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Mark Shuttleworth Addresses Ubuntu Privacy Issues
sfcrazy writes "Mark Shuttleworth has for the first time talked about the privacy issues in Ubuntu Dash after being criticized by EFF and FSF. He mentioned some changes in the way use can 'disable' the search results. However the company has showed that under no circumstances they will disable the online search by default as demanded by EFF and FSF. Shuttleworth was simply spinning the wheel moving things around to give an impression that something has been done where as the core problem remains — Dash sends keystrokes by default and legally every user agrees to send such keystrokes to PRODUCT.canonical.com server to be shared with partners like Facebook."
127.0.0.1 product.canonical.com
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
All that will happen is people will move to fedora or mint or countless other Linux distros.
Mark, if you want to make some money try selling something worthwhile. Games would be one idea, hell get steam to give you a cut if you make installation of steam optional during OS install. Selling users data is a bad idea.
It amazes me that when somebody does something as a business that it infuriates people especially when they get something for free. Yes, Ubuntu is taking free software, wrapping it as a supportable bundle and distributing it. So now they've hooked into the information sharing arrangement. It's easy enough to disable as well and the hosts file solution is also there. I wonder if just charging $10 a download / dvd would make more sense then adding another keylogging data collector out there. Frankly Facebook is the worst and the network of data collectors it's partnered with is becoming more and more troublesome.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
get back to Slack
I would say that pretty much ends the usefulness of the Ubuntu line. Anyone who thinks that sending all my keystrokes to their server - which they can in turn sell off to third parties - is, in my not so humble opinion, bat fucking crazy.
You should not have to edit hosts files or anything else to make a product usable, because that product should not be spying on you from install forward. I do believe my personal response to Mark is a big "FUCK OFF AND DIE". End of story. End of Ubuntu.
Dream as if you'll live forever.
Live as if you'll die tomorrow.
~Anonymous~
I replaced Ubuntu with Mint when I was first confronted by Unity because I couldn't abide the new UI.
Sounds like that was the least of the reasons to go...
I was thinking that it's been a while and that I should have another look at how Unity has evolved, but not if they are reduced to doing this to stay in business.
Canonical can have a good poke about in /home/gordonjcp if they think it'll help. Why?
Because I'm getting bombarded with advertising *anyway*.
If the adverts are going to be there then they may as well be for stuff I actually want, rather than constantly advertising pharmacies that will discreetly ship to the US without requiring a prescription (why would you want to buy drugs over the internet, never mind without a prescription?). If advertising stuff that I want to buy helps a company that I'd like to support but can't be bothered actually handing over cash to, then that's fine by me.
> We will aim to enforce this at the kernel level, hence
> the CC to Jamie S who leads our security team.
WTF? Why is that needed? To keep jr devs from accidentally re-enabling it? Or, in fine /. conspiratorial tradition, is the keylogging built into the kernel?!
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.
Parent is flamebaiting a bit, but I agree. There are no lack of Debian-based distros which don't come with the increasingly concerning baggage that Ubuntu is being bundled with. I retired my last Ubuntu machine about eight months ago and am Debian-only now.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
No. There's a world of difference between the stuff I might put up on a blog, Facebook, G+ and whatever else social network exists, and the data I use my computer to handle. What if you're having legal troubles? IRS are after you? You have applications for a Betty Ford-like clinique? Tax returns? These are things that you're NOT going to be putting up on Facebook or your blog, but documents you might have to have. This is data Ubuntu has no business knowing that I have on my computer.
Mark Shuttleworth has devolved. He's decided to accept the definition of User as something other than Owner. He's raised the port cullis and thrown open the doors for third parties to hunt User metadata, revealing his allegiance, defaulting to a state of non-concern for the least among us.
I'm sure it's convenient for him to imagine he's still engaged in promoting Linux, but at what cost?
How much did he get for his soul? How much did he get for everyone else's?
I'm in the minority here because I really don't care about the advertising. Linux is for servers and development.
However the feature is astonishingly retarded. I'm trying to launch the console and it shows me "Console" the movie? WTF, why would anyone ever click on that? What else is there, "Spreadsheet" the movie? This is the worst advertising placement ever.
It would be another thing entirely if they only showed this stuff in a media query view. In fact iTunes and other media managers have a similar feature.
This. Ubuntu has jumped the shark so long ago. It lost what made it special. Why is anyone still using it?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
This is the problem with "success" of open projects as they grow they require more and more money to continue to reinforce their expansion and it only snowballs downhill from there. Before you know it your out there selling your soul and your users data to the highest bidder. You can still reap profit on support alone but you can't expect it to support an organization of any size with fat paychecks for all doing this. There aint any shortage of corporate customers happily willing to purchase yearly support subscriptions whether they actually need it or use it.
Distributions put together by people who give a shit don't have this problem. The cost of packaging in time and effort is such a minsicule effort and mostly a solved problem contrasted with the effort required to produce operating system and software bundled with it.
What if bash maintainers decided they need more money too and decided to ship your keystrokes off to facebook as well? What if the maintainers of every one of the thousands of packages that go into a modern distribution followed suite? Spying by default is indefensible.
I use a couple of different Linux distros currently, many more in the past and also *BSD now.
What Ubuntu does that no one has done was make it easy for the user. The way Ubuntu does things is a Windows killer - if it weren't for the pre-installation of Windows on every fucking thing that's not Apple or handheld.
See, unlike everyother distro, when you install something on Ubuntu, it'll work (sample: everything I've installed) - and I mean using the distro's software manager - even Windows can't make that claim. Calibre for example. Updating Calibre on XP involves uninstalling and installing again; otherwise if you don't do the uninstall f the old version, when you run it, you get the old version. Ubuntu just upgrades with no hassles.
Ubuntu does have a user experience that is superior to every other distro out there - and I think they know it.
And don't get me started on how spell check for Slashdot on firefox foesn't work on Mint.
Gets turned into a marketing opportunity?
Rick B.
It's the American Way!
Ubuntu might write off people who oppose this change as a small minority of geeks, and the vast majority of people won't care.
Which is true in the short term. Unfortunately as history has proved repeatedly, the "vast majority of people" go to a geek for advice. That might be a family member, a trusted friend or some geek writing something online. They might not understand what the issue is, but over time they will hear the geek background noise about what Ubuntu is doing. In the Medium to Long term, Ubuntu is in trouble if they continue down this track.
Does everything I need and doesn't waste a bunch of resources.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
to resolve this situation: make it opt-in. I know they're trying to finally make some money, but this will hurt them in the long run on that level as well. This type of thing, intrusive internet advertising on the desktop, it's what they call "untenable". People who want that much integration with the internet will surely buy a Chromebook and run Linux, *and* still not have ads on their desktops.
Using Ubuntu these days goes against why I used Linux to start with.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Nice work Mark, you have convinced me to move to some other distro. I will not install any keylogger in my computers willingly. Bye bye, it has been nice few years (since 2009) and now i move on. I understand corporations need to gain income, but selling out your users is wrong way to do it. Forceing your users to install mandatory keylogger is even more wrong. So you can count my 6 computers out of your installation base please.
Can I claim that anything I do on my Ubuntu computer is published by me and thus covered by copyright? I do not own the operating system and the company can access what I do in dash so isn't it like I am publishing my activities to them and their clients? Hit them with a take-down notice.
I admit this thought is not well formulated buy it is the germ of an idea, no?
I never liked Ubuntu from the getgo and like it even less now but I have to admit that it has produced some benefits to the Linux community.
I have to agree. For the most part I've always liked Ubuntu, but even after moving to Xubuntu after the Unity nonsense I still didn't like the direction they were/are going in. Moved to Linux Mint XFCE and haven't looked back.
And honestly, I don't even mind that Gnome and Unity have been the abysmal disasters that they are either. XFCE works great for the most part. I do run mutter instead of xfwm because it has a better compositor, but thats pretty seamless and works great.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
This really isn't the only reason to avoid Ubuntu, but it is the most compelling. Aside from dependency hell, Unity, and the ridiculous amount of patches that get applied to all the packages, that many times break applications (I'm a developer for http://getnightingale.com/ - Ubuntu's taglib is completely hosed from our perspective), and in general it is TOO friendly to the user, making them dumb and complacent in most cases.
I talked to Hak5's Darren recently and he's moving away from Ubuntu, and I did 4 years ago to Arch for my single user machines and Debian for my servers. I haven't looked back since. Most other distros are much more in line with the open standards and software that Linux is all about than Shuttlebuntu. Give some other distros a try, and you may find one that just blows your mind...like Archlinux, Debian, Mint, or whatever else.
Are you a lawyer, and is this legal advice?
I think you are talking bullshit, so if you have any evidence to backup your assertions then please provide some links.
"if you have are not paying for it, you are not the customer - you are the product being sold". (source unknown)
Xubunbtu
Kubuntu
Lubuntu
Mint
...
You don't have to install Ubuntu main line and have your privacy Dash'd to pieces by their business practices and partners.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
I wish I was trolling, but up to now I've been a huge proponent of OSS: the fact that the source code is available for review makes it relatively secure. For the common user Open Source's flagship products are Libre Office, Firefox, and Ubuntu. Now I find out Ubuntu wants to sneak in ads and sell user data and I have to wonder, if they do this what other product is also doing it or plans to?
Please, open source developers, do it for free or charge for it upfront, but don't sneak in hidden "features." It goes against the spirit of the movement and creates huge distrust in the community.
Hopefully this is limited to systems with GUI's installed and not headless servers.
The issues have not been addressed.
If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.
3^2 * 67^1 * 977^1
Not necessarily true.
iPhone5 has better memory, while the S3 has a much faster processor.
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/136291-iphone-5-benchmarks-slower-than-the-galaxy-s3-faster-than-the-nexus-7
Shuttleworth's response translated: Ubuntu is spyware by default.
It's disturbing that Mark Shuttleworth fails to realize how privacy works.
The right move would be to give users clear optional choices that honestly explains the tradeoff:
Do you want to support Ubuntu by allowing us to spy on you:
Yes or No.
I'd rather use Microsoft Windows 8. Now that says something!
Anyone caught posting the above will be beaten severely with their own keyboard.
<-- This. Please don't propagate this "please don't propagate this 'this' meme anymore" anymore.
Comparing a Ferrari to Ubuntu is just one of the many fails in your post.
It is more like a Pinto with that unity junk.
It's a shame really. I no longer have a distro that I feel really comfortable recommending to non-techie users. In my opinion, Shuttleworth has pissed away most of his very well earned respect in the community.
I've long felt that Ubuntu was the only really "complete" distro for the desktop. Other ones come close, but they tend to have one major issue or another for regular users. Ubuntu had the least, by far. Sucks.
First Unity, now this. They both suck. I mean, they really do.
expandfairuse.org
Two obvious reasons:
1. A lot of people think that the value of things is measured in dollars, and so if a project doesn't make money it's not worth doing.
2. There's basically nobody on the planet who wouldn't like having more money.
I am officially gone from
To wit, 10++ things AdBlock can't do, hosts can:
Hell of a thing to quote,
I do use a HOSTS file and appreciate your trying to learn others as well.
So add to your post this warning for HostsXpert - that being; don't use it.
HostsXpert is a Windows HOSTS file editor, add. remove, play with your HOSTS file
But it will render your HOSTS file useless, while looking quite normal.
I've written the author years ago, I've posted to www.majorgeeks.com who still host HostsXpert
nothing has changed. HostsXpert version 4.4 should be removed from the Internet as it's malware.
Proof: this works 100% of the time (otherwise it's random) with your HOSTS file loaded in HostsXpert
"toggle comment" on any entry, it will add: # your comment
It will also change every space to a tab, rendering the HOSTS file useless. Unless
you have a text editor set to show tabs you will never notice it.
127.0.0.1 facebook.com
becomes
127.0.0.1 facebook.com
changing a space to a tab to every entry in your HOSTS file.
127.0.0.1 facebook.com
becomes
127.0.0.1 facebook.com
Never shows up correctly (but you get a hint of how hard it is to find)
First line is separated by a space, the second a tab.
I've used Linux since I could get RedHat on Floppies. I personally like BSD based systems, but for my family who play more games, I typically have used Ubuntu. I work as a senior systems admin, and I make the purchasing and installation decisions at the company where I work.
I don't like the idea of spyware coming as a default solution on my kid's laptop. Or my aunt's, or my wife's, or my grandmother's, or my friends'. I don't like the idea of recommending Ubuntu on any system at the Linux User's Group in my region. That is because I don't like the idea of spyware, period. This was one of the reasons why I walked away from anything Windows for personal use a while back. I've been recommending various Linux distributions for home and production work for over two decades now, and this is the first time I'll be telling everyone to find something other than Ubuntu, and to avoid that distro, as well as anything heavily comingled with the Ubuntu source tree.
Yes, I did know about the Unity key logging issue prior to this, but I had expected that this was an oversight of Canonical, not an intended feature design. Now that this is confirmed as being deliberate (and not deliberately stupid), I'm of the opinion that they could easily introduce other spyware "features" as they see fit in the future, probably without any pesky public outcry. Because of Canonical's dishonesty and general smarminess in regard to the stealthy introduction of spyware onto one of the critical user interfaces of their distro, I simply cannot trust anything coming from them. I consider their tree tainted. I will be suggesting to ALL of those people that I give recommendations to either move to Debian, or CentOS, or something else NOT based on the Ubuntu tree. I will be recommending that Ubuntu based distro installs be unsupported at future LUG install fests. It will not matter to me if they reverse course at a later point, because Shuttleworth has already responded to this problem with a rather dismissive wave of his hand, and any reversal of his opinion would strictly be due to a damaged reputation, and not because, I feel, that he or Canonical has any integrity to begin with.
More importantly in terms of my own time, I now have to come up with migration plans for those family members I do support. I am not thrilled about this, because I am their "tech support", and they, as users, have serious problems with changes to how the GUI looks and operates. I also have friends who have bought laptops through System76 who are infuriated about Canonical's antics as well. Canonical may seem to feel that people like me and my friends can now simply go away as soon as they think they are more successful, but Canonical is forgetting the kind of people who put them into their lofty position. I will be working on taking this away from them, as hard if not harder than I promoted them in the past.
Wrong.
Dotted decimal notation is for human convenience. The IP addresses your computer uses are the is always a 32-bit integer with the same amount of digits.
0.0.0.0 = 00000000000000000000000000000000
127.0.0.1 = 01111111000000000000000000000001
They're the same size.
Is anyone aware of similar issues with Mint?
Yes. It converts you into a mindless drone who must recommend Mint in every turn when Ubuntu is mentioned.
Side effects include chanting the line "I switched to Mint and have never looked back."
How do you do that in Arch, now that the hosts file has been eliminated by the bloody, I mean, bleeding edge ...of change ...for the sake of change?
Is this something I don't know about? I used Arch on my laptops for some 4 years or so, until as recently as last week(*), and /etc/hosts worked just fine.
* [digression] I enjoyed the ride with Arch for a long time, having migrated from Slackware. Years ago, it was the similarity to Slackware (i.e. simplicity) in combination with a more feature-laden package manager that attracted me to Arch, but now a lot of that simplicity has evaporated in favour of all sorts of trendy doodads. I sort of got used to things getting broken in the course of rolling-release upgrades (or in some cases just staying broken from the start), but when pacman borked my machine for the umpteenth time last week, I blew Arch away and reinstalled Slackware. It was like coming home: everything "just works", and any individual applications that I want to be really current can be built by myself or obtained from trusted repositories.
I'm probably one of the few people who actually doesn't find Unity so bad and don't get all the hate that it seems to have here on Slashdot. I use 12.04 on my primary machine and Unity works well enough for me: it's not revolutionary, but it's no better and no worse than the Gnome 2 user experience that came before it. However, these types of shenanigans is where I draw the line. While Ubuntu did a lot of good work in their time, I don't think I'll ever upgrade to Quantal or any of their future versions unless I hear they're actually doing something to address these concerns with privacy. My next major upgrade will be to either Debian Squeeze or Linux Mint Nadia, and that's happening soon.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
I'm not sure why people get so hot under the collar about Unity. I don't personally care for it, but it is similar enough to Gnome 2.x to not be offensive (I suppose), and it probably isn't counter-intuitive for Mac users. Gnome 3 was a big disappointment for me, having been a fan of Gnome since the '90s. I'm now using KDE, and am quite happy now that 4.10 includes compositing, which used to be a bit unreliable with the combination of earlier versions of KDE with compiz.
I've been saying for years (to little effect) that desktop Linux is desperately missing a decent firewall which gives the *USER* a choice as to whether any process/program can communicate with the network.
Zone alarm used to be a must have for any Windows box because it would not only block incoming connections but it would prompt the user whenever *anything* tried to get out to the internet. No exceptions. Nothing left the machine without you, the all important user, giving it the go ahead (I actually tested an early version used a packet sniffer and it actually did "just what it said in the tin")
This was not only invaluable for giving you control of your machine but it was an excellent method for spotting viruses on peoples machines because as soon as the program tried to connect out to the net a nice pop up would appear asking if you wanted to allow this (and did you want your answer rememberred). Err.. no and never ! Even better people actually listened when I expleined this to them and didn't just let anything connect.
Without such a fully featured, user friendly, firewall desktop Linux users are completely at the mercy of developers doing whatever the hell they like with your machine. Download covers from Amazon for your MP3 collection (thereby telling Amazon exactly what you have on your machine) ? Likewise for IMDB covers ? Sending Amazon keystrokes from the Unity lens ? What next, all keystrokes to go to GOogle for some research effort ?
Without a decent firewall asking if you want to allow stuff to phone home (and denying all by default) the average user has *no idea whatsoever* what information is being leaked out of their nice little Linux desktop.
It's about time people understood that it's as important to be able to block outgoing connections as it is to block incoming connections.
And it's about time the Linux developer community got their fingers out and put such a firewall in place. Hell if I had the time to learn the low level networking stuff I'd have a go myself but age and multiple commitments mean I just don't have the time.
However it's one of the main reason I prefer Windows to Linux on the desktop as at least there are several Windows firewalls that work in this way. Desktop Linux is not only simply not secure but is totally complacent about user security.
Sadly Linux developers do not have your privacy foremost in their minds..
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
To me, Ubuntu demonstrates how the FLOSS ecosystem is in good shape. Just like the evolution theory. I am a recovering apple fanboy who moved to Ubuntu a few montsh ago. I started trying Linux in my laptops already in the late 90's. But there was always something missing. A driver, a resolution ... So I settled then on OSX, which I thought
was "the Linux I always wanted". However, in recent years
I have seen Apple drifting and becoming more like the Microsoft
they used to criticise.
I read more and more about Ubuntu, Mint, etc. and decided to have a go. I tried to install Debian, but some drivers were missing. Now Ubuntu is in all my computers and in my tablet (TF101).
Reportedly Shuttleworth seems not to be a nice person. And Ubuntu collects personal info. But that does not really matter. Just remove Dash. What really matters is that all the money he is spending in making Ubuntu popular also helps Linux in the long run.
It may seem unfair for him to repackage Debian and sell it as "his" product. But, the same will happen to Ubuntu (Mint anyone?). Just wait for someone else with deep pockets to take Ubuntu and repackage it. With GPL, in the end the Linux community always wins. Compare that to other systems.
2. There's basically nobody on the planet who wouldn't like having more money.
so, you are suggesting we use linux that comes from an alien race or life form, instead?
they tend to suck at the terrestrial languages, though; so don't expect their spell-check to be worth a damn.
and if they spy on us, who cares! again, they don't know our languages.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
The same refrain echoed over and over again by spammers and other sociopaths: "we're going to lie to you, we're going to abuse you, we're going to compromise your security, we're going to invade your privacy, we're going to harass you, we're going to steal from you...but hey...you can opt-out."
I am sure that when Mark Shuttleworth et.al. install the next anti-security anti-privacy mechanism that they'll say you can opt out of that one too. And the next...and the one after that.
This is a path we've seen heavily traveled before. It always leads to the same place. And Ubuntu has now committed itself, irrevocably, to the first step. it is clearly time to recognize, as Stallman has, that Ubuntu == spyware.
Use Lubuntu or Xubuntu instead! They're much faster and less bloated!!!!! Lubuntu/LXDE is the best distro/GUI I've used, even lighter than XFCE.
http://nathanlindsell.blogspot.com/
I agree. However, that sort of information should be guarded under a different principle, which is general privacy laws. No one should have access to that type of personal information unless it's signed over by the informed consumer.
WTF do you want? You do not want to pay for software, you want it free, but since the Free Software crowd in Linux is unable to deliver a decent experience, you've welcomed Mr. Shuttleworth's Wonderful Piggybacking Adventure in Debianland. Now, how do you expect he should pay his employees and run a business?
This is what happens, kids. You've been told you are to pay for nothing. You've been told that advanced software should be free. Never mind that you still pay for hardware, or cars, or power tools at your garage (a contractor pays much more for his tools than you have come to expect to pay for yours, although most of your tools are offshoots or direct products of PhDs). But software! Hey, software should be free as shit is free! You've been told supporting businesses is illegal - almost - or at least immoral. Now you get what you pay for.
So, stop complaining and quit with the whining. Or face the fact that free as in "libre" software is only free because someone else is freeing up the costs for you (by either entering the GPL/proprietary double-blind cynical scheme, or using a business-friendly license). There is no free lunch. There is no pool of full time experts in free software. Experts don't work for nothing. Only the low-skilled works for nothing. Everybody's gotta eat, and not everyone is a lonely celibate as Stallman, that can just go around collecting money for his Church.
You keep kidding yourselves that Linux is the victor of Free Software, when all it was was part of an IBM backed-up business plan to kill proprietary Unixen. Linux is driven by corporations, and now you will begin to eat each other's livers. All that will remain is going to be Shuttleworth's Spyware Machine and Red Hat's per seat licenses. Debian sucks, Fedora is the RedHat dump site, Mandriva is moronically managed, SuSE - wtf is SuSE?, and all the small distros are insignificant. You thought being business-hostile was good, but you've embrace hypocrisy to the utmost, while deriding the BSD distros, which never claimed to ride such high horses of morality and always supported businesses.
You want it all, but you can't have it...
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
Shuttleworth is the Zuckerberg of free software. Since the Linux crowd has been gullible enough to believe you don't have to pay for advanced software tools, now he's out to sell your data. What is the poor man to do, if he wants a little profit? Surely, he can't keep paying his employees, dedicated full time to fixing Debian's shortcomings, out of his own pocket, can he? So he's gonna sell YOU.
All should be well in your philosophy, because Free Software is made effortlessly. The only people that have to pay for their own tools are the 99% of non-TI workers: the doctors, the carpenters, the farmers. They must buy microscopes, endoscopes, a wood saw, a truck, a tractor. But people who need compilers must not. Software falls off a tree. Or it's magically made by the Debian packagers. Wait...But what do they "package"? Oh, that's right! Software made by other people! Oh, my! I'm so confused...
The part I don't really grasp is...do you *actually* pay for hardware ?! If so, then why?! Why don't you just grab a notebook and run out of the store?!
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
WTF are you talking about? If you use Ubuntu, you use a product of Shuttleworth's company. And what is this "community" you're talking about? Linux developers sometimes don't have the decency of writing portable Unix software (as anybody with a BSD experience witll tell you - Autotools my ass!). Is Red Hat part of the "community"? If it is, then they suck, because Fedora sucks, they're Red Hat's fart, and Red Hat sells per-seat licenses. So does SuSE. And the failing Mandriva. Debian ceased to exist on its own a long time ago, when their workflow imploded the distro, grinding eveything to a halt. It is now officially the provider of royal jelly for the Queen Bee of free software, Ubuntu.
See: http://lunedemiel.tm.fr/anglais/07.htm
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
I think it really speaks volumes about competence and vision when a millionaire took a bunch of supposedly übergeeks from Debian and came up with Unity, while, another millionaire took Unix developers and developed a full-on Unix-based GUI based on the Smalltalk-inspired objective-C, then took a microkernel that was dead in the FSF's water, souped it up with BSD user land and came up with Mac OS X. Now, you tell me, who is the wisest?
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
You thought wrong. Linux was a free software project backed by IBM so Sun Microsystem and HP's Unix and every other proprietary Unix could be put out of business, because IBM sold Big Iron.
And now we're in a much better world because stuff that ran certified Unixen (such as radar and medical equipment) moved on to fucking Windows, because they couldn't trust the no-vendor-is-responsible business motto of the likes of Mr. Torvalds and Mr. Stallman.
Because if that situation, we began to see airports shutting down, because the air traffic optimization software went bezerk, banks and financial transactions that go sunny side up these days during marketing hours, medical emergency systems that hang, and so and so forth. And now, the world's biggest asshole, that Oracle CEO dick head owns Java. Whoopee!
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
(However - are you ABSOLUTELY sure it does that with the TAB
character? Again - I've seen many hosts files that use that between the IP
address & the host-domain name's why I ask!)
Bottom line, It changes spaces to tabs of ones HOSTS file yet appears the HOSTS file will still work.
To test once again if Hostexpert 4.4 disables ones HOSTS file I downloaded, It's a stand alone, .Chm help file.
doesn't need to be installed - Just two files; the executable and a
Under my previous XP's (Dual boot) my HOSTS file wasn't doing anything, I
searched long and hard for a fix, one time opened the HOSTS file in Notepad++
when I found the spaces were tabs. UltraEdit is my text editor of choice and
special charters are normally off. I made a macro in UltraEdit to replace the
tabs with spaces as my HOSTS file is over 19000 lines.
I still ran Hostexpert 4.4, when the HOSTS file quit working I'd find tabs
again and have to rerun the macro at which time it would work again. It's a
random error unless you right click on an entry and select "Toggle Comment",
at which time it's a gimme your spaces are now tabs.
Under Win7 it doesn't matter, so I installed XP and this time the tabs made no
difference. Using no HOSTS file and one with spaces and one tabbed, Slashdot.org
only showed ads with no HOSTS file.
So I was wrong, but at the time a tabbed HOSTS file didn't work in two
separate XP systems; a spaced HOSTS file did. I quit using Hostexpert years
ago as it did indeed disable my HOSTS file at the time.
Thank you for the feed back, it made me go back and retest a really good
HOSTS file editor actually. While it will change your spaces after the 127.0.0.1
or 0.0.0.0 to tabs, it apparently doesn't affect it's operation.
See it here to understand what I mean -> http://www.start64.com/index.php?option
Creates a seriously large file all sites selected, 3732K larger than mine or and extra 100,000+ lines.
I'd suggest allowing one to add single addresses but the program doesn't give an end product. :}
Under "Speedup favorite sites" changing Bing.com to Google.com would be a plus