I never use the Dash (especially for internet stuff)

[nrundy]

I keep seeing on blogs how there's all this increasing internet activity in the Dash.

Personally, I don't care for this. If I want to do something online, I open a web browser. A web browser has the security extensions (e.g., noscript etc), https display with EV notification so I know when the connection is secure, advanced/personalized search capabilities (e.g., via Firefox's Search-bar) that I can customize however I want. Essentially, a web-browser is a much better tool for accessing the web than the Dash is.

I rarely use the Dash for its other intended use--to find files. I found I never use the Zeitgeist feature (literally--never). I just never need to know my recent history.

Once in a while I use Dash to open an application that is not in my Launcher. But even doing this is extremely rare. For example, I'm much more likely to click a file and use the right-click context menu to open the app I need (e.g., right-clicking and selecting Open With to open Kid3-qt to deal with an mp3 file).

I really like Unity, but find the Dash to be the most useless thing. I especially don't like the increasing focus on making the Dash connect to the internet for everything--this I actively dislike and am only interested in how to disable this capability.

I wish the developers were devoting more time & energy to developing interfaces or ways to communicate to the user the internet connections that Ubuntu/Unity is making to the internet and simultaneously giving users more control over these connections. It seems instead they're just focused on making everything connect with little time devoted to giving users control over these connections.

[Copper Bezel]

This doesn't address your larger point, but a factual correction - you are using Zeitgeist when you search for recent files. You're not using the Activity Journal front end, but Unity makes massive use of Zeitgeist itself (and that's largely what Zeitgeist is for.)

[Mikeb85]

I have 12.10 installed. There's a new 'Privacy' setting that allows you to not only control whether or not the dash searches for internet results, but also to control exactly (and I mean exactly) what zeitgeist tracks.

[Copper Bezel]

He's not ranting about Zeitgeist. He's talking about the fact that Unity's cloud and web features just work without fiddling with any arcane, irrelevant, or nonsensical configuration settings, which obviously reduces his freedoms.