Posted on March 5th, 2008 by FrozenFox
Nonsense that people love to repeat. That's exactly what this section is for. Maybe some day someone will stop repeating it.. though not likely. (More to come..)
RELIGIOUS
Darwin recanted evolution on his death bed. Sigh. First of all, even if this WAS true (which it isn't), it still would not mean he was wrong. Rationality doesn't work that way. He would need to demonstrate why his ideas were incorrect for this FUD to mean anything at all. He didn't do such in the tale itself. He only proclaimed his regret through "I was wrong!" out of fear and died in the tale. In any case, it was an outright lie made up long after the incident that lots of people believe(d). Fortunately, even one of the larger Christian groups reports on the issue as likely false at http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v18/i1/darwin_recant.asp
Furthermore, his own daughter was there when he died. She says the story is untrue. Somehow, I think his own daughter is more likely to tell the truth than a religious nut with a mission to 'save' everyone. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/hope.html The irritating part of this FUD is how often it's repeated, as if it had any relevance and as if it were true in the first place. Hell, even the first Google response gives this nonsense and hilariously fallacy-ridden "support" of the tale. People seem to want to believe this nonsense so bad, yet even if they were correct it would amount to nothing.
The United States is a Christian country / was founded on Christianity. This is yet another one of those often repeated failtastic Christian favorites. In the context that most Christians make this argument (ie the country was founded upon Christianity), this argument is laughable. A minimum of five minutes of research would show you that most of the founding fathers were in fact deists (ie, people who believe in a non-personal God UNLIKE the God of the Bible, Quran, etc), and were in favor of secularism. See http://freethought.mbdojo.com/foundingfathers.html for more information. Why is that? It's quite obvious, actually. They left Europe in part because they were tired of the conditions there; they had significant disapproval towards the religious wars going on there at the time. Catholics and Protestants were engaged in violent war against each other then, so why in the world would they want to bring it over to their new home? I've studied these religious wars at length from a History course I took here at University and outside of class from interest. Most of the large Revolutionary War icons and the minds behind the Constitution and Declaration of Independence were deists (I'm not entirely sure, but I'm pretty sure there was an Atheist among them as well), therefore the country was not "founded" upon Christianity/Christians. If you shift the word 'founded' to mean 'fought for', you'd in large part be correct. However, then you are redefining words and completely ignoring the fact that most of the leaders of the effort were non-Christian or even sometimes anti-Christian (search for quotes from Thomas Jefferson on the issue.. he didn't like Christianity at all!). However, they were vehemently in support of the freedom to believe whatever you want to. It was put in the Constitution, of course! This country cannot be a "Christian country" because of the above and the fact that it is also not composed entirely of Christians who want to force their will on everyone else. It is based on the belief that you can worship as you please (including not at all). What ever happened to the "melting pot" culture? It seems to come and go in conversation as it's convenient, doesn't it? We are not all the same. Stop trying to cover up this fact by declaring the nation as such.
LINUX
Linux infringes on Windows' copyrights. Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, loves to spew this FUD frequently. However, over all of the years of this nauseating repetition, no lawsuits have ever been filed on their (direct) behalf. Moreover, the community constantly calls Microsoft out on the issue and it always results in (gasp!) no response. I imagine anyone with remote intelligence would consider such behavior suspicious: a monopoly claiming massive infringement (and losing lots of money) but refusing to act or give specifics. It's possible that MS tried to 'act' via a third party, though such cannot be confirmed. SCO (which some have reported to have MS ties) tried to sue the major Linux vendors over similar infringement claims and failed miserably. See http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/10/2148253 for more information. When I say "miserably", I mean so much that they fell into bankruptcy. There is no way (at the present) to definitively prove a link between SCO and Microsoft. However, the timing of their lawsuit after all of these years of Linux running (gaining momentum) and Microsoft's all-out assault campaign (trying to save itself from Vista-haters switching to Linux) is suspicious. It's a simple FUD tactic meant to scare away people from using a competitive product (the nature of a monopoly). However, a SCO memo was leaked that many argue suggests such a link. One user in particular (orpheus52) commented: "Groklaw has posted that the ER post is real. Paystar, who gave SCO millions, has a major investor called Vulcan that is owned by Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft. This is truly a RICO moment. It must be hard for some one who defends Microsoft on every post on this site to swallow, but the facts are coming in. I look forward to your post admitting your error. ;)". I looked further into this comment, and the memo in question appears to be old news. Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO-Linux_controversies had this to say: "Microsoft funding of SCO controversy: On March 4, 2004, a leaked SCO internal e-mail detailed how Microsoft has paid SCO over $100 million, via the BayStar deal and other means. Blake Stowell of SCO confirmed the memo was real. BayStar claimed the deal was suggested by Microsoft, but that no money for it came directly from them. In addition to the Baystar involvement, Microsoft paid SCO $6M (USD) in May 2003 for a license to "Unix and Unix-related patents", despite the lack of Unix-related patents owned by SCO. This deal was widely seen in the press as a boost to SCO's finances, which would help SCO with its lawsuit against IBM." Please see that site for lots of interesting information, mostly related to SCO failing miserably and potential MS-SCO link explanations. To sum all of this comment more coherently: SCO tried to sue "Linux" for Unix copyright issues and failed miserably; now Microsoft (with possible links to SCO) is trying their hand at the same issue but refuses to reveal exactly what is being infringed upon, completely destroying their argument's credibility. There is no rational reason to believe Microsoft is telling the truth.
Linux requires windows or something from windows. This common nonsense is likely linked to the above. In addition, it likely stems from a gross misunderstanding of WINE, NDISWrapper, and minor legal issues with packages such as DvdCSS. Linux does not require ANY license of any sort or anything whatsoever to do with Windows. Wine is a compatibility layer (similar to in end result, but not at all the same as, an emulator) for Linux (and other operating systems like BSD or Mac) to enable Windows programs to run. Wine does not require that you own windows because it is an open-source REMAKE of the windows libraries from the ground up, not the actual windows libraries themselves. This is one reason why Wine and its spin-offs (Cedega, Crossover office) do not work perfectly and run everything one might want them to. NDISWrapper is a program that allows you to install Windows wireless card drivers in Linux by plugging in their main functions into the Linux system in the event that Linux currently does not support your wireless card natively. There is no license attached to your wireless drivers that require you to own Windows, they aren't made by bloody Microsoft. DvdCSS is a package for Linux (which, along with other packages of questionable legality like windows media codecs) that allows you to run DVDs. Most (reputable, company-run) distributions do not include any packages of questionable legality by default, but allow you to install them yourself if you have Windows or otherwise meet the legal requirements. As for DvdCss, this is because you must own a license to decrypt (play) DVDs, and from what I understand you must either acquire a license manually or buy Windows or a Linux distribution that pays for this privilege. DvdCss is not a question of infringing on Windows' rights, but from the people that make the copy protection schemes. As for the other codecs, like the Windows media codecs, the same issue as DvdCss. Reputable distributions have them available to install if you are legally allowed to, but do not include them by default, so any illegal or Microsoft-infringing activity is entirely the user's doing, and has nothing to do with Linux. Saying that Linux infringes on Microsoft's rights for this is comparable to saying Windows infringes on game makers' rights because so many games are pirated there.