Intend counts a lot. With a name like The Pirate Bay everyone pretty much knows what the site is meant, and used, for.

The judge actually specifically addressed that issue.

Neither of those work because they block IP's too.

Except that it's only limited to one site, and the decision was only made because TPB didn't start filtering dutch visitors like earlier court verdict said. They have also been playing games setting up additional domains and ip's, because they know companies have to go via slow courts to get them banned.

The verdict also said that if they submit non-TPB domains or ip's and violate that court decision, they will be legally liable.

Why is that idiotic? It's entrepreneurship. My income is completely based on commissions and has been for the last five years. I'm not even working for anyone, as I do affiliate marketing on the internet (and no, not the spammy type, the useful type where my visitors actually benefit from my sites). Sure, there's some insecurity in a job like that, but there always is if you run a business. On the other hand on good times I've also made significantly more than I would get if I were paid a normal salary instead of commissions. On top of that I am free to travel the world at the same time and can wake up (and take holidays) when I want to. Everyone's own choices.

The article clearly notes (and shows screenshot) that the ads that will be displayed on your news feed are from pages you have liked. I only like pages I want to get updated information from (like Team Fortress 2 and some bands), and I get their news updates already. So what's the problem?

Their back-end is quite technically outstanding. Those Twitter clones couldn't handle such load. Apart from that, what sites on the internet actually are that technically outstanding? Pretty much none. The most valued asset of websites is their users and community.

It's not an anti-Google or anti-Linux spin, those are just good examples that everyone knows. Linux is struggling to get market share, and while Google has successful products, they have tons of which they just cancel or someone never hears about (or has a reason to use). For example, see this story about the cancellation of Google Health. It's filled with people who haven't even heard about it, or didn't know why they'd use it.

Sales and marketing is mostly finding out what a person needs, why he needs that and how they can help the person with it. It's also making it easier for customers to buy your services or products, and letting them know such product exists (to fix a need, again). What is so immoral about that?

I've stumbled upon many programmers who are trying to sell their products to customers but they lack total understanding of it. They want to spend time with the product, and almost loathe customers (which is shared feeling between lots of geeks and programmers). But you can't run a business like that. You need someone to take care of the customers and researching what their product can fix. "Here is the thing, maybe it does something for you" isn't really good selling point. You need to figure out and tell the customer what he would gain by buying your product or service, from the customers point of view.

Programmers themselves really often make the mistake of thinking that everyone else's job is simple and easy and doesn't require much knowledge, or that companies should be spending more resources on programmers and IT than other departments. Best example is sales and marketing people. Programmers think it is completely unnecessary, but quite frankly, they would perform really poorly trying to do that kind of work. And I say this is a programmer-since-I-was-a-kid, but only picked up some sales and marketing skills after becoming an adult (I run my own business).

I think I also know why programmers suck at sales and marketing people. Programmers, and geeks, quite often lack the social skills and knowledge of human psychology to succeed in it. I know I used to, and many slashdotters say they'd rather be left alone to work on code. Frankly, these are important skills. Programmers have the ability to read code, error messages and everything else that is presented to them as facts and clearly. They have the mindset of a computer, "do x, get y". What they lack is reading people and other things when it isn't presented to them in a straight, clear form. Programmers fail to see subtle hints and expressions. They need it in clear. Maybe it's a difference in brain or something. It's also why so many people with Asperger syndrome are overly fascinated by computers. They also cannot read subtly things, they need it in clear. Code, compiler messages and computers provide that.

Which is also why I don't understand why programmers and IT usually put down other departments like sales and marketing. Maybe because they don't understand that it is actually hard work, and requires learning just like you do with programming books. Yes, some people will be good at it naturally, but majority aren't. It's the same with programmers and pretty much anything. The fact is, sales and marketing is hard work. It's especially hard to do it correctly, as it's usually the sales and marketing people that are responsible for the product gaining any users.

You can have everything right in your product but if no one knows about it and if there's no one telling you what would your product improve on the persons work or life, then your product is almost useless. This same trend can be seen with Linux and to an extend with some Google (and other geeky companies) products. Just throwing something at wall to see if it sticks doesn't work. You need to do your research, you need to interact with your customers and most importantly, you need to provide them with something that actually fixes a need they have. "But GPL is free, and leads to code liberation" frankly doesn't cut it. Most people care about their own needs, and that does nothing about them. Sales and marketing people are good at researching, reading and telling people, from the customer point of view, that what would it fix in their lives, and it is an essential skill.

If people are choosing Google then why is Google paying OEM's/Manufacturers/Browser makers/Shareware authors over billion an year to set google.com as default homepage and/or search engine and to spread Chrome?

And why did Chrome in Russia have specific switch in code that defaulted the search to Google instead of Yandex?

That's because people aren't choosing Google. They get shoved to Google in various ways.

I was obviously talking about how people usually do it. Of course you can do all sorts of tricks or server side determination on when to include GA, but that's completely beside the point and not how majority do it.

Yes, because someone who has different opinion is obviously a paid shill. Do you even notice how paranoid you sound?

That makes no sense. Facebook like button really isn't on all pages of the internet because it makes no sense to have it on them, and isn't as widespread either. But every site wants to see how many visitors they have and all other information about them.

But hey, if you don't believe me, take a look at Blekko's Grep the Web. As part of crawling the web they do exactly this kind of stuff, to determine how many websites have something compared to other.

Here we can find number of domains with Google Analytics: 12,380,670
Here we can find number of domains with Facebook like button: 522,242 + 817,817 = 1,340,059

Yep, exactly the same. Except that Google Analytics is installed on 11 million more domains than Facebook like button.