You would be surprised about how many people aren't able to properly understand almost any slightly complex idea. Most of them have an internet connection, are quite unaware about their poor understanding skills and, in some cases, "defend" their ridiculous misinterpretations in very aggressive, coward and even obsessive ways.
it does have a couple downsides, albeit nitpicky ones. For example, it eliminates anchor tags that will bring a user to a specific part within a longer article, so visiting a link that has been shared in Chrome will land you at the top of the page.
Why anchor tags aren't supported? Answer: no reason (AKA incompetence). Extracting that information is trivial and also storing it; sample approaches: including it within the main id (e.g., id=12345 for whatever.com/subwhatever and id=12346 for whatever.com/subwhatever#firstarchor), creating a secondary id (e.g., id=12345&id2=1 and id=12345&id2=2 for the previous example) or even keeping the anchor tags in the new URLs because they aren't too messy.
If you have enough resources to store/index as many pages from as many domains as required, you shouldn't find any problem to also deal with whatever number of anchor tags. Or, in other words, the first rule of any let's-slightly-improve-something-that-is-fine-anyway action should be making sure that it can still do what the previous version was able to do.
Come here, all you need is a nice backrub and a warm hug...
I have had real-world/online interactions with a big number of people from different backgrounds and nobody has ever said to me something on these lines before! Thanks (LOL). I am not even sure about how to react. What about “if you are a hot woman, I would meet you in your home within the next hour, otherwise are you crazy?"? LOL.
I think that anyone saying something like this in a forum used by contributors of an open-source piece of software is likely to be crazy enough to not care about what a list of prohibitions tells. Also I don't think that most of the users in forums of this kind would consider a post like that acceptable, not even take it seriously. Your post looks more like the typical what-if scenario unreasonably feared by some people more concerned about blindly expecting certain prejudices to be generally applicable than about properly understanding on a casuistic basis.
It is short for 'robot'. It is used for physical robots too
Sure. I meant that, even within this specific context of software/internet, that expression is commonly used for much more than just the referred malware-like subtype.
detecting bots, automated social media accounts governed by software but disguising as human users
The expression "bot" is used to describe a wide variety of software applications, not just those emulating people in social media. In fact, the most common bots are the ones used by a big number of sites to retrieve information from internet for different purposes (e.g., search engines retrieving what they are showing to their users); they are also called crawlers or spiders. Here you can find a detailed list of active ones (I am the proud father of one of them:)).
So, a better version of the summary would have been:
detecting the social media bots disguised as human users
Just in case it wasn't completely clear, my previous message was a joke where I intentionally misunderstod the context of "spaces" in the description and brought the spaces vs. tabs difference (about which I personally don't care, exactly the same than about any other irrelevant issue where people might have their own preferences without affecting me at all) to a ridiculously extreme point. Also my intention was just writing a joke without even trying to criticise what is described in this article, at least, not directly.
If you ask my opinion, this list of don'ts does seem too exhaustive, unnecessary and even a bit ridiculous. Honestly, I cannot see myself ever getting involved in the elaboration of a set of rules on these lines or even supporting those doing so. I think that detailed regulations make only sense when strictly required like making sure that criminals/corporations behave as they should. I also think that people preferring to rely on abstract prohibitions rather than on properly understanding others are a big problem (for them and for everyone else) and always try to avoid dealing with them. On the other hand, I understand that codes of conduct are somehow common (and even required?) in certain scenarios and, as such, might see the point of all this. I know about many things which I don't understand, like or support but which apply to people different than me and which cannot rightfully criticise.
Long story short: I don't think that I am entitled to say what is best for a community of which I am not part. In principle and from my external position, I consider the format (ridiculously long list of prohibitions -> joke material) and the underlying intention (strict regulations required within a community of like-minded people defining how personal interactions should occur -> community of not-knowing-how-to-behave/-understand/-interact-with-others or prohibition-/arbitrariness-prone individuals) very unappealing to me, but perhaps required.
According to the linked article, the main reasons for these reproducibility problems are:
The code might be a work in progress, owned by a company, or held tightly by a researcher eager to stay ahead of the competition.
On top of that, they include another quite "curious" possibility (!!):
Or it might be that the code is simply lost, on a crashed disk or stolen laptop
Nothing of this sounds like scientific/university research in its traditional form of sharing knowledge (+ actually having relevant knowledge, what doesn't seem the case with people saying/believing "the code is simply lost"). So, I hope that most of these cases refer to the research performed by (private) companies, which might also behave according to the traditional knowledge sharing ideas anyway.
Universities and research institutions shouldn't allow the aforementioned scenarios to happen at all. Companies providing any kind of funding should accept the academic rules and understand that the given research can't be restricted. Researchers interested in focusing more on the commercial side of things should work for a company or start their own one.
Another very relevant issue is how can anything lacking reproducibility and, as such, impossible to be validated be considered scientific research at all? Isn't publication an essential requirement (what needs being peer-reviewed, for what someone had to understand that work, what cannot happen unless it is reproducible)? The alternative would be blind faith, what doesn't sound too scientific-ish. How can this happen at all? Because the ones who can avoid it don't do what they should! And I think that I know the root problem: being too understanding, adaptable, trusting in most of people having common sense/knowing what they do. The solution? Being 100% intolerant with stupidity, dishonesty or any other form of arbitrary imposition. Clear limits (= if you want my research, you would accept these rules; in any other case, your money is worthless here) and no exceptions. It is much easier than what it seems: (unfair, dishonest, greedy) money/attitudes will always be worlds behind honesty/knowledge/principles.
You can never be completely sure and that's why my original post was also meant to avoid paranoids to get relaxed. LOL. Seriously and as said before, I do trust Canonical and the Linux world in general . But you can never be sure when dealing with for-profit, big enough companies: today's behaviour might change tomorrow. The fact that Linux is, by far, the most widely used OS for web-based purposes (+ in the mobile world indirectly via Android and who knows what might happen in the future of desktop...) makes it a good target for potentially shady intentions. The best thing is to always be attentive and to let them know about good/bad ideas. Or what are you suggesting? To accept whatever change and to blindly trust the good intentions of companies (+ sporadic monitoring of a huge and complex code base)? No, thanks. One thing is liking/trusting them by default, a different story is allowing them to forget who is the boss here (= we, their customers).
you have a far greater opinion of yourself than is justified by your wit or talents.
OK. Thanks for letting me know. Not sure about what this has to do with my previous post (because I wrote in brackets "with me"? My opinion was only based on my interactions with that user, perhaps s/he doesn't behave like this with everyone but just with me for whatever reason. I try to avoid overall-valid assessments as much as I can, mainly when my personal opinion is their only justification) or what source you have used to get an idea about my wit/talents and misperception of them.
You might actually know a lot in general and about me. You might have carefully analysed and understood my knowledge and behaviour, not just in Slashdot but also in other places. You might be the kind of person with usually worthy opinions and good intentions. The kind of person who doesn't care about spending as much time as required to gain enough insights into something. You might see errors as acceptable outcomes which shouldn't be feared, but accepted and fixed ASAP. In principle, it seems that this is precisely the kind of personality that your statement is implying: you know, understand and wisely conclude; you don't need to explain anything else, because everyone knows you and your wisdom. On the other hand, perhaps you are a coward (posting as AC) idiot repeating a sentence said by many before. A person with low self-esteem, always trying to play safe and naively expecting his/her ridiculous fears/complexes to be applicable to everyone else. You might be the type of person misinterpreting sensible critics, honesty or even slightly different behaviours as personal attacks and probably saying things like "you think that you are better than me" to random people for random reasons. You might probably have an invasive and even violent behaviour towards others. You might even expect everything/everyone to meet whatever expectations your limited perception considers applicable under the given conditions and get angry/unhappy with even the slightest variation. What kind of person are you? The worthy or the pathetic version? A true mystery.... LOL. I am kidding. No, no mystery at all. It is crystal clear, at least, for those belonging to the first group like me:)
An even easier way to opt out is to check the opt-out checkbox
Thanks for the help. LOL. Logically, I meant that, in case of distrusting Canonical, I would move to a different distro rather than modifying the code as suggested by the parent poster.
Firstly, I saw your nick and recalled previous not-precisely-too-sensible interactions with you. Then, I read your first paragraph and said to me "well... a bit aggressive/ignorant, but I guess that with a little effort that person could hopefully understand something". But then I read your second paragraph and put my whole focus on my aforementioned preliminary impression about you: what is your exact problem (with me)? Well... it doesn't matter. I have already spent all my today's time trying to help poor-understanding individuals to get even half idea right. So, I will plainly move to the I-will-not-reply-you mode (now and probably ever). BTW, nice heading "the" in your nick. LOL.
Sure. You have slightly better information which might be eventually useful on exchange of what? Entering in the hugely unpopular collecting-user-info group? I don't think that it is worthy, but completely up to them. As said, I will continue using Ubuntu for the time being, disable this option when installing the new version and hope this to just be an irrelevant anecdote.
Still easier: I can stop using Canonical products and move to a different distro.
I do hope you understand the difference.
I never said otherwise. All what I said was that I expect them to not start going in certain direction. I will be even installing this new version. For the time being, everything is fine; although I don't like this change and what it might represent too much.
users click something to find out the technical reasons why
Excellent example of user-concerned (Linux?) attitude. Giving detailed and sensible explanations would help me to even overlook issues like this one. Be open, honest, clear, convince me that I can trust you and you might accomplish something. But what is the matter with all this hypocrite, dishonest, empty speeches? Trying to cover the let's-say-something requirement and then do whatever they want? You, software company changing whatever in a product I use, shouldn't think that you have my blind trust. You have to (re-)earn it every single time and if you fail to do so I would replace you with other option.
OK. Thanks for the info. I don't use Steam (or have any relationship with that company or play modern computer games or develop games or anything on these lines) and I am not even sure about what would be my position in that specific scenario (would I care about Steam collecting that information or not?). In any case, I guess that the difference between an OS and an application running on it is quite clear.
This speaks volumes about you, and very little about Canonical. I don't even use Ubuntu and my first thought was "Hey, I'll bet they could use this to prioritize patches and focus development".
Better: speaks volumes about what I think of big software companies. Or even better: speaks volumes of the kind of behaviours which are unfortunately very common in the software industry. Note that I have never spammed anyone or supported any kind of random advertisement on these lines. I am actually a quite advertisement-incompatible person, always caring about doing things properly rather than about maximising the impact of the way in which I transmit what I do.
The first step of being responsive to your users is to know what they need, and one way to know what they need is to know what they have/use
As written in a previous post, the more a company knows about you, the more likely is that they can deliver what you want. I think that this is clear for most of people. The question is if that potential benefit compensates the associated risk/power on you. At least for me and when dealing with an OS, the answer is NO.
Of course, the IP address isn't collected. Well, actively collected... it just comes along for the ride with the HTTPS origin packet.
As far as they are expressly saying that they will not do it, I personally trust them because otherwise it would be a huge, impossible-to-defend-against lie. You can have access to lots of information, but simply not store it. When automatically dealing with huge amounts of data, not storing something is pretty much identical to never having seen it in the first place.
Knowing what their users want to do with their system and putting their effort behind making this a priority is sensible.
There is always a justification or, better, an excuse to defend this or any other action. Microsoft wasn't probably thinking about world domination or random user invasion when deciding to implement telemetry in Windows 10. This isn't even a matter of doubting about the honest intentions of the companies performing these actions. This is simply beyond what some people are willing to tolerate in their trade-off with for-profit companies. The more a company knows about you, the more likely is that they can build a product you like. Also the more (ways to gather) information from you, the higher their power on you and the risk that things you don't want could happen.
Its not like you couldn't have seen this coming, Canonical pioneered sending your search results to Amazon.
Canonical is clearly a mass-market oriented company, at least for the Linux world. I don't think that this is necessarily bad as long as they don't forget their defining essence. They can include additional features which might be appealing to whatever new subset of users and which I might ignore. But they should better make sure that I can continue relying on Linux and on all what it is supposed to represent.
There is some value in knowing that only 0.1% of your customers use some obscure hardware or software -- if your goal is to discontinue support for those items.
And what about asking directly? Via opinion polls or publishing upcoming plans and seeing the reaction of the community or simply relying on existing statistics (from the vendors or from the quite a few companies which care about these things). There are usually lots of alternatives to compensate whatever user data collection is expected to accomplish; or, at least, to minimise the bad advertisement that such actions provoke. The most ironic part is that a big proportion of these massive data sets are probably just sitting idle somewhere hoping to be eventually useful for just-in-case scenarios.
"to improve the daily experiences of the Ubuntu users" they will be collecting "flavour and version of Ubuntu, network connectivity or not, CPU family, RAM, disk(s) size, screen(s) resolution, GPU vendor and model, OEM manufacturer, location (based on the location selection made during install), no IP information, time taken for Installation, auto-login enabled or not, disk layout selected, third party software selected or not, download updates during install or not, livePatch enabled or not"?! How could that goal be accomplished with so poor means? I can only think of one type of actions: spamming, targetted advertisement or any other form of custom nagging. Without forgetting about the potential security implications of an eventual data breach! And you let it enabled by default (the disabled alternative would have looked much more user-concerned)! And within the Linux community, which is precisely well known for not being too understanding with this kind of things?! Why? Potentially losing so much to get almost nothing?! Workbook example of a bad decision.
Note that I am currently using Ubuntu and, in principle, will install this new LTS version. Curiously, I have recently moved my main machine from Windows to Linux precisely to escape from Windows 10 invasive, controlling, imposing, etc. actions. I will not stop using Linux but, if Canonical starts going in certain direction, I would certainly stop using Ubuntu and all their products.
Up to you. The whole downloading/installation process is quite easy. In fact, I found and started using it by pure accident; my original intention was trying Komodo (fee-based IDE), but couldn't refrain myself from clicking on the Komodo Edit download button including a shiny "free" label:)
I have recently moved my main machine to Linux (long-time Windows user until that moment, only relying on Linux for secondary computers) and one of the few difficulties has been finding a proper replacement for Notepad++. Finally, I found a quite good alternative: Komodo Edit. I don't like too much the most common/famous Linux text editors.
Slashdot Mirror
obviously he's being sarcastic.
You would be surprised about how many people aren't able to properly understand almost any slightly complex idea. Most of them have an internet connection, are quite unaware about their poor understanding skills and, in some cases, "defend" their ridiculous misinterpretations in very aggressive, coward and even obsessive ways.
it does have a couple downsides, albeit nitpicky ones. For example, it eliminates anchor tags that will bring a user to a specific part within a longer article, so visiting a link that has been shared in Chrome will land you at the top of the page.
Why anchor tags aren't supported? Answer: no reason (AKA incompetence). Extracting that information is trivial and also storing it; sample approaches: including it within the main id (e.g., id=12345 for whatever.com/subwhatever and id=12346 for whatever.com/subwhatever#firstarchor), creating a secondary id (e.g., id=12345&id2=1 and id=12345&id2=2 for the previous example) or even keeping the anchor tags in the new URLs because they aren't too messy.
If you have enough resources to store/index as many pages from as many domains as required, you shouldn't find any problem to also deal with whatever number of anchor tags. Or, in other words, the first rule of any let's-slightly-improve-something-that-is-fine-anyway action should be making sure that it can still do what the previous version was able to do.
Come here, all you need is a nice backrub and a warm hug...
I have had real-world/online interactions with a big number of people from different backgrounds and nobody has ever said to me something on these lines before! Thanks (LOL). I am not even sure about how to react. What about “if you are a hot woman, I would meet you in your home within the next hour, otherwise are you crazy?"? LOL.
I think that anyone saying something like this in a forum used by contributors of an open-source piece of software is likely to be crazy enough to not care about what a list of prohibitions tells. Also I don't think that most of the users in forums of this kind would consider a post like that acceptable, not even take it seriously. Your post looks more like the typical what-if scenario unreasonably feared by some people more concerned about blindly expecting certain prejudices to be generally applicable than about properly understanding on a casuistic basis.
It is short for 'robot'. It is used for physical robots too
Sure. I meant that, even within this specific context of software/internet, that expression is commonly used for much more than just the referred malware-like subtype.
detecting bots, automated social media accounts governed by software but disguising as human users
The expression "bot" is used to describe a wide variety of software applications, not just those emulating people in social media. In fact, the most common bots are the ones used by a big number of sites to retrieve information from internet for different purposes (e.g., search engines retrieving what they are showing to their users); they are also called crawlers or spiders. Here you can find a detailed list of active ones (I am the proud father of one of them :)).
So, a better version of the summary would have been:
detecting the social media bots disguised as human users
Just in case it wasn't completely clear, my previous message was a joke where I intentionally misunderstod the context of "spaces" in the description and brought the spaces vs. tabs difference (about which I personally don't care, exactly the same than about any other irrelevant issue where people might have their own preferences without affecting me at all) to a ridiculously extreme point. Also my intention was just writing a joke without even trying to criticise what is described in this article, at least, not directly.
If you ask my opinion, this list of don'ts does seem too exhaustive, unnecessary and even a bit ridiculous. Honestly, I cannot see myself ever getting involved in the elaboration of a set of rules on these lines or even supporting those doing so. I think that detailed regulations make only sense when strictly required like making sure that criminals/corporations behave as they should. I also think that people preferring to rely on abstract prohibitions rather than on properly understanding others are a big problem (for them and for everyone else) and always try to avoid dealing with them. On the other hand, I understand that codes of conduct are somehow common (and even required?) in certain scenarios and, as such, might see the point of all this. I know about many things which I don't understand, like or support but which apply to people different than me and which cannot rightfully criticise.
Long story short: I don't think that I am entitled to say what is best for a community of which I am not part. In principle and from my external position, I consider the format (ridiculously long list of prohibitions -> joke material) and the underlying intention (strict regulations required within a community of like-minded people defining how personal interactions should occur -> community of not-knowing-how-to-behave/-understand/-interact-with-others or prohibition-/arbitrariness-prone individuals) very unappealing to me, but perhaps required.
This code of conduct applies to all spaces
And what about tabs, f*cking pieces of steaming sh*t? How can you dare to ignore my blank space and indentation identity? What are you, animals? LOL.
The code might be a work in progress, owned by a company, or held tightly by a researcher eager to stay ahead of the competition.
On top of that, they include another quite "curious" possibility (!!):
Or it might be that the code is simply lost, on a crashed disk or stolen laptop
Nothing of this sounds like scientific/university research in its traditional form of sharing knowledge (+ actually having relevant knowledge, what doesn't seem the case with people saying/believing "the code is simply lost"). So, I hope that most of these cases refer to the research performed by (private) companies, which might also behave according to the traditional knowledge sharing ideas anyway.
Universities and research institutions shouldn't allow the aforementioned scenarios to happen at all. Companies providing any kind of funding should accept the academic rules and understand that the given research can't be restricted. Researchers interested in focusing more on the commercial side of things should work for a company or start their own one.
Another very relevant issue is how can anything lacking reproducibility and, as such, impossible to be validated be considered scientific research at all? Isn't publication an essential requirement (what needs being peer-reviewed, for what someone had to understand that work, what cannot happen unless it is reproducible)? The alternative would be blind faith, what doesn't sound too scientific-ish. How can this happen at all? Because the ones who can avoid it don't do what they should! And I think that I know the root problem: being too understanding, adaptable, trusting in most of people having common sense/knowing what they do. The solution? Being 100% intolerant with stupidity, dishonesty or any other form of arbitrary imposition. Clear limits (= if you want my research, you would accept these rules; in any other case, your money is worthless here) and no exceptions. It is much easier than what it seems: (unfair, dishonest, greedy) money/attitudes will always be worlds behind honesty/knowledge/principles.
gets paranoid enough to do just that
You can never be completely sure and that's why my original post was also meant to avoid paranoids to get relaxed. LOL. Seriously and as said before, I do trust Canonical and the Linux world in general . But you can never be sure when dealing with for-profit, big enough companies: today's behaviour might change tomorrow. The fact that Linux is, by far, the most widely used OS for web-based purposes (+ in the mobile world indirectly via Android and who knows what might happen in the future of desktop...) makes it a good target for potentially shady intentions. The best thing is to always be attentive and to let them know about good/bad ideas. Or what are you suggesting? To accept whatever change and to blindly trust the good intentions of companies (+ sporadic monitoring of a huge and complex code base)? No, thanks. One thing is liking/trusting them by default, a different story is allowing them to forget who is the boss here (= we, their customers).
you have a far greater opinion of yourself than is justified by your wit or talents.
OK. Thanks for letting me know. Not sure about what this has to do with my previous post (because I wrote in brackets "with me"? My opinion was only based on my interactions with that user, perhaps s/he doesn't behave like this with everyone but just with me for whatever reason. I try to avoid overall-valid assessments as much as I can, mainly when my personal opinion is their only justification) or what source you have used to get an idea about my wit/talents and misperception of them.
:)
You might actually know a lot in general and about me. You might have carefully analysed and understood my knowledge and behaviour, not just in Slashdot but also in other places. You might be the kind of person with usually worthy opinions and good intentions. The kind of person who doesn't care about spending as much time as required to gain enough insights into something. You might see errors as acceptable outcomes which shouldn't be feared, but accepted and fixed ASAP. In principle, it seems that this is precisely the kind of personality that your statement is implying: you know, understand and wisely conclude; you don't need to explain anything else, because everyone knows you and your wisdom. On the other hand, perhaps you are a coward (posting as AC) idiot repeating a sentence said by many before. A person with low self-esteem, always trying to play safe and naively expecting his/her ridiculous fears/complexes to be applicable to everyone else. You might be the type of person misinterpreting sensible critics, honesty or even slightly different behaviours as personal attacks and probably saying things like "you think that you are better than me" to random people for random reasons. You might probably have an invasive and even violent behaviour towards others. You might even expect everything/everyone to meet whatever expectations your limited perception considers applicable under the given conditions and get angry/unhappy with even the slightest variation. What kind of person are you? The worthy or the pathetic version? A true mystery.... LOL. I am kidding. No, no mystery at all. It is crystal clear, at least, for those belonging to the first group like me
An even easier way to opt out is to check the opt-out checkbox
Thanks for the help. LOL. Logically, I meant that, in case of distrusting Canonical, I would move to a different distro rather than modifying the code as suggested by the parent poster.
Firstly, I saw your nick and recalled previous not-precisely-too-sensible interactions with you. Then, I read your first paragraph and said to me "well... a bit aggressive/ignorant, but I guess that with a little effort that person could hopefully understand something". But then I read your second paragraph and put my whole focus on my aforementioned preliminary impression about you: what is your exact problem (with me)? Well... it doesn't matter. I have already spent all my today's time trying to help poor-understanding individuals to get even half idea right. So, I will plainly move to the I-will-not-reply-you mode (now and probably ever). BTW, nice heading "the" in your nick. LOL.
Sure. You have slightly better information which might be eventually useful on exchange of what? Entering in the hugely unpopular collecting-user-info group? I don't think that it is worthy, but completely up to them. As said, I will continue using Ubuntu for the time being, disable this option when installing the new version and hope this to just be an irrelevant anecdote.
if you so please by changing the underlying code
Still easier: I can stop using Canonical products and move to a different distro.
I do hope you understand the difference.
I never said otherwise. All what I said was that I expect them to not start going in certain direction. I will be even installing this new version. For the time being, everything is fine; although I don't like this change and what it might represent too much.
users click something to find out the technical reasons why
Excellent example of user-concerned (Linux?) attitude. Giving detailed and sensible explanations would help me to even overlook issues like this one. Be open, honest, clear, convince me that I can trust you and you might accomplish something. But what is the matter with all this hypocrite, dishonest, empty speeches? Trying to cover the let's-say-something requirement and then do whatever they want? You, software company changing whatever in a product I use, shouldn't think that you have my blind trust. You have to (re-)earn it every single time and if you fail to do so I would replace you with other option.
This is literally what Steam collects.
OK. Thanks for the info. I don't use Steam (or have any relationship with that company or play modern computer games or develop games or anything on these lines) and I am not even sure about what would be my position in that specific scenario (would I care about Steam collecting that information or not?). In any case, I guess that the difference between an OS and an application running on it is quite clear.
This speaks volumes about you, and very little about Canonical. I don't even use Ubuntu and my first thought was "Hey, I'll bet they could use this to prioritize patches and focus development".
Better: speaks volumes about what I think of big software companies. Or even better: speaks volumes of the kind of behaviours which are unfortunately very common in the software industry. Note that I have never spammed anyone or supported any kind of random advertisement on these lines. I am actually a quite advertisement-incompatible person, always caring about doing things properly rather than about maximising the impact of the way in which I transmit what I do.
The first step of being responsive to your users is to know what they need, and one way to know what they need is to know what they have/use
As written in a previous post, the more a company knows about you, the more likely is that they can deliver what you want. I think that this is clear for most of people. The question is if that potential benefit compensates the associated risk/power on you. At least for me and when dealing with an OS, the answer is NO.
Of course, the IP address isn't collected. Well, actively collected... it just comes along for the ride with the HTTPS origin packet.
As far as they are expressly saying that they will not do it, I personally trust them because otherwise it would be a huge, impossible-to-defend-against lie. You can have access to lots of information, but simply not store it. When automatically dealing with huge amounts of data, not storing something is pretty much identical to never having seen it in the first place.
Knowing what their users want to do with their system and putting their effort behind making this a priority is sensible.
There is always a justification or, better, an excuse to defend this or any other action. Microsoft wasn't probably thinking about world domination or random user invasion when deciding to implement telemetry in Windows 10. This isn't even a matter of doubting about the honest intentions of the companies performing these actions. This is simply beyond what some people are willing to tolerate in their trade-off with for-profit companies. The more a company knows about you, the more likely is that they can build a product you like. Also the more (ways to gather) information from you, the higher their power on you and the risk that things you don't want could happen.
Its not like you couldn't have seen this coming, Canonical pioneered sending your search results to Amazon.
Canonical is clearly a mass-market oriented company, at least for the Linux world. I don't think that this is necessarily bad as long as they don't forget their defining essence. They can include additional features which might be appealing to whatever new subset of users and which I might ignore. But they should better make sure that I can continue relying on Linux and on all what it is supposed to represent.
There is some value in knowing that only 0.1% of your customers use some obscure hardware or software -- if your goal is to discontinue support for those items.
And what about asking directly? Via opinion polls or publishing upcoming plans and seeing the reaction of the community or simply relying on existing statistics (from the vendors or from the quite a few companies which care about these things). There are usually lots of alternatives to compensate whatever user data collection is expected to accomplish; or, at least, to minimise the bad advertisement that such actions provoke. The most ironic part is that a big proportion of these massive data sets are probably just sitting idle somewhere hoping to be eventually useful for just-in-case scenarios.
"to improve the daily experiences of the Ubuntu users" they will be collecting "flavour and version of Ubuntu, network connectivity or not, CPU family, RAM, disk(s) size, screen(s) resolution, GPU vendor and model, OEM manufacturer, location (based on the location selection made during install), no IP information, time taken for Installation, auto-login enabled or not, disk layout selected, third party software selected or not, download updates during install or not, livePatch enabled or not"?! How could that goal be accomplished with so poor means? I can only think of one type of actions: spamming, targetted advertisement or any other form of custom nagging. Without forgetting about the potential security implications of an eventual data breach! And you let it enabled by default (the disabled alternative would have looked much more user-concerned)! And within the Linux community, which is precisely well known for not being too understanding with this kind of things?! Why? Potentially losing so much to get almost nothing?! Workbook example of a bad decision.
Note that I am currently using Ubuntu and, in principle, will install this new LTS version. Curiously, I have recently moved my main machine from Windows to Linux precisely to escape from Windows 10 invasive, controlling, imposing, etc. actions. I will not stop using Linux but, if Canonical starts going in certain direction, I would certainly stop using Ubuntu and all their products.
to download a file and read install instructions
Up to you. The whole downloading/installation process is quite easy. In fact, I found and started using it by pure accident; my original intention was trying Komodo (fee-based IDE), but couldn't refrain myself from clicking on the Komodo Edit download button including a shiny "free" label :)
checkout Geany.
I am quite happy with Komodo Edit, but will do some tests with Geany at some point anyway. Thanks for the tip.
I have recently moved my main machine to Linux (long-time Windows user until that moment, only relying on Linux for secondary computers) and one of the few difficulties has been finding a proper replacement for Notepad++. Finally, I found a quite good alternative: Komodo Edit. I don't like too much the most common/famous Linux text editors.