...I don't want to store kiddie porn on my computer. And that freedom of speech BS - did the kids have the freedom not to be raped?
Yeah! And I'd rather not have kiddie porn travelling by mail. If we need to end the postal system, so be it, it's for the children. Come to think of it, those vile kiddie pornographers are using encryption to hide their behavior. Let's ban encryption too. Some are even using the Internet, let's ban that. And they're using cameras to take those pictures, time to ban cameras.
Hmmm, now that I think about it, human beings are a common threat in the sexual abuse of humans. We better get rid of people ASAP.
Ultimately your argument is, "But what about the chiiiiiildren!" There are lots of tools used by criminals. Yes, child pornographers use Freenet. It's unfortunate, but it's not the fault of the tool. Terrorists use airplanes and box cutters, but no one is trying to ban them.
Funny, this seems to be one of those double standards. People like ESR and Linus are praised and recognized as the fathers of OSS, heros among their kind, but as soon as they say something offensive you disown them.
God, I hate those hypocritical open source folks. It's almost like they're a diverse group of people with differing opinions. It's like that hypocritical United States that praises George Bush but simultaneously disowns him. Everyone knows that real organizations (especially self-organizing ones without any sort of hierarchy) behave as a hive-mind.
In life, whether personal, corporate, OSS, whatever, when you associate yourself with an organization, your actions reflect that organization to some degree.
Indeed. I'm part of the "zapp" organization, and I'd like to say that we're all pot-smoking hippies who never bathe.
Just because ESR claims to be part of the movement doesn't mean everyone agrees that he part of the movement, let alone that he represents them. That's part of the reason for the big Free Software / Open Source Software divide. It's one thing to be part of something as organized as a business or organization, it's quite another to be part of something as nebulous as a "movement."
My state's Do-Not-Call List has kept my phone blissfully silent for the last year or so. But the various DNC List laws have several loopholes. Perhaps the worst is the political campaign loophole. Worse yet, many of those campaigns are using automated responders which simply play a recording if you (or your answering machine) answers. Our primary is today, over the last three days I've gotten a half dozen unwelcome political calls and a dozen hung up calls that I can only guess are predictive dialers. For a phone that normally rings one a week this was a huge irritation. At least they haven't started calling my cell phone (yet).
...I have to counter that they are worried about Lindows infringing on their copyright, not about "blocking" Linux.
Well, trademark to be specific, but I understand your point.
I know it's easy to jump on MS, but let's be honest: Lindows, as a word, doesn't mean anything. It's just Windows with an L instead of a W. It is OBVIOUSLY trying to cash in on the Windows franchise.
Microsoft has to at least share the blame. "Windows" is a terrible trademark. Trying to claim a trademark on a term that had an accepted meaning within the industry long before you named a product after it is just sleazy. "Microsoft Windows" is a good trademark, but "Windows" is a terrible trademark. "Lindows" at least created a new word, just the sort of thing that is clearly trademarkable.
Oh, and with a neat 95% of the marketplace, I think MS is winning in the free market.
That's a big leap of logic. I could just as easily say, "With a neat 95% of the marketplace, I think MS is clearly abusing a monopoly position." Dominant market position can mean lots of things.
Your core confusion comes from confusing what X Windows is, possibly as a
result of using Microsoft Windows. Windows does a great deal to blur the lines
between the graphics display layer and the widgets on top.
X Windows is (to simplify a bit) just a way to display bits on screen.
Exactly what you display is left as a problem for the next layer up. This
might seem odd, but it has great benefits. This means that the user interface
layer (often Gnome or KDE these days) can engage in rapid change and
development while the base layer (X) can sit nice and stable. Conversely,
because particular widget sets and other user interface details aren't embedded
into the graphics system I can pick from competingofferings.
XFree86 is mostly stable because it works fine. There have been some
important developments recently (XRender, XRandR, XVideo), but on the whole
we've got what we need. The user visible improvements should take place on a
higher level (Gnome, KDE, etc). Those higher levels can take advantage of the
stable base X provides. All that's needed are regular driver updates for new
hardware as it comes out (and bug fixes as bugs become known). The X Windows
standard itself is gloriously stable. It works fine, additional functionality
can be (and is) provided through extensions. That stability is key to allowing
higher levels in the system to experiment.
The features you want sound like great ideas (although I notice that
Microsoft Windows and MacOS doesn't support the snapshot and migration
functionality you want either). But they're ideas for different layers.
Complaining that X should provide them is like complaining that your dashboard
should provide better traction.
Scenario 4: One of the largest geek web sites in the world with tens of thousands of visitors allows those visitors to post their individual opionions and thoughts. As a result you get a broad spectrum of thoughts on any given issue.
Clueless Monkey Response: Slashdot is hypocritical! Clearly everyone on Slashdot shares a hivemind so multiple points of view on a single topic indicates a state of hypocracy. It certainly couldn't mean that the thousands of visitors actually have differing points of view. I know, I'll post about that hypocracy in a attempt to be funny and get Karma.
I'm a bit fan of computer games. So I download a game demo or so a week. Modern games are big, and so are their demos. Sucking down a 500MB demo from various download mirrors sucks. Because of the huge bandwidth costs to serve the files the various mirrors force me to sign in, view ads, wait in queues, use Windows only spyware filled download programs (I often download in Linux in the background while doing Real World). Software publishers themselves generally don't release the demos themselves (because of the cost), they offload it onto one of these icky download sites. This entire process sucks.
Then came BitTorrent. If I can find a good source all is well. The software works great under Linux, it's open source, no spyware, and if the file is popular instead of waiting in line the download actually goes faster. BitTorrent is just about the only thing I do that saturates my cable modem bandwidth. Pulling down a huge demo in less than an hour is great. No longer do I fire off a download, then let my computer work on it for the rest of the night.
Now if software publishers would realize the joy of BitTorrent and release the torrents themselves everything would be better.
As a way to illegally share content BitTorrent isn't so good. But as a way to acquire legal but big content there is nothing like it.
The great features on this wonder laptop? A pretty red finish that he apparently spends time worrying about damage to. It plays a revving up sound when it boots (as far as I can tell, this is just the Windows Log In sound), and Ferrari themed background image. This man is a giant dork. Yes, I appreciate good looking hardware and even a nice desktop graphic. But to suggest that those are key purchasing decisions, let alone something to base an article on, is inane.
If your boss is likely to be irritated when you challenge particularly dracononian employment terms, is it worth it to work there? If you have little to no hope of finding another job, maybe it is; but it's worth considering.
In fact, above a certain level of skill, pay, and/or education, both the law and business practices just stops recognizing a concept of "on your own time". (You'll know when you reach that level;-)
Yes, but at that point Ask Slashdot might not be a terribly useful source of information about similar people's experiences.
There are many valid arguments questioning the effective sovereignty of Sealand. However, this particular one is not valid:
Actually the UK did annex Sealand. The UN had a general law of the sea treaty under which every country could extend its territorial limit.
If Sealand ever had a valid claim then it is immune from such an annexation. You can't simply expand your territorial waters and claim nearby soveriegn nations. Claiming that any treaty could allow such a thing to impact third party is just silly. If Sealand doesn't have a valid claim then the argument is irrelevant.
I'm no fan of WMP (I use BS Player or Windows Media Player Classic) but it's easy enough to get a screenshot from it, just turn down hardware acceleration.
I might be niave, but that seems just a tad bit non-obvious. I might even suggest that my parents would be unable to figure it out, let alone track down the setting (in the Display control panel if I remember correctly).
The core problem is that we're increasingly seeing businesses attempt to control what we do with products we own. Why are my printer, my graphics software, and my DVD player acting as little police officers? They aren't even terribly good police officers, they occasionally stop perfectly legal behavior. This crap is gradually sneaking into our society, because 99% of people don't run into the problems they don't see any problem at all. Slowly running into the problem becomes viewed as a sign of guilt; you've been charged by the hardware and found guilty in the court of public opinion. Futhermore this restricted functionality is more expensive than not having the restrictions. The currency detecting drivers or DVD lockout features weren't free to develop and include. We're being asked to pay for less functional equipment. That in the case of currency duplication you have the government leaning on suppliers to make their products less functional makes it all the worse.
No, these aren't free speech issues in general. (This particular situation might be; despite HP's warm and fuzzy claims I suspect that the government strongly encouraged them.) There is no law against this behavior. But it's unethical (not that that bothers most large businesses). As citizens we should stand up and demand that companies actually try to serve their customers first.
Mind you, I'm not defending counterfeiting currency, just answering your question. Your question implies that you would say that breaking the law is unethical. I'm always surprised to hear Americans declare that the law is a measure of morality or ethics given that many of the best parts of our country came from civil disobediance. (I realize you might not be American, if so, my apologies. Still, the statement stands.)
I've actually found it useful a number of times though that when a site didn't present me with the content that Google saw, I just viewed Google's cached copy.
Agreed, for a number of reasons. I'm browsing with Mozilla 6 on Linux and I want webmasters to see it in their logs. We (Linux users) are a small percentage and I don't want us to look even smaller. Every person spoofing from Linux or Mozilla to something else just fuels the "there aren't enough (Linux|Mozilla) users to justify testing for that platform" which isn't that bad, but leads to "...so we'll block them from the site."
I only use spoofing as a last resort against brain dead sites.
The short answer is to switch to DirecTV. The need for IR blasters goes away instantly...
Well, that only solves the Tivo problem if I'm willing to get one of the DirectTivos (or whatever they got rebranded to). The DirectTivos are really nice, but I've already got one that I've paid for a lifetime subscription on. And I'm still left with problems with my existing VCR, or the little TV in my bedroom (for which it seems silly to attach a dedicated receiver given how rarely I use it).
To say nothing of the problems if I decide to try and hook a computer up to the input stream.
I'm also concerned about supporting any
company willing to sue the innocent along with the guilty in a sort of legal carpet-bombing.
To answer another poster's assertion that the Internet is like a car, you can't just drive, you have to have some knowledge, I'd say this: sure, you have to know how to USE the car. But you shouldn't have to be expected to understand its architecture and occasionally pull the carburetor as well.
In the early days of automobiles you either knew how to repair your car or you were wealthy enough to employ a dedicated mechanic. Cars were new and rapidly changing. Eventually cars matured into the mass marketed consumer product they are today, but it took a long time. Computers are still immature. Sure, we should strive to make computers mature, but it's not something that's going to happen overnight. We're still in the period of rapid change and growth, techniques as primative as basic user level security only made it into mainstream operating systems relatively recently. Strive to make things better, but don't get irritated when things are still kinda crummy tomorrow.
Unlike the rules of the road, the rules for computers completely change every 5 years.
A fair point. In the grand scheme of things computers are a relatively immature technology. (And it's still a fair comparision automobiles. Early cars experienced rapid change in both technology, technique, and legal restrictions.) But if it's so immature is it reasonable to demand that it be as
easy to use as a nipple?
Presenting different content to Google than to random visitors is deceitful. They want the Google goodness of appearing to offer publically available content, but don't actually want to offer it. They're effectively lying to Google. If you don't want to offer content to non-subscriber's, that's fine. (I pay for two subscriber only online magazines that I respect. They play fair and their content either isn't indexed, or only the table of contents and summary pages are indexed.) But don't lie about the availability of content to Google. (I'm complaining now because this article features just such an example regarding Tech Review's use of this sleazy trick. My other pet peeve is IGN.)
Anyway, if you encounter this crap, step one is to report the site to Google. This is a case of "Page does not match Google's description" and "Cloaked page" and is clearly web spam.
Step two is to read the page anyway. Set your web browser's user agent "Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)" and you're good to go. You may also need to disable JavaScript so you don't get redirected. Personally I just suck down the page with "wget --user-agent="Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html) http://www.example.com/".
Where I live, in Fairfax, VA, the cable systems have gone 100% digital. One night all the analog boxes were turned off and the cable company parked a customer-service van at the entrance of our subdivision to swap-in digital cable boxes.
This worries me and is the reason I suspect that getting digital cable actually caused by cable bill to shrink. I suspect my provider wants to move everyone to digital so that they can cut analog service. Sure, more channels is nice and all, but my TV, VCR, and Tivo all know how to tune to analog cable, not digital. I don't want to fiddle around with a stupid IR Blaster.
Have a page "download.php?filename=foo.txt" that all your links point to, and have that page return <meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="1;URL=files/$filename">
This sucks. The biggest problem: I right click on the link in my browser and select "save to disk". I'm not spidering the site, I just want to save one lousy document. However, I don't get the document, I get the stupid referrer page. This occasionally bites me when I download software from SourceForge and the link suggests that it's a direct link, not an index link.
Also, while some people use wget rudely, there are plenty of valid reasons to use it. When I'm downloading anything large I copy the URL into a console and use wget. I trust wget to survive for the length of the download more than any web browser. Heck, I can fork wget into the background and have it survive logging out.
There are abusers and stopping them is a good idea, but don't also stop innocent users.
You know what else is boring? Proofreading. And yet
Distributed Proofreaders manages to get about 5,000 pages of text proofread every day! The key is making it easy so that a little bit of my time can be useful. It also helps to get some popularity. I'd repeatedly heard about the distributed Proofreaders, but this is the first I've heard about Sardonix. Now that I've heard about it, it sounds interesting, next time I decide to proof a page or two for Distributed Proofreaders I'll take a look to see if I can help with Sardonix.
Very interesting attitude. I've gotten into several very heated exchanges on Slashdot concerning copyrights. The universal answer was copyright laws favor the artists too much and they should do it out of love and there's nothing wrong with downloading music and movies for free even if it robs the artist.
No, the universal answer is that life is complicated and no one knows everything. As a result in a large group of people (like, say, Slashdot), you'll get a wide variety of opinions, some on each extreme end and some more more nuanced opinions. If you think Slashdot is hypocritical then world politics must completely baffle you.
Any argument accusing Slashdot on the whole of hypocracy or holding inconsistent opinions simply shows how disconnected you are.
Change the law and allow people to go into a famer's field and pick the crops without paying and see how quick people give up on farming. Sorry there's no difference.
It's a good think you apologized, since it's a completely inappropriate analogy. A better analogy would be if people could purchase food from a farmer, take the seeds in that food, and grow their own copy of the food. Oh, wait, they can do that.
In general once I purchase something from you I have the right to do with it as I will. Copyright adds this unusual twist that the original creator can limit my actions with the thing that I purchased. It's entirely unlike traditional property law. I'm in favor of copyright, I think it can be a very good thing. But to suggest that copyright is just a form of physical property law is stupid.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah! And I'd rather not have kiddie porn travelling by mail. If we need to end the postal system, so be it, it's for the children. Come to think of it, those vile kiddie pornographers are using encryption to hide their behavior. Let's ban encryption too. Some are even using the Internet, let's ban that. And they're using cameras to take those pictures, time to ban cameras.
Hmmm, now that I think about it, human beings are a common threat in the sexual abuse of humans. We better get rid of people ASAP.
Ultimately your argument is, "But what about the chiiiiiildren!" There are lots of tools used by criminals. Yes, child pornographers use Freenet. It's unfortunate, but it's not the fault of the tool. Terrorists use airplanes and box cutters, but no one is trying to ban them.
God, I hate those hypocritical open source folks. It's almost like they're a diverse group of people with differing opinions. It's like that hypocritical United States that praises George Bush but simultaneously disowns him. Everyone knows that real organizations (especially self-organizing ones without any sort of hierarchy) behave as a hive-mind.
Indeed. I'm part of the "zapp" organization, and I'd like to say that we're all pot-smoking hippies who never bathe.
Just because ESR claims to be part of the movement doesn't mean everyone agrees that he part of the movement, let alone that he represents them. That's part of the reason for the big Free Software / Open Source Software divide. It's one thing to be part of something as organized as a business or organization, it's quite another to be part of something as nebulous as a "movement."
My state's Do-Not-Call List has kept my phone blissfully silent for the last year or so. But the various DNC List laws have several loopholes. Perhaps the worst is the political campaign loophole. Worse yet, many of those campaigns are using automated responders which simply play a recording if you (or your answering machine) answers. Our primary is today, over the last three days I've gotten a half dozen unwelcome political calls and a dozen hung up calls that I can only guess are predictive dialers. For a phone that normally rings one a week this was a huge irritation. At least they haven't started calling my cell phone (yet).
Well, trademark to be specific, but I understand your point.
Microsoft has to at least share the blame. "Windows" is a terrible trademark. Trying to claim a trademark on a term that had an accepted meaning within the industry long before you named a product after it is just sleazy. "Microsoft Windows" is a good trademark, but "Windows" is a terrible trademark. "Lindows" at least created a new word, just the sort of thing that is clearly trademarkable.
That's a big leap of logic. I could just as easily say, "With a neat 95% of the marketplace, I think MS is clearly abusing a monopoly position." Dominant market position can mean lots of things.
Your core confusion comes from confusing what X Windows is, possibly as a result of using Microsoft Windows. Windows does a great deal to blur the lines between the graphics display layer and the widgets on top.
X Windows is (to simplify a bit) just a way to display bits on screen. Exactly what you display is left as a problem for the next layer up. This might seem odd, but it has great benefits. This means that the user interface layer (often Gnome or KDE these days) can engage in rapid change and development while the base layer (X) can sit nice and stable. Conversely, because particular widget sets and other user interface details aren't embedded into the graphics system I can pick from competing offerings.
XFree86 is mostly stable because it works fine. There have been some important developments recently (XRender, XRandR, XVideo), but on the whole we've got what we need. The user visible improvements should take place on a higher level (Gnome, KDE, etc). Those higher levels can take advantage of the stable base X provides. All that's needed are regular driver updates for new hardware as it comes out (and bug fixes as bugs become known). The X Windows standard itself is gloriously stable. It works fine, additional functionality can be (and is) provided through extensions. That stability is key to allowing higher levels in the system to experiment.
The features you want sound like great ideas (although I notice that Microsoft Windows and MacOS doesn't support the snapshot and migration functionality you want either). But they're ideas for different layers. Complaining that X should provide them is like complaining that your dashboard should provide better traction.
Or my favorite:
Scenario 4: One of the largest geek web sites in the world with tens of thousands of visitors allows those visitors to post their individual opionions and thoughts. As a result you get a broad spectrum of thoughts on any given issue.
Clueless Monkey Response: Slashdot is hypocritical! Clearly everyone on Slashdot shares a hivemind so multiple points of view on a single topic indicates a state of hypocracy. It certainly couldn't mean that the thousands of visitors actually have differing points of view. I know, I'll post about that hypocracy in a attempt to be funny and get Karma.
I'm a bit fan of computer games. So I download a game demo or so a week. Modern games are big, and so are their demos. Sucking down a 500MB demo from various download mirrors sucks. Because of the huge bandwidth costs to serve the files the various mirrors force me to sign in, view ads, wait in queues, use Windows only spyware filled download programs (I often download in Linux in the background while doing Real World). Software publishers themselves generally don't release the demos themselves (because of the cost), they offload it onto one of these icky download sites. This entire process sucks.
Then came BitTorrent. If I can find a good source all is well. The software works great under Linux, it's open source, no spyware, and if the file is popular instead of waiting in line the download actually goes faster. BitTorrent is just about the only thing I do that saturates my cable modem bandwidth. Pulling down a huge demo in less than an hour is great. No longer do I fire off a download, then let my computer work on it for the rest of the night.
Now if software publishers would realize the joy of BitTorrent and release the torrents themselves everything would be better.
As a way to illegally share content BitTorrent isn't so good. But as a way to acquire legal but big content there is nothing like it.
It's damn good software. It was worth a donation to Bram.
The great features on this wonder laptop? A pretty red finish that he apparently spends time worrying about damage to. It plays a revving up sound when it boots (as far as I can tell, this is just the Windows Log In sound), and Ferrari themed background image. This man is a giant dork. Yes, I appreciate good looking hardware and even a nice desktop graphic. But to suggest that those are key purchasing decisions, let alone something to base an article on, is inane.
If your boss is likely to be irritated when you challenge particularly dracononian employment terms, is it worth it to work there? If you have little to no hope of finding another job, maybe it is; but it's worth considering.
Yes, but at that point Ask Slashdot might not be a terribly useful source of information about similar people's experiences.
Also, if you're at that level this sort of thing isn't quite as bad of a problem.
There are many valid arguments questioning the effective sovereignty of Sealand. However, this particular one is not valid:
If Sealand ever had a valid claim then it is immune from such an annexation. You can't simply expand your territorial waters and claim nearby soveriegn nations. Claiming that any treaty could allow such a thing to impact third party is just silly. If Sealand doesn't have a valid claim then the argument is irrelevant.
Stick to your other arguments.
I might be niave, but that seems just a tad bit non-obvious. I might even suggest that my parents would be unable to figure it out, let alone track down the setting (in the Display control panel if I remember correctly).
No, these aren't free speech issues in general. (This particular situation might be; despite HP's warm and fuzzy claims I suspect that the government strongly encouraged them.) There is no law against this behavior. But it's unethical (not that that bothers most large businesses). As citizens we should stand up and demand that companies actually try to serve their customers first.
I thought it was odd that my new printer was wandering around my office labelling everything, but the support page says that it's a feature. *shrug*
Some would argue that it can be. She might. They might. He might. Heck, some people might argue that treason against one's country could sometimes be ethical.
Mind you, I'm not defending counterfeiting currency, just answering your question. Your question implies that you would say that breaking the law is unethical. I'm always surprised to hear Americans declare that the law is a measure of morality or ethics given that many of the best parts of our country came from civil disobediance. (I realize you might not be American, if so, my apologies. Still, the statement stands.)
Indeed. However, in the two cases I gave the site in question asked Google to not provide the cache option.
Agreed, for a number of reasons. I'm browsing with Mozilla 6 on Linux and I want webmasters to see it in their logs. We (Linux users) are a small percentage and I don't want us to look even smaller. Every person spoofing from Linux or Mozilla to something else just fuels the "there aren't enough (Linux|Mozilla) users to justify testing for that platform" which isn't that bad, but leads to "...so we'll block them from the site." I only use spoofing as a last resort against brain dead sites.
Well, that only solves the Tivo problem if I'm willing to get one of the DirectTivos (or whatever they got rebranded to). The DirectTivos are really nice, but I've already got one that I've paid for a lifetime subscription on. And I'm still left with problems with my existing VCR, or the little TV in my bedroom (for which it seems silly to attach a dedicated receiver given how rarely I use it). To say nothing of the problems if I decide to try and hook a computer up to the input stream. I'm also concerned about supporting any company willing to sue the innocent along with the guilty in a sort of legal carpet-bombing.
In the early days of automobiles you either knew how to repair your car or you were wealthy enough to employ a dedicated mechanic. Cars were new and rapidly changing. Eventually cars matured into the mass marketed consumer product they are today, but it took a long time. Computers are still immature. Sure, we should strive to make computers mature, but it's not something that's going to happen overnight. We're still in the period of rapid change and growth, techniques as primative as basic user level security only made it into mainstream operating systems relatively recently. Strive to make things better, but don't get irritated when things are still kinda crummy tomorrow.
A fair point. In the grand scheme of things computers are a relatively immature technology. (And it's still a fair comparision automobiles. Early cars experienced rapid change in both technology, technique, and legal restrictions.) But if it's so immature is it reasonable to demand that it be as easy to use as a nipple?
Presenting different content to Google than to random visitors is deceitful. They want the Google goodness of appearing to offer publically available content, but don't actually want to offer it. They're effectively lying to Google. If you don't want to offer content to non-subscriber's, that's fine. (I pay for two subscriber only online magazines that I respect. They play fair and their content either isn't indexed, or only the table of contents and summary pages are indexed.) But don't lie about the availability of content to Google. (I'm complaining now because this article features just such an example regarding Tech Review's use of this sleazy trick. My other pet peeve is IGN.)
Anyway, if you encounter this crap, step one is to report the site to Google. This is a case of "Page does not match Google's description" and "Cloaked page" and is clearly web spam.
Step two is to read the page anyway. Set your web browser's user agent "Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html)" and you're good to go. You may also need to disable JavaScript so you don't get redirected. Personally I just suck down the page with "wget --user-agent="Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html) http://www.example.com/".
This worries me and is the reason I suspect that getting digital cable actually caused by cable bill to shrink. I suspect my provider wants to move everyone to digital so that they can cut analog service. Sure, more channels is nice and all, but my TV, VCR, and Tivo all know how to tune to analog cable, not digital. I don't want to fiddle around with a stupid IR Blaster.
Chessbrain is kind of a cool hack, and I would respect that, if they weren't filthy spammers. Here is a typical Chessbrain spam. Notice the spam body image is hosted off of chessbrain.net. (Filthy, filthy, incompetant, spammers.
This sucks. The biggest problem: I right click on the link in my browser and select "save to disk". I'm not spidering the site, I just want to save one lousy document. However, I don't get the document, I get the stupid referrer page. This occasionally bites me when I download software from SourceForge and the link suggests that it's a direct link, not an index link.
Also, while some people use wget rudely, there are plenty of valid reasons to use it. When I'm downloading anything large I copy the URL into a console and use wget. I trust wget to survive for the length of the download more than any web browser. Heck, I can fork wget into the background and have it survive logging out.
There are abusers and stopping them is a good idea, but don't also stop innocent users.
You know what else is boring? Proofreading. And yet Distributed Proofreaders manages to get about 5,000 pages of text proofread every day! The key is making it easy so that a little bit of my time can be useful. It also helps to get some popularity. I'd repeatedly heard about the distributed Proofreaders, but this is the first I've heard about Sardonix. Now that I've heard about it, it sounds interesting, next time I decide to proof a page or two for Distributed Proofreaders I'll take a look to see if I can help with Sardonix.
No, the universal answer is that life is complicated and no one knows everything. As a result in a large group of people (like, say, Slashdot), you'll get a wide variety of opinions, some on each extreme end and some more more nuanced opinions. If you think Slashdot is hypocritical then world politics must completely baffle you.
Any argument accusing Slashdot on the whole of hypocracy or holding inconsistent opinions simply shows how disconnected you are.
It's a good think you apologized, since it's a completely inappropriate analogy. A better analogy would be if people could purchase food from a farmer, take the seeds in that food, and grow their own copy of the food. Oh, wait, they can do that.
In general once I purchase something from you I have the right to do with it as I will. Copyright adds this unusual twist that the original creator can limit my actions with the thing that I purchased. It's entirely unlike traditional property law. I'm in favor of copyright, I think it can be a very good thing. But to suggest that copyright is just a form of physical property law is stupid.