When you need a bigger tea cup...

[bra|10n]

...create a bigger storm of course!

http://www.infoworld.com/d/data-cent...03467?page=0,0

I'm thinking Paul Venezia is feeling a tad unnoticed by his current employer.

[nothingspecial]

Thread moved to Recurring Discussions.

[ajgreeny]

I am interested to know what exactly is meant by Mark S's statement mentioned in this quote from that posted link. What does he mean by "we have root"?

But the biggest problem I have with the Amazon debacle is another comment by Shuttleworth: "Don't trust us? Erm, we have root. You do trust us with your data already."

We surely don't give anyone else our personal and private data, certainly not anyone within canonical, and certainly not any of the sort of search info that you might use in a local filesystem search, for example bank account numbers, etc etc. I don't use and never will use any cloud storage (eg ubuntu-One) for precisely the reason that I don't trust others with my data, or not any more than is essential when using web banking.

Thank goodness I don't use unity, partly because my machines are not new and fast enough for it, but if I did, I would definitely remove the shopping-lens that seems to be behind this search feature.

[bra|10n]

@ajgreeny,

The rather innocuous statement of "we have root" simply points out that every time you apply updates to your system, you are in fact placing complete trust in your distribution (Ubuntu or any other) to do just that, and not implant code or seek to gather personal information or the like.
As to the removing of this shopping-lens then, as always this remains your prerogative.

[thatguruguy]

I particularly like this nugget from that article:

This by itself is a problem because nobody intends to search Amazon for sensitive personal information. For instance, someone might search for a file with a Social Security number or with a specific text string that is in no way intended to be read by anyone else. They're ostensibly searching through their own local file system, after all, and the thought that by default that search string will be sent out to not one, but two, third parties is extremely disturbing.

[Emphasis added by me]

Let's consider for a moment how completely idiotic this statement is.

1. First of all, the Dash doesn't do a full-text search of all documents.
2. It implies that a person would search for a document using the main Dash, rather than the document lens. Which people might do, but the document lens is a better way to search for documents.
3. It implies that documents are sent to Amazon, or anyone else. Which they aren't.
4. Frankly, the only way this would work is if you had several files with the social security numbers of individuals in the file name. Since the social security numbers themselves would be useless without identifying the person the social security number is associated with, the name of the person with that social security number would also need to be in the file name. If you routinely name files with both the social security numbers and names of associated individuals, you shouldn't be allowed to use a computer.

[bra|10n]

@thatguruguy,
And in what is now eight years of existence I don't know of a single occasion where Canonical have demonstrated the amount of 'apparent stupidity' they are being accused of, hence the thread title.

I'm not a Unity user, but in a similar vain to the rubbish in the link I posted I read and hear other criticism; Ubuntu's lack of contribution upstream, their lone deviation of referring to the kernel as the 'Ubuntu kernel', and the endless debate over the size of it's user-base. In my mind, Red Hat and Gentoo installs aside, I believe Ubuntu dwarfs the total remaining Linux ecosphere. And the recent rumblings of whether Linux wouldn't be better served by adopting a common base, package management and core application set? Ridiculous if the above generalisations I make are in fact accurate. Why would Ubuntu go back and retrieve the projects that fell off along the way? Give them a helping hand up?, again?
And with this in mind, and knowing that contributions cannot logically be directed downstream (as a counter argument), then perhaps it's time Mark Shuttleworth got the elbows out and repositioned Ubuntu. Ultimately I believe this will happen , but all in good time of course...

[vasa1]

Another example of blogger/commentard/journo rage:

I have to admit, when I first read of the news I was also enraged with a certain amount of anger and honestly couldn’t believe that our beloved Ubuntu had fallen victim to the commercial trap.

[cariboo907]

Thank goodness I don't use unity, partly because my machines are not new and fast enough for it, but if I did, I would definitely remove the shopping-lens that seems to be behind this search feature.

You don't even need to remove the shopping lens, as it can be turned off in System Settings->Privacy.

[bra|10n]

"but it also allows to indirectly identify the user."

Without telling this little porky the author just wouldn't have a headline...

http://attheedgeoftime.blogspot.co.u...ping-lens.html

Alan Pope is a follower of this day tripper... Interesting to see if he follows up with a response

[Mikeb85]

Using 12.10, the main issue I have with the Amazon lens is usability. I'm not shopping everyday. I don't want to be.

The privacy menu gives the option to include online search results or not. But the main scope only searches Amazon results, not Wikipedia or other online scopes you may have installed. If you change the privacy option to not include online search results, all your web-based scopes cease to work.

If Amazon results competed with Wikipedia results and the other scopes/lenses you have installed, it would be a good user experience. Instead it overshadows everything else.

Canonical should have been happy with their Amazon web-app they included in 12.10, or simply included a separate Amazon scope. Not integrated it into the main scope.

It annoys me, so it's no longer on my computer, even though odds are this Christmas I'll shop with Amazon, through the web-app Canonical provided...