CIA WORLD FACEBOOK! Give all your friends at the NSA your RSA keys! We aren't going to hit you with this baseball bat! CIA WORLD FACEBOOK!

No. The infringement upon obvious market values is instituted by a corrupt government to provide increased revenue and offensive PR for its controlling companies. Information is free, and you are doing no crime by sharing it, rather, you're helping people.

Mmn, let's expand that example out a little. US advertises big "internet is great for PR!" program, gives internet access to impoverished countries. But wait! They paid for it, so let's not let any of these sites about how the US government is stabbing kittens show up to the people who receive the free internet! Beggars can't be choosers! But, wait! Aren't we, the customers and the taxpayers, paying for that internet access?

absolutely!

metallica needs cash!!!! metallica made 450 billion dollars last year and they still need money! so contribute to them! BUY THEIR RECORDS CAUSE THEY NEED THEIR CASH!!!!

METALLICA NEEDS MONEY AND THEY NEED CASH!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

Ah, the ridiculous sound of the idiot laughing at his liberties being taken from him at gunpoint.

  A*A    SDGJK  A     A OOOOOOG HDAMIO  HDAMIOP         A     A HDAMIOP
   A    A     A AA    A A     A A     A A               AA   AA A
   A    A       A A   A A     A A     A A               A A A A A
   A    A  ASGS A  A  A A     A ANAICO  SDGJK           A  A  A SDGJK
   A    A     A A   A A A     A A   A   A               A     A A
   A    A     A A    AA A     A A    A  A               A     A A
  AAA    SDGJK  A     A EEEEEHH A     A HDAMIOP         A     A HDAMIOP

It may be illegal, but the law is quite impotent without a means for identification and enforcement.

As long as you don't say "I downloaded it off of BitTorrent," you're fine. People don't seem to understand it's not illegal (aka, eligible for civil compensation) to DOWNLOAD songs, only "making available" is illegal. Can somebody please develop anonymous PayPal?

Let's see here. On the left hand, we have the people at Microsoft claiming to make a secure operating system, and putting escrow into the encryption such that data can be seamlessly copied from the operating system to an unknown location. We witness Microsoft as an incredibly corrupt entity, in nearly every possible way - from locking in hardware manufacturers to using Windows to throwing lawsuits at everybody who even vaguely seems to threaten them (remember Lindows?). On the right hand, we have the code of Linux, FreeBSD, etc. available for the entire world to review, figures of authority are not chosen based on how much of a jackal they are, but how much their experience is worth. OpenBSD and FreeBSD have things like in-kernel crypto, chroot jails, are actually POSIX compliant, and seem to suffer from very little bloat due to the trend to make specific utilities as discrete as possible, and hence nearly as flawless as possible. Let's just agree to disagree. Or I can just call you an idiot. I'm fine with either.

Maybe you haven't used Vista enough...

If they don't want their grades to be changed, they shouldn't leave their databases open. Copyright is patently bullshit - it is impossible to own an idea, and tremendously harmful to attempt to enforce that ownership through legislation, if you didn't catch on to that fact in the last decade of lawsuits. There was no evidence besides hearsay that he stole a single computer. As for him 'damaging' the 'victim's' computer, I certainly didn't read anything about that, though I might have skimmed over it - if such alleged damage pertained only to data, I would recommend that the 'victim' sucks it up and does a better job securing his computer next time.

Well, soon, we'll all be using an operating system on which somebody can watch every move of ours, so then everything will be OK. You shouldn't use Linux, it promotes antisocial and deviant behavior, like watching pornography, programming, and understanding what "zsh" is.

Ah, there is, of course, iPodLinux, which will function on the Touch in surely no time. I've been occupying myself heavily lately with Linux games - due to the high degree of generativity inherent to OSS, even one game can offer a seemingly endless supply of entertainment. There are, I should mention, flight sims, and here's a good list of CAD programs for Linux: http://linuxgazette.net/issue54/frost.html. Most games with the Quake/Doom/Marathon/Cube etc. engines will also run on Linux, albeit with some small tweaking at times.\ and finally we finish with a quote from David Lynch about video on the iPhone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKiIroiCvZ0

Well, flight sims aside, gtkpod (and hopefully an upcoming port of ephpod) are more than adequate. Personally, I prefer Rockbox.