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Ubuntu's New Firefox Is Watching You
sukotto writes "Ubuntu recently released an unannounced and experimental 'multisearch' extension to Firefox alpha 3, apparently in an effort to improve the default behavior of new tabs and of search. In a response to one of the initial bug reports the maintainers mentioned that the extension's other purposes were 'collecting the usage data' and 'generating revenue.' Since this extension installs by itself and offers no warning about potential privacy violations, quite a few people (myself included) feel pretty unhappy. The only way to opt out is to disable the extension manually via Tools > Add-ons." Most posters to this Ubuntu forum thread are not happy about multisearch.
This is not actually far away from how Firefox generates its revenue too - from ad clicks in Google search and by direct sponsoring from Google.
The two main ways to monetarize and support OSS projects is giving support and ads. In the later case you always lose some of your privacy. Developing Linux and its distro's need money aswell. You could choose a distro that is financed in other way (maybe by you), use commercial software that doesn't do this or be fine with generating some ad income to support the development. "Perfect" package is usually impossible to obtain because of financial limitations.
Google is build completely around this model too and it seems to work good for them - even if people lose some of their privacy. Hell, slashdot is maintained by ad revenue too. Another distro that also does same kind of stuff is Linux Mint.
Its nothing new, but it might surprise those who believe in pure, not-revenue-generating OSS. It's how the free for user projects are financed.
There's no point denying it: Big projects need funding. Funding creates dependencies. Since there is no way around the need for funding, it is of utmost importance that dependencies and privacy implications are disclosed. So Ubuntu: FAIL.
Well, here's the outrage from when Microsoft slipped the .NET Framework Assistant into Firefox without asking. Adjust your outrage accordingly...
Most people are under the impression that Ubuntu is a free OS, not an Ad Sponsored/Data mining revenue oriented OS.
Canonical is Free to distribute a computer program that watches how people use it as long as people who use the program know what's going on. But because Firefox/Iceweasel/whatever is free software, you are also Free to download the source code, rip out the data mining, and rebuild it, or to hire someone to do so for you.
I hear the Ubuntu extension also has a feature for euthanasia of old people.
if you are smart enough understand what Linux is, or to install a version of Linux, you obviously know what you are doing. so i dont see how this would be a problem.
Its not my fault, someone put a wall in my way.
I've been following this for some time. The multisearch add-on was only intended for the pre-release versions, as part of a research project. It will NOT be included in the final Karmic release.
That is what alpha releases are for, after all: testing. Admittedly, the devs could have bothered to mention that they were planning this, but it's better that they did it here than in the final release.
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
I installed Linux Mint about a month ago looking for a new Linux distribution to put on a cheap laptop I had just gotten. All the search pages, no matter where I searched, were coming up branded "Linux Mint". Didn't take too long for me to get annoyed at this, especially when I found out there was no way whatsoever to remove the addon from Firefox. I ended up downloading the mozilla.com distributed package and overwriting the symlinks by hand. Mint is based on Ubuntu, but my 9.04 installs don't have this in there. I guess this is one "innovation" that made it back up the food chain. Personally embarassing for me, since I had just finished recommending Linux Mint to several friends, aquaintances, and customers.
0. Once prerequisites are installed on Ubuntu,
1. Download the source:
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/3.5.2/source/firefox-3.5.2-source.tar.bz2
2. Unpack source:
tar xvfj firefox-3.5.2-source.tar.bz2
3. Create .mozconfig in the top-level directory:
. $topsrcdir/browser/config/mozconfig
mk_add_options MOZ_OBJDIR=@TOPSRCDIR@/objdir-ff-release
mk_add_options MOZ_MAKE_FLAGS="-j4"
ac_add_options --enable-optimize
export CFLAGS="-gstabs+"
export CXXFLAGS="-gstabs+"
4. make -f client.mk
5. Enjoy objdir-ff-release/dist/bin/firefox
Penguin?
Watching you from the closet...
Can't we remove the code and recompile it or not use it, I mean I am glad people caught this bullshit but that person should be removed from his ability to check in code or warn people that they are doing testing and that testing is generating revenue for him, its dam shaddy dont get me wrong but it seems easy to fix? Am I wrong? If so how?
I'm not bothered by Canonical wanting to leverage potential sources of revenue. They're providing me with a service free of charge, as is Google.
I'm bothered by the fact that it replaced the normal Google UI with something less usable. I'm also bothered that they used a Firefox extension rather than using a standard search engine plugin, making it much more difficult to undo.
Epiphany is available in Ubuntu -- it also looks a hell of a lot nicer with GNOME than FF does. Give it a try.
--saint
as soon as Linux gained enough popularity that spyware and spyware like activities would start creeping in, glad i learned Linux early, fortunately i dont use ubuntu, and i wonder how long until this is embedded in to firefox itself and not removable, i am using an unofficial build of firefox (Shiretoko-3.5.2) and for all i know it may already have it, if it does i hope word gets out and it bites mozilla.com on the ass. it might even be prudent to just remove the damn thing and use lynx or links instead. maybe even just abandon Linux completely and switch to one of the [Free/net/open]BSDs not sure i could trust PCBSD to not pull the same crap canonical/ubuntu is doing...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
The screenshots are odd. They all look the same to me and they look like a login page to that forum, not anything to do with Google at all.
On a side note, does anyone know how to completely disable Firefox from opening new tabs without permission? I've tried to disable it every way I can and I've mostly got it, but every so often I run into a website like this Ubuntu forum that somehow nevertheless manages to force Firefox to open a new tab.
Why is it that web "designers" can't understand that I have perfectly functional "Open in New Tab" and "Open in New Window" options if the right click menu if I want to do so and if I don't use those options it's specifically because I DON'T want to open a new tab or window.
Its becoming more and more obvious that Ubuntu's reign as the king of distros is slowly ending. From the new non-disableable notifications, to the annoying new default behavior for the update notifier, to the elimination of an often used shortcut (CTRL+ALT+Backspace, on the default install), I can't see Ubuntu keeping its spot at number one. I'm not sure which distro will take over, but my guess would either be Mint or Fedora.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
[obligatory]
In soviet russia, Firefox watches YOU!
[/obligatory]
ialwaysfeellike
No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
FTW! Free as in "we don't spy on you".
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
it was introduced in Karmic which is an alpha distribution. It wasn't introduced without announcement to the main production users of Jaunty. It may have been introduced without announcement to the Karmic alpha, because introducing it to the alpha *is* the announcement. It was done to see if it was better, results from alpha testing may reveal it is not better, or may reveal it is better. The results of the experiment will help decide whether it should stay, or go.
Youth in Asia, or old people? You aren't even making any sense and you spelled 'youth' wrong.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Ok, I guess is time to start looking at alternatives. Not saying I will switch but I better keep options open.
Any user-friendly, easy to install linux distribution like Ubuntu around? (Fedora need not to apply, btw)
Preferably one without that pulseaudio crap installed by default...
HTML is obsolete. It's time for a new, simpler and richer markup language.
yadda yadda yadda.
Best Slashdot Co
It's "Grammar Nazis", not "grammar Nazis".
How dare you insult the Obamessiah! You just wait until I perfect the device that lets me stab people in the face over the Internet.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The Ubuntu modification uses an Ubuntu custom Google search, rather than the Mozilla custom Google search. Google collects the same data in both cases; the only difference is that, with the Ubuntu search, Ubuntu gets to see aggregates information about popular searches, while, with the Mozilla custom search, Mozilla gets to see this aggregated information. In both cases, Google are the only people who get individually identifiable information about searches. Ubuntu isn't "watching you" any more than Mozilla is watching you when you search using a stock Firefox.
I use SeaMonkey.
Sad!
Quoting from the linked bug report:
"We've made some changes in the Alpha 3 version of Firefox related to how and where search queries are processed. We've introduced the changes at this time in an experimental vein in order to explore and understand the user experience and usage patterns. We plan to use this experimental code at least until Alpha 4.
Note that we did not necessarily foresee Multisearch as code that we would ship in a stable release. Whatever actions we take in response to the information and feedback will depend on the information and feedback that we collect from this effort."
This is a test feature directed at exploring ways of improving user experience, nobody is spying on anyone. Maybe there should have been a better P.R.strategy, like communicating this experiment on advance, and requesting feedback. That would avoid some moron misinterpreting the whole thing. Now can we all go back to doing useful stuff?
Actually free software isn't new. Members of the Tech Model Railroad Club, some of the original computer hackers, at MIT openly posted source code as early as 1959, 50 years ago. Open source Berkeley Software Distribution or Berkeley Unix was released in 1977.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Can it be remotely activated
i hear Amazon and Apple have experience in the matter
of course if all else fails ask Microsoft
is anyone left in technology who actually treats a customers property as not theirs ?
gives a new meaning to the word pwned (except its a feature not a bug)
Why are people surprised by this? $huttleworth.wants to use you to make money.
I'm more disappointed by the Canonical way of handling the thing, though.
I don't think that debian or fedora ever went in a similar direction with the same attitude.
http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/
It will be in the debian/ubuntu repos, so how is removing the addon from the software the only way to opt out.
Just don't install Firefox in the first place.
It is for exactly reasons like this that Firefox was forked (And some time ago.)
Install icecat. Not Firefox. Besides, there are plenty of better browsers available for GNU/Linux. Opera, midiori, chromium and aurora to name just a few.
Too bad there are no operating systems other than Canonical's that properly support .do^H^Hodf, Excha^H^H^H^Hvolution^W IMAP, and Internet Ex^W^WFirefo^Wany standards compliant browser.
lamezorrrz.. come on the economy isn't THAT bad..
Pretty much everyone I know doing anything with Linux these days is using Ubuntu. So....
1) Become the OS standard
2) Convince everyone you provide a better user experience
3) Sneak in some evil
4) Profit!!!
The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.
Of course, it is not much of a theory. No, it is pretty much fact.
Ubuntu's New Firefox Is Watching You - 158 Comments
Microsoft's New IE Is Watching You - 658 Comments
I'll try anything once. Twice if it tastes good
It's a no-effort, free-as-in-beer way of supporting my favourite OS.
I plan on installing Ubuntu Studio on my Mac and if Firefox has this extension I will be looking on how I can get rid of or disable it. If I want to support Canonical and Ubuntu I'll help those I can and buy support from Canonical. I already have Firefox setup the way I want on my Mac and I want to use the same data stores in both OSes. That's what I do now, I have both Firefox 2 and 3 and they both use the same ones. I have FF 2 running now with a bunch of tabs open. If I start FF 3 it will open with the same tabs open. If I add a bookmark to one it will be there in the other too.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
You tell others to RTFA but apparently you didn't read both of them. The second one has this tidbit:
"Change #2 is just an artefact of collecting the usage data. We could only see what parts of the FF UI people were using to do searches if we sent them to our custom page. This usage data is important because it helps us channel design and development resources to useful features, and is also important because it can be tied to revenue generation."
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I don't think anyone begrudges Ubuntu taking advantage of a perfectly acceptable revenue model. That's not the problem here.
The problem is that Ubuntu is shipping a modified version of Firefox instead of the default Firefox shipped by Mozilla. Sure, both Ubuntu and Debian ship patched versions of just about every package they include in the repository. But the overwhelming majority of those patches don't noticeably effect the user experience.
Firefox, on the other hand, is pretty much the #1 most important part of the user experience in Ubuntu. It's the application most people are going to use more than anything else. In fact, after Ubuntu is installed, the user will probably spend more time interacting with Firefox than with all the rest of Ubuntu combined. It's not inaccurate to say it's a Firefox machine, as opposed to an Ubuntu or Linux machine.
Since Firefox is the most important part of the user experience, the users don't want Firefox changed in any way. They want the default Firefox as shipped by Mozilla. They don't want the named changed to Shiretoko or IceWeasel. They don't want the icons changed. They don't want weird extensions that change behaviour. They also don't want updates to come from Ubuntu repositories, as they do for every other package. They want the newest version of Firefox from Mozilla at the exact moment that Mozilla ships it.
I understand the reasoning behind Ubuntu and Debians policies, but I think it is obvious that Firefox trumps Ubuntu. They should make a special exception for it. Just ship the raw Firefox as released by Mozilla. Don't modify it in any way whatsoever. The world is just getting more browser centric. The operating system is just the code that talks between the browser and the hardware. You can do anything you want to the OS, but don't touch the browser or you'll lose all the users you worked so hard to gain.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Do you understand the English language?
In somewhat clearer words:
shortcut
makes perfect sense. People who know what is up can still go to ctrl-alt-f1 and kill X from there. People who don't know what they are doing shouldn't loose all their data every time they smash the keyboard with their palm.
First let me say I don't know what CTRL+ALT+Backspace is or does though I know what CRT+ALT+Delete is and does in Windows. With that out of the way, don't you think it's just as easy to CTRL+ALT+F1 by smashing the keyboard as it is to CTRL+ALT+Backspace?
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
... and ads. In the later case you always lose some of your privacy...
I'm baffled by this novel assumption that you can't advertise a product without breaking into the privacy of your prospect customers.
But... the future refused to change.
oh, hell, who the fsck cares I go on askjolene daily ....I don't know why somebody would really be concerned about their "privacy" and a business model that will require knowing something about the user. If you are smart you will not buy shit they try to sell you ... if you are dumb, you will buy that shit anyway ...
Karmic is in alpha, right? It's open source, right?
Somebody FORK that sucker. Bwahahahaha. ;^P
--
Toro
Do you understand the English language?
What part do you not understand? They collect data and data mining is collecting or otherwise acquiring data that is then mined.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Maybe now you cheap asses will finally get the difference between 'open source' and GNU software. How could you sell debian for commercial company and what did you expect will happen?
The FIRST thing I did was to look at my Firefox to see if I had this search function. Nada. I opened up Synaptic to see if it were available. Nope.
So, I checked out the links offered in the article.
WHOOO-HOOO!!
We are talking about an ALPHA thingamabob. Alpha. Test stuff. Meaning that, the people who have the addon VOLUNTEERED to install and TEST the thing.
TFA is a little bit of grandstanding by a drama llama. This addon is going to be tested, the community will determine if it's useful, and whether it should be modified. Unless you CHOOSE to VOLUNTEER to use this thing, you won't even see it for some time come. At which point in time, you will have a CHOICE as to whether to install it.
FUD me!! I spent 5 minutes of my remaining life looking at a total non-issue.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
"The only way to opt out is to disable the extension manually via Tools > Add-ons"
Quite a negative way to say it can be disabled. I love the use of the word "manually." As a developer, I consider "manual" to be running an update query on a firefox sqlite database. This should be written:
"To opt out, the extension can be disabled via Tools > Add-ons"
it just transfers you to a console
Okay. It requires another step then if you want to kill everything. Well I guess you can pull the plug, which I've had to do after the computer I was using became unresponsive.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
... is people not really paying attention to the facts.
* This has been repeatedly stated to be an experiment in an alpha (i.e. testing only) release
* Revenue gathering from the choice of search engine is nothing new (it's the main way Firefox generates revenue for Mozilla Corp)
* The data gathered is which of the search boxes you use (the default firefox UI lets you search from the search bar, in the URL bar and the default homepage).
So basically this seems to be an experiment to figure out which of the search methods people are using most.
(disclaimer: I work for Canonical as a sysadmin. I'm not a developer and I don't work on Ubuntu directly, so I was not in any way involved in the planning/implementation of this, and I speak here only for myself as an Ubuntu user who's dismayed at the anger people are unbottling with little information)
Chris "Ng" Jones
cmsj@tenshu.net
www.tenshu.net
Straight through from RH 7.1 to FC 12 then I had finally had enough with the sound and video display issues that never really get fixed, just get more complicated and more buggy with every new release. RH and Fedora have made it perfectly clear that desktop linux is something they just don't care about, they are "enterprise" and "server" oriented, even though they "offer" desktop apps. Some update left me with a totally blank unresponsive screen and I went ENOUGH! I've googled and sweated all the little bugs of the day I want to with them. Every release the stupid hoop jumping to get correct resolution or to get any sound whatsoever out of speakers (this is 2009, please!), and it might work for a week, then it goes down again with another bad update, back and forth, then back to a new release and do it all over again, except this time with a thousand more new packages no one really wants or uses to help mess things up.
Had the latest ubuntu disk kicking around, re checked it, it worked running it live on my hardware, looked perfect, it installed perfectly fine, gave me the option to do the card manufacturer's blob drivers, took a chance, they worked fine (I actually do want the screen to work, sick of half assed screens), sound worked perfectly fine with no pulse audio fuckups, etc. Got all my media to play and work completely painlessly without having to go look up this weeks new and improved way to do that, everything I want to view or listen to without a ton of copy pasting cryptic commands that only half work half the time for half the people if you have ever followed the fedora forums a lot. They have a few volunteer gurus there who really do try hard, but if you don't have near the same exact hardware they have, good freekin luck! Ubuntu, just nails more hardware well it seems, more and different rigs will work fine out of the box. Same gnome desktop, two completely different results, so it has to be how much they care and quality control and ubuntu is just winning, little mistakes or not.
And it's almost hard for me to say that, because I was such a fan for a long time of red hat and then fedora, but got to call it like I see it now, downhill bad last few years with the RPM boys.
So far, so good three months now with ubuntu. In my view, ubuntu is winning on the desktop because they actually do care about the home user and the desktop, in fact, I wish Red Hat and Fedora would just stop pretending to even bother with home users and the desktop, it would actually help them focus resources, and nothing wrong with fixating on the enterprise and the server, just SAY THAT OFFICIALLY AND STOP PRETENDING YOU OFFER A HOME USER OR DESKTOP VERSION so people aren't faked out what they are getting.. Heck, even on the fedora forums the big names there will tell people over and over again (generally speaking) that the fedora devs don't bother reading or replying or helping there much at all if even ever, they stick to those *quaint* 1980s stupid mailing lists so they can feel old school and leet or something. For an alleged "community" distro the main guys don't participate with the users? huh? And you can find that quoted there dozens of times on the semi official not really official forums. If that ain't a clue that they really don't give a shit about the desktop (and it shows) I don't know what is. In fact, this ubuntu has been so painless, I haven't had the need to go try and fix anything, never one time had to go lookup how to fix something, haven't even bothered to even look at the forums much at all, just for fun, but they seem way less frantic with bad fixes just glancing at it, and I so far could have gotten by completely ignoring the forums there, haven't needed them. With fedora, seems almost every update breaks something else. It just got intolerable for me, I couldn't excuse it anymore.
So, my anecdotal cancels yours I guess, unless you have some real hard numbers to show us.
if I want to save my tabs (usually I don't) I simply killalll firefox-bin.
You don't need to kill Firefox if you want to open it with all of your tabs open to the pages that were open when closed. In Preferences set Firefox starts: to "Show my windows and tabs from last time". I used to do that when I wanted to go back to where I was before, then switch back to "Show my homepage" but now I keep it set to the first one. Of course it launches that way every tyme, which as you hint you don't want it to do.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Everybody knew about this already, because it's open source of course! /sarcasm
I alternate between Windows XP and Kubuntu Jaunty with a shared Firefox profile on an NTFS drive, and 90% of the time all I see is minor changes in the task bar underneath Firefox.
(The other 10% I enjoy a better console and alternate between loving and hating Linux packaging.)
=S
ok I buy the reasoning behind not letting everybody see where you browser... but come on... what have you got to hide ? and who here doesn't know how to hide it if they want to ?
just "let it be" stop thinking everybody is after you.... allllllot of the comments here look like they are written by CIA spies who are handling state secrets.
nobody gives a fuck what you are browsing... ok, so you google for "teen girl panties". ItÂs not a state secret, nobody gives a fuck.
and yes i'm drunk and fed up with the "don't browse unless you use TOR" crazy crowd.
Exception Duck - may or may not contain chicken.
Maybe Ubuntu users should ask for a refund from their vendor.
Cory Doctorow talking about cloud computing makes as much sense as George W Bush talking about electrical engineering.
In Soviet Russia, you watch Ubuntu's Firefox!!!
This same data is collected by every single search engine?
Plus more? I mean, at least they're not storing it in a big database, tied to your IP.
I knew as soon as I saw the name "Canonical". It's referring to the process of achieving saint-hood and Ubuntu is the perfect tool to achieve control of the less sheep-like in the herd. Don't be fooled, geeks. This company is not as innocent as it seems. At the precisely needed moment, it will become a necessary part of a grand scheme to enslave us all, primarily through open source software that we have been duped to believe is safe. How else will they get all the open-minded open source proponents other than to play their very own game? Benevolent dictator, indeed.
The level of skill it implies, the time and the money, is out of reach of any ordinary user.
This would be an extraordinarily hard sentiment to formally define. How far back in history does one need to go to say the same about literacy? How far would one need to travel in the present world? Long before your definition reaches bedrock, it all becomes relative to a social construct.
Two of the great innovations of our number system (positional representation, and the digit zero) were incredible aids to making numeracy less "out of reach" for ever larger segments of the population.
The upward swing of the innovation cycle is making the dog walk in the first place, however badly. If the technology becomes pervasive, this is followed by the outward swing, making the technology ordinary. This point was also neglected by the post who suggested that open source needs to be better than closed source to overcome the adoption hurdle. But that only applies in the boost phase of the innovation cycle, not to ball point pens.
The desktop OS is halfway through the commoditization cycle already. For a broad audience, the browser already matters more. Decisions are increasingly driven not by what is best, but by what is most hassle free. Cost is not driving the bus. There are some pieces of software offered with no monetary cost I won't install because the software doesn't do enough for me to justify reading the license agreement, and the organization hasn't maintained a reputation where I'm willing to install the software on trust. (Ubuntu seems to be actively scouting the boundary with this latest move.)
Speaking of licenses, IANAL => literacy ain't worth much. The governing rules of society are out of reach to those governed. So that's what "out of reach" gets you as a debating tactic: absolutely nothing. Out of reach is not merely taken for granted, it's a governing principle.
The hassle factor is asserting control over the behaviour of our installed software has less to do with the learning the C language and more to do with byproducts of the software engineering life cycle. We're at the point in the innovation cycle where invention of the digit zero would be incredibly welcome.
The problem is that our software has an emotional IQ which in the animal kingdom would be dead square in the quadrant "too dumb to live".
A mother bear gets a bit testy about the space between herself and her bear cubs. I get a mite testy about a software installer shuffling around a system configuration that was carefully tweaked. To cite the most extreme example, I once lost nearly a month in a software development process because some stupid Microsoft JET accessory (don't ask) swapped a defective DLL in place of a DLL I had carefully chosen to be compatible with some other quirky POS (thanks, Microsoft).
In the animal kingdom, you take one look at momma bear, then you consider your survival odds if she gets testy about your next foot step. This the emotional IQ our software needs to develop. This is difficult at the present moment, because my software is blind: it doesn't know who the fuck I am. It doesn't know I have "bad mother fucker" tattooed on my wallet. (Note to the Sun Java installer: the next time you install the Yahoo toolbar because I forget to click off the Yahoo button--after clicking it off 13 out of 15 times already--I'm going to rip out your giblets and engage in a pagan ritual.)
This blindness is a byproduct of an inferior technology: our software engineering and release life cycle. As software engineers, we haven't yet figured out how to function effectively in a world where _every_ end user software install takes into account a personality profile of the software victim.
Testiness factors
1. maybe it's cool ... ...
2. what the heck is a DLL and why should I care?
5. don't mess with it if I don't understand it
10. mother bear
11. Godzilla
Having lived through
This same data is collected by every single search engine?
They are still analyzing or mining the data. That, or they are selling it. There is no other reason to collect the data.
at least they're not storing it in a big database, tied to your IP.
And how do you know this?
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
This just another reason why I don't like or use firecrap or thrunderturd. Don't like them... never cared for them since their netcrap days.... don't now.
I use only Konqueror for web browser and file manager... works great.
Any site which fails to work properly in Konqi... I don't visit ever again.
I test and develop in Konqi... Works in Konqi. DONE... Don't care if it breaks or borq's fireturd or exploder.. Works great where I am sitting on my Konqueror browser... You need to update to Linux and and KDE V3.5.10 and you won't have that problem....
Same applies to icesleasel and companions....
Now I know my choice was correct.
And for the "Its OK, their making money from it, and its just their lack of up front disclosure....." NO its not OK to make money in this manner regardless of how upfront they might have been.
This is winslease move, plain and simple.
1311393600 - Back to Black
This is the real issue here. if they want to get revenue like this, fine, more power to them, but they should warn users upfront.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
.
Most people are under the impression that Ubuntu is a free OS, not an Ad Sponsored/Data mining revenue oriented OS.
Well, that is how they present themselves, so you shouldn't expect to be blind-sided like that.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Falcon, in order to not dig your hole any deeper I suggest you read a little more widely on this subject before commenting further.
OK, let me check for outrage... no, sorry, can't get outraged by this. I've spent it all on the PATRIOT Act, TSA, etc. Let me know when they're reporting back to Homeland Security.
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Debian is still good but needs to be cleared of a mono infection recently acquired. BTW that's an H.R. problem not a technological one. Remove or quarantine the carriers and you have solved the infection.
...a more relevant question would probably be, why are you using Ubuntu in the first place?
Ubuntu is a gateway drug for Windows refugees who don't know any better. For people who actually know their way around Linux, you're likely to find just about anything else more desirable.
It takes a couple of clicks to disable the extension (especially since everyone knows about it now :)), so what's the big deal? OSS needs some way of generating revenue. There really is little privacy in the world today... what with cell phones, ezpass, online banking, etc...The only way to be truly private is to "opt-out" of technology -- get rid of your cell phones, computers, ezpass, ,pay your bills with "snail-mail", nix twitter, facebook, e-harmony, myspace, etc...
CTRL-ALT-Backspace behavior was changed by the X.Org project, not Ubuntu. Fedora had the same change also.
Wait, I thought lolbuntu was the new osx, a shitty distro that can do no wrong. If this article is correct, that is no longer true, and I'll have to quickly jump ship to the latest and greatest distro. Maybe Centos will be it this time around.
As much as I hate to agree with one of the frothing Microserf fanbois, there is definitely a double standard being applied here. This kind of thing shouldn't be acceptable no matter who does it.