If it's "dishonest" to frame this as "Tesla can't sell cars in Texas" then it's equally "dishonest" to frame it as "Tesla can sell cars in Texas if the follow 'the rules'". Both of those statements are true.
No. Only one of those statements is true.
It's hard for me to have sympathy for tesla when every article claims that X state or Y state is ZOMG BANNING TESLA. No one is banning Tesla. It's intellectually dishonest. Tesla is whining that they don't like the rules, so they're just going to take their ball and go home. Look. It's the law. Want to sell cars? Get dealerships. Don't like the law? Lobby to change it. I would be a lot more interested in what Tesla and their supporters have to say if they would just present the facts honestly. It strikes me as a lot of whining and crying "unfair," when changing the law specifically for Tesla strikes me as less fair (however inevitable and necessary for that to happen *in due time*).
What I would like to see is a browser/scraper that sits on my own computer (not the cloud or a web server) so I can have complete control over it
This is really clever. The era of ethical computing services is yet upon its dawn. Find a way to monetize the idea and it just might make you rich. Remember, people said there was no (ethical) way to monetize search when google was getting started. They were (right) wrong!
Technically speaking, there's no reason all the end clients need to scape the web. The scraper could be completely centralized, but you'd run searches against a local database which is downloaded every couple days. All web searches could be performed locally. The NSA is making cheap storage work for them, maybe we should too
The fault of management? How can that be. Software is easy right? I mean, I can use the Excel... kinda. How much harder is it than that.
If these are our best and brightest programmers shoveling out this software, can we try the worst and dullest to see if they can do better?
We need more attitudes like this in management if we want to truely succeed as an engineering discipline.
It's similar to the financial industry where the mantra "best and brightest" is trotted out to excuse the salaries and bonuses of those who continually reek havoc in the financial markets and suffer no penalty.
I resent the comparison. The traders have a rock star like, individualistic culture. Software I've worked on has very much been a team with the individuals less in competition and more coming together to share responsibility for making the best product possible. Making quality software that stands up the barrage of unexpected situations (and even more untested situations) is a very difficult task, especially when it has to have a reasonable price tag.
If these are our best and brightest programmers shoveling out this software, can we try the worst and dullest to see if they can do better?
Someone's got a career in management ahead of them. I encourage you to give it a shot!
DDG's problem seems to be that it only shows the top link for a given domain in the main search results. It's a terrible design, I'll admit.
If you wanted privacy, use encryption - it's one of the initial uses of PGP - for encrypting email!
Heh, if only the gubmint would let anyone open an unmolested secure email service.
I miss Scroogle, even if the guy behind it was a little crazy. Hell, I'm a little crazy! Startpage just isn't the same (although, I generally use DuckDuckGo, and I encourage everyone to do so).
I actually like Unity. It's only problem is bugs (and that it's spyware). If everything worked as designed, I'd be pleased as peaches. I am disappointed that I have to replace it after finding out it is spyware (probably after a year of using it).
I have disabled the tracking features (I think), but that is not enough. I cannot in good conscience continue to support the project (and very likely, I will switch from Ubuntu as well in the near future).
Yeah, they are scumbags plain and simple.
I exclusively run Gentoo on my servers!
I'm sorry, what? A business model can somehow "not have a right to exist"? I hate to break it to you, but business models don't have rights. People, individuals have rights.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetorical_device
How is a business owner just supposed to "not track" someone? You realize every time you pay with a Credit card, that's tracked, right?
An unethical part of the credit card industry. I don't have a huge problem with those records being kept, but they should not be shared or sold without consent, just like medical data. In an ideal world, that data would have a lifetime, probably around 2 years, after which it is truely, actually destroyed.
You have a right to browse Websites. You have a right to use whatever user-agent you want.
And likewise, I have a right to send those Set-Cookie headers. You can honor them or not.
Despite your completely arbitrary assertion, there is nothing unethical about keeping logs of activity sent to ones own server, or requesting -- not even forcing, but politely asking via a Set-Cookie header -- that a customer identify themselves with a unique token. It is ethical because it is completely voluntary. If you don't want the tracking, don't send the Cookie header in your request. It's really as simple as that.
You are not seeing the big picture. Your technical understanding of the WWW is not completely wrong, but it is pretty outdated. The tracking mechanisms we're starting to see are going FAR beyond just cookies. But, even that is not the real problem. The real problem is that this data, especially when combined from many sources, provides an almost complete trace of our lives. The profit comes at the detriment of our privacy, one of the greatest things we have in the USA. We may very well see the unraveling of our republic in pursuit of profit. Things can, and very well might, get Orwellian very fast.
It's not just one small piece of the picture that is unethical, nor am I somehow philosophically totally opposed to keeping records. It's the vast amount of data companies are harvesting and keeping that is unethical. It's the sharing of all this data without true user consent that is unethical. It's the unreadable and tricky TOSes buried in every website that are unethical. It's the preservation of this data probably forever that is unethical. It is the wanton carelessness with which this data is stored, transmitted and shared that is unethical. It's the government getting their grubby hands on this data to then also store it forever that is unethical (in this case, pretty much illegal). This information is our very lives. It deserves dignity, because that is what American is supposed to stand for: the dignity of the individual. Because, that is what is right and ethical. And, to believe that we can't fix this with regulations is to believe that we are a limp-wristed and ineffectual nation. To believe that this is the only way we can have the internet is to be too lazy to solve the really challenging problems of our time. To let our ancestors and descendants down. Tackling the hard societal problems is what we are called to do in a democracy. To just waive our hands and say "it's impossible" is to surrender.
You know what, the problems with their business model aren't my problem. If their business model requires I provide information to a 3rd party
This is a point that gets lost in a lot of discussions about pervasive tracking on the internet and the necessity of advertising. Your business model does not have a right to exist. People seem to forget this. This is what regulations are for. If a business model is unethical, it should not exist. Just because ponzi schemes are a business model that works for some people, does not mean that that business model should exist. Tracking users without permission is unethical.
Besides, the internet existed before there were any ads. And, it existed before pervasive tracking. Nature hates a vacuum, especially when there is money to be made. Another form of advertising / monetization scheme will take the place of the completely unethical and, frankly, irresponsible, one that we have now.
None like google.
The game of life is a game of boomerangs. Our thoughts, deeds and words return to us sooner or later with astounding accuracy.
