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"I'm not addicted to cake rolls! I'm just trying to increase the glycan* sugar level in my mucus!"

*Not to be confused with the lycan sugar level, which is both different and much scarier.

While I agree in some respect he got lucky, I'm also pretty sure he knows a LOT more about the technology behind what his company does than you or I. He and Sergei Brin weren't "suits" who sold ads, they were Computer Science PhD students at Stanford who invented many of the early concepts behind Google's core search engine.

They invented Page Rank which is the only novel idea in Google's playbook. An idea they have since diluted to such a degree that in order to get 10 relevant hits on the front page, you'd have to be searching for porn or mainstream news items. Google has become such a nuisance with their "I know what you want" bullshit, that using Duck Duck Go is better, even though they serve raw search results and have a much smaller database.

duckduckgo returns whatever bing returns :) It's just an anonymizing front end to bing.

No. It's not.: "DuckDuckGo gets its results from over 50 sources, including DuckDuckBot (our own crawler), crowd-sourced sites (in our own index), Yahoo! (through BOSS), embed.ly, WolframAlpha, EntireWeb, Bing, Yandex, and Blekko." Please don't FUD on the Duck.

I'm so glad they came to a buypartisan agreement.

I think there are plenty of perfectly nice large and strong people to handle the tiny few who suddenly decide to go rogue.

Violent people very rarely "suddenly decide to go rogue". They typically have a history of increasing violence.

The odds of one of those perfectly nice large and strong people being around when one of those rogues attacks you is low; and firearms enable people who are perfectly nice but not large and strong to protect you.

A quick internet search turns up many instances of ">older ladies defending themselves with firearms, and of mothers defending themselves and their kids, when no nice young large and strong folks were around. People who want all guns to disappear want a world where those ladies would be defenseless against their attackers.

Hey, I already walk around unarmed --- a short, flabby weakling --- and yet don't regularly get beset by burly bandits.

Nor are you regularly shot at by gun-toting thugs.

Part of the reason that, if you live in a middle-class area, you're not very likely to be assaulted is because we hire people with guns to lock up burly bandits. And also because potential burly bandits know that some portion of potential victims are armed -- armed citizens create a penumbra of protection.

With guns, I'm still at the mercy of those better armed, with better marksmanship, and more willingness to initiate violence with the element of surprise

All of those factors apply even more without guns (except substitute "marksmanship" with more general "skill"). In a typical assault scenario, if you have a gun your attacker is not significantly "better armed" even if he has a bigger gun, and marksmanship is not much of a factor because assaults happen at close range. With knives or other weapons, both the size of the attacker and of the weapon matters much more, and skill is a huge factor.

I think there are plenty of perfectly nice large and strong people to handle the tiny few who suddenly decide to go rogue.

Violent people very rarely "suddenly decide to go rogue". They typically have a history of increasing violence.

The odds of one of those perfectly nice large and strong people being around when one of those rogues attacks you is low; and firearms enable people who are perfectly nice but not large and strong to protect you.

A quick internet search turns up many instances of ">older ladies defending themselves with firearms, and of mothers defending themselves and their kids, when no nice young large and strong folks were around. People who want all guns to disappear want a world where those ladies would be defenseless against their attackers.

Hey, I already walk around unarmed --- a short, flabby weakling --- and yet don't regularly get beset by burly bandits.

Nor are you regularly shot at by gun-toting thugs.

Part of the reason that, if you live in a middle-class area, you're not very likely to be assaulted is because we hire people with guns to lock up burly bandits. And also because potential burly bandits know that some portion of potential victims are armed -- armed citizens create a penumbra of protection.

With guns, I'm still at the mercy of those better armed, with better marksmanship, and more willingness to initiate violence with the element of surprise

All of those factors apply even more without guns (except substitute "marksmanship" with more general "skill"). In a typical assault scenario, if you have a gun your attacker is not significantly "better armed" even if he has a bigger gun, and marksmanship is not much of a factor because assaults happen at close range. With knives or other weapons, both the size of the attacker and of the weapon matters much more, and skill is a huge factor.

Good post. And in terms of consumers getting fleeced by companies, consumers tend to accept it until something better comes along.

In my house, we have two low-end Android tablets. Obviously the cheap game selection is not on par with the latest Starcraft 2 and Injustice: Gods Among Us, but there are some games with beautiful artwork, some with good mechanics and storytelling, the prices are great, and the selection is huge. And while even the best Android titles on mid-range Android hardware clearly lag the top of the line PC titles for visuals and other features, the gap is acceptable. No, I can't play the two big name games I listed. But I've got two tablets (10 inch and 7 inch) and over 30 games each that can be played without any active internet connection, all for under $450 total. Try that with a current generation console.

In terms of search and social networking, things are heading in the right direction it's just taking longer. I haven't given up hope. DuckDuckGo ( https://duckduckgo.com/about ) is a great search engine that works as well for me as Google but doesn't track. Still, it's a hosted service, and my long term hope would be for something like the distributed search engine Yacy ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YaCy ) - but Yacy's search results weren't that great the last time I tried it. For social networking, a lot of people are working on making distributed alternatives to the big names: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_software_and_protocols_for_distributed_social_networking just because they haven't gained a major share of the market yet, that does not mean it cannot happen.

Unless you mean like Poland was afraid of change, in 1939.

We are, however, afraid of looking like some smug, douche-bag - wearing these things.

We also don't trust Google to have a 24-hour tap on what we see and say.

StartPage

(Also known as Ixquick) is good, as is DuckDuckGo, for those who value privacy.

Yeah, looks like they might not be so worried about those security issues after all. Or maybe they only come in play when you turn your free non-WebGL'd Windows Blue into Windows Blue Super-Clouditized And Also Actually Plays Games Edition with monthly subscription.

...but seriously--long side rant follows--their Windows 8 insolence motivated me to get a laptop and make it Arch Linux-only (I have a desktop with Windows 7 and Arch in some crude tandem dualboot way, but I wanted to try non-secure-boot EFI and GPT and also see how the laptop would work with Linux and such), so I guess I won't have to worry about that. I got Wine and managed to massage it to play Terraria and Torchlight II with not too much strangeness (the Steam Cloud'd Torchlight II characters I played over on Windows played nicely on Wine), and I'm having fun (with scattered annoyances) trying to build a 64-bit simulated processor in Verilator there, and ultimately to turn that into something with a GUI and "monitor" in a window that runs my own interpretation of POSIX. That should be fun.

It seems pretty strange that the Swedish Language Council wanted "ogooglebar" to mean "something that can't be found in *any* search engine"

As far as I'm concerned, if I say something is "un-google-able" then I mean "I can't find it in Google"

For example, the search term ||= is ungoogleable, but is it ogooglebar?

1. Open a web browser

2. go to a search engine (such as https://duckduckgo.com/)

3. copy/paste the following text string to find everything you will ever need to know about best Linux distros for newcomers:

"best linux distro for newcomers"

4. repeat as necessary with other search engines

whoops, shoulda paid more attention to the preview. this is the real url

[O]f the three search engines only Google will actually use SSL, even if you go to http://google.com/ the form is submitted over https. The other two not only won't do that, they will *downgrade* you to http even if you explicitly navigate to https://yahoo.com/ or https://bing.com/. Iranians can easily use DPI to spy on Yahoo and Bing users, only Google presents a problem. So I'm not surprised Bing didn't get blocked, it's not clear to me why Yahoo did.

https://duckduckgo.com/ and https://ixquick.com/ both support SSL/TLS. The latter allows viewing searched content through their embedded HTTPS proxy service.

Children, and according to standford/NYU study:

Following nine months of intensive research—including two investigations in Pakistan,
more than 130 interviews with victims, witnesses, and experts, and review of thousands
of pages of documentation and media reporting—this report presents evidence of the
damaging and counterproductive effects of current US drone strike policies. Based on
extensive interviews with Pakistanis living in the regions directly affected, as well as
humanitarian and medical workers, this report provides new and firsthand testimony
about the negative impacts US policies are having on the civilians living under drones.

It is like those holding the reins want to create terrorists, must not be enough already to justify the defence spending we already have - good for MIC business.

These types of reports fail to compare the use of drones to use of other forms of combat. Drones cause far less "collateral damage" than more traditional forms of warfare. For example, consider the use of suicide bombers- far more civilians killed total, and by percentage. And apologists like to ignore that the groups being shot at have shown absolutely NO hesitation to target civilians directly and use them as cover.

We could use carpet bombs, and kill shitloads of civilians. We could send in troops, or use cruise missiles, and still kill more civilians than we do with drones. We could do all kinds of things, the only thing which results in fewer civilian casualties is to pack up our bags and go home. Now, I realize that is what many people would like to see happen, but it's not going to result in peace. That's the whole problem- they will bring the war to us, while at the same time going back to an oppressive Theocracy in their own land which places little or no value on the lives of women or anyone who doesn't fall down and pray to their Imaginary Friend in the Sky.

Following nine months of intensive research—including two investigations in Pakistan, more than 130 interviews with victims, witnesses, and experts, and review of thousands of pages of documentation and media reporting—this report presents evidence of the damaging and counterproductive effects of current US drone strike policies. Based on extensive interviews with Pakistanis living in the regions directly affected, as well as humanitarian and medical workers, this report provides new and firsthand testimony about the negative impacts US policies are having on the civilians living under drones.

It is like those holding the reins want to create terrorists, must not be enough already to justify the defence spending we already have - good for MIC business.

What does "I wouldn't hold my breath that" mean?

It's a widespread idiom in American English. "I wouldn't hold my breath that X" means "I do not expect that X will occur soon" or "I do not believe that X has a high probability of occurring at all".

I assume it originates from the common act of a child throwing an tantrum, threatening to hold their breath until they pass out. "I want a cookie!" "You're not getting one, and if I were you, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for one."

HTH.

Cameron Todd Willingham ... was an American man who was convicted of murder, and executed in 2004 for the deaths of his three young children by arson.

Willingham's case gained renewed attention in 2009 when an investigative report by David Grann in The New Yorker,[1] drawing upon arson investigation experts and advances in fire science since the 1992 investigation, suggested that the evidence for arson was unconvincing, and that had this information been available at the time of trial, Willingham would have been acquitted.

According to an August 2009 investigative report by an expert hired by the Texas Forensic Science Commission, the original claims of arson were doubtful.[2]

...

The case has been further complicated by allegations that Texas Governor Rick Perry impeded the investigation by replacing three of the nine commission members in an attempt to change the commission's findings; Perry denies the allegations.[4]

There are dozens, if not hundreds more like this.

Check and mate.

Not according to DuckDuckGo itself. If you have citations to offer, I'd be curious to see them.

The first listed source on that page is Yahoo, which is Bing.

I understand that this is probably regarding Google directing people to their own services when searching for competitors (Google+ when searching for Facebook, for example), but I'm going to take the opportunity to go off-topic and mention two providers who use Google results without giving them tracking information.

https://www.duckduckgo.com/
https://www.startpage.com/

The results are slightly off sometimes, but that only goes to show that Google really does its profiling of you very, very well indeed.

Not according to DuckDuckGo itself. If you have citations to offer, I'd be curious to see them.

I wasn't even talking about Crowder. I even agree that unions are necessary in many instances. You are proving my point about having blinders on when it comes to something you believe in. For just one example since you seem incapable of using Google (or Bing or DuckDuckGo) here is a raw feed of them tearing down a tent with people inside. I cannot abide people who throw around the word tolerance and then show none. It is apparent you do not wish to discuss this but to simply tell me I am wrong. You cite examples of violence and then justify them.

24 hours!!?? Are you kidding. Lets start at 6 years, at least the ones we know about, and go from there... rule of law, indeed.

Duck Duck Go isn't just a frontend for bing.

They collect from many different sources including their own crawlers. Bing is a source, but nowhere near the only one.

See Duck Duck Go's help page on sources for more the full list.

I visited Belgium recently. I wanted to go to the Pirate Bay, but it was blocked. I did a quick search for Pirate Bay mirrors and came up with a lot of hits. Including a script that is specifically for mirroring the site http://unblockedpiratebay.com/external/ which you can include on your own website.

So, basically, the whole thing is pointless. Block one site, and mirrors will spring up. (Same as what happened with Wikileaks.)

PS https://duckduckgo.com/html/?q=pirate+bay+mirror.

which is why DuckDuckGo, a so called "privacy oriented browser", uses bing for it's underlying searches. Any time you hear "anticompetitive search", it's 100% microsoft/fairsearch funded. It's not even remotely about privacy or security as a result of that. Anyone who believes duckduckgo is about your privacy when bing has your information, is misinformed.

if you wanted privacy in your search, use a multi-search engine and get real results the way you want. It's that simple, and they do exist. To act like people are somehow " at a loss" when they can go to any website they want to search is to fail to acknowledge that bing is a horrible search engine.

TLDR: anti-google (and pro-microsoft) article.

Right, so even though this is a blindly ignorant comment, it gets a score of 5, Interesting because it's anti-Microsoft? DDG isn't a browser, it's a search engine. It doesn't solely use Bing for its searches. It uses a variety of search engines, amongst them Yahoo and WolframAlpha, to generate its results. It's in no way funded by Microsoft, it's not affiliated with FairSearch and information does not get passed from DDG to Microsoft. DDG works as an intermediary and keeps no personal data.

And that's the primary appeal of DDG to the majority of its users - you avoid the filter bubble effect and none of your personal data is stored. Maybe you should've read their privacy policy before commenting. It would have made you sound less like the kind of typically reactionary cretin that all too often brings down the level of conversation on Slashdot.

Good grief, you would've thought this guy was just blindly commenting without having read the... Oh, right.

Duck Duck Go!

/hint: July 2, 1890 is the date of the Sherman anti-trust act/

DuckDuckGo has made a whole host of guarantees that they will never track you, collect personal info, etc. They've built their entire brand around these guarantees. (Their billboard slogan is "Google tracks you. We don't.") You don't have to simply trust their goodwill; their self-interest will enforce this too. If they broke their guarantees, their company would lose its reputation very quickly, their brand would soon be worthless, and they'd likely be vulnerable to a host of lawsuits.

Google, on the other hand, freely admits that they do collect and use such information. You have to read the fine print and look around to get a better idea about how they plan to use that info, and they won't tell you at all about the unintended ways this info gets used (here's DuckDuckGo's page about that).

which is why DuckDuckGo, a so called "privacy oriented browser", uses bing for it's underlying searches. Any time you hear "anticompetitive search", it's 100% microsoft/fairsearch funded. It's not even remotely about privacy or security as a result of that. Anyone who believes duckduckgo is about your privacy when bing has your information, is misinformed.

Are you sure you're understanding how the site works?
Standard searches made via DuckDuckGo will not result in you personally being tracked by the underlying search engines. This is because your client isn't making direct contact with the underlying search engines - DuckDuckGo is collating the results together and presenting them. In that context, what you're saying is that buying a can of Heinz Beans from a supermarket results in Heinz tracking me - even though I have no direct contact with them (and assuming the supermarket isn't passing on personally identifying purchaser information to Heinz).

There's no Bing/Google tracking happening here:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=test%20search

Using a bang (such as !bing or !image) is where tracking can kick in because at that point you're most likely hitting a source site. This is comparable to ordering beans directly from Heinz.

This link would result in tracking from bing:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=!bing+test+search

DuckDuckGo is a multi-search engine. You're only making contact with the underlying search providers when you choose to, and at that point it's pretty clear because you're seeing a Google/Bing page.

which is why DuckDuckGo, a so called "privacy oriented browser", uses bing for it's underlying searches. Any time you hear "anticompetitive search", it's 100% microsoft/fairsearch funded. It's not even remotely about privacy or security as a result of that. Anyone who believes duckduckgo is about your privacy when bing has your information, is misinformed.

Are you sure you're understanding how the site works?
Standard searches made via DuckDuckGo will not result in you personally being tracked by the underlying search engines. This is because your client isn't making direct contact with the underlying search engines - DuckDuckGo is collating the results together and presenting them. In that context, what you're saying is that buying a can of Heinz Beans from a supermarket results in Heinz tracking me - even though I have no direct contact with them (and assuming the supermarket isn't passing on personally identifying purchaser information to Heinz).

There's no Bing/Google tracking happening here:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=test%20search

Using a bang (such as !bing or !image) is where tracking can kick in because at that point you're most likely hitting a source site. This is comparable to ordering beans directly from Heinz.

This link would result in tracking from bing:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=!bing+test+search

DuckDuckGo is a multi-search engine. You're only making contact with the underlying search providers when you choose to, and at that point it's pretty clear because you're seeing a Google/Bing page.

Right, except if you had read all of the serie, you'd know that Axlotl tanks are in fact... *spoiler alert* nemow uxalielt fo bmow

I like Romney for requiring OpenDocument format (ODF) when he was governor of Mass.

Um, you lost me here, why would a greedy venture capitalist give a flying fuck about open-source software? I just did a google search and found nothing relating to WTF you just said, or are you just a Romney-troll in disguise? In that case, you still aren't changing my vote, the O's are in for FOUR MORE YEARS bitch.

http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20060313100529485&mode=print

Next time, try using a search engine instead of a fucking ad engine, dipshit.

Once again, point us to your 'public knowledge' that affirms the existence of any such list, or "disposition matrix". How do you know about it?

Let me Duck that for you.

Seriously, are you alleging that kill list doesn't exist? That Obama is not killing people with drones?

But I am not familiar what this matrix thing is you talk about.

Let me Duck that for you.

If you want real fictional mathematics, look for some of the works of El Naschie.

I agree with the above poster that is most likely City Rail in NSW, by a process of elimination:
- Only 5 cities in Australia have public transport rail networks.
- Melbourne have recently introduced Myki - good case study on how not to do it, so they are unlikely and the article states this
- Brisbane use Oyster Card, unlikely but if it is then this is a much bigger story
- Perth uses Smartrider, a smart card system.
- Adelaide have used MetroTicket which contains a magnetic strip developed by Crouzet-SA. A smartcard system is in the process of being rolled out

The RailCorp is being split in two article has some pretty cutting statements about the inefficiency of government run enterprises and entitlement mentality. Solving this will not be simple, and as other posters have commented the problem is the organisation. I'd advise potential vendors to think of a price and triple it. There is a reason some government organisations are charged a premium and yet the vendor still makes a loss.

Posting this as an Anonymous Coward, because I have a bit of experience working as a vendor to RailCorp NSW. Let's just say they are a "challenging" client.

Or use DuckDuckGo for your searches:

At some other search engines (including us), you can also use an encrypted version (HTTPS), which as a byproduct doesn't usually send your search terms to sites. However, it is slower to connect to these versions and if you click on a site that also uses HTTPS then your search is sent. Nevertheless, the encrypted version does protect your search from being leaked onto the computers it travels on between you and us.

At DuckDuckGo, our encrypted version goes even further and automatically changes links from a number of major Web sites to point to the encrypted versions of those sites. It is modeled after (and uses code from) the HTTPS Everywhere FireFox add-on. These sites include Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon to name a few.

https://duckduckgo.com/privacy.html

Wait, there was almost no government back in 19th century?

Nope, there was lots of government back in 19th century. Government specifically targeted the Chinese so the rest of the country profit.

Wait, industrialisation made hired labour more productive and competitive than slave labour?

Nope, cheap immigrants (like the Chinese mentioned above) allowed for more hiring. If a businessman could help it, he wouldn't hire any employees and use machines instead.

Empire building is what really hired more labor. The US government, for example, wanted a transcontinental railroad for their empire (i.e so their centralized non-free-market postal service and military could use it). So Congress passed laws to build one instead of waiting for free market to take care of itself.

It's INSANE that this guy (and Ron Paul) are not in the elections

It's not insane. It's actually perfectly logical. Successful empires always keep certain people and groups of people down and exploit their labor and productivity. Gary and Ron are those people, just like the Chinese immigrants were back in 19th century US.

The media and history books will turn a blind eye on them, just like how libertarians think 19th century was this wonderful paradise where "everybody" was free, turning a blind eye on what the Chinese immigrants (and other people who don't matter to government) went through.

By choosing linux, you expose the child to a different way of working to accomplish the same task. This means when the inevitably encounter a different OS they will have to learn new skills, but will then have a distinct advantage when it comes to learning the third OS or a major upgrade occurs. You also need to consider that most kids are exposed to smart phones and computers so have some experience with this anyway.

Your language example was well chosen. Learning a second language has many additional benefits. Latin is an excellent choice for someone interested in science.

You would still have to prove that they are responsible for the hack. The fact that their legitimate (if silly) business benefits from some hacked code does not prove they are responsible for the hack.

Mebbe. But in the US, much property is seized without any proof of a crime. Google "asset seizure". Once that happens, it's "guilty until proven innocent", or sometimes "guilty even if you are proven innocent." Of course it's abuse, but law enforcement agencies do it all the time (for one thing, it's very lucrative for the agencies). Why should this be any different?

Of course, I'm now going to have to go on the run from Google's lawyers, for using the word as a generic verb.

I am thinking its either Slashdot has its performance artists too, or a Google-bomb smear campaign of Mr. Kowalski.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Mr.+Alexander+Peter+Kowalski

But if mods are effective, Google can't see it on slashdot.

I don't mean the bang command, I mean the literal character... You can search special characters in DuckDuckGo, ones that are ignored by other search engines...

For ":wq" that would search up the literal string ":wq", which is the Vi command for Writing and quitting, on Bing though, it ignores the ":" and only searches up "wq", so you get results like the Wikipedia article for "Water Quality" and other acronyms that it could stand for.

Compare:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22%3Awq%22

http://www.bing.com/search?q=%22%3Awq%22&qs=n&form=QBRE&pq=%22%3Awq%22&sc=0-0&sp=-1&sk=

DuckDuckGo does not collect or share personal information. For these reasons, DuckDuckGo takes the approach to not collect any personal information. The decisions of whether and how to comply with law enforcement requests, whether and how to anonymize data, and how to best protect your information from hackers are out of our hands. Your search history is safe with us because it cannot be tied to you in any way. When you access DuckDuckGo (or any Web site), your Web browser automatically sends information about your computer, e.g. your User agent and IP address. Because this information could be used to link you to your searches, we do not log (store) it at all. This is a very unusual practice, but we feel it is an important step to protect your privacy.

It's do not track not cover up track. I think these fellas need a course in remedial grammar.

There are times I do want, say, Google to keep my data, and I don't care if they share it -- like if I search for Minecraft stuffs, I want MC stuff to appear on my search. Or if I search a topic and I'd rather be swayed towards more reliable sources that I would frequent rather than like, "HOMEOPATHY MAGIC QUANTUM JUICE PANACEA MAKE MONEY FROM HOME."

For everthing else, there's Duck Duck Go

https://www.duckduckgo.com/ - problem solved.

Among others.

http://help.duckduckgo.com/customer/portal/articles/216399-sources

Short version: DuckDuckBot, Yahoo!, embed.ly, WolframAlpha, EntireWeb, Bing, and Blekko.

Sure, here you go:

Bing
or the awesome DuckDuckGo (also uses Bing, but many slashdotters like it more than Bing)

LOL it's just another reason to continue using DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine.

FTFY
Just because he didn't say it first doesn't mean it's not a valid quote.

Just what does the word "quote" mean to you right wingers? If he didn't say it then it isn't a valid quote. Nevermind the "first" nonsense I can't even find something where he even repeated it - unless you count ideologically similar comments. Those who have repeated the quote: right wing AM radio loudmouths. Why not attribute the quote to them? At least they have actually SAID it. A cursory search led to comments he has made that may be similar but you might want to cite something that is, well, those exact words.

You need one of these than.
They aren't all perfect, but duct tape and superglue will help you out with the faceplate.