Because everyone knows there's no way a government can have the power to protect citizens and ensure corporations don't fuck them over by ensuring interoperability. It's not like they have these things called legislatures that can make laws or anything. Besides, corporations were created to give all the wealth of a nation (and world) to one or a small group of individuals, not for the common good of society!

Aren't standards something the FCC is supposed to protect? Even better though an international organization should champion standards. I would suggest the ISO but after the whole OOXML fiasco they seem to be okay with declaring these same kinds of proprietary standards as standards.

Real standards need to rely on only open pieces throughout, and revisions especially if frequent should be backwards compatible. If you break compatibility, you should be creating a totally new and separate standard.

Oh Slashdot, you're such a good opinion/polling testing site for corporations...

Mozilla, Google, and others make data mining revenue, so Canonical wants in too. Funny, since I've been doing a lot lately while browsing to prevent tracking with user agent strings, cookies, scripts, and am considering Tor to hide my IP even. Meanwhile, Ubuntu is headed in the opposite direction. Time to switch distros after this.

Lol, they "need money" only if they come up with a business model that is moral, otherwise they can find other jobs. If they are going to data mine users, at the very least they need to build in options for easily opting into that instead of forcing that onto users.

lol, says the CEOs of the oil industry. Great excuse, but there are other solutions that don't sacrifice morals.

At least if it gets bad someone can release a bundle without those included, or better yet an easy privacy option to enable/disable them, the way it should have been to begin with. I suggested it in the Ubuntu forums but that didn't go over very well.

I know of some ways, and they don't involve spying on users. How about offering installation and development services for two?

You can make money via paid development/support and other ways. You can have morals and have a business at the same time, it is possible.

There is no clear separation. When I do "quick searches" for private documents on my computer, I want to know that it is a search only on my computer. It's not in a "search online" lens, it's doing it in "search movies" and "search music". If you want to be data mined though, be my guest.

I do not help developers by offering to be spied upon, and at least then I would have a choice. The way it is now I have to do something proactive to protect myself. Simply moving to another distro is all that isn't *buntu.

You forgot the other ones. You need to remove the video and music lenses which pull info from YouTube, Google, and others, otherwise you will be querying those businesses even if you are just trying to search your own computer for content. It's a form of spyware.

Also having to remove crapware you don't want after you install something was an often-heard compaint about Windows. I'd rather not have it be on Linux now too.

Canonical: You're getting your morals turned around. Community should come before money. Forget what the spirit of Ubuntu was supposed to represent?

But your grandma got Linux because of you, and you shouldn't recommend spyware or adware to anyone.

Artificial scarcity. It is the backbone of the American economy as well as many other corporatist nations. Since you can't make money off free stuff, stores won't carry it. Even when selling hardware, if they can make more money selling restricted software along with it, they will. Before if you got a discount from buying a pre-built computer with crapware on it, at least you could wipe it all and install whatever you wanted. Now with “secure boot”, they can push control onto the software level and control the entire software stack if the wanted to. Don't like that Windows 8 Crapware Edition on there? Too bad, you're stuck with it, and the Crapware Edition won't allow you to remove the crapware on it either, plus it comes with adware and spyware (when you purchased this computer, you automatically opted-in to provide us with “information for marketing purposes”) pre-loaded which you also can't remove. I can also see this entire system pushing out build-it-yourself computers since the pre-built one offers more money. Even if some semblance of DIY hardware is still available, at the very least the pre-built systems will ultimately cost less because the hardware vendors will get a cut of the marketing and data mining profits.

I just figured I would share the future in advance with everyone so that the reality would set in sooner: Start supporting vendors which sell pre-built computers that aren't locked down as well as standardized DIY hardware. Also, start supporting home fabrication projects which will soon be able to create primitive computers, because ultimately unregulated capitalism will always find some way to fuck you otherwise. DIY hardware is already horribly unstandardized and consumer-raping. If you live in a country which is regulated so you feel you don't have to worry - just wait, you will. There is meaning behind the saying with the roots and the evil. No, not the recipe for making evil root beer.

I doubt the mega store chain thing will work since Intel, AMD, etc can simply give Walmart and others a bigger cut of the profits to keep the competition out, one of the bigger problems in the capitalistic world in many countries right now I think. I think Internet sales, smaller shops, and the fab@home movement perhaps might be the only way to get past all the anticompetitive roadblocks at this point, at least at first until things take off.

So...it's a CPU that uses an actual real standard for connecting to the rest of the motherboard/system?

Wow. Standards for freedom for end users, something the megacorps purposefully forget about. What a concept.