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Privacy GUI Ubuntu Linux

Shuttleworth: Trust Us, We're Trying to Make Shopping Better 255

An anonymous reader writes "In a blog post responding to the latest controversy over Ubuntu, Mark Shuttleworth says 'integrating online scope results' are 'not putting ads in Ubuntu' because the shopping results 'are not paid placement', but 'straightforward search results'. He goes on to explain his plans to make the Home Lens of the Dash a place to find 'anything anywhere'. Like a cross between Chrome OS's new app launcher, Siri and Google Now 'it will get smarter and smarter' so you can 'ask for whatever you want' it 'just works'."
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Shuttleworth: Trust Us, We're Trying to Make Shopping Better

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  • by eldavojohn ( 898314 ) * <eldavojohn AT gmail DOT com> on Monday September 24, 2012 @10:56AM (#41437963) Journal
    From the Q&A part of his blog:

    This is just a moneymaking scheme.

    We picked Amazon as a first place to start because most of our users are also regular users of Amazon, and it pays us to make your Amazon journey get off to a faster start. Typing Super “queen marking cage” Just Worked for me this morning. I am now looking forward to my game of Ultimate Where’s Waldo hunting down the queens in my bee colonies, Ubuntu will benefit from the fact that I chose to search Amazon that way, Amazon benefits from being more accessible to a very discerning, time-conscious and hotkey-friendly audience.

    Cool, thanks for at least being honesty about that part. Although I don't understand why this wasn't the front-and-center thesis of your blog post. You're getting paid to bring us to Amazon faster. Okay. You can opt out of it but it's enabled by default. Okay. I get that. It's okay, nobody's going to fault you if you're trying to figure out new revenue models. But you should really be up front with your user base about it or you're going to get some seriously knee jerk reactions that might doom your product before it's out the door (regardless of how true it is). You're running damage control now and that probably could have been avoided if your floated this out in front of "leaked" screenshots.

    I'm also really curious about this next part of your answer to this question:

    But there are many more kinds of things you can search through with Unity scopes. Most of them won’t pay Ubuntu a cent, but we’ll still integrate them into the coolest just-ask-and-you’ll-receive experience. I want us to do this because I think we can make the desktop better.

    So what happens when it's time to integrate and "bring the user faster" to Barnes & Noble? What happens when you've "integrated" with both Amazon, B&N, Abe's Books, eBay, Go Hastings, etc and I type in "Ender's Game"? What happens when the outfit that sold you your "queen marking cage" doesn't sell them on Amazon and there's middle men re-listing everything at a higher price on Amazon on the chance that someone with a default scope searches for it through Ubuntu? I have reservations that this move is making an already omnipotent Amazon unduly more powerful ...

    • by Anna Merikin ( 529843 ) on Monday September 24, 2012 @12:43PM (#41439795) Journal

      I might find this useful if I could choose which retailers to include or exclude. No NewEgg? Add it. Don't like Amazon? Delete it.

      Someone (not google, apple nor microsoft) should act as a clearing house for payment for these custom searches as these very "well-qualified sales leads" are much more valuable to a retailer than random Ubuntu-sent queries through a private Amazon acting as a commercial clearinghouse.

      IMHO and YMMV

      • by ifiwereasculptor ( 1870574 ) on Monday September 24, 2012 @01:16PM (#41440259)

        If they follow the example of Mint and Firefox, inclusion and exclusion would be fair game. Even if they don't, it's open source. And unlike carrier-defiled Android, they can't remove your administrative rights from the machine so you'd have to root it (well, they can, but that would be a whole new level of stupid). Shuttleworth already said he doesn't want the Unity dock placed on the bottom of the screen, but mods are trivial and aplenty.

      • If they have a simple on/off switch in System Settings: Privacy, this might be not so bad.

        After all, the way you're doing it now is to go to Google and type in "queen marking cage". Why not type it into the Ubuntu search box?

        And a simple way to customize your preferred search sites (like you can with Chrome and FF) would also be nice.

    • by MrEricSir ( 398214 ) on Monday September 24, 2012 @01:41PM (#41440645) Homepage

      You're getting paid to bring us to Amazon faster. Okay.

      Faster? Heh. You've obviously never tried Unity lenses.

      • Faster? Heh. You've obviously never tried Unity lenses.

        Unity lenses are speedy on my laptop (Corei3-350M, 2GiB RAM, magnetic 320GB HD), except when I have 100+ Firefox tabs open and the system is swapping heavily.

    • by Kjella ( 173770 )

      What happens when the outfit that sold you your "queen marking cage" doesn't sell them on Amazon and there's middle men re-listing everything at a higher price on Amazon on the chance that someone with a default scope searches for it through Ubuntu?

      You mean like today? There's always more places to look but there's a diminishing gain, for the most part I only check prices until it's reasonably optimal not check every store to see if somebody, somewhere offers it for $2 less. Your mileage - and valuation of your time - may vary.

    • If I'm searching for a product, why wouldn't I want Ubuntu to point me to people selling it? It's a money making scheme which actually benefits the users. Ads are annoying because they push products you aren't looking for. Intelligent search results are just better search results. They're showing me what I'm looking for.

      • I'm not sure I want everything I type/search for filtered through Amazon, or anyone for that matter. For example, I have Google Instant disabled for a reason: A) it's my network bandwidth, B) I'll send my query when I'm damn well and ready...
      • by Nyder ( 754090 )

        If I'm searching for a product, why wouldn't I want Ubuntu to point me to people selling it? It's a money making scheme which actually benefits the users. Ads are annoying because they push products you aren't looking for. Intelligent search results are just better search results. They're showing me what I'm looking for.

        Weird, when I want something, I just use google. If i want something from amazon, I can go to amazon's web page. If I want something from Newegg, I go to Neweggs web site. Otherwise, I use google and see what the various pricing is like.

        Justify this all you want, but lets be real. It's about Ubuntu making more money and changing the face of linux forever, and not for the good.

      • If I'm searching for a product, why wouldn't I want Ubuntu to point me to people selling it?

        I can't speak for you, but for me, I don't want a third party to be involved in what was a simple transaction between me and the people selling it. Especially not the producers of my OS. It doesn't matter if they're Apple, Microsoft, or Canonical, what I'm looking for and buying is None Of Their Business.

        This is even more important when we're talking about searching my own computer. Using the lens, Canonical will now know every search you perform, even if you're only searching locally.

        It's a money making scheme which actually benefits the users. Ads are annoying because they push products you aren't looking for. Intelligent search results are just better search results. They're showing me what I'm looking for.

        Assuming that's what y

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Although that's true, Mint has sort of worked itself into a corner. Since its claim to fame now is supposed to be as the un-Unity distro, they can't quite put it back in. And if they do, what's the point of bothering with Mint as opposed to stock Ubuntu? There have been some bugs with Mint, so that'd be another reason to just stay with Ubuntu.

        Same goes for xubuntu, lubuntu, etc. They can't quite put shopping-lens-enabled Unity in the mix.

  • by OldKingCole ( 2672649 ) on Monday September 24, 2012 @11:00AM (#41438035)
    Why can't you just integrate Google search into the lens?
  • "It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is."
    What's happened to plain speech Mr. Shuttleworth?
  • by na1led ( 1030470 ) on Monday September 24, 2012 @11:05AM (#41438131)
    http://apple.slashdot.org/story/12/04/26/1740234/steve-jobs-idea-for-an-ad-supported-os [slashdot.org] , but I'm sure Apple has found a way to use subliminal messages instead, considering how many people are buying new iPhones.
    • Just a completely different question - if this idea was patented wouldn't Canonical run into problems? Maybe the patent system can save Ubuntu from this garbage....
  • by AmazingRuss ( 555076 ) on Monday September 24, 2012 @11:07AM (#41438165)

    ...so many other things that need fixing, and they're whacking off about internet search.

    If I want to search the internet, I pull up google and search. That crap has no business on my desktop

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Microlith ( 54737 )

      so many other things that need fixing, and they're whacking off about internet search.

      To be frank, a lot of what needs fixing takes money to fix. Particularly integration and compatibility issues which seem to be, by far, the biggest source of problems. This requires labs full of hardware and people to develop and automate the testing.

      If you're struggling to find sources of income (which wouldn't surprise me, given the attitude expressed here on Slashdot previously) then it's hard to step up and develop the

  • by HangingChad ( 677530 ) on Monday September 24, 2012 @11:10AM (#41438225) Homepage

    As long as it's not pushing forced ads, I have no problem with Ubuntu setting up a shopping network and app sales.

    They have to make money somehow and this seems like one of the less offensive services they could implement.

      1. Advertising is a terrible way for an OS to make money. Support contracts are the right way, but Ubuntu is not even trying to compete with Red Hat for that sort of thing.
      2. The ads are being shown at times when people are not actually trying to shop. That is also known as "spam."
      3. This opens the door to Amazon controlling Ubuntu. Not at all good, not at all.
      • You'll notice that Canonical is working in an area that Redhat outright gave up on. For the very reasons you cite. "Support contracts" don't work with end-users.

        This opens the door to Amazon controlling Ubuntu.

        And accomplishing exactly what?

        • Support contracts work great when you're making desktop OSes that can be used in businesses. Then you can release the same OS (or a slightly different version) for free to home users and other non-payers, to build more mindshare. Exactly the way that Red Hat and Fedora do it.

    • by pavon ( 30274 ) on Monday September 24, 2012 @12:06PM (#41439205)

      Every time you search for a local file on your computer, the details of that search will be transmitted to a third party cloud service. That is a huge potential privacy issue regardless of who that service is. Worse, they they don't even make their users aware of this fact, which is completely unacceptable. That Canonical still doesn't understand this after being having it brought to their attention means they clearly cannot be trusted to assemble a secure Linux distribution.

      • From the TFA:

        Why are you telling Amazon what I am searching for?

        We are not telling Amazon what you are searching for. Your anonymity is preserved because we handle the query on your behalf. Don’t trust us? Erm, we have root. You do trust us with your data already. You trust us not to screw up on your machine with every update. You trust Debian, and you trust a large swathe of the open source community. And most importantly, you trust us to address it when, being human, we err.

        • by Kjella ( 173770 )

          I also trust Ford to build a car that won't get me killed in a car crash, I trust them do keep that up with spare parts, recalls and authorized service centers. It doesn't mean I want them to install a GPS tracker in my car so they can "improve my experience". Saying you should trust Ubuntu because they already 0wn your computer isn't exactly a confidence builder.

          • I also trust Ford to build a car that won't get me killed in a car crash, I trust them do keep that up with spare parts, recalls and authorized service centers. It doesn't mean I want them to install a GPS tracker in my car so they can "improve my experience". Saying you should trust Ubuntu because they already 0wn your computer isn't exactly a confidence builder.

            It is easy to turn off, and it is open source, so everyone can audit it.

        • by pavon ( 30274 )

          I've read their response and it is bullshit. There is a difference between trusting someone to write software for you, and trusting them to receive your private information over the internet. For example, hospitals may trust software to process patient data. They don't (and can't by law) trust that software to send patient info to some random cloud service. Home users deserve the same respect as corporate users and should be informed of any services that transmit their information so they can decide whether

        • As I mentioned before, I don't want everything I type/search for sent elsewhere. It's my bandwidth and my information, *if* I want to search elsewhere, I'll explicitly query elsewhere. I have Google Instant disable for reasons like that...

          Let's breed smarter users that know about things and how they work, rather than dumber users that rely on things that "just work" and have no idea how they work.

    • As long as it's not pushing forced ads, I have no problem with Ubuntu setting up a shopping network and app sales.

      They have to make money somehow and this seems like one of the less offensive services they could implement.

      This is seen as a problem because certain free software extremists* are too leftist and they hate the idea of a company making profit.

      * Don't get me wrong, I love open source. I strongly promote Linux, Libreoffice, Firefox, Chrome and 7zip. My laptop uses open source exclusively (to the be

  • These companies can only afford to give away free stuff for so long before the investors demand that they start making serious money from the fanbase (i.e the product, eyeballs in this case) and that means more invasive advertising. Google will do it too eventually.

    Canonical does a bit of development work but its not huge. Linux would survive without them. Most of what they been doing the past while is unnecessary interface changes and cloud integration in an attempt to be in with the cool kids and also all these cloud things provide data for mining and if people get too dependent on it they can even charge fees to use it.
    • by Microlith ( 54737 ) on Monday September 24, 2012 @11:16AM (#41438325)

      Linux would survive without them.

      It would, but it would be a pale shadow of its current self. Sure it'd survive on servers and in the mobile space, but the desktop would be even tinier. What would Valve do, shift their target to Fedora? Which is even less end-user targeted than Ubuntu?

      • by jedidiah ( 1196 ) on Monday September 24, 2012 @12:02PM (#41439135) Homepage

        A very miniscule proportion of what attracts Valve to Ubuntu has anything to do with what Canonical has done. Like any other distribution, Ubuntu is the combination of a number of upstream projects. Canonical really gets much more than it gives in this respect.

        What Canonical does is mainly configuration management and that it tends to do poorly. They already have a bad reputation for pushing out versions before they're ready or making other bad decisions.

        The fact that they've decided to put on the afterburners after having jumped the shark is really no surprise to anyone.

        • A very miniscule proportion of what attracts Valve to Ubuntu has anything to do with what Canonical has done.

          Canonical has achieved a user base with Ubuntu that no other distro really has, as far as I can tell. That is what attracts Valve.

          The fact that they've decided to put on the afterburners after having jumped the shark is really no surprise to anyone.

          And by "jumped the shark" I take that to mean "they aren't being the difficult old hard to use pain in the ass Linux that I know and love," right?

    • ... and that means more invasive advertising. Google will do it too eventually.

      What could possibly be more invasive than tracking a user's every interaction [google.com] with a Web site?

  • by deusmetallum ( 1607059 ) on Monday September 24, 2012 @11:13AM (#41438267)
    I have been thinking long and hard about this and I can only come to this conclusion. It is a nice feature. It needs tweaks, so results for photoshop don't pop up, or if they do it should explain it's not compatible with Linux. But what it needs more than anything, which is something Canonical keep missing out of all of their super new features is a simple tickbox for on or off. I understand that this is still beta, and it's certainly not LTS so it is more or less a testing platform, so I'm not jumping up and down right now. Canonical have proven to me that they can iron things out between normal releases and LTS, and I'm happy to accept that this may well be the case here. I'm basing this on evidence that I have seen over the last 4 years, not just what Mark says. This really is a great step forward for UX, as it is saying "hey, let's do more 'cloud' stuff from the desktop." Think about what else will be possible with a bit of thought. We could have it bring up all of your photos, from all sources (picassa, facebook, twitter) and present them in one place. I could type something like "London" into my dash and it shows me all the photos I've taken in London, a list of all my friends who are currently *in* London, and maybe sell me a London guide book. I cannot begin to express how awesome features like this can be. Amazon is only a single step to a full set of amazing features, and we must remember that these aren't *ads.* I am searching for a product, I can chose to buy it, and I won't get prompted to buy anything similar next time I fire up the dash. One thing that I also think is important to remember, is that we are a set of pretty clued up power users and as such we will see problems and we will jump to justify why something is a bad idea. However, if I were to install this on my Dad's laptop tomorrow, I can guarantee he would actually be quite thrilled with this feature. This is Linux for Human Beings and I think product searching is a very human thing to have.
    • I have been thinking long and hard about this and I can only come to this conclusion.

      Thanks. I'm glad you know everything and can think for everyone about all things all the time. /sarcasm

    • I have been thinking long and hard about this and I can only come to this conclusion. It is a nice feature. It needs tweaks, so results for photoshop don't pop up, or if they do it should explain it's not compatible with Linux. But what it needs more than anything, which is something Canonical keep missing out of all of their super new features is a simple tickbox for on or off.

      If I use the tickbox you are suggesting to turn the feature off, will the system still be tracking my queries for use the next time I turn the feature on? I'm not suggesting that Ubuntu would do that *now*, but it strikes me as a slippery slope kind of thing, and they could easily justify it to themselves in the future, especially under pressure from their corporate partners.

      One thing that I also think is important to remember, is that we are a set of pretty clued up power users and as such we will see problems and we will jump to justify why something is a bad idea.

      I think that's really where a lot of the pushback is coming from. The typical "clued up power user" is only too aware of how such mec

  • by Volanin ( 935080 ) on Monday September 24, 2012 @11:16AM (#41438313)

    Some people are also questioning if the home lens (the default lens to make any local search) is the right place to integrate these remote searches to third party services. In theory, amazon could gather information about every file you search, every program you launch through the lens, and such. There is even a bug report [launchpad.net], marked as confirmed, questioning this very thing.

    • In theory, amazon could gather information about every file you search, every program you launch through the lens, and such

      AGAIN. From TFA:

      Why are you telling Amazon what I am searching for?

      We are not telling Amazon what you are searching for. Your anonymity is preserved because we handle the query on your behalf. Don’t trust us? Erm, we have root. You do trust us with your data already. You trust us not to screw up on your machine with every update. You trust Debian, and you trust a large swathe of the open source community. And most importantly, you trust us to address it when, being human, we err.

      And:

      There is even a bug report [launchpad.net], marked as confirmed, questioning this very thing.

      That is marked as confirmed because it affects multiple users, and relates to a more broad list of concerns than what you infer. The way you word it points to a bug about Amazon seeing your keystrokes, while the bug report is more of a list of concerns such as opt-in vs opt-out, making the amazon lens separate from home etc.

  • by yog ( 19073 ) * on Monday September 24, 2012 @11:24AM (#41438477) Homepage Journal

    Ubuntu was at one time an appealing alternative to Windows. I had it running on a desktop and laptop at home, and at least one VM at work ran Ubuntu. It just worked. But the minute they came up with this Unity dashboard thing, it broke the familiar UI and as far as I'm concerned, tweaking Ubuntu to make it usable again to myself and my users became more effort than it was worth.

    Meanwhile, Suse has plowed ahead with a record of pretty consistent, solid distributions. Fedora's been pretty good as well, but once I got Suse I just got used to the Suse way of doing things and didn't look back.

    Yeah, I miss how Ubuntu can locate printers very reliably on the network, while I have to manually plug in the IP addresses in YaST, but that's not a show stopper. What is a showstopper is when I can't find basic stuff like the calculator because it's been moved from a simple accessories pulldown menu and hidden in some goofy app picker.

    This ad thing is merely more fuel on the fire. I don't get what those people are thinking. I guess they have to keep pushing the envelope, looking for ways to monetize their product and keep growing, but I would have thought they'd do better by just making it the easiest and most affordable alternative there is to Windows. Anyway -- R.I.P. Ubuntu!

    • It makes no sense! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      As a fellow that's the family's tech support I agree. I installed Ubuntu on my mother's laptop because of the "noob friendliness" and it just working. Ubuntu had a Gnome interface and deb-package management which I am both familiar with and I never had problems with it.

      I need to keep things consistent. And since this whole Unity thing was introduced as not just something that's a feature, but as the default window manager and me having to install Ubuntu again, I needed to install gnome-shell myself, and tha

    • Windows 8, latest Apple OSes, non-OS softwares, etc. seem to be having weird designs and bad ideas. It's like computers are not cool like the old days. :(

    • What is a showstopper is when I can't find basic stuff like the calculator because it's been moved from a simple accessories pulldown menu and hidden in some goofy app picker.

      Click the Ubuntu icon (or press Super, or press Super-A), type cal, hit Enter.
      Or press Super-A (or right-click the Ubuntu Icon and choose Applications), click Filter Results, choose Accessories.

  • ... it will never be the Year of Linux in the Desktop.

    I'd LOVE to use linux in the Desktop always (I love the Open Source philosophy) however, this kind of things make it hard.

    Now what? Ubuntu users moving AGAIN to another distro? Mint? I do not know.

    KDE/GNOME/Unity/X11/Mate/Cinnamon/LXDE/etc/etc/etc and still LibreOffice looks like Office 97.

    I've decided a while ago to stay with debian, even if it does not look that "eye candy". Anyway, I'm old enough to not care at all if my desktop can not spin like a cu

    • still LibreOffice looks like Office 97.

      What is wrong with that?

      • by lsolano ( 398432 )

        still LibreOffice looks like Office 97.

        What is wrong with that?

        It looks outdated for new linux users. I like it because is simple, but for people coming from a windows world, it looks just "old". I think it does not help to adopt linux users.

        • nonsense, productive windows users with half a brain know the ribbon is work-impeding garbage and a useful menuing system is superior

          • Whether or not the ribbon has had an adverse impact on you personally, it is still what users coming from a Windows environment are used to - and they will no doubt find that an interface based on Office 97-2003 does indeed look old fashioned.

            I certainly know from personal experience that when I have to use a machine which has an older version of Office on, I really struggle with finding my commonly-used features and it takes me longer to do pretty much anything.
        • still LibreOffice looks like Office 97.

          What is wrong with that?

          It looks outdated for new linux users. I like it because is simple, but for people coming from a windows world, it looks just "old". I think it does not help to adopt linux users.

          Yes, it's too bad things that look outdated or old can't actually be functional and useful.

  • Paid Placement (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Bob9113 ( 14996 ) on Monday September 24, 2012 @11:29AM (#41438587) Homepage

    'are not paid placement'

    Ummm, Are you getting paid? Would you still get the money if you removed the Amazon component from the OS? OK, let's see if you can follow this: When you get paid for a commercial placement, that is paid placement. The fact that the individual items displayed are not paid placements does not change the fact that the entire component is a paid placement.

    This is just his nature. He is a sleazeball. That's why so many of us were so hesitant to use Ubuntu way back when it started rising. Do we really want to get an OS from this glorified PHB? What slimy crap is he going to pull next? On the upside, he also has some really stupid ideas about the direction of the UI, so it doesn't hurt to just walk away. Just walk away.

    • He is a sleazeball.

      Delicious ad-hominem.

      That's why so many of us were so hesitant to use Ubuntu way back when it started rising.

      I suspect the hesitance was due to the fact that Ubuntu was bringing in new users by not being a pain in the ass to use, and long-time Linux users were incensed that someone would make it usable.

      Not news: Slashdot is full of hate for a company and person who have worked to make Linux usable.

      • by Bob9113 ( 14996 )

        If what you are implying was true, I wouldn't have a Linux Mint machine right next to me (though, admittedly, this one is stripped-down Debian testing with XFCE). I have my hard-core machines, my user-friendly machines, and I even have two MacBook Pros. I even ran Ubuntu on one of my primary laptops for more than a year -- get this -- because it was user-friendly.

        Go peddle your prejudice elsewhere.

    • This is just his nature. He is a sleazeball. That's why so many of us were so hesitant to use Ubuntu way back when it started rising. Do we really want to get an OS from this glorified PHB? What slimy crap is he going to pull next? On the upside, he also has some really stupid ideas about the direction of the UI, so it doesn't hurt to just walk away. Just walk away.

      Wow, that is the first time I have seen this. Please drink a glass of water, relax.

  • by 3seas ( 184403 ) on Monday September 24, 2012 @11:39AM (#41438731) Homepage Journal

    ... as in an application/add on/option type of functionality. And to increase interest, not that google general search results always find what you want, provide the users with easy to use filtering.... so if they boycott a company, they don't have to see their ads when searching.

  • by anarcat ( 306985 ) on Monday September 24, 2012 @11:51AM (#41438949) Homepage

    Apart from what's already been mentioned here, one bit particularly troubles me:

    We are not telling Amazon what you are searching for. Your anonymity is preserved because we handle the query on your behalf. Don’t trust us? Erm, we have root. You do trust us with your data already.

    I don't equate having root with having people's data, personally. I happen to adhere to a Ethics Code (SAGE's [lopsa.org]) that *keeps* me from peeking over people's personal data, *especially* for my own interests. Adding a snitch that report back not only the machine's existence (you get that through APT automated updates) but also personal search requests to Canonical headquarters by default does seem like a major privacy breach.

    That the dictator of Ubuntu and Canonical brushes his responsibilities aside like this is downright scary if you ask me, especially given the argument is "we have root, we 0wn you already, sorry bud".

    • The point was that if you don't trust them you should not use Ubuntu because they make it and thus have root access. I think that's a legitimate point to make.

  • Well, it looks like I might need to find a new distro.

    Sorry guys, but if you're planning on adding ads directly to my operating system, you won't be getting any money from me as I'll be moving to another distro.

    If I want to search Amazon, I'll bloody well go to Amazon.com.

    In the end, they might hurt themselves more than they help themselves.

  • straightforward search results pushing product are called "ads"; amazon sponsoring them makes them "paid for advertising".

    with this & your crippled Unity UI, your distro is circling the drain; shape it up, young man.

  • About every podcast I listen to now has a pleading about supporting them by going to their website and clicking on the Amazon banner ad so they get their beaks wet. Now the OS wants to do it too? Pass. I never to remember to do the link thing when shopping on Amazon anyway.

    I already switched to LMDE when the Unity debacle started. Ubuntu is rapidly becoming the MySpace of distributions.
  • ... before it, Canonical seems to have difficulty wrapping their collective heads, as well as that of their resident big head, around the concept of "opt in".
  • you just made your distro in to Spamware
  • Having not used Ubuntu much since the Unity debacle (well, that is most of my Ubuntu systems stayed preUnity), I was curious about what my child was seeing in the library so installed Mint. Imperfect, but a lot more usable than Unity. Kudos to the school for taking the time to do a little homework.

    I wish Mark and the Canonical team luck. The last several design choices have driven away technically literate people AND those aiming for the technically illiterate. No doubt there is some huge market that I'm ju

  • Shuttleworth: Trust Us, We're Trying to Make Shopping Better

    Hmm... I though Canonical was trying to make computing better with Ubuntu. My bad.

  • Fine, let's try that.

    2muchcoffeeman@thisbox:~$ sudo sandwich -ham -swiss -dijon -mayo -lettuce -tomato -bacon

    I wonder how long it will take ...

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