I don't see where Tynt is claiming that visitors to sites that use Tynt are their customers. The same thing is true of Google Analytics. These services exist for the site owners, not the visitors to those sites. Anyone who believes a site's visitors are the customers these services are targeting is simply deluding themselves in their arrogance and self-importance.

Why should I write this tool myself? I can sign up for Tynt (and did some time ago) and use a tool that has already been written. The same thing can be said of Google Analytics. Given enough time, knowledge, and incentive, I am sure I could write a similar tool myself. Again, why should I? Someone else has already written it and it does what I need it to do. Since you're such an advocate of writing your own software tools, then I would expect that you've written your own operating system/browser/whatever entirely from scratch. No? Certainly, anyone using an operating system/browser/whatever could have written it themselves instead of giving money to a third party.

Furthermore, I very much doubt that *anyone* who uses Tynt on their site could have written it themselves. I've seen it in use on smaller websites created and maintained by people who are clearly not programmers, but they are able to follow directions on copying and pasting some pre-written code into their site.

Since Google Analytics is also building a massive database of viewer data, then I assume you'll be happy to rant against that, as well?

I don't view you as corrupting their service. Instead, you are providing exactly the kind of information that I'm looking for as someone who uses Tynt. I doubt your highlighting is exactly random, as you are reading the text you've highlighted at some point. If you're repeatedly selecting text, then that tells me you are lingering in that area of the content, which means that either I need to improve it and make it more clear or you find that information particularly interesting. The tricky part is determining whether you are particularly interested in the content or if word choice+sentence structure+order of information presented+etc is impairing comprehension.

Of course it's a feature for site owners. The whole service is a service for site owners. Why does this confuse/surprise you?

I use Tynt's service on a cattery website for which I am responsible (www.tabaxipixiebob.com). The primary reason I use Tynt's service is for the attribution link because I need to know if another Pixie Bob breeder copies the site owner's content and uses it on their site. This has happened to at least one other breeder that I know of, where that person's personal information (information about their employment, the name of their spouse, etc) was copied and used verbatim. So, if something like this happens, then I need to be able to contact that breeder and negotiate a change to the content of their site. The attribution service also can help generate backlinks to the site, assisting with search rankings and such.

The other reason I use it is because I want to be able to improve the content on the site. So, if I know what content is being highlighted while being read, then I know what parts of a page are generating interest. A heat map, of sorts, and content that is not highlighted as often probably needs improvement. I view this aspect of Tynt as no different than a writer or movie producer lurking in forums where their work is being discussed to find out what parts are most interesting and what is most criticized/lampooned. I'll grant that I am not *asking* visitors whether they want to share this data, but at the same time, it isn't like I can exactly have a conversation with even a small fraction of the people who visit the site since I have no idea who they are or how to contact them. If I could round up a focus group and get some feedback, then I wouldn't need to use Tynt for this (but I would still use it for the attribution part of the service).

Hope this helps to demystify the use of Tynt a little for you.

Well, and that is true. However, all my external drives are USB.

Thanks for that information. I realized after I hit Submit that I should have inquired what others' experiences were like (I did preview, but that still wasn't enough to save me from myself). I'm going to guess its my Windows config because this experience is uniform across all my external hard drives and, with the one exception, they are all USB2. I'll have a look at that.

I'm interested to see Windows 7's USB performance with an upgrade to USB v3. While I am still on XP myself, I am definitely underwhelmed by Windows' ability to transfer large amounts of data via USB. I just had to back up a bunch of stuff (25G) this past Friday and, since I was already logged into Windows and was feeling lazy, I decided to just do that from Windows. It took 5 hours to transfer the files and this was a USB2 drive plugged into a USB2 port. When I later copied the same data back, I did it while logged into Linux (Fedora 11, specifically) and it only took 20 minutes. I've had the same experience transferring files to a USB1 drive plugged into a USB2 port: 15G transferred to that drive in 17 minutes in Linux, but Windows was telling me it was going to take something on the order of 23 hours! I concede that I have not attempted this experiment with Windows 7 at all, yet (No one I know has it).

The idea is to keep the birds away, not give them convenient perches. :)

LOL. An excellent point and thanks :)

Ok. Fine. The article says nothing about traditional renewable resources. Happy?

I see nothing in the article that says they feel this is better than wind or solar power. Instead, it is simply stated that they feel this will reduce their carbon footprint relative to using heating oil or natural gas only. Renewable energy sources aren't mentioned in the article, at all.

Good point. I've never used MSN Messenger and didn't realize it pulls that crap. MS should be forced to make their programs follow user preferences and then alternative browsers should be bundled. Some of the other comments, I see, are saying this should be put onto the OEMs instead of Microsoft. My attitude is "whatever". Either option is fine by me as long as the ruling expands the user's choices by actually appearing to expand user choices rather than by appearing to limit them.

So, just bundle multiple browsers instead of removing the only browser currently bundled. Once the user is aware they have choices, they might start to seek out lesser known alternatives. Even if users don't initially start looking for other alternatives, some will eventually and it will make it easier to develop a competing browser.

Well, I think the national distribution would be based on Fedora, but would quickly take on its own development cycle, feel, application set, etc. I think if they don't do this, that is a mistake because why would you want to stick with a dev cycle not of your own choosing? Regardless whether you start with Debian, Gentoo, Fedora, or whatever distribution as your base, I wouldn't want to be stuck only with their dev cycle, default application set, and etc. I think it would be good for the national distro to use national icons - the Russian flag, the bear (I'm not actually certain if the bear is a Russian icon or a Soviet icon), and whatever else. Also, they could contribute improved support for Cyrillic alphabet back to the rest of the world. Personally, that would be a distro worth making my home machine triple-boot for. I'd very much like to see what it looks like.