Because Windows isn't always the best tool for the job? Because having a diverse ecosystem of IT appliances that can all share authentication and other such services is a VERY valuable thing?

Yes, I can see how a very rational assumption would infuriate you. Especially since it hurts your own argument.

They only way this would be un-ethical is if Canonical was forcing people to use Ubuntu and making the "feature" impossible to remove (at least without significant effort).

You have a choice to NOT use Ubuntu if you don't want to. Does that make their inclusion of Amazon search to their desktop unethical? Hardly. There are plenty of alternatives out there (Debian, Fedora, Linux Mint, Gentoo, CentOS, etc...). If Amazon search becomes the price of entry into the Canonical/Ubuntu "eco-system" then that's the price you agree to when you choose it.

You're are right about one thing though. Ideally it should be an option on first-time set up. Maybe if RMS suggested such a course of action, Canonical and others would listen to him instead of dismissing him as a crazy person ranting about his own personal paranoia.

Aside from flat-out removing the package as the AC suggested, there's more than likely an easy way to disable it in system settings.

If my Grandmother cared enough about her privacy that she didn't want searches to show Amazon shopping results, she probably would Google how to turn it off. She's not the most tech saavy, but Google isn't *that* hard to use. Also, if she were using Ubuntu it would probably be on a system I set up for her, and not one she did herself.

Do you routinely run local searches in Ubuntu's GUI for whatever depraved porn you have? Do you include PII as search terms? No? Then whatever you are searching for probably isn't anything that really matters in terms of Amazon knowing more about you ("resume.docx" This guy must want resume writing software! or maybe Microsoft Word! Oh, wait this is Linux.... He can't use any software we sell.... Hmmm.... Maybe sell him a printer and some resume paper? Yeah, that's the ticket!).

The point is that it's not permanent, it can be removed/disabled, AND it's not really any more invasive than your average Google Search.

QFT Was about to say something similar... Why not just disable it? Surely it's not *that* hard. At worst it should be editing the source, removing that particular piece, and recompiling... Which in the magical fantasy land that RMS lives in, everyone and their Grandmother knows how to do.

A google search showed me that apparently they publish their Facebook API's to GitHub... Link

Doesn't make it any less fishy, but it's more info about them...

Correction, we did it because the British wanted to protect BP and misled us with misinformation indicating that Iran's government was unstable and about to go Communist (playing off the ridiculously strong anti-Communist sentiment in the US at the time) and give all those "valuable oil resources" over to the USSR.

We were played as pawns in someone else's game. Not the other way around. Doesn't make what we did right, but that is the truth of the ordeal.

As opposed to the Western Expansion and Manifest Destiny just over a century earlier that lead to the near complete destruction of several unique and indigenous cultures?

It was more heinous than that? Really?

American History is no more bloody or filled with acts we would now call "criminal" than any other country to have ever existed. Does that make our past actions right? Hell no, but they happened and there's not really a lot we can do about many of them now. Stop playing the blame game. How this fight started. Who started this fight. If you wanted to you could probably link all of it to the Crusades or Roman Expansion.... None of that should matter more than what we do going forward.

we stop racism by NOT CARING when all speakers are white or black or Muslim or Christian or gay or straight or male or female... Diversity exists naturally, and can't be forced or legislated (when it becomes blatant discrimination).

One could argue that rehashing classic episodes is pure laziness on the part of the writers. I'd prefer to see more original stories than rehashes (especially if they're as fan-pandering as the ones you describe).

In the original run, Companions very VERY rarely died (only one I can think of off the top of my head is Adrick). A few were psychologically scarred by their time with the Doctor (ie: Teegan), but for the most part they all lived "happily ever after" (well, to some extent anyways).

This article is nothing more than flamebait.

George Takei has made similar posts. Facebook wants to charge him for the amusing lolcats and whatever else he posts. When he posts about his book? Yeah, then it makes sense to charge him, but for the other stuff? Not so much.

His current solution was to tell everyone to add his page to their "interests" and then you start seeing his posts in your news-feed again.

Article about both Cuban and Takei's frustrations

Apple seems to think so (I don't know about Android).

One of the shiny new features with the launch of iOS 5 (over a year ago) was the ability to backup to iCloud if you wanted to. You also have the option of doing the backup via iTunes. The big question is whether having on-device restore functionality makes sense on a mobile device. Shouldn't your goal be that this should only be something you need to do sparingly? Why would you devote such a huge chunk of available disk space to something that the average consumer should (ideally) never have to use? It makes no sense.

Apple has iCloud for free which does give you so many GB of storage for photos, documents and some other stuff. Media purchased via iTunes is available via iCloud and for $25/year all your other music (regardless of where/how you got it) can be too.
Android has Google Drive and other Google cloud services that let you do the same things and probably a few more.

The big point here is that Microsoft is still stuck in the past, doing a lot of the things they used to, because in the PC world it worked... That doesn't mean it'll work well (or be a good idea) in the Mobile world.