting into community college.

If I'm not dirt broke, this entire article is sort've pointless from a practical standpoint unless you just really enjoy this sort of cost-saving exercise. But if you don't and you're making enough for a real computer then you may as well just get the real computer.

The reason I think it's important to identify terrorism committed in the name of Islam, Nazism, Christianity, etc. with their respective belief systems is because it empowers us to ask 'why'. Why are so many terrorist organizations affiliated with Islam, RECENTLY SPEAKING? Why has white supremacy become more visible in the American social space including the pre-charlottesville social space? I don't have the end all be all answer. But I think asking the question is important because whatever the true answer is, I think it's fair to say that it's probably regionally rooted, potentially linked to the economics of certain groups rooted in those regions, and because of the regional nature of many Islamic terrorist groups and white nationalist groups, I think it's fair to say that there is a cultural BUT NOT UNIVERSALLY CULTURAL element to it. I would make a similar assessment of the IRA in Ireland, Christian terrorists in Africa, and by now you can probably see where I'm going with this. Acknowledging the affiliations of these organizations and their beliefs is important because it explains THEM. It doesn't inform us about their beliefs, but it allows us to analyze why they have chosen to affiliate with those beliefs in a hopefully honest fashion.

None of that is meant to imply that Nazism should be viewed as American, or that Islamic Terrorism should be viewed as a sub-element of Islam, but acknowledging that these contexts exist with regard to SPECIFIC ORGANIZATIONS is important in my opinion because the root of these issues is often multifaceted and can only be combated, in my opinion, with a comprehensive understanding of these groups and their spiritual as well as political influences.

Edit: I will acknowledge when I edit an argument in the face of something that someone has pointed out. This post has already been heavily edited for my own satisfaction however because while modern examples of significant terrorism are obviously not evenly distributed across cultures, that does not mean that one culture is implicitly prone to terrorism and I'm trying very hard to keep my grammar and framing of arguments as neutral in that respect as possible while acknowledging the current configuration of terrorism, hate, and extremism across the globe.

Further, it wasn't simply nazis in the abstract that killed those few million people, it was nazi controlled Germany. It seems dishonest to ignore that aspect of the history because you gloss over all of the political maneuvering allowed the nazi party to become the force that it was such as the Reichstag Fire Decree. On top of this you ignore the history of antisemitic racism in early 20th century Europe that allowed the nazi party to gain enough popularity to attain traction as a political party.

Your point that anyone supporting the spread of nazism is supporting the actions of the nazi party that existed in Hitler's Germany is valid. However, in America this sort of speech is not as distinctly illegal as it is in much of (all of?) Europe and so from an American perspective a discussion needs to take place about how to approach the topic because for us blanketly outlawing nazi groups because of their beliefs would erode some part of the general freedom of speech that we operate with. Whether that erosion represents the loss of anything of value is debatable, but it would none the less represent a decrease in our overall speech protections. This is where my point about evaluating and qualifying the reach and influence that groups like this actually have becomes relevant, because a rational discussion would be dependent on this sort of information.

This was why I concluded with the argument that we should at the same time be focused on identifying and quantifying the reach and influence these groups. Because in the wake of an extremely upsetting event it's important to emphasize the need for intelligent debate and evaluation or else the discourse becomes volatile and incapable of rational decision making.