I run firewalls and I have virus scanners, but if you haven't been infected with a virus before then you haven't been on the internet long enough.
I've been on the Internet for about 25 years. No computer under my administration has ever been infected by malware of any sort.
Why do I get punished for what other people do?
You aren't being punished. The Net is being protected.
Should car manufacturers be able to remotely turn off your car when your car starts to leak oil or freon?
Bad analogy. The manufacturer is not shutting off your car. The toll-road operator is telling you to leave and not come back until you fix your oil leak.
Advertisiers, who are the only ones Google cares about, can tolerate quite a bit of inaccuracy in their targeting. All that they are going to do with "fingerprinting" is cluster searches together as probably having come from the same person. Being wrong 10% of the time is no great loss to them. To me "targeted" ads are of no consequence at all as I see no ads anyway
> I imagine you're still tracked by your IP address...
Dynamic. They might be able to tie clusters of my searches together that way. So what?
>...by cookies...
No cookies, no scripts.
>...and/or any other methods I don't know about.
Which would be just as likely to work through this thing. Browser fingerprinting would be one such. It would let them tie all of my searches together. So what?
I don't actually much care about their "data mining". I just don't want to see their asinine ads. And I don't. They don't get much data either, but that's really a side-effect.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been on the Internet for about 25 years. No computer under my administration has ever been infected by malware of any sort.
You aren't being punished. The Net is being protected.
Bad analogy. The manufacturer is not shutting off your car. The toll-road operator is telling you to leave and not come back until you fix your oil leak.
> The customer is probably not the villian here...
No, but he's the fool, cheapskate, and/or lazy sod. He could have hired someone to help him.
That's called "deep packet inspection". Expect to be able to reach only Disney, ESPN, and Fox. No P2P, of course. Maybe Blizzard, if they pay enough.
Sue the infested site where you clicked to see the cute puppy and got infected. Don't make the rest of us suffer for your incompetence.
So much for "network neutrality".
It's easy to avoid getting infected.
That door has always been wide open.
Yes.
> Other search engines are available.
Bing?
Google is an advertising agency. I see no ads.
> I don't believe anything could go wrong at all.
Advertisiers, who are the only ones Google cares about, can tolerate quite a bit of inaccuracy in their targeting. All that they are going to do with "fingerprinting" is cluster searches together as probably having come from the same person. Being wrong 10% of the time is no great loss to them. To me "targeted" ads are of no consequence at all as I see no ads anyway
"Bam" what?
That would be a silly waste of their resources.
> I imagine you're still tracked by your IP address...
Dynamic. They might be able to tie clusters of my searches together that way. So what?
> ...by cookies...
No cookies, no scripts.
> ...and/or any other methods I don't know about.
Which would be just as likely to work through this thing. Browser fingerprinting would be one such. It would let them tie all of my searches together. So what?
Google search and news work fine without one.
I don't actually much care about their "data mining". I just don't want to see their asinine ads. And I don't. They don't get much data either, but that's really a side-effect.
I've already got one of those. It's called Privoxy.
> I noticed that too, from reading the summary.
Yes, but it's a Slashdot summary so there is no reason to believe it is true without verifying it.
Which would consist of writing "This number stands for the entire Library of Congress" on the corner of your blotter.
Yes, but they only have two of them.
> ...we pledge allegiance to a foreign head of state.
She's your Queen. She just happens to also be queen of a number of other nations.
Looks like a good reason to stay away from VMWare.
What the hell is that? And how do you download any sort of media?
It does, if you are a fly. Of course different kinds of flies like different kinds of shit, and so we have political parties.
> Nobody wants to listen to reason...
Don't worry. There will be no actual reason involved. This will just be another source of "truthiness".
It isn't serious.
I've been observing politicians for half a century. I was even actively involved in politics for a decade or so.