How much does it pay,
How long until I qualify for a pension, and
Do I get to hack other countries for fun and profit without worrying about legal repercussions?
(Hey, the SCADA hacks on Iran sound like pure geek porn. Don't lie, you all wish you could have done that without fear of the MIBs showing up at your door to ship you off to Gitmo!)
Oh, and most important - I want a guarantee, in writing, notarized, and reviewed by my lawyer, that they won't ship me off to die in some foreign sandbox (no tech-pun intended) when they need sacrificial grunts for the next blood-for-oil charade.
I came in here to say exactly that. Get a.3mm "drafting" pencil, and you'll have the cleanest, most reliable lines you've ever seen. You can also get different hardness leads to suit your preference of pressure.
If someone doesn't know enough to know that they want something other than MSIE, then in most cases, they don't. Making them pick a browser on first use amount to a complete crap-shoot. Sure, they might pick FF or Chrome, and get lucky (though personally, I have more philosophical objections to Chrome - which don't apply to Chromium - than to MSIE). Or they might pick Safari, now deprecated for Windows, and end up in a far worse situation than just defaulting to MSIE.
We're calculating lost downloads, now? And I thought lost sales due to piracy was a stupid metric...
If only - If only - People had another way to get a browser than to pick from a menu when they first use Windows! Some sort of, I dunno, website or something, where they could choose to go to get whatever browser they prefer.
if you have to be sneaky to get their info, I don't think much of your morality. IMO that's really assholish behavior and I wish you people would stop it.
FWIW, I agree with you. But as I said in my other response, this doesn't stop anyone from collecting anything. It just requires posting a privacy policy. And if you've read any privacy policies lately, you'll know that they virtually all say "we do what we want, deal with it or piss off".
I support real consumer protection laws. I don't support feelgood nuisances that punish everyone.
You don't live there, why would they give a shit about you? why would you give a shit about them?
Because:
1) TFA says nothing about the AG threatening only companies located in CA, and
2) California has a long history of strong-arming their regulatory environment onto the rest of the US simply by virtue of the size of their economy.
We don't need another Andrew Cuomo wannabe destroying a major part of the online world in a pathetic attempt to make a name for themselves while forcing their morals on the rest of the world. Thanks for the nannyism, but I've outgrown the diapers. I'll decide whether or not to do business with someone online, and while a privacy policy may factor into that, I think we can all figure out the meaning of not having one at all.
Yes, let stop consumer protection, what could go wrong?
Posting a privacy policy does not equate to "consumer protection".
Every year, all my banks and credit cards and other financial institutions send me a copy of their "privacy" policy. It unwaveringly boils down to "we share this, and you can't do a goddamned thing about it, so neener-neener".
Yeah, they'd hire a replacement, life would go on.
Yup, they would. Based on the last time we looked, it would take about a year, and they'd end up with yet another "bad attitude". I have to wonder, though, which counts as more dysfunctional - Modern corporate "disposable human" culture, or somewhat arrogant no-respect-for-authority geek culture? Because y'know, I'd trust my geek coworkers to help me get out of a burning building; the former would make more from the insurance payoffs with me dead.
But yes, the world goes on in my absence. Way to miss my bigger point in favor of tossing me a personal "fuck you". I answered the question accurately, whether you like that answer or not. People put up with "attitude" when they have no choice, simple as that.
BTW, you left out the typical AC "I fired a hundred of you assholes last year alone and ended up getting a very respectful and skilled ex marine", Mr. Fortune-500 CEO.
Because you need me, not the other way around. And so does everyone else.
Follow my rules or find a job elsewhere. I'm not going to put up with bullshit.
Okay, see ya - Because your competition will.
And FWIW, this doesn't only apply to geeks. You could say the same for pharmacists, for nuke-certified welders, for a host of other positions with a high barrier to entry (whether highly skilled or merely artificial - Do you complain about the crudeness of your crude plumber, when the local guild has made it a miracle you got one to come out at 2am and you thank Zeus for the opportunity to pay him quadruple overtime for the privilege?).
If you want the best of a small group, you put up with the quirks common to that group, or you go without. If you go without a plumber, your house fills with shit. If you go without a good network security guy, you might not have things leak in, but you can bet they get out...
It's not about any of those things. It's about protection from foreign states. Made at a time when there wasn't a sufficient full time army.
Uh, no. You fail history.
We have a second amendment for the explicit purpose overthrowing an oppressive federal government.
Read your Federalist Papers:
"The only refuge left for those who prophesy the downfall of the State governments is the visionary supposition that the federal government may previously accumulate a military force for the projects of ambition. [...] To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. [...] But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the national force, and of officers appointed out of the militia by these governments and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned in spite of the legions which surround it." (#46, James Madison)
You can make a reasonable argument for the second amendment referring to the National Guard (though that organization has become nothing more than one more branch of the Federal military, making such an argument moot); But they originally existed very clearly for the purpose of protecting the states from the federal government.
The real problem comes from the fact that most people count as complete idiots. Those with a love of learning new things generally do not count as complete idiots (though make no mistake, you can certainly find exceptions to that).
You want to know why I sometimes come off as arrogant? Because with any low-skilled task, I can quite likely do your job better than you do. With more highly skilled work, I may never attain the mastery of someone doing it forty hours a week for thirty years, but I can (and do, as part of my nine-to-five) shadow you for a week and find ways to automate half your department out of a job.
That said, acting like you recognize any of the above will have negative consequences on your social life. Even if you lack "true" humility, learn to fake it, for your own sake. Learn to bite your tongue when you watch someone struggle through the simplest of tasks, and resist the urge to rip the mouse from their graceless hands so you can finish the task for them. Don't correct people's atrocious grammar (cue someone finding a poorly conjugated verb in this post). Don't explain to them that "literally" doesn't mean "figuratively", and that "irregardless" doesn't mean anything (no, really, it doesn't. Yes, you can find it in some dictionaries. You still sound ignorant trying to use it). Don't point out that they never have any money because of their $8 soy lattes, or that soy lattes count as merely one symptom among many.
And don't suggest playing the four of diamonds on the five of clubs while taking the train into work, either.
Have you *looked* at facebook? Huge numbers of people proudly post every real, factual detail of their real lives to it.
Yep, I have, actually - My goldfish has his own page, which I help him maintain (fins suck for typing, dontchaknow).
He has tons of friends, too, the vast majority of whom lack legs (and of those with legs, the majority of those have four of them).
And out of all the vast biographical data about him available for Facebook (or the government) to mine, you'll find one thing conspicuously missing - Anything that would give you the slightest bit of useful information about his owner (beyond questioning the sanity of someone making a FB page for a pet fish, but you can damn hundreds or even thousands of other psychos on that count).
That said... I do have to agree with you, overall. I suppose far, far too many people do put semi-legit info on Facebook... Even among those who initially lie to preserve their basic privacy, many then proceed to ruin their efforts by loading in enough additional information to give a pretty good picture of reality.
Don't worry. Everyone already does this. Your precious little databases of everything, everywhere, already contain 100% pure unadulterated shit (actually only 95% shit, but since you can't easily tell which morons gave real info, you can't trust any of it). So really, you haven't lost anything.
Boo-hoo. Back to social control the old fashioned way - Poisoning kids' minds via the school system, and having the boys in blue damage the minds of those that escape with some shreds of individuality intact.
bullshit...if this were true, you'd be using them instead.
What a stupid assertion. Just like with any other tool, each has its own purposes at which it performs best.
Windows (XP through 7 excluding Vista) "just works", and it works damned well as a solid, easy-to-use desktop environment. Linux kicks ass for boxes you want to fire up and forget about for months at a time (home servers of various flavors). OS-X... um... Looks nice, I guess.
You can use more than one of these, even all of them, on a regular basis, without needing to forsake the others lest the True Believers(tm) cast you into the pit.
Now, Windows 8... Hey, perhaps it rocks the tablet world and will totally bury both Android and iOS. Perhaps not. For the desktop environment, however, thanks, but I don't have any need or desire to use a "minimalist" interface on my 3x 1920x1200 displays. A three year old can use it? GREAT! And I mean that... But I have a few more responsibilities, and a bit more capacity to deal with a sophisticated UI, than a three year old.
Should a developer need to know the ins and outs of the Data Center? Should they know Unix/Linux/Windows/App Servers and everything else that is running?
If you want that code to run in a massively-parallel hot-swappable environment, then you bet your ass you want your devs to understand everything running in that environment.
If, however, you want a standalone app to run on a few desktops, then no, your dev doesn't need to understand data center architecture; but in that environment, neither does your admin / ops guy.
Realistically, I give this FP a 9/10 for managing to troll a group of people who largely overlap. Most programmers can do 95% of sysadmin work; and most sysadmins can code reasonably well. People go into one or the other not for their capacity to do the other job, but either as a preference or even blind luck.
Personally, I would rather deal with pure code than dust, but I've damned well pulled cable while crawling through 70 years of dust inside a ceiling at 120F. On the flip side, I know guys who just love the shininess and the contented hum of a new rack, and consider scripting one of the "dirty but necessary" aspects of their job.
But can we all just settle our differences, come together in peace, and agree that the rest of the world sucks and needs to learn to both how to 1) use a vacuum cleaner, 2) plug in their own damned monitors (and perhaps the occasional printer), and 3) write simple Excel macros?
Not getting their details on the scene changes it from "their problem" to "your problem".
It "impacts your rates" if someone magically crashes into your car inside your locked garage while you lounge on the beach in Tahiti 2000 miles away.;)
As for an accident with you involved... You need their license plate number, and their name helps but doesn't strictly matter. Your own insurance company will do the rest, for the simple reason that they would much, much rather make the other guy pay than pay out themselves.
Who cares? Cell phones make this trivial for end-users to manage.
If they block their info, I block their call - 99% done-in-one.
For the rest, my phone only lets me know I have a call for numbers in my contacts list. If someone else legitimate wants to get in touch with me, they can leave a message.
Yes, Virginia, we've reached the point of whitelisting all of our means of contact. If I don't know you, I don't talk to you, period... Except, because my cell carrier makes a shitton for text messages (I don't pay, but someone does), I have no way whatsoever to block text messages. I can default the "ring" to totally silent, and override it on my contacts, but I can't outright block the damned things.
It is, in fact, an example of causation and not correlation that spending more money than you need means you have less money than you could've
Say what???
Spending more doesn't just "correlate" with having less, it directly, mathematically, physically, tangibly causes it. If you have ten apples, and only need to eat five a day but decide to eat six today - Tomorrow you go to bed hungry.
I don't know what kind of socialist bullshit they feed you kids today, but wasting less means having more, period. Yes, other things might also cause you to have less in the long run, but let's start by not spending our food stamps on the low-hanging organically grown farmer's market fruit.
Is this standard procedure for EVERY criminal case? Are the names of other defendants published for every trial to come out of that court? I know most cases are public record that anyone can access if they care.
Yes. And not just those charged, but pretty much every adult appearing in the police blotter for any reason that day. Pretty common practice at small-town papers across the country.
I absolutely think we need to pull our heads out of our asses when it comes to puritanical prohibitions on consensual sex (even for pay), but we don't live in that world. These guys committed a crime and got caught, and now they get to suffer all the associated consequences (such as getting their five minutes of (in)fame in the local paper) of that crime. Simple as that.
I consider myself a fairly well-informed geek, and a regular reader of Slashdot.
And, as the links all appear Slashdotted, I have no fucking clue what the summary talks about. I recognize a lot of the words, the overall tone interested me enough to "look inside", but... What does "Unity Dash" mean, why does it mean giving info to governments, and what does Amazon have to do with turning off lenses and scopes? And what lenses and scopes?
And yes, I know about Ubuntu's recent whoring itself to Amazon for ad placement on the desktop, but that seems to have nothing to do with the rest of the summary.
Slashdot Mirror
How much does it pay,
How long until I qualify for a pension, and
Do I get to hack other countries for fun and profit without worrying about legal repercussions?
(Hey, the SCADA hacks on Iran sound like pure geek porn. Don't lie, you all wish you could have done that without fear of the MIBs showing up at your door to ship you off to Gitmo!)
Oh, and most important - I want a guarantee, in writing, notarized, and reviewed by my lawyer, that they won't ship me off to die in some foreign sandbox (no tech-pun intended) when they need sacrificial grunts for the next blood-for-oil charade.
I came in here to say exactly that. Get a .3mm "drafting" pencil, and you'll have the cleanest, most reliable lines you've ever seen. You can also get different hardness leads to suit your preference of pressure.
I hope this is just a brilliant troll.
Sarcasm, yes. Trolling, no.
If someone doesn't know enough to know that they want something other than MSIE, then in most cases, they don't. Making them pick a browser on first use amount to a complete crap-shoot. Sure, they might pick FF or Chrome, and get lucky (though personally, I have more philosophical objections to Chrome - which don't apply to Chromium - than to MSIE). Or they might pick Safari, now deprecated for Windows, and end up in a far worse situation than just defaulting to MSIE.
We're calculating lost downloads, now? And I thought lost sales due to piracy was a stupid metric...
If only - If only - People had another way to get a browser than to pick from a menu when they first use Windows! Some sort of, I dunno, website or something, where they could choose to go to get whatever browser they prefer.
Alas, we do not live in a perfect world.
if you have to be sneaky to get their info, I don't think much of your morality. IMO that's really assholish behavior and I wish you people would stop it.
FWIW, I agree with you. But as I said in my other response, this doesn't stop anyone from collecting anything. It just requires posting a privacy policy. And if you've read any privacy policies lately, you'll know that they virtually all say "we do what we want, deal with it or piss off".
I support real consumer protection laws. I don't support feelgood nuisances that punish everyone.
You don't live there, why would they give a shit about you? why would you give a shit about them?
Because:
1) TFA says nothing about the AG threatening only companies located in CA, and
2) California has a long history of strong-arming their regulatory environment onto the rest of the US simply by virtue of the size of their economy.
We don't need another Andrew Cuomo wannabe destroying a major part of the online world in a pathetic attempt to make a name for themselves while forcing their morals on the rest of the world. Thanks for the nannyism, but I've outgrown the diapers. I'll decide whether or not to do business with someone online, and while a privacy policy may factor into that, I think we can all figure out the meaning of not having one at all.
Yes, let stop consumer protection, what could go wrong?
Posting a privacy policy does not equate to "consumer protection".
Every year, all my banks and credit cards and other financial institutions send me a copy of their "privacy" policy. It unwaveringly boils down to "we share this, and you can't do a goddamned thing about it, so neener-neener".
Dear California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris:
Go pound sand.
Sincerely,
Someone who doesn't live in California.
Yeah, they'd hire a replacement, life would go on.
Yup, they would. Based on the last time we looked, it would take about a year, and they'd end up with yet another "bad attitude". I have to wonder, though, which counts as more dysfunctional - Modern corporate "disposable human" culture, or somewhat arrogant no-respect-for-authority geek culture? Because y'know, I'd trust my geek coworkers to help me get out of a burning building; the former would make more from the insurance payoffs with me dead.
But yes, the world goes on in my absence. Way to miss my bigger point in favor of tossing me a personal "fuck you". I answered the question accurately, whether you like that answer or not. People put up with "attitude" when they have no choice, simple as that.
BTW, you left out the typical AC "I fired a hundred of you assholes last year alone and ended up getting a very respectful and skilled ex marine", Mr. Fortune-500 CEO.
Why should they be exempt? Geeks aren't special.
Because you need me, not the other way around. And so does everyone else.
Follow my rules or find a job elsewhere. I'm not going to put up with bullshit.
Okay, see ya - Because your competition will.
And FWIW, this doesn't only apply to geeks. You could say the same for pharmacists, for nuke-certified welders, for a host of other positions with a high barrier to entry (whether highly skilled or merely artificial - Do you complain about the crudeness of your crude plumber, when the local guild has made it a miracle you got one to come out at 2am and you thank Zeus for the opportunity to pay him quadruple overtime for the privilege?).
If you want the best of a small group, you put up with the quirks common to that group, or you go without. If you go without a plumber, your house fills with shit. If you go without a good network security guy, you might not have things leak in, but you can bet they get out...
It's not about any of those things. It's about protection from foreign states. Made at a time when there wasn't a sufficient full time army.
Uh, no. You fail history.
We have a second amendment for the explicit purpose overthrowing an oppressive federal government.
Read your Federalist Papers:
"The only refuge left for those who prophesy the downfall of the State governments is the visionary supposition that the federal government may previously accumulate a military force for the projects of ambition. [...] To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. [...] But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the national force, and of officers appointed out of the militia by these governments and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned in spite of the legions which surround it." (#46, James Madison)
You can make a reasonable argument for the second amendment referring to the National Guard (though that organization has become nothing more than one more branch of the Federal military, making such an argument moot); But they originally existed very clearly for the purpose of protecting the states from the federal government.
instead of sitting fat and happy in front of their sports programs.
...Or reading/posting to Slashdot about it. ;)
Where does this nerd arrogance come from?
The real problem comes from the fact that most people count as complete idiots. Those with a love of learning new things generally do not count as complete idiots (though make no mistake, you can certainly find exceptions to that).
You want to know why I sometimes come off as arrogant? Because with any low-skilled task, I can quite likely do your job better than you do. With more highly skilled work, I may never attain the mastery of someone doing it forty hours a week for thirty years, but I can (and do, as part of my nine-to-five) shadow you for a week and find ways to automate half your department out of a job.
That said, acting like you recognize any of the above will have negative consequences on your social life. Even if you lack "true" humility, learn to fake it, for your own sake. Learn to bite your tongue when you watch someone struggle through the simplest of tasks, and resist the urge to rip the mouse from their graceless hands so you can finish the task for them. Don't correct people's atrocious grammar (cue someone finding a poorly conjugated verb in this post). Don't explain to them that "literally" doesn't mean "figuratively", and that "irregardless" doesn't mean anything (no, really, it doesn't. Yes, you can find it in some dictionaries. You still sound ignorant trying to use it). Don't point out that they never have any money because of their $8 soy lattes, or that soy lattes count as merely one symptom among many.
And don't suggest playing the four of diamonds on the five of clubs while taking the train into work, either.
Have you *looked* at facebook? Huge numbers of people proudly post every real, factual detail of their real lives to it.
Yep, I have, actually - My goldfish has his own page, which I help him maintain (fins suck for typing, dontchaknow).
He has tons of friends, too, the vast majority of whom lack legs (and of those with legs, the majority of those have four of them).
And out of all the vast biographical data about him available for Facebook (or the government) to mine, you'll find one thing conspicuously missing - Anything that would give you the slightest bit of useful information about his owner (beyond questioning the sanity of someone making a FB page for a pet fish, but you can damn hundreds or even thousands of other psychos on that count).
That said... I do have to agree with you, overall. I suppose far, far too many people do put semi-legit info on Facebook... Even among those who initially lie to preserve their basic privacy, many then proceed to ruin their efforts by loading in enough additional information to give a pretty good picture of reality.
Dear faux-outraged MPs...
Don't worry. Everyone already does this. Your precious little databases of everything, everywhere, already contain 100% pure unadulterated shit (actually only 95% shit, but since you can't easily tell which morons gave real info, you can't trust any of it). So really, you haven't lost anything.
Boo-hoo. Back to social control the old fashioned way - Poisoning kids' minds via the school system, and having the boys in blue damage the minds of those that escape with some shreds of individuality intact.
bullshit...if this were true, you'd be using them instead.
What a stupid assertion. Just like with any other tool, each has its own purposes at which it performs best.
Windows (XP through 7 excluding Vista) "just works", and it works damned well as a solid, easy-to-use desktop environment. Linux kicks ass for boxes you want to fire up and forget about for months at a time (home servers of various flavors). OS-X... um... Looks nice, I guess.
You can use more than one of these, even all of them, on a regular basis, without needing to forsake the others lest the True Believers(tm) cast you into the pit.
Now, Windows 8... Hey, perhaps it rocks the tablet world and will totally bury both Android and iOS. Perhaps not. For the desktop environment, however, thanks, but I don't have any need or desire to use a "minimalist" interface on my 3x 1920x1200 displays. A three year old can use it? GREAT! And I mean that... But I have a few more responsibilities, and a bit more capacity to deal with a sophisticated UI, than a three year old.
Should a developer need to know the ins and outs of the Data Center? Should they know Unix/Linux/Windows/App Servers and everything else that is running?
If you want that code to run in a massively-parallel hot-swappable environment, then you bet your ass you want your devs to understand everything running in that environment.
If, however, you want a standalone app to run on a few desktops, then no, your dev doesn't need to understand data center architecture; but in that environment, neither does your admin / ops guy.
Realistically, I give this FP a 9/10 for managing to troll a group of people who largely overlap. Most programmers can do 95% of sysadmin work; and most sysadmins can code reasonably well. People go into one or the other not for their capacity to do the other job, but either as a preference or even blind luck.
Personally, I would rather deal with pure code than dust, but I've damned well pulled cable while crawling through 70 years of dust inside a ceiling at 120F. On the flip side, I know guys who just love the shininess and the contented hum of a new rack, and consider scripting one of the "dirty but necessary" aspects of their job.
But can we all just settle our differences, come together in peace, and agree that the rest of the world sucks and needs to learn to both how to 1) use a vacuum cleaner, 2) plug in their own damned monitors (and perhaps the occasional printer), and 3) write simple Excel macros?
Not getting their details on the scene changes it from "their problem" to "your problem".
;)
It "impacts your rates" if someone magically crashes into your car inside your locked garage while you lounge on the beach in Tahiti 2000 miles away.
As for an accident with you involved... You need their license plate number, and their name helps but doesn't strictly matter. Your own insurance company will do the rest, for the simple reason that they would much, much rather make the other guy pay than pay out themselves.
Who cares? Cell phones make this trivial for end-users to manage.
If they block their info, I block their call - 99% done-in-one.
For the rest, my phone only lets me know I have a call for numbers in my contacts list. If someone else legitimate wants to get in touch with me, they can leave a message.
Yes, Virginia, we've reached the point of whitelisting all of our means of contact. If I don't know you, I don't talk to you, period... Except, because my cell carrier makes a shitton for text messages (I don't pay, but someone does), I have no way whatsoever to block text messages. I can default the "ring" to totally silent, and override it on my contacts, but I can't outright block the damned things.
Dear UN:
Go fuck yourself until you come up with your own plan. Difficulty - No "strongly worded letter"s.
They also always want everyone else to undergo population declines but never have the guts to say who and how.
;)
I will not reproduce.
By choice.
You're welcome.
Now kindly do your part and go die in a 90% fatal global pandemic.
Hmm, perhaps... On re-reading I can indeed find a more charitable interpretation than what I first read.
My apologies.
It is, in fact, an example of causation and not correlation that spending more money than you need means you have less money than you could've
Say what???
Spending more doesn't just "correlate" with having less, it directly, mathematically, physically, tangibly causes it. If you have ten apples, and only need to eat five a day but decide to eat six today - Tomorrow you go to bed hungry.
I don't know what kind of socialist bullshit they feed you kids today, but wasting less means having more, period. Yes, other things might also cause you to have less in the long run, but let's start by not spending our food stamps on the low-hanging organically grown farmer's market fruit.
Is this standard procedure for EVERY criminal case? Are the names of other defendants published for every trial to come out of that court? I know most cases are public record that anyone can access if they care.
Yes. And not just those charged, but pretty much every adult appearing in the police blotter for any reason that day. Pretty common practice at small-town papers across the country.
I absolutely think we need to pull our heads out of our asses when it comes to puritanical prohibitions on consensual sex (even for pay), but we don't live in that world. These guys committed a crime and got caught, and now they get to suffer all the associated consequences (such as getting their five minutes of (in)fame in the local paper) of that crime. Simple as that.
I consider myself a fairly well-informed geek, and a regular reader of Slashdot.
And, as the links all appear Slashdotted, I have no fucking clue what the summary talks about. I recognize a lot of the words, the overall tone interested me enough to "look inside", but... What does "Unity Dash" mean, why does it mean giving info to governments, and what does Amazon have to do with turning off lenses and scopes? And what lenses and scopes?
And yes, I know about Ubuntu's recent whoring itself to Amazon for ad placement on the desktop, but that seems to have nothing to do with the rest of the summary.
Anyone have a better explanation?
Hard to lie about your zip code when they can Geolocate you. Need to use a proxy to get around that.
I show up as coming from somewhere in Georgia (US state, not a former Soviet satellite). Presumably, my ISP joins the rest of the outside world there.
Except... That missed my actual location by about 1500 miles.
So, not really all that tough - If you trust IP-based geolocation to tell you where I live, you wouldn't believe me if I really told you.