Given the reaction to Guantanamo, I'd say it hardly provided a workaround. The Bush administration was hounded by critics until the very end, and even Bush admitted he wanted to close it (and given the troubles Obama's having closing it, I'm inclined to agree that it's complicated).
So it's okay if the constitution and the bill of rights are violated as long as everything turns out OK in the end? Go tell that to the people who were tortured there. Guantanamo is most definitely a workaround, even if it stops to be one someday.
Also, Guantanamo is a very specific legal hack. It takes advantage of the fact that non-US citizens do not have rights outside US soil. American citizens could not get sent there without the government breaking the law.
I have no words to express how that argument still shocks me today, even though I've heard it countless times. People who use it seem to think that all that matters are legal definitions. Guantanamo is freaking occupied by American forces. It was leased to them. It is as American as soil can be, in any sensible meaning of the word. And come on, non-US citizens? I am a non-US citizen. If I visit the USA and get murdered, mugged or raped there, does that mean the law gives me no protection? I'm not sure if I'll ever want to visit your country.
Look: please don't get the idea that I'm trying to spite you, or start a pissing contest, or anything like that. I just find it mildly curious that your signature claims the USA is a "freer" nation than others, and at the same time you fail to realize that all those granted freedoms are promptly papered over by your government whenever it suits them. Judging by our conversation, you do seem to be intelligent enough to not fall for that.
It doesnt redirect you to another 3rd party site owned by the NSA, it simply provides a web GUI that suggest sites on what the system thought you wanted to see.
It doesn't redirect you to a third-party site owned by the NSA; it redirects you to a third-party site, full stop. This not only breaks a whole host of applications relying on DNS to inform them that a domain name doesn't exist, but it is in violation of the standards that hold the Internet together.
The first amendment (in fact, the bill of rights) is notoriously difficult to work around in the US. There is not enough recent history of martial law being imposed (indeed, it can't be invoked except by Congress) but even when a "state of emergency" is declared, the bill of rights doesn't go away. New Orleans found that out after confiscating guns [nraila.org] post-Katrina. Note that neither WW2 nor 9/11 affected the First Amendment in any way.
I'd say the Guantanamo affair is proof that 9/11 has provided a way to get around the Bill of Rights (though not specifically the first amendment).
Now, reading about censorship in Portugal I do see that it's done a great job in ensuring freedom of speech. However, I wonder how it can reconcile that with imprisoning people for insulting national symbols (including other countries' symbols). Surely, this must be unconstitutional?
In my interpretation of the constitution, it surely is unconstitutional. I actually find it very silly to legislate respect for the national symbols; I'm not obliged to love my country just because I live in it. I don't know if anyone has challenged that law yet.
My understanding of free speech laws in most liberal democracies is that most of them give large grants of power to the government of the day, so that they can squelch free speech if they feel it's necessary in the public interest. The most famous of these laws are the German laws banning holocaust denial, or laws in India about speech that "inflame inter-religion tensions". I understand why these countries take these positions, but it does bring about a chilling effect. Countries with specific traumatic histories are not the only ones, even relatively liberal Canada [wikipedia.org] and Sweden [wnd.com] have had similar cases.
I totally agree with you in this matter. Freedom of speech in order to be effective must not contain "exception clauses"; otherwise it is far too easy to fall down a slippery slope.
I'm not sure how Portugal's constitution guarantees freedom of speech. For example, Section II Article 37 grants freedom of expression, but I'm not sure if the government can frame laws to curtail it to maintain public order, for example. (Most European countries have such laws on the books and have used them on a number of occasions).
Note that I'm no expert on the Portuguese constitution, but my interpretation is that the freedoms granted by article 37 (or any other article, for that matter) can never be infringed by any law (see Part IV, Section I). However, rights can be suspended in a "state of siege or emergency", though only for a limited time, under strict guidelines, and certain rights (including freedom of conscience and religion) cannot be infringed (article 19). As far as I know, this has never occurred since the current constitution is in force.
I don't know how the US stands *constitutionally* in this regard, but I'm going to speculate that if the installed powers wanted to curtail basic rights in a time of great distress (war, terrorist attacks, etc) they would have no trouble doing so, even if that amounted to bypass any kind of legislation or "constitutional promise". I believe the situation is similar in any democracy of the world...
By contrast, in the US, any law the government tries to pass can be challenged if it violates the 1st amendment -- it isn't something the government of the day can "work around". Libel laws do exist, but are notoriously weak because the law deliberately skews in favor of free speech.
I don't see how the US is different, in that regard, from any other constitutional democracy; one of the explicit purposes of a constitution is precisely to prevent the government from passing certain kinds of laws.
Also, since this'll be open source it'd be trivial for you to remove any problematic bits from the code. That said, a company would have to be very very stupid to sneakily grab sensitive data. And Google's not stupid - even when their apps have stored private user data, they've been very up-front about it (Google Toolbar, Google Desktop) and the privacy-unfriendly features had to be consciously turned on by the user -- it was not the default.
As soon as you hand off your data via HTTP to an application running on someone else's server, what guarantee do you have about the code that runs there?
I don't think the parent was referring to what Google applications do locally --- he/she was referring to what they do remotely. They may promise they don't do (and won't ever do) anything with your data, but you still have to trust what they say, and many people (like me) are not willing to trust them that far.
It says a lot about the world that no other nation yet has the 1st and 2nd amendment.
This is totally offtopic, but regarding your current signature, I'd like to let you know that there's at least one other nation in the world (Portugal) that has an article in its constitution equivalent in content to the 1st amendment to the U.S. constitution. And I'm sure there are a lot more that also do.
That is because those artists had patrons or were employed by the 'State'.
Precisely. I was talking about patronage.
Now can you imagine one person being the patron for a movie. It cannot be done, not if you want A or B grade movies.
Who said it would be a single person?
I have seen lots of great movies that were made on a low budget. Don't assume that all "A or B grade movies" come from Hollywood and cost millions of dollars. That's what they want you to think: that their existence is crucial to the production of worthwhile forms of art.
No industry could survive something like that - and I'm not just talking about the RIAA et all who would no longer be able to rape producers and consumers alike, I'm talking about there not being enough money around to invest in creating quality content for us in the first place.
I think the question is really whether you need a "content industry". Music and other forms of art exist since the dawn of mankind. No industry was ever in place to support the production of those works until the 20th century. Why do we need such an industry in order to create "content"? Why do we have to regard the production of art as an industry?
I say we should let people pay what they think is fair for content. If we get to the point where content quality actually drops because there's not enough money, certainly someone who appreciates good art will be willing to give some of their money to subsidize it. Only it won't be a million dollar industry --- but art is not about making money, right?
Yes, developers choose to follow the cult of GPL and that is their choice. It is a free society in some parts of the world so they have that right.
You assume all developers using the GPL follow some kind of cult. I don't think that's the case, I can just choose a license that fits what I'm willing to let people do with the software I write, and be done with it...
I grant that Stallman is too much of an extremist sometimes, but let him do what he think he's right. (I actually think he's right on this one, but not because of licensing issues... it's the Microsoft patent trap that gets me worried).
But so what? Let people choose what they choose! Instead Stallman rails against other's choices without saying let them choose. He wants you to do it his way rather than letting you choose. He wants you to give him the power.
I say no. I say it too restrictive. Public Domain is the true open source software. However, I also say you too can choose as you wish. Don't force your choices upon me with your restrictive licenses is all that I ask. If you make good software let it be truely free as public domain or another non-restrictive based license. You choose.
You still haven't understood that it's not just a matter of end user choice --- it's also a matter of developer choice. You say I'm free to choose, but then insist that I (as a developer) put my code in the public domain because the GPL is too restrictive.
Read the OP. The words are his; I adapted them to point out his dubious stance of criticizing Stallman for calling mono evil and pushing an agenda, while he himself calls the GPL evil and even says that more software should be in the public domain.
I'm not "for the GPL" or "against the GPL"; if I ever release source code it will probably be GPL'd (or BSD'd if I deem more appropriate), but I'm not denying anybody the choice. The OP on the other hand seems to think that developers shouldn't have the right to choose the license for the code they write (or I got him wrong).
Cute. But I'm not a famous person with an agenda. I'm not a person with HIS OWN OPERATING SYSTEM and many other programs under a license which HE WROTE to IMPOSE HIS WILL upon the unsuspecting masses in a duplicitous game marketed as freedom when it's really restrictions.
I'm simply a user that is fed up with all the restrictions put onto software by the likes of Stallman. I'm not forcing anyone to choose anything. I just don't like it when others tell me that good software like "mono" is evil because of it's licensing terms or some silly issue involved with it.
Yes I prefer Public Domain over BSD/MIT/Apache/... and over GPL and even GPL over Commercial but I'm not forcing that upon you. You can choose what you want doshell. That is a key difference. Stallman on the other hand goes out of his way to influence people to choose GPL, he gives talks, people fly him all over the world to opine, he gets many perks not mentioned to anyone. He is a major political advocate yet his GPL is highly successful and he continues pushing his BORG like agenda. Like Microsoft he's won already! Give it a break!
Stallman does not have the power to impose anything. Proof of that is the fact that Debian is shipping mono anyway. And even if Stallman somehow prevented them from doing it, even you or I could set up our own distribution including mono.
He is famous and has an agenda, but what do you expect him to do? Do you think he should refrain from expressing his opinion just because he's actually heard when he does so? I might not like Stallman's stance on software licensing, but I will be the first in line to defend his right to express his views.
You also seem to miss one very important point: it's not Stallman who puts restrictions on software, it's the developers. Stallman may have written the GPL, but it's still up to the developers to pick the license they will be using. If you want to be mad at someone because there's too much GPL software in the world, be mad at the developers who wrote it (which include Stallman, of course).
Chill out! If you don't think mono is evil, just ignore RMS already and keep going. You can choose what you want, just like everybody else, and he won't stop you from doing so.
When I used to use Bulletin Board systems to download software most of it was in the public domain. Now evil software licenses like GPL have ruined the public domain. It's quite sad to impose so many restrictions on free software.
I don't get why you keep trying to influence what others choose to do with the software they write. Why do you feel the need to keep pushing your GPL-is-evil-but-BSD-is-nice-and-public-domain-is-better agenda when the GPL is one of the most successful licensing models out there? I just don't get it. You're not the only voice and if someone chooses to license their own software under the GPL, that's their choice, not yours.
I just don't get why you keep meddling in the affairs of others.
You're doing it wrong.
I think you mean "correlationisnotcausation"
Actually, I'm not wrong. The GGP said "excellent karma rating => no reproduction" (P => Q), and the GP used that proposition to imply that "bad karma rating => reproduction" (not P => not Q). That's the fallacy of denying the antecedent.
Of course the GGP may indeed be inferring correlation from causation by thinking that the correlation between excellent karma and the absence of reproduction implies causality. But the GP's construction is a fallacy independently of the truth value of the GGP's statement.
I think you were just trying to be funny because of the tendency to dismiss all foul logic as "correlation is not causation" on slashdot. If that is the case, I apologise for taking you so seriously.;)
I do not argue about copyright (i.e. I do think copyright should exist). But I do question the idea of shifting the blame from filesharers to torrent trackers. I think it sets a dangerous precedent that harms freedom of speech.
I would also argue that the punishment for copyright infringement is too harsh right now. This is precisely because the lawmaker (or whoever is lobbying) insists on regarding it as stealing --- which is why I insist on correcting people who misuse that term.
It is time for science to be market-driven rather than socialist in nature.
That would essentially amount to enslaving all scientists to the desires of big corporations. No research would take place unless it led to an immediate big buck.
Science is not about making money or inventing ways to make money. Science is about the pursuit of knowledge, even when it gets you no tangible gain.
If you think that's a pointless goal, you should think how much of today's technology would have been possible if we hadn't researched "pointless science" decades or centuries ago. Would the "free market" be willing to invest in that science by then, when no one could see the potential applications?
But honestly, I for one don't think the pursuit of knowledge (with no strings attached) is a pointless goal. I think it is a rather worthwhile one.
Why is making it easy for people to steal ethical?
I'm not going to answer your question. But if you want a honest discussion, you could begin by using honest words to match the concepts you refer to.
Copying a file is not stealing. Stealing is depriving the owner of something. The original file is not deleted when I copy it, hence I'm not depriving anybody of anything. The only thing I could possibly be "stealing" is bandwidth; but even that I am not, since the uploader made the file available willingly in the first place, and I'm paying for my internet connection.
In contrast, when I walk into a store and come out with a book without paying for it, I'm not stealing the book's publisher or author; but I'm stealing the shop owner, because I deprived him of his property. And indeed, when that happens, it's the shop owner --- not the book's publisher or author --- I have to face in court if I am caught.
1) Wouldn't it be as simple as establishing a couple links or scripts named specific things, which apply to most distros? If file-browser is KDE's varient on one distro, and Gnome's varient on another, it doesn't matter, since you don't need to know the name of the executable - only the guy that made the script needs to know.
When anyone executes file-browser, they get Nautilus or whatever program is the default one...
Wow, you think application names confuse users, and yet you believe the intuitive way to run a file browser is to do [Some menu]->[run command]->["file-browser" <enter>]?
Cut the crap already. What you need is a start-menu-like shortcut that says "Text editor" but actually executes/usr/bin/gedit. Which by the way is what Ubuntu does by default, so I really don't understand what this discussion is about...
<flame>Perhaps if people actually knew Linux instead of spewing out what they heard about it back in 1996, we wouldn't have so much pointless discussion here...</flame>
Wouldn't the easiest get-around for DNS be to stop using domain names, and instead refer to everything by its IP address? I know it's not pretty to look at, but it's no worse than remembering a telephone number.
Yes, wait until the anti-IPv6 crowd hear about that one;)
This is also a vulnerability of the Internet, with its centralized DNS name servers. I wish I was knowledgeable enough to come up with a solution to that one.
The DNS name servers are not centralized. Perhaps you are thinking of the root servers, but those hold only a few records for the TLDs; in order to resolve "slashdot.com", the root servers only know about the ".com" part. Besides, 99% of the queries you make do not ever reach a root server, because you are using your ISP's name server, which does caching. Precisely because it would be unworkable to make every query depend on the DNS servers "above".
The current problem with the DNS is one of security, but that has nothing to do with it being centralized (indeed I would argue it is easier to secure a centralized system than a decentralized one...)
Note I don't believe Atheism is legitimate - because you can't prove the absence of something.
So I take it you deeply and truly believe in the existence of the Invisible Pink Unicorn? Because, since its absence cannot be proved, it would be illegitimate for you to affirm it doesn't exist!
This is a design decision, and it is a problem of the filesystem, no matter how much they try to blame it on "poorly written applications". Applications should be able to do whatever they want. It is the job of the filesystem to accurately record it. Period.
The job of the filesystem is to provide system calls whose behavior has been clearly specified. Now point to me where SUS or POSIX or your favorite Unix standard says, e.g., that write(2) ensures data has been flushed to disk upon return.
The write(2) manpage on my Linux system says
A successful return from write() does not make any guarantee that data has been committed to disk. In fact, on some buggy implementations, it does not even guarantee that space has successfully been reserved for the data. The only way to be sure is to call fsync(2) after you are done writing all your data.
And the situation is similar for many other filesystem-related system calls.
If the applications are making wrong assumptions about what the system calls they use provide, they are indeed "poorly written". And the filesystem shouldn't get the blame for that.
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So it's okay if the constitution and the bill of rights are violated as long as everything turns out OK in the end? Go tell that to the people who were tortured there. Guantanamo is most definitely a workaround, even if it stops to be one someday.
I have no words to express how that argument still shocks me today, even though I've heard it countless times. People who use it seem to think that all that matters are legal definitions. Guantanamo is freaking occupied by American forces. It was leased to them. It is as American as soil can be, in any sensible meaning of the word. And come on, non-US citizens? I am a non-US citizen. If I visit the USA and get murdered, mugged or raped there, does that mean the law gives me no protection? I'm not sure if I'll ever want to visit your country.
Look: please don't get the idea that I'm trying to spite you, or start a pissing contest, or anything like that. I just find it mildly curious that your signature claims the USA is a "freer" nation than others, and at the same time you fail to realize that all those granted freedoms are promptly papered over by your government whenever it suits them. Judging by our conversation, you do seem to be intelligent enough to not fall for that.
It doesn't redirect you to a third-party site owned by the NSA; it redirects you to a third-party site, full stop. This not only breaks a whole host of applications relying on DNS to inform them that a domain name doesn't exist, but it is in violation of the standards that hold the Internet together.
I'd say the Guantanamo affair is proof that 9/11 has provided a way to get around the Bill of Rights (though not specifically the first amendment).
In my interpretation of the constitution, it surely is unconstitutional. I actually find it very silly to legislate respect for the national symbols; I'm not obliged to love my country just because I live in it. I don't know if anyone has challenged that law yet.
I totally agree with you in this matter. Freedom of speech in order to be effective must not contain "exception clauses"; otherwise it is far too easy to fall down a slippery slope.
Note that I'm no expert on the Portuguese constitution, but my interpretation is that the freedoms granted by article 37 (or any other article, for that matter) can never be infringed by any law (see Part IV, Section I). However, rights can be suspended in a "state of siege or emergency", though only for a limited time, under strict guidelines, and certain rights (including freedom of conscience and religion) cannot be infringed (article 19). As far as I know, this has never occurred since the current constitution is in force.
I don't know how the US stands *constitutionally* in this regard, but I'm going to speculate that if the installed powers wanted to curtail basic rights in a time of great distress (war, terrorist attacks, etc) they would have no trouble doing so, even if that amounted to bypass any kind of legislation or "constitutional promise". I believe the situation is similar in any democracy of the world...
I don't see how the US is different, in that regard, from any other constitutional democracy; one of the explicit purposes of a constitution is precisely to prevent the government from passing certain kinds of laws.
Also, since this'll be open source it'd be trivial for you to remove any problematic bits from the code. That said, a company would have to be very very stupid to sneakily grab sensitive data. And Google's not stupid - even when their apps have stored private user data, they've been very up-front about it (Google Toolbar, Google Desktop) and the privacy-unfriendly features had to be consciously turned on by the user -- it was not the default.
As soon as you hand off your data via HTTP to an application running on someone else's server, what guarantee do you have about the code that runs there?
I don't think the parent was referring to what Google applications do locally --- he/she was referring to what they do remotely. They may promise they don't do (and won't ever do) anything with your data, but you still have to trust what they say, and many people (like me) are not willing to trust them that far.
It says a lot about the world that no other nation yet has the 1st and 2nd amendment.
This is totally offtopic, but regarding your current signature, I'd like to let you know that there's at least one other nation in the world (Portugal) that has an article in its constitution equivalent in content to the 1st amendment to the U.S. constitution. And I'm sure there are a lot more that also do.
Precisely. I was talking about patronage.
Who said it would be a single person?
I have seen lots of great movies that were made on a low budget. Don't assume that all "A or B grade movies" come from Hollywood and cost millions of dollars. That's what they want you to think: that their existence is crucial to the production of worthwhile forms of art.
I think the question is really whether you need a "content industry". Music and other forms of art exist since the dawn of mankind. No industry was ever in place to support the production of those works until the 20th century. Why do we need such an industry in order to create "content"? Why do we have to regard the production of art as an industry?
I say we should let people pay what they think is fair for content. If we get to the point where content quality actually drops because there's not enough money, certainly someone who appreciates good art will be willing to give some of their money to subsidize it. Only it won't be a million dollar industry --- but art is not about making money, right?
Yes, developers choose to follow the cult of GPL and that is their choice. It is a free society in some parts of the world so they have that right.
You assume all developers using the GPL follow some kind of cult. I don't think that's the case, I can just choose a license that fits what I'm willing to let people do with the software I write, and be done with it...
I grant that Stallman is too much of an extremist sometimes, but let him do what he think he's right. (I actually think he's right on this one, but not because of licensing issues... it's the Microsoft patent trap that gets me worried).
But so what? Let people choose what they choose! Instead Stallman rails against other's choices without saying let them choose. He wants you to do it his way rather than letting you choose. He wants you to give him the power.
I say no. I say it too restrictive. Public Domain is the true open source software. However, I also say you too can choose as you wish. Don't force your choices upon me with your restrictive licenses is all that I ask. If you make good software let it be truely free as public domain or another non-restrictive based license. You choose.
You still haven't understood that it's not just a matter of end user choice --- it's also a matter of developer choice. You say I'm free to choose, but then insist that I (as a developer) put my code in the public domain because the GPL is too restrictive.
Read the OP. The words are his; I adapted them to point out his dubious stance of criticizing Stallman for calling mono evil and pushing an agenda, while he himself calls the GPL evil and even says that more software should be in the public domain.
I'm not "for the GPL" or "against the GPL"; if I ever release source code it will probably be GPL'd (or BSD'd if I deem more appropriate), but I'm not denying anybody the choice. The OP on the other hand seems to think that developers shouldn't have the right to choose the license for the code they write (or I got him wrong).
Cute. But I'm not a famous person with an agenda. I'm not a person with HIS OWN OPERATING SYSTEM and many other programs under a license which HE WROTE to IMPOSE HIS WILL upon the unsuspecting masses in a duplicitous game marketed as freedom when it's really restrictions.
I'm simply a user that is fed up with all the restrictions put onto software by the likes of Stallman. I'm not forcing anyone to choose anything. I just don't like it when others tell me that good software like "mono" is evil because of it's licensing terms or some silly issue involved with it.
Yes I prefer Public Domain over BSD/MIT/Apache/... and over GPL and even GPL over Commercial but I'm not forcing that upon you. You can choose what you want doshell. That is a key difference. Stallman on the other hand goes out of his way to influence people to choose GPL, he gives talks, people fly him all over the world to opine, he gets many perks not mentioned to anyone. He is a major political advocate yet his GPL is highly successful and he continues pushing his BORG like agenda. Like Microsoft he's won already! Give it a break!
Stallman does not have the power to impose anything. Proof of that is the fact that Debian is shipping mono anyway. And even if Stallman somehow prevented them from doing it, even you or I could set up our own distribution including mono.
He is famous and has an agenda, but what do you expect him to do? Do you think he should refrain from expressing his opinion just because he's actually heard when he does so? I might not like Stallman's stance on software licensing, but I will be the first in line to defend his right to express his views.
You also seem to miss one very important point: it's not Stallman who puts restrictions on software, it's the developers. Stallman may have written the GPL, but it's still up to the developers to pick the license they will be using. If you want to be mad at someone because there's too much GPL software in the world, be mad at the developers who wrote it (which include Stallman, of course).
Chill out! If you don't think mono is evil, just ignore RMS already and keep going. You can choose what you want, just like everybody else, and he won't stop you from doing so.
I don't get why you keep trying to influence what others choose to do with the software they write. Why do you feel the need to keep pushing your GPL-is-evil-but-BSD-is-nice-and-public-domain-is-better agenda when the GPL is one of the most successful licensing models out there? I just don't get it. You're not the only voice and if someone chooses to license their own software under the GPL, that's their choice, not yours.
I just don't get why you keep meddling in the affairs of others.
Actually, I'm not wrong. The GGP said "excellent karma rating => no reproduction" (P => Q), and the GP used that proposition to imply that "bad karma rating => reproduction" (not P => not Q). That's the fallacy of denying the antecedent.
Of course the GGP may indeed be inferring correlation from causation by thinking that the correlation between excellent karma and the absence of reproduction implies causality. But the GP's construction is a fallacy independently of the truth value of the GGP's statement.
I think you were just trying to be funny because of the tendency to dismiss all foul logic as "correlation is not causation" on slashdot. If that is the case, I apologise for taking you so seriously. ;)
An implication is not an equivalence.
So let me guess. You type all your addresses by hand when you browse the web? There's something called Domain Name System that may be useful to you.
I do not argue about copyright (i.e. I do think copyright should exist). But I do question the idea of shifting the blame from filesharers to torrent trackers. I think it sets a dangerous precedent that harms freedom of speech.
I would also argue that the punishment for copyright infringement is too harsh right now. This is precisely because the lawmaker (or whoever is lobbying) insists on regarding it as stealing --- which is why I insist on correcting people who misuse that term.
That would essentially amount to enslaving all scientists to the desires of big corporations. No research would take place unless it led to an immediate big buck.
Science is not about making money or inventing ways to make money. Science is about the pursuit of knowledge, even when it gets you no tangible gain.
If you think that's a pointless goal, you should think how much of today's technology would have been possible if we hadn't researched "pointless science" decades or centuries ago. Would the "free market" be willing to invest in that science by then, when no one could see the potential applications?
But honestly, I for one don't think the pursuit of knowledge (with no strings attached) is a pointless goal. I think it is a rather worthwhile one.
I'm not going to answer your question. But if you want a honest discussion, you could begin by using honest words to match the concepts you refer to.
Copying a file is not stealing. Stealing is depriving the owner of something. The original file is not deleted when I copy it, hence I'm not depriving anybody of anything. The only thing I could possibly be "stealing" is bandwidth; but even that I am not, since the uploader made the file available willingly in the first place, and I'm paying for my internet connection.
In contrast, when I walk into a store and come out with a book without paying for it, I'm not stealing the book's publisher or author; but I'm stealing the shop owner, because I deprived him of his property. And indeed, when that happens, it's the shop owner --- not the book's publisher or author --- I have to face in court if I am caught.
Wow, you think application names confuse users, and yet you believe the intuitive way to run a file browser is to do [Some menu]->[run command]->["file-browser" <enter>]?
Cut the crap already. What you need is a start-menu-like shortcut that says "Text editor" but actually executes /usr/bin/gedit. Which by the way is what Ubuntu does by default, so I really don't understand what this discussion is about...
<flame>Perhaps if people actually knew Linux instead of spewing out what they heard about it back in 1996, we wouldn't have so much pointless discussion here...</flame>
Yes, wait until the anti-IPv6 crowd hear about that one ;)
The DNS name servers are not centralized. Perhaps you are thinking of the root servers, but those hold only a few records for the TLDs; in order to resolve "slashdot.com", the root servers only know about the ".com" part. Besides, 99% of the queries you make do not ever reach a root server, because you are using your ISP's name server, which does caching. Precisely because it would be unworkable to make every query depend on the DNS servers "above".
The current problem with the DNS is one of security, but that has nothing to do with it being centralized (indeed I would argue it is easier to secure a centralized system than a decentralized one...)
So I take it you deeply and truly believe in the existence of the Invisible Pink Unicorn? Because, since its absence cannot be proved, it would be illegitimate for you to affirm it doesn't exist!
It's an unfortunate name, akin to calling Astronomy "Telescope Science".
(Yes, I'm thinking of the old Dijkstra's saying: "Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.")
The job of the filesystem is to provide system calls whose behavior has been clearly specified. Now point to me where SUS or POSIX or your favorite Unix standard says, e.g., that write(2) ensures data has been flushed to disk upon return.
The write(2) manpage on my Linux system says
And the situation is similar for many other filesystem-related system calls.
If the applications are making wrong assumptions about what the system calls they use provide, they are indeed "poorly written". And the filesystem shouldn't get the blame for that.
Also keep in mind that asking "who" is responsible for something does not automatically imply anyone at all is.