Even those can be spoofed.

If you're worried that someone is going to tamper with DNS or packet injection then I would think any potential security risk goes FAR beyond the Amazon ads and would affect any network activity, basic web browsing included. To suggest that pulling a JSON string via an HTTP get request from amazon.com using an officially supported API is somehow more dangerous than searching on amazon.com in a web browser is absolutely insane. There may be *privacy* concerns here (and maybe bad taste) but there is very little cause for concern over security issues. And this is coming from someone who uses noscript/RequestPolicy/Cookie Monster/HTTPS Everywhere/Calomel SSL Validation in Firefox to lessen privacy/security exploits. See here for an explanation of how the query works.

There is justifiable paranoia, and then there is you...

1 members found this post helpful.

I certainly harbor much disdain over the business model driving ewboontew, and often let a rant out here and there in that regard.

I have, however, been assured by a good acquaintance of mine who is one of the developers at Canonical that the following makes (what many of us are loosely referring to as *malware*) it go away:

In all fairness I found myself [reluctantly] compelled to disclose this.

But then again, here we go with yet another example of a distro that instead of needing configuration to enable features one desires to use in production, is a distro that needs disconfiguration before it is [aruguably] safe to use.

Just my

I hope that helps!

.

Splitters!

This is an Ubuntu bug report, but I think it applies equally well to Slackware. I'd be most grateful if someone at SBo steps up to implement the feature!
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...l/+bug/1055766

4 members found this post helpful.

Heh, that's a good bug report.

Ha!

An interesting take on this issue, with a great mention of Slackware, can be seen here:

http://www.itwire.com/opinion-and-an...hs-big-mistake

1 members found this post helpful.

It's nice to think Pat makes a decent living from Slackware. Hopefully that is the case.

Patrick V. knows whats he's doing, which clearly isn't the case with Mark Shuttleworth.

Just because you have billions of dollars doesn't give you billions of IQ points. Better to be broke and smart than rich and stupid.

You can quote me on that.

Of course, it's best to reasonably wealthy and smart. Too much money can be a bad thing, so I only want enough money to accomplish my goals.

Keep in mind that Ubuntu is geared towards being a Windows replacement. As such look at the user base. These are people that never heard of a command prompt; anything that does not point and click is over their head. They want to be be able to do everything without regards to safety or operating system sanity.

I have tried Ubuntu. I went back to Slackware.

People that run Slackware want some control over what their system does. Slackware does not, nor do I expect it to, replace my Windows PC.

-JJ

I believe Shuttleworth's intention from the start was to make money, but the author of the linked article is right in that it did not make this at all clear to begin with - certainly not in blogs, certainly not in the forums and certainly not on their website. From all the "humanity to others" marketing, ubuntu came across as some kind of charity. If you compare the 'buntu website of 2006 to the present one, the difference is the difference between the website for a FOSS project and the website for a commercial enterprise.

All the bad press coming from canonical's apparent desperation to make some money is going to make the situation even worse. Canonical should have asked for donations - up front - years ago and continued selling cds, t-shirts, mugs and baseball caps. That's about the best they can hope for. Instead they have tried the underhanded methods which most users of free software are going to have a problem with and then sought to backtrack, explain away or compromise on these poor business moves. It does seem like Shuttleworth is completely out of touch with his consumer or is trying to target a different type of consumer - the type of consumer who just isn't interested in GNU/Linux and never will be. He has alienated the type of person who would have bought into ubuntu.

The result of this is that many users have felt cheated and over the years most have moved to other distros. This has almost set up 'buntu as a beginners' distro or "jumping off point" which cannot be at all what Shuttleworth intended.

I wonder where they'd put the ads on Ubuntu?! Is the ads flashing on the Ubuntu's desktop like the one on the free apps on my android phones?!

BTW, do they need someone to do somethings like translation? I could tranlate Chinese for them if they want to! Just want to help a bit.

The translation into Chinese has already started but there is still a lot of work and besides the more the merrier so you are welcome to create an account and contribute. Please read the guidelines before. I am on my phone now so won't post any links but everything is explained on the main page of the project. Have fun.