u2328

Actually, looks like they took away the ability to use Twitter and it's Facebook exclusive.

Citation please.

I agree with Mark that it's not worth beating up Canonical over a bureaucratic slip up. Latching on to simple mistakes that are the result of internal miscommunication and misinterpretations of policy is foolish. And ideologues (especially in the software world) love to do that blindly, but it's not intelligent discourse.

That being said, I don't think that absolves Canonical of the underlying criticism: your company is active pushing a product, despite its open-source-ness, that betrays the trust and privacy of your users unless they're informed enough about the situation to opt-out.

I know Canonical is a corporation and has to generate revenue. I won't sit and pretend like I know how to solve that problem for your company. It doesn't change the dilemma, however. I'd like to recommend a user-friendly Linux to my friends and family. I won't recommend Ubuntu until the privacy issue is opt-in instead of opt-out. In fact, if they're less-technical, I recommend iPads and Macs. At least Apple doesn't ship off desktop search results to a third party that we're aware of. I hold enough trust with Apple to believe that they are not. It's unfortunate that I can't say the same for Canonical.

You mean, the illusion of the latest high-tech gear.

It's just that they're... (god, that's embarrassing)

I think people are glad, sure. It's just that their highly skeptical of anything the government does anymore. With good reason.

It's just a bunch of bureaucrats in a room. They've got their Standard Operating Procedures, and react accordingly. They're just cogs, and all the real decisions come from the higher ups. All the hardware in that room is procured and maintained through IT contractors and there is no software on those machines that wasn't listed when they wrote those ~5 year long contracts.

Impressive presentation, if you're trying to show off. Terrible otherwise, and the content is just dumb. David Kushner has always struck me as one of those superficial tech journalists who writes about it all the time, but largely avoids attempting to explain the important technical details to the audience well. He's either dumbing it down on purpose because he thinks his audience will be easily confused, or he really has a meager understanding himself. Regardless, I don't think he's doing his audience a service when he puts this 'Hackerz-are-l33t' theme on this article like he's submitting a screenplay to Hollywood.

He's basically like the 'Smykowski' character from Office Space; trying to justify his job ("I talk to the engineers so you don't have to!"), but in the end, he's not really doing anything.

This is an important topic and it deserves to be treated much more seriously. I feel embarrassed for Rolling Stone here. It's style over content and the fancy animations are just compensating for an otherwise shallow article.

Can't wait for all the wannabe-startup-bros to start throwing those terms around now when they're looking for coders. "Hey man, wanna come forked on my awesome new idea? Send me your pull request and let's get started!"

Kettle, meet pot.

The NSA can't trust 'brilliant' people huh? Worried that they might be acting against the NSA's best interest? Weird! I can't possibly imagine how they feel! Nope, not at all! It's not like I have a secretive government agency stockpiling of much of communications as they can get their hands on that could one day be taken out of context and used against me or something. Crazy!

It's all relative. Ever seen Idiocracy?

Technology doesn't wreck the middle class, but it certainly enables America's corporate bureaucracy to cut as many costly human labor positions as it can.

We could counteract that if invested in our educational system, and I mean really invested in it. Don't just throw money at the problem, but strengthen and expand public institutions of learning. No more student loans and no more financial aid. I'm not necessarily against private schools and universities, but all our current system does for lower-middle-class people is straddle vulnerable people with mountains of debt for a educational experience of questionable quality.

It's obviously meant as an approximation.

Look, you can believe it or not, but that's just your opinion. Everybody gets to make up their mind for themselves.

How are they well-positioned? I don't mean to sound crass, but what has Facebook ever done that makes you think they're well-positioned? They're pretty much a software/advertising company. Sure, they have their Open Compute project, but besides that, what significant contribution to technical engineering have they contributed to that suggest they have the know-how and ability to scale such a massive infrastructure project.

You're right. I pretty much just blurted out the first thing that came to my mind when I read about it, and what I said was equivalent to garbage. It was completely uncalled for and I apologize to everybody in this forum for lowering the level of discourse, much less crapping over someone's hard work and pride.

You're right. I apologize for my remark. It was crass and uncalled for.

It's mission creep. Law enforcement will always demand more power in pursuit of what they see as their goal of stopping the bad guys. Trampling all over innocent peoples' civil liberties is unfortunate to them, but they will never cease their pursuit for more power. Have you heard Ray Kelly's argument in defense of stop-and-frisk? "We do this to protect minorities! It's for their own good!" without any mention or even a passing courtesy to said minority's civil rights.

Actually, I can think of one area that probably won't be receiving all the extra scrutiny that the rest of us have been enjoying in new found police state, and that's Wall Street. Someone's gotta pay for all those toys cops have been buying lately.

How very 20th Century of you. We're all in the database; much more efficient.

Yay, another JavaScript super-set language that solves one problem.

Ha, gross. Why would the Humble Bundle people associate with EA?

You're extracting some sort of context that I did not make, and that you're attributing a quote to me that I never said makes me thing that you didn't bother to even digest my statements.

If anything here is silly and worthless, it is engaging any further in this thread with you.

Wow, such vitriol. Let me guess, you're a big Ubuntu fan, and my assertion about privacy offended you and your clan. Now you're trying to peg me as some sort of moral absolutist. Well, I'm not, I just do what I can do when it comes to getting people to use software that respect their privacy.

Obviously, people make their own decisions. Sometimes they ask recommendations, and I respond with my honest opinion. So when it comes to Ubuntu, I tell them that I would not recommend it, for the reason I explained above.

This is cool. Finally, a Linux distro that I could set my less-than-technical friends and family with.

(Why not Ubuntu, you might ask? Simple: Ubuntu ships off their users' desktop search results to Amazon by default. I know it can be disabled and all that, but that's besides the point. I can't recommend software from people who don't respect their users' privacy.)

Ha, that's only for the rich and powerful who have bought influence with the Administration.

Obama proposes nothing of the sort. All he's proposing is a fresh coat of paint over the same policies and procedures in an attempt to make it seem like it seem like Obama cares about civil liberties and privacy, but he really doesn't. The security of the state and the establishment is what matters to him. Hasn't his Justice Department's failure to go after the big players in the financial crash, failure to go after the Bush Administration war criminals and instead go after easy targets like Aaron Schwartz proven that to you yet?

Sorry guys, we thought Obama was our friend, but he's thrown in the law enforcement and military types over the geeks. Color me a disappointed Obama voter, but at least I know where the Democrats stand. It'll be third party voting for me here on out.

Cutting sysadmins by 90% is a big indicator. There's also been a lot of talk from former NSA about security risks involved with contractors with top secret security clearances. The writing is on the on wall.

Don't get me wrong. I think Snowden is a patriot, but read between the lines here. Security breaks at the interface, and for the NSA, it broke at the interface between itself and it's contractors. Snowden was a Booz Allen Hamilton employee, so just like a diseased appendage threatening the rest of the body, I think the NSA is going to start cutting Booz off. Cronyism between the government and private business only extends so far. Booz has become a liability for the NSA, and they're not going to let that relationship, no matter how cozy, threaten the whole thing.

Any other Obama supporters out there so utterly disappointed in this administration? Call me naive, but good god this is depressing. Seems like the country at large is so much more willing to let this stuff slide because it's not Bush/Cheney doing it.

Congrats Democrats. Your complicity here has pretty much converted me to a third-party voter.

Wasn't so much about him being the first black President as much as him not being Bush/Cheney et. al. Still pretty premature of them since Obama ended up adopting and ramping up many of the foreign policies that made Bush/Cheney so despised by the world in the first place.