I think a lot of the people posting on here are likely be to professionals, or at least fairly technical people. Lets face it... that is the audience on this site.
Dell's corporate support is great. I don't think many people complained about that. When a company spends millions of dollars on hardware, dell gives them personal representatives, etc. Every time I've ever called our company representative, things have always been handled amazingly quickly, usually faster than they estimate.
Additionally, even if you aren't calling your corporate rep, if you are technically skilled and *know* what your problem is and how to fix it before you even call, and if you forcefully make this known when you DO call, then your tech support experience will also be much more streamlined than the average "joe". I suspect that a lot of people who read/. would fall into this bucket if they don't fall into the first bucket.
So yeah, a lot of people reading this site never see the "real" tech support nightmare which many people see.
The proposed deal didn't make sense before, and it makes even less sense now. If Microsoft takes just search from yahoo, then the rest of Yahoo will be irrelevant within a year. Yahoo would be stupid to give up search.
The only way this can end well is if Microsoft just backs away and pretends that none of this ever happened.
There is just no getting around the fact that Yahoo is itself struggling to survive against google, and Microsoft has already pretty much admitted they can't compete with Google in search... I mean, didn't anyone ever tell Ballmer that two wrongs don't make a right?
Perhaps if the ads weren't so obnoxious, and we didn't have to worry about malicious content, spyware, pop ups, and porn ads showing up while trying to browse otherwise tame sites at work, then we wouldn't NEED the ad blocking features.
I beg to differ. There are a few trivial ways to gain full control on any windows box which cannot be countered without crippling the OS. Certainly doesn't require anything more than the ability to use google.
I hate to break it to you but there are still trivial ways to gain full control of any machine secured using these methods. You can certainly protect the *data* but anyone with physical access to the machine can take over in a matter of minutes.
Trust me, it is literally *impossible* to secure any currently released version of microsoft windows if the user has console access. Period. It cannot be done. All it takes is about two minutes on the console with any windows box and they will be able to get full control (if they know a few tricks) no matter how locked down you think it is.
I always laugh when I go to a new client and they give me a new laptop where I don't get admin rights and its all configured so that only their admins are supposed to be able to install software, etc, etc. In my early days I used to just wipe the hard drive and install my own OS, but for the last few years I've learned that I don't need to waste my time with that.
Don't be ridiculous. They HAVE to keep this data. It is essential to have this type of data in order to be able to provide various statistical analysis services and summaries to sell advertising. Without it, they lose. Period. Every other company keeps the same type of data, so AOL can't afford to not keep it.
Maybe now someone will be able to do a full fledged port to Alpha. I've used Alpha (Linux mostly) systems for many years and I'm never going to give them up until I can't make them run anymore. Yes, I know there are other 64 bit options these days, but I just like Alpha.
The only thing I've really found that is lacking on the Alpha is Java support. There are a few little projects out there which offer limited support, but not since compaq stopped its implementation at JRE 1.3 has there been a real Java environment for Alpha.
Since Java is one of my all time favorite languages to work with, I really hope this could lead to a complete, up to date, stable JRE for Alpha/Linux.
What I mean is you can't prove it unless you confronted someone and they admit they are the person who made those searches, like that NY Times article with the old lady for example.
Clearly you can find a few examples where the evidence does suggest pretty strongly who a person might be, but even if you have a username, you STILL wouldn't know who was really using a computer at the time or why, or if it was even some bot/spyware program on the client.
And just to be clear, I had nothing to do with this data being released. Nothing. The thought would never even cross my mind, never in a million years would I do something so obviously against company policy. Every company in the internet business keeps data like this (and it is vital to the way they all do business), but I have no idea why the guy who posted it somehow thought it would be OK for him to release some of it on the internet. I only wanted to say that many people are over reacting to the situation because they do not understand the technical details.
Believe me, AOL is taking this incident VERY seriously. Things will never be the same again after this.
Does this mean my old HP48GX will be considered cutting edge? I should get ready to sell it on EBay when the craze hits! All my old classmates will be forced to allow me to have the last laugh after I was on the recieving end of much ridicule for using the HP when the TI was the only thing "officially" endorsed by all the calculus textbooks.
I don't know if I could ever part with it though. I still use it almost daily, the thing continues to kick ass.
Perhaps the dumbest comment I've seen yet. All search/advertising companies rely on this data to make money. It is not like they can just say "oh, lets just not save any search logs". Thats absolutely ridiculous.
For a short time, yes, the aggregate data will be useful for such things... but the keywords change so much that this data will be worthless soon. Which is why AOL wasn't concerned about releasing this data (from a competitive advantage standpoint anyway). In terms of the privacy issues, it was clearly a stupid thing to do, even though this data is completely harmless. Non-technical folks simply don't understand how useless user level data (of this type) really is, and therein lies the problem.
First of all, why is this surprising to you at all. They HAVE to know who the users are, they are billing them! Aside from that and for marketing campaigns however, usernames are never used. There just isn't reliable or useful data do be had by including usernames.
Also, anyone who uses AOL.com does not have to be a logged on user, and you have no way of knowing if a "unique user" in that case is really "one person". Even in the case of logged on users, you still can't know that, it is pure speculation.
User level data is worthless.
Your next ridiculous assertion is that on google, you don't have a username to associate you with your searches. HELLO, have you heard of GMAIL? or any of the other services they offer which require usernames? Google most certainly can and does have usernames associated with its log data. Perhaps not as much as AOL, but believe me, that is where google WANTS to go. In order to sell more advertising, google needs demographic information about it's users, and that is the only REAL reason google is now coming out with more and more services which will make people more likely to be logged on users
You know nothing of the sort. You have no idea if the user ever visited your site, in many cases AOL's caching engine is the only hit you'll ever get on your site and subsequent searches in the AOL log using the same anonymous user number are not even necessarily the same person for a number of reasons which I shouldn't have to get into if you have any idea how this stuff really works. You are grasping as straws.
Someone searching for their own SSN, or name, is foolish for sure, but as I already said, you have no idea if those searches were really entered by those people or if they were other people looking for said people. You don't even know if they were just people goofing around. User level data is so unreliable that we essentially don't use it. The only real use for this data is at an aggregate level for the purposes of identifying patterns, etc.
No, it doesn't. It is *possible* but how do you know it wasn't someone else searching for them? You would have no basis make a conclusion from such tenuous data.
The only way you'd know who it was, smart guy, is if they were logged in on your site at the time so you could get the user id. But if the user is already logged in then you don't need the AOL search log to tell you who the user is!!
Like I said, this is all a big deal being made about nothing. Bloggers looking for attention.
By itself this data is useless anyway. I am familiar with the warehouse that holds this data (because I helped to create it), and even if you have all the tables available to cross reference, we still don't even save anything that is personally identifiable. Its a complete joke that people are making such a big deal out of this. AOL uses this stuff purely at an aggregate level.
If you want to bitch about privacy and ethics, why don't you people go shake a few trees around the Bush administration.
I wasn't the one who posted that data, but I'm personally familiar with the situation. I know the type of data that was used, we analyze it all the time. I'm telling you, unless you already had personal knowlege of the person you were looking for, or you were searching for your own searches that you remember doing, there is no way you'd have a real chance to use this data for much of anything.
Just a bunch of bloggers looking to make something out of nothing so they can get attention.
You may have something, there is something to be said for natural abilities. I see people all the time who simply "don't get it". As far as I am able to tell, most of these people never will "get it". Some people can learn how to do one thing well but as soon as something new comes, they seem to have no ability to pick it up by applying concepts from what they already know. Like people who use Oracle for years and then are helpless if you sit them down in front of a Teradata system. This always baffles me.
Yes, I did take all those math and theory classes too, and we also had a very high dropout rate (then again so does any major, not just CS). I as far as the classes for my major were concerned, there was little, if anything, that I did not already know going into them. I worked full time as a consultant the whole time while in school and what I noticed was that in the real world at every single client, technology was way ahead of what they were teaching in college. So while general concepts are always applicable, any graduate would still have quite a learning curve to adjust to the way things are done in the real world.
So what really angers me about the way job candidates are often percieved is that hiring managers will many times thow out resumes lacking a degree (without even reading it) even if the applicant has many years of real world experience. In reality, the candidates with experience are going to be your better choices, but due to unfortunate perceptions (dare i say discrimination) many job candidates lose out to people with vastly inferior skills simply because mommy and daddy sent them to some expensive school and they paid for a piece of paper that is essentially meaningless. As a result, I had to kill myself working long hours full time and going to college at the same time so I could prove to people that I can handle a job in the tech field that I was already doing for over 6 years.
I don't know where you go to school, but at my school I've had to take all those classes too and frankly, they were easier than most of my general education classes. It is a lot harder to write a big research paper for a history class than it is to write a computer program, or draw up a design for a computer chip. I would say that college (from a learning standpoint) has been a complete waste of time, by the time I was out of high school I already taught myself most of what college was planning to "teach" me in computer science. The only reason I went ahead with the degree was to get a stupid piece of paper certifying what I already know, for the benefit the mindless hiring drones who take comfort in the fact that I wasted ~ $60k so they could take me seriously when glancing at my resume.
So yeah, be insulted if you want, but the fact is that a computer science degree is not that hard.
The Catholic Church is far and away the biggest company in the world. Nothing else even comes close. It is the biggest financial power, wealth accumulator and property owner in existence... a greater possessor of material riches than any other single institution, corporation, bank, giant trust, government or state of the whole globe.
The staggering accumulation of the wealth of the Catholic church has become so formidable as to defy any rational assessment.
Its incredible to me that people continue to give money to those greedy whores. Its incredible that its even legal for such a scam to operate actually...
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I think a lot of the people posting on here are likely be to professionals, or at least fairly technical people. Lets face it... that is the audience on this site.
Dell's corporate support is great. I don't think many people complained about that. When a company spends millions of dollars on hardware, dell gives them personal representatives, etc. Every time I've ever called our company representative, things have always been handled amazingly quickly, usually faster than they estimate.
Additionally, even if you aren't calling your corporate rep, if you are technically skilled and *know* what your problem is and how to fix it before you even call, and if you forcefully make this known when you DO call, then your tech support experience will also be much more streamlined than the average "joe". I suspect that a lot of people who read /. would fall into this bucket if they don't fall into the first bucket.
So yeah, a lot of people reading this site never see the "real" tech support nightmare which many people see.
The proposed deal didn't make sense before, and it makes even less sense now. If Microsoft takes just search from yahoo, then the rest of Yahoo will be irrelevant within a year. Yahoo would be stupid to give up search.
The only way this can end well is if Microsoft just backs away and pretends that none of this ever happened.
There is just no getting around the fact that Yahoo is itself struggling to survive against google, and Microsoft has already pretty much admitted they can't compete with Google in search... I mean, didn't anyone ever tell Ballmer that two wrongs don't make a right?
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Perhaps if the ads weren't so obnoxious, and we didn't have to worry about malicious content, spyware, pop ups, and porn ads showing up while trying to browse otherwise tame sites at work, then we wouldn't NEED the ad blocking features.
I beg to differ. There are a few trivial ways to gain full control on any windows box which cannot be countered without crippling the OS. Certainly doesn't require anything more than the ability to use google.
I hate to break it to you but there are still trivial ways to gain full control of any machine secured using these methods. You can certainly protect the *data* but anyone with physical access to the machine can take over in a matter of minutes.
Trust me, it is literally *impossible* to secure any currently released version of microsoft windows if the user has console access. Period. It cannot be done. All it takes is about two minutes on the console with any windows box and they will be able to get full control (if they know a few tricks) no matter how locked down you think it is. I always laugh when I go to a new client and they give me a new laptop where I don't get admin rights and its all configured so that only their admins are supposed to be able to install software, etc, etc. In my early days I used to just wipe the hard drive and install my own OS, but for the last few years I've learned that I don't need to waste my time with that.
Don't be ridiculous. They HAVE to keep this data. It is essential to have this type of data in order to be able to provide various statistical analysis services and summaries to sell advertising. Without it, they lose. Period. Every other company keeps the same type of data, so AOL can't afford to not keep it.
Maybe now someone will be able to do a full fledged port to Alpha. I've used Alpha (Linux mostly) systems for many years and I'm never going to give them up until I can't make them run anymore. Yes, I know there are other 64 bit options these days, but I just like Alpha.
The only thing I've really found that is lacking on the Alpha is Java support. There are a few little projects out there which offer limited support, but not since compaq stopped its implementation at JRE 1.3 has there been a real Java environment for Alpha.
Since Java is one of my all time favorite languages to work with, I really hope this could lead to a complete, up to date, stable JRE for Alpha/Linux.
What I mean is you can't prove it unless you confronted someone and they admit they are the person who made those searches, like that NY Times article with the old lady for example.
Clearly you can find a few examples where the evidence does suggest pretty strongly who a person might be, but even if you have a username, you STILL wouldn't know who was really using a computer at the time or why, or if it was even some bot/spyware program on the client.
And just to be clear, I had nothing to do with this data being released. Nothing. The thought would never even cross my mind, never in a million years would I do something so obviously against company policy. Every company in the internet business keeps data like this (and it is vital to the way they all do business), but I have no idea why the guy who posted it somehow thought it would be OK for him to release some of it on the internet. I only wanted to say that many people are over reacting to the situation because they do not understand the technical details.
Believe me, AOL is taking this incident VERY seriously. Things will never be the same again after this.
Yes, they used 8 bit saturn microprocessors. I believe they are in fact register based. But my comment was meant to be sarcastic anyway :)
Does this mean my old HP48GX will be considered cutting edge? I should get ready to sell it on EBay when the craze hits! All my old classmates will be forced to allow me to have the last laugh after I was on the recieving end of much ridicule for using the HP when the TI was the only thing "officially" endorsed by all the calculus textbooks. I don't know if I could ever part with it though. I still use it almost daily, the thing continues to kick ass.
Perhaps the dumbest comment I've seen yet. All search/advertising companies rely on this data to make money. It is not like they can just say "oh, lets just not save any search logs". Thats absolutely ridiculous.
For a short time, yes, the aggregate data will be useful for such things... but the keywords change so much that this data will be worthless soon. Which is why AOL wasn't concerned about releasing this data (from a competitive advantage standpoint anyway). In terms of the privacy issues, it was clearly a stupid thing to do, even though this data is completely harmless. Non-technical folks simply don't understand how useless user level data (of this type) really is, and therein lies the problem.
First of all, why is this surprising to you at all. They HAVE to know who the users are, they are billing them! Aside from that and for marketing campaigns however, usernames are never used. There just isn't reliable or useful data do be had by including usernames.
Also, anyone who uses AOL.com does not have to be a logged on user, and you have no way of knowing if a "unique user" in that case is really "one person". Even in the case of logged on users, you still can't know that, it is pure speculation.
User level data is worthless.
Your next ridiculous assertion is that on google, you don't have a username to associate you with your searches. HELLO, have you heard of GMAIL? or any of the other services they offer which require usernames? Google most certainly can and does have usernames associated with its log data. Perhaps not as much as AOL, but believe me, that is where google WANTS to go. In order to sell more advertising, google needs demographic information about it's users, and that is the only REAL reason google is now coming out with more and more services which will make people more likely to be logged on users
You know nothing of the sort. You have no idea if the user ever visited your site, in many cases AOL's caching engine is the only hit you'll ever get on your site and subsequent searches in the AOL log using the same anonymous user number are not even necessarily the same person for a number of reasons which I shouldn't have to get into if you have any idea how this stuff really works. You are grasping as straws.
Someone searching for their own SSN, or name, is foolish for sure, but as I already said, you have no idea if those searches were really entered by those people or if they were other people looking for said people. You don't even know if they were just people goofing around. User level data is so unreliable that we essentially don't use it. The only real use for this data is at an aggregate level for the purposes of identifying patterns, etc.
No, it doesn't. It is *possible* but how do you know it wasn't someone else searching for them? You would have no basis make a conclusion from such tenuous data.
Um... no thats a blatant exaggeration.
The only way you'd know who it was, smart guy, is if they were logged in on your site at the time so you could get the user id. But if the user is already logged in then you don't need the AOL search log to tell you who the user is!!
Like I said, this is all a big deal being made about nothing. Bloggers looking for attention.
LOL, good point.
By itself this data is useless anyway. I am familiar with the warehouse that holds this data (because I helped to create it), and even if you have all the tables available to cross reference, we still don't even save anything that is personally identifiable. Its a complete joke that people are making such a big deal out of this. AOL uses this stuff purely at an aggregate level.
If you want to bitch about privacy and ethics, why don't you people go shake a few trees around the Bush administration.
I wasn't the one who posted that data, but I'm personally familiar with the situation. I know the type of data that was used, we analyze it all the time. I'm telling you, unless you already had personal knowlege of the person you were looking for, or you were searching for your own searches that you remember doing, there is no way you'd have a real chance to use this data for much of anything. Just a bunch of bloggers looking to make something out of nothing so they can get attention.
You may have something, there is something to be said for natural abilities. I see people all the time who simply "don't get it". As far as I am able to tell, most of these people never will "get it". Some people can learn how to do one thing well but as soon as something new comes, they seem to have no ability to pick it up by applying concepts from what they already know. Like people who use Oracle for years and then are helpless if you sit them down in front of a Teradata system. This always baffles me.
Yes, I did take all those math and theory classes too, and we also had a very high dropout rate (then again so does any major, not just CS). I as far as the classes for my major were concerned, there was little, if anything, that I did not already know going into them. I worked full time as a consultant the whole time while in school and what I noticed was that in the real world at every single client, technology was way ahead of what they were teaching in college. So while general concepts are always applicable, any graduate would still have quite a learning curve to adjust to the way things are done in the real world.
So what really angers me about the way job candidates are often percieved is that hiring managers will many times thow out resumes lacking a degree (without even reading it) even if the applicant has many years of real world experience. In reality, the candidates with experience are going to be your better choices, but due to unfortunate perceptions (dare i say discrimination) many job candidates lose out to people with vastly inferior skills simply because mommy and daddy sent them to some expensive school and they paid for a piece of paper that is essentially meaningless. As a result, I had to kill myself working long hours full time and going to college at the same time so I could prove to people that I can handle a job in the tech field that I was already doing for over 6 years.
I don't know where you go to school, but at my school I've had to take all those classes too and frankly, they were easier than most of my general education classes. It is a lot harder to write a big research paper for a history class than it is to write a computer program, or draw up a design for a computer chip. I would say that college (from a learning standpoint) has been a complete waste of time, by the time I was out of high school I already taught myself most of what college was planning to "teach" me in computer science. The only reason I went ahead with the degree was to get a stupid piece of paper certifying what I already know, for the benefit the mindless hiring drones who take comfort in the fact that I wasted ~ $60k so they could take me seriously when glancing at my resume.
So yeah, be insulted if you want, but the fact is that a computer science degree is not that hard.
I know several people who have season passes to Disney World... when you enter the parks, there is a fingerprint reader for season pass holders.
I've borrowed 3 different season passes before and never had a problem getting past the scanner, it just isn't reliable.
I bet a warm hotdog would work too.
The Catholic Church is far and away the biggest company in the world. Nothing else even comes close. It is the biggest financial power, wealth accumulator and property owner in existence... a greater possessor of material riches than any other single institution, corporation, bank, giant trust, government or state of the whole globe.
The staggering accumulation of the wealth of the Catholic church has become so formidable as to defy any rational assessment.
Its incredible to me that people continue to give money to those greedy whores. Its incredible that its even legal for such a scam to operate actually...