Comment 25 for bug 174283

> Respectfully, I think your argument in this paragraph is a logical fallacy,
> along the lines of a Slippery Slope argument.

There is no slippery slope, no string of events, just one event
causing another, a precedent set.

> Just because the rm command by default prevents the deletion of
> / doesn't mean that users "will expect the system to save them from
> themselves doing anything potentially destructive."

Well, someone sure did the same thing here, and nobody objected...
Luke Maciak (tuxmentat) wrote on 2007-12-06 "...@Luciano - note that
Sun implemented this very "feature" in Solaris 10...I'm not saying we
should follow Sun's example, but their choice to implement it shows
that many people do think this is an issue." You don't think if I went
through other bug reports I'd find many people using the same logic?
How many times do you think these arguments get opposed?

> Just because a car has seatbelts, airbags, and anti-lock brakes doesn't mean
> that people believe they can safely aim their car towards the edge of a cliff.

Want to bet on that?

http://www.motorauthority.com/sat-nav-strikes-again-uk-driver-nearly-goes-off-cliff-following-gps-directions.html

Besides crashing a car is never the intended use of a car, except when
they're crash testing or filming a movie or something, but that's
intentionally causing a problem and not using them for their intended
use (transportation). The rm command is supposed to delete the files
you tell it to.

> We're not talking about the partitioner; only the rm command. Since
> you brought up logical fallacies, is this an example of a Red Herring?

Nope, it's applying the logic of the pro argument here to another
situation in an attempt to make clear it's ridiculousness. A red
herring is an attempt to distract from the actual discussion at hand.
An example of a red herring would be something like:

> I can see you're quite passionate about this idea. I confess that I
> don't understand why it's such a big deal to you.

Also..

> Respectfully, you seem to be taking the argument to absurd extremes.
> No one's calling for Ubuntu to be like that.

This 'bug' *IS* taking it to this extreme. The whole premise is that
'experienced' users allegedly destroy entire systems with no chance of
recovery by mis-typing an rm command, which is a product of either
lack of backup, lack of proofreading, or lack of actual experience.
Ignorant users pasting it into a terminal window would paste a string
with '--no-preserve-root' in it anyway, because they're not likely to
know what it means. Beyond that, the only argument for it is that
doing anything else makes Ubuntu a crabby hard-ass old man that nobody
wants to hang out with because he deletes your files if you look at
him funny, or that "SunOS is doing it so why shouldn't we?".

> I don't understand your point

Then read it again, it's pretty clear. Try not just focusing on the
last sentence of the paragraph. It might help.