RE: [gentoo-user] [OT] Mozilla Google behind the scenes payola
-Original Message- From: Bob Sanders [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 12 August 2005 03:52 To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Mozilla Google behind the scenes payola On Thu, 11 Aug 2005 21:19:43 +0200 Antoine [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: How would you feel if a company bought lots of too-small-to-be-readily-visible flying cameras (like the mosquito-cams in the Dan Brown book Deception Point :-)) and followed you around wherever you went (in these public places, which would certainly include shops but not the bathroom...)? Without you being conscious of it? Very useful to follow someone around to get their (window)shopping habits, and almost certainly completely illegal. How are these different (apart from legality)? Um...you may not know this, but Holly is in the UK. London in particular has cameras all over the place. From what I've heard, it's not possible to walk in public there without being recorded. In public, there is already a trail of her activities. Bob Just FYI: There's also cameras installed in the toilets of many establishments. A friend of a friend got arrested for snorting class A substances in the lav. The funny thing is that he was a copper and he had confiscated the said substance a few minutes earlier . . . :D Quoting from WSJ.com: In all, there are at least 500,000 cameras in the city, and one study showed that in a single day a person could expect to be filmed 300 times. Now if you add the times you've been to the toilet you see that Holly is quite accurate in saying that you can only be alone in your thoughts - Big Brother is watching . . . -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Mozilla Google behind the scenes payola
Neil Bothwick schreef: On Fri, 12 Aug 2005 15:17:40 +0200, Holly Bostick wrote: Big Brother may be watching you, but you watch Big Brother-- that show with the incredibly ironic name-- don't you? No way! So who are 'you' (generic) to talk about 'privacy'? Much less as a inalienable right, when it's clear that this right can be happily bought and sold? The contestants are not really selling their privacy, just performing for pay. but even if they were, it is theirs' to give or sell, not ours to take. I thought that the whole point of an inalienable right was that it could not be bought or sold (or given or taken, for that matter). I was thinking about the distinction you made, and wondering if it meant that I could legally sell my (supposed) inalienable right to freedom/liberty on eBay (i.e., can I sell myself into slavery-- not indentured servitude, but actual slavery, which would be the only condition in which I had sold my inalienable right, rather than just my labor for a specified amount of time). If I did, would the buyer be performing an illegal act by buying my right to liberty? The contract itself is, by your reasoning, perfectly legal, but it is illegal to hold slaves, because it compromises my inalieanble right to liberty... which I have sold, which (according to you) I may do. But of course, I do not have the right to sell my liberty at all in·al·ien·a·ble Audio pronunciation of inalienable P Pronunciation Key (n-ly-n-bl, -l--) adj. That cannot be transferred to another or others: inalienable rights. because inalienable rights may not be transferred to others, by any means, willing or unwilling. So any such contract is invalid. I really question the distinction that Big Brother contestants are performing for pay, rather than selling their right to privacy. At what point is the distinction made that they're 'performing', rather than just 'living' under specified conditions? Because they're on TV? But that's a circular argument-- they sold their right to privacy (which they presumably may not sell, if such a right is inalienable) to be on TV, but because they're on TV, their right to privacy no longer applies, because any appearance on TV is classified as a 'performance', even if that performance appears indistinguishable from 'real life'. Witness the many live surgery shows now appearing. That actually *is* real life... isn't it? But the patient has consented to overlook (for pay, or other compensation) their (inalienable?) right to privacy when their body is being sliced open (or is the interior of your body not private?) in order that it be televised. In any case, it looks to be a damn slippery slope to be starting down, if one really is concerned about what 'others' may observe about one and what others may not observe. Is the right to privacy actually inalienable? If so, is all of it inalienable, or just some of it? How much? If not, and we have no inalienable right to privacy in any degree, then all we're talking about is a (relatively) minor agreement between humans in order to maintain society (as opposed to a meta-agreement like the inalienable rights to life, liberty, etc), and those are always going to be something where some of us don't agree with the compromise ultimately reached. But this is back to where I started... the ultimate meaning of the right to privacy and the extent and nature of such a right, is a far more important question than whether Mozilla is accepting dirty money from Google, who (possibly) violates said right...because it's impossible to judge whether someone is violating a right that is indistinct in extent and ambiguous in meaning. Holly -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Mozilla Google behind the scenes payola
On Fri, 12 Aug 2005 17:16:21 +0200, Holly Bostick wrote: The contestants are not really selling their privacy, just performing for pay. but even if they were, it is theirs' to give or sell, not ours to take. I thought that the whole point of an inalienable right was that it could not be bought or sold (or given or taken, for that matter). I was thinking about the distinction you made, and wondering if it meant that I could legally sell my (supposed) inalienable right to freedom/liberty on eBay (i.e., can I sell myself into slavery-- not indentured servitude, but actual slavery, That's not a valid comparison, because the idi^H^H^Hcontestants on BB are only selling their privacy for a limited time, not for good. Most of them probably find their lives become private again far sooner than they had wished, the talentless, publicity-seeking wannabes. Besides that, if freedom is an inalienable right, does that not include the freedom to sell that freedom? Not that we really have any truly inalienable rights. -- Neil Bothwick I'd give real money if he'd shut up! pgpCQVZYLYqSx.pgp Description: PGP signature
RE: [gentoo-user] [OT] Mozilla Google behind the scenes payola
-Original Message- From: Holly Bostick [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 11 August 2005 01:32 To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Mozilla Google behind the scenes payola [snip] And if my theory holds water in any way, then the Mozilla Foundation really would have had no choice but to spin off a for-profit subsidiary... after all, if the money is rolling in (via perfectly legitimate and socially acceptable means), it has to go somewhere, and it can't go to the N-F-P foundation beyond a certain level. An accountant could probably advise better, but I would think that there are appropriate vehicles (e.g. NfP trusts) which would allow financial profits that cannot be expensed in activities supporting the Moz Organisation objectives within the financial year, to be stored and in turn invested thereafter both in for profit and not schemes so that they may grow and prosper. Making an economic profit is not a problem in itself. Compromising Moz.Org./OSS objectives in seeking to derive this profit creates a conflict of interest and therefore it becomes a problem. Of course this may not be the case with the FF/Google syndication, I don't really know. Perhaps what we have here is a strategic failure; i.e. Moz could not come up with valid ideas to promptly expense the profit in support of the development of FF and other products and therefore were forced to spin-off. - [OT] Holly, you mention that you have a zillion search engines incorporated in your browser . . . 8O Where do you get them from? How can these be added to a browser? [/OT] -- Regards, Mick -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Mozilla Google behind the scenes payola
Michael Kintzios schreef: [OT] Holly, you mention that you have a zillion search engines incorporated in your browser . . . 8O Where do you get them from? How can these be added to a browser? [/OT] The vast majority of them come from mozdev.org itself. If you click the search engine button (the Google logo, in this case), you get a drop-down list of available search engines (as you probably know, Firefox includes several by default other than Google-- Amazon.com, Creative Commons, Ebay, Yahoo, and dictionary.com). At the bottom of this list there is an entry More (or Add) search engines, which, if clicked, opens http://mycroft.mozdev.org/download.html . On this page, you can find a whole lot of search engine plugins for any purpose-- mostly for specific sites or purposes, including Gentoo Packages (packages.gentoo.org), Gentoo Bugzilla, by both summary (word/name) and bug #, the Gentoo Forums, Gentoo-Portage, and the Gentoo Wiki (although all of these engines are not necessarily where you'd expect if you go through the listing, but putting 'Gentoo' in the page's search box will bring them all up). Debian also has some engine plugins, as does Mandrake (just one). Not to mention various dictionaries in many languages, shopping sites, and other special interest categories. Also, a few sites that I visit have plugins that have not (yet) been accepted by Firefox, and so are available from the website itself. You may also find this to be the case. There are two caveats: 1. this may have changed, but before the recent 'upgrade every day' period (where Firefox was being revised every day over the course of 4 days), the folder /usr/lib/MozillaFirefox/searchplugins (now /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/searchplugins) was a root-only folder, meaning that you had to install search engine plugins as root. It also meant that an upgrade would remove all your installed plugins, restoring the 5 default plugins. There are Mozilla bugs 'open' for this issue, but I don't know their current status. The bugs themselves are linked in the thread of the MozillaZine forums I link to below. I solved this by a) changing the permissions of the searchplugins folder so that I could write to it as a user, so I could install search engines as a user; b) once installed, copying the searchplugins folder to /root as a backup, so that if an upgrade wiped the folder, I could just copy it back. 2) Search plugin order is rather random, which can be a problem if you have a lot of search plugins. You can, however, set the order of your search plugins. I set them up in groups of similar type, in order of likelihood of use, with Google Linux-- rather than Google Main-- as first (because my Google searches are more likely Linux-specific than 'general'). Google itself is second, and the IMDB is third, since I'm always running to my computer during commercials to get a list of actors in the movie I'm watching -- I know her/him from *somewhere*, but Then dictionaries/thesauri (in two languages), then Gentoo-specific engines, then other Linux engines-- LQF has a Firefox search plugin, did you know?-- and so on. The way to do this is to set up a user.js (easy with the ChromEdit plugin), and is documented on the MozillaZine forums here: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=177335 (a summary is in the first post, more detailed instructions on page 5, see the post by Roger77, which gives the format for the entries). The nice thing about this is that user.js is in your profile folder, thus is unaffected by an upgrade, so once you restore your backup plugins (if that's still necessary), the reinstalled plugins will be in the correct order (your order, in other words). Anyway, the search box is one of my favorite features of Firefox. I watch my bf (a dedicated Mozilla Windows user) typing 'synonym cadence' in the *Google* Bar because he's trying to remember a(n English) word for a kind of poetic rythmic title (which turned out to be 'alliteration', which he remembered himself after throwing a snit because the help he had asked me for was in some way unsatisfactory. The point being, Google didn't lead him to the answer, but a targeted search from an appropriate site might have), and regretting that he won't even try Firefox, where he could just change the search engine to thesaurus.com (or InterGlot Synonym NL), type the word and have the specific search results he needed in many fewer steps. But to each his or her own. I like efficency, and the ability to customize the search box helps me gain more efficiency in my searches. Holly -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
RE: [gentoo-user] [OT] Mozilla Google behind the scenes payola
Wow! Thanks, I've bookmarked this message. :-) -Original Message- From: Holly Bostick [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 11 August 2005 13:39 To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Mozilla Google behind the scenes payola Michael Kintzios schreef: [OT] Holly, you mention that you have a zillion search engines incorporated in your browser . . . 8O Where do you get them from? How can these be added to a browser? [/OT] The vast majority of them come from mozdev.org itself. If you click the search engine button (the Google logo, in this case), you get a drop-down list of available search engines (as you probably know, Firefox includes several by default other than Google-- Amazon.com, Creative Commons, Ebay, Yahoo, and dictionary.com). At the bottom of this list there is an entry More (or Add) search engines, which, if clicked, opens http://mycroft.mozdev.org/download.html . On this page, you can find a whole lot of search engine plugins for any purpose-- mostly for specific sites or purposes, including Gentoo Packages (packages.gentoo.org), Gentoo Bugzilla, by both summary (word/name) and bug #, the Gentoo Forums, Gentoo-Portage, and the Gentoo Wiki (although all of these engines are not necessarily where you'd expect if you go through the listing, but putting 'Gentoo' in the page's search box will bring them all up). Debian also has some engine plugins, as does Mandrake (just one). Not to mention various dictionaries in many languages, shopping sites, and other special interest categories. Also, a few sites that I visit have plugins that have not (yet) been accepted by Firefox, and so are available from the website itself. You may also find this to be the case. There are two caveats: 1. this may have changed, but before the recent 'upgrade every day' period (where Firefox was being revised every day over the course of 4 days), the folder /usr/lib/MozillaFirefox/searchplugins (now /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/searchplugins) was a root-only folder, meaning that you had to install search engine plugins as root. It also meant that an upgrade would remove all your installed plugins, restoring the 5 default plugins. There are Mozilla bugs 'open' for this issue, but I don't know their current status. The bugs themselves are linked in the thread of the MozillaZine forums I link to below. I solved this by a) changing the permissions of the searchplugins folder so that I could write to it as a user, so I could install search engines as a user; b) once installed, copying the searchplugins folder to /root as a backup, so that if an upgrade wiped the folder, I could just copy it back. 2) Search plugin order is rather random, which can be a problem if you have a lot of search plugins. You can, however, set the order of your search plugins. I set them up in groups of similar type, in order of likelihood of use, with Google Linux-- rather than Google Main-- as first (because my Google searches are more likely Linux-specific than 'general'). Google itself is second, and the IMDB is third, since I'm always running to my computer during commercials to get a list of actors in the movie I'm watching -- I know her/him from *somewhere*, but Then dictionaries/thesauri (in two languages), then Gentoo-specific engines, then other Linux engines-- LQF has a Firefox search plugin, did you know?-- and so on. The way to do this is to set up a user.js (easy with the ChromEdit plugin), and is documented on the MozillaZine forums here: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=177335 (a summary is in the first post, more detailed instructions on page 5, see the post by Roger77, which gives the format for the entries). The nice thing about this is that user.js is in your profile folder, thus is unaffected by an upgrade, so once you restore your backup plugins (if that's still necessary), the reinstalled plugins will be in the correct order (your order, in other words). Anyway, the search box is one of my favorite features of Firefox. I watch my bf (a dedicated Mozilla Windows user) typing 'synonym cadence' in the *Google* Bar because he's trying to remember a(n English) word for a kind of poetic rythmic title (which turned out to be 'alliteration', which he remembered himself after throwing a snit because the help he had asked me for was in some way unsatisfactory. The point being, Google didn't lead him to the answer, but a targeted search from an appropriate site might have), and regretting that he won't even try Firefox, where he could just change the search engine to thesaurus.com (or InterGlot Synonym NL), type the word and have the specific search results he needed in many fewer steps. But to each his or her own. I like efficency, and the ability to customize the search box helps me gain more efficiency in my searches. Holly -- gentoo-user
Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Mozilla Google behind the scenes payola
Matt Randolph schreef: Holly Bostick wrote: Surfing the Internet is a lot like walking down the street. Do you think Jane and John Doe computer users know that? Do you think they know that what they do in Word and Outlook is private, and what they do in Internet Explorer is public? It's only the distance of an inch on the computer screen between the icons. How could they possibly know it makes a whole world of difference? Don't get me started on how responsible I 'should' be in terms of protecting others from their own stupidity. I am, generally, not for it. You can't learn from your mistakes if you don't make them, and the lack of learning is what makes Jane and John Dingbat dingbats in the first place. Admittedly, there are some mistakes (the fatal kind), that you don't want people to make as a learning experience, but there is a reason that they say What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And I think there is no way that we can stretch cookies deposited on your computer by non-visited sites to something that could kill you. If John and Jane Dingbat don't have a clue, well, that's not so good. If they don't have a clue that they don't have a clue, well, that's hopeless. If they have a clue that they don't have a clue, but choose not to get a clue, then they need to protect themselves in their voluntary 'blind spot', and that's their responsibility, not mine. You can see me. The fact of my existence is not private. Because you can physically see me, you know a lot of things about me already. ... All of this information is *personal*, but *not* private, If you saw someone following you in the street, writing down your every action, documenting what you bought and at which stores you bought it at... If you saw someone recording public but personal information about you as you went about your business in public, would you not call the police? Not as a first resort, no. What if someone was peering through the window of your home yet did it while standing on the public right of way (the sidewalk)? I've actually lived in this situation (a ground floor flat with front windows on the street), so I know what I'd do. What I did... and what I would do in the previous situation is confront the person, and (in the first situation ask them what they were doing), and (if the reason was not acceptable) inform them that their behaviour was unacceptable and ask them to/demand that they cease and desist (or move along, as the case may be). If they then did not, that would be a reason to call the police. I would, most likely, close my curtains as well (but possibly not, if I wanted to monitor their activity while waiting for the police). What if they had binoculars and a camera? Binoculars I probably can't do anything about/don't know anything about, since the fact that they are using them suggests that they're hiding from me (it's kinda stupid to stand right in front of my window and yet use binoculars to look into my open window). Same with a camera, but if for some reason somebody was standing right in front of my window taking pictures of the interior of my house, I would do the same (confront them and ask why), then likely demand the film before telling them to move along. I might even be induced to replace the unexposed film at my own cost, depending on the situation. Have you given up all of your rights to privacy in your home by opening your curtains? Sort of-- at least to all areas of your home visible through the window. It's called plain sight. If you want privacy, the first line of defense is to prevent normal human senses from perceiving your activity. You wouldn't open up your curtains and then murder your spouse right in front of the open windows, and expect that there would be no witnesses because your right to privacy demands that *no one look* (or hear) your crime? Does your right to privacy supercede my right to turn my head and perceive my environment accurately while walking down the street? Think about disturbing the peace. You are in your house, having a party. A noisy party. I am in my house, trying to sleep. We are both on our private property, but your 'private' activity is perceptible to my senses on my 'private' property-- I can hear you. I then have a legitimate actionable complaint (because the noise you are making is clearly public, because I can perceive it, despite the fact that I am not in your private area). Therefore, the police will act on it, if I choose to call them (which is how I know it's a legitimate complaint in the public arena). If you had any sense you would call the police on anyone who did any of those things to you because that is harassment and it is none of their goddamned business. It is YOUR business and when all is said and done it is one of the few things in this world that you truly have. But you don't. 'Everybody' (in your immediate environment) knows your business (or some aspects of it). If not
Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Mozilla Google behind the scenes payola
Holly Bostick schreef: Matt Randolph schreef: What if they had binoculars and a camera? Same with a camera, but if for some reason somebody was standing right in front of my window taking pictures of the interior of my house, I would do the same (confront them and ask why), then likely demand the film before telling them to move along. I might even be induced to replace the unexposed film at my own cost, depending on the situation. What's funny is that this reveals that I carry a vestige of the superstitious belief that taking a picture steals some or all of your soul. Otherwise, why would it matter if a stranger had a picture of me? Even if they were getting paid for publishing said photo, I would hope that my greed wouldn't come into play (you get paid, so I should get some of the money for it). Yes, naturally, the photo *could* be used for criminal purposes (put up on a dating or porn site), which I would object to, but 1) most people are not criminals and 2) taking the photograph is not in and of itself a crime (photosouping it onto a naked body and posting it on a porn site is the crime). But I must admit that it gives me a chill to think of a stranger taking photos of me as in the example -- she said, looking at her two photo postcards, one of a young girl, one of an elder man and woman. I wonder how they feel about having their pictures on my wall? H -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Mozilla Google behind the scenes payola
On Tue, Aug 09, 2005 at 08:14:26PM -0400, John J. Foster wrote: On Tue, Aug 09, 2005 at 05:05:34PM -0400, Paul M Foster wrote: On Tue, Aug 09, 2005 at 03:52:10PM -0400, John J. Foster wrote: http://www.scroogle.org/gscrape.html#ffox Just wondering if anyone had heard of this. Although, if true, it certainly doesn't surprise me with todays corporate ethics as they are. Just a bad mark on Mozilla. I'm trying to figure out what's wrong with this. Google pays Mozilla to make Google the default search engine for Firefox. Mozilla could have made it Yahoo or someone else, but Google paid them and that's bad? This seems the same to me as Ford offering a television show free cars so that whenever you see a car in the show, it's a Ford. This is as old as advertising itself. snip Even IF only one of those allegations are true, I'm disappointed in Mozilla's choices. They were, until a few days ago, non-profit. Google may be the best general purpose search engine out there right now, but IF Mozilla made it the default for cash, I have a problem with that. If Mozilla knows that a Google search deposits cookies from sites never visited, I have a problem with that. IANAL, and I'm not privvy to all the laws pertaining to non-profits, but I think that what really defines a non-profit is that no single person or group profits from the entity. And I think that non-profits routinely gain funds from investments in other entities. I'm not sure, but I think this is the case. -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Mozilla Google behind the scenes payola
Holly Bostick wrote: Michael Kintzios schreef: Sharing our private information (i.e. our own browsing trends) for profit without our consent is evidently not on This carries the assumption that our own browsing trends is, in fact, private information, which I do not necessarily agree with. Surfing the Internet is a lot like walking down the street. You can see me. The fact of my existence is not private. Because you can physically see me, you know a lot of things about me already. 1. I am human. 2. I am female. 3. I am of childbearing age (you don't know my exact age, but you can see that I am older than 9 and younger than 50). 4. I am of African descent. 5. I am (for the purposes of this example), wearing a wedding ring, so I am or was in a committed relationship, most likely with a man. How would you feel if a company bought lots of too-small-to-be-readily-visible flying cameras (like the mosquito-cams in the Dan Brown book Deception Point :-)) and followed you around wherever you went (in these public places, which would certainly include shops but not the bathroom...)? Without you being conscious of it? Very useful to follow someone around to get their (window)shopping habits, and almost certainly completely illegal. How are these different (apart from legality)? Cheers Antoine -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Mozilla Google behind the scenes payola
Michael Kintzios wrote: -Original Message- From: Holly Bostick [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 11 August 2005 01:32 To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Mozilla Google behind the scenes payola [snip] And if my theory holds water in any way, then the Mozilla Foundation really would have had no choice but to spin off a for-profit subsidiary... after all, if the money is rolling in (via perfectly legitimate and socially acceptable means), it has to go somewhere, and it can't go to the N-F-P foundation beyond a certain level. An accountant could probably advise better, but I would think that there are appropriate vehicles (e.g. NfP trusts) which would allow financial profits that cannot be expensed in activities supporting the Moz Organisation objectives within the financial year, to be stored and in turn invested thereafter both in for profit and not schemes so that they may grow and prosper. Making an economic profit is not a problem in itself. Compromising Moz.Org./OSS objectives in seeking to derive this profit creates a conflict of interest and therefore it becomes a problem. Of course this may not be the case with the FF/Google syndication, I don't really know. Is this right? AFAIK, non-profits don't actually make profits at all, they have surpluses. The surpluses can't be redistributed as such (though of course a non-profit could give money away, though would probably need justification) but they are surpluses that in theory should be reinvested/spent. I really don't see any reason whatsoever for spinning off a company for these reasons. In any case, if the company remains wholly owned by the mozilla foundation then the problem won't go away - if the foundation decides to withdraw capital it will still be surplus. I guess the company could then be sold but I can't see how it would differ from any other company that is paid to be the guider of an OSS project... I may be wrong about my assumptions but would be interested to know if that is wrong... Cheers Antoine -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Mozilla Google behind the scenes payola
Antoine schreef: How would you feel if a company bought lots of too-small-to-be-readily-visible flying cameras (like the mosquito-cams in the Dan Brown book Deception Point :-)) and followed you around wherever you went (in these public places, which would certainly include shops but not the bathroom...)? Without you being conscious of it? Very useful to follow someone around to get their (window)shopping habits, and almost certainly completely illegal. How are these different (apart from legality)? OK, now explain to me why they are almost certainly illegal. My guess is because humans are made very uncomfortable by constant observation-- i.e., a lack of solitude, which condition is ever increasing. You are almost never alone; in fact one must really go out of one's way to be 'alone' in today's world. You are always reachable, if you have a cell phone. With video phones now here, you're not only reachable, but visible. No more picking up the phone naked and unkempt. Because, as social animals (and curious ones), we find it hard to resist picking up the phone when it rings. So this discomfort has been codified into law in some fashion (or several fashions), since we refuse to stop the march of technology (or slow the expansion of the human race, which is eating away at our ability to be 'private', which essentially means 'alone with our thoughts'. But this is a social issue masquerading as legalities. Because the actual fact of someone knowing where I shop (which many people know, without me being conscious of it) is not relevant to anything. *It doesn't matter if anyone knows this*, except insofar as they choose to use the information in a way that I'm not happy with, which is a fact of life on Planet Earth-- some proportion of people will use the information they have in a way I'm not happy with. The real issue is that knowing that such constant observation is occurring, without our active consciousness of it, or ability to control or limit it, *makes our skin crawl*, which is a human thing. That doesn't make it bad (in some eternal sense), any more than the fact that most people have a 'natural' fear of snakes (all snakes, even the harmless ones) makes snakes bad. I understand that things that make our skin crawl are a 'problem' that we have to solve in order to manage a society successfully, but there's a big difference between 'agreements that humans make with each other to make our lives bearable' and 'natural law' (i.e., inalienable rights). I just wish we'd stop confusing the one with the other. Holly -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Mozilla Google behind the scenes payola
Holly Bostick wrote: I have the right to observe, and I also have the right to record my observations, Yes, as an individual you have that right (unless you're observing military installations :). But Google is a company, and companies are bound to some rules: http://home.planet.nl/~privacy1/wbp_en_rev.htm Or in a more understandable form (but in Dutch): http://www.justitie.nl/themas/meer/hoofdlijnen_wbp.asp In short: Organisations may only collect and use personal data for a well-defined goal. This goal they must define up front, before starting the collection of data. They may not collect more data than strictly necessary for that goal. Etcetera, etcetera. Benno -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Mozilla Google behind the scenes payola
Benno Schulenberg wrote: Holly Bostick wrote: I have the right to observe, and I also have the right to record my observations, Yes, as an individual you have that right (unless you're observing military installations :). But Google is a company, and companies are bound to some rules: http://home.planet.nl/~privacy1/wbp_en_rev.htm Or in a more understandable form (but in Dutch): http://www.justitie.nl/themas/meer/hoofdlijnen_wbp.asp In short: Organisations may only collect and use personal data for a well-defined goal. This goal they must define up front, before starting the collection of data. They may not collect more data than strictly necessary for that goal. Etcetera, etcetera. Benno I personally think it is an uneeded FireFox bashing. I do agree that a software program should not be as dependant on a single website (Google) as FireFox is. I think that the instant Im Feeling Lucky feature needs some big changes. And for those of us who would rather not use Google, well, its a pain. I know that FireFox is trying to be helpful, and I understand that. I just dont want to see it on the road to Microsoft Word's 'helpfulness'. I DONT WANT TO TAB IT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] IT!!! ..ahem.. Ive seen worse features in programs, but I think that FireFox should be less dependant on something like a website. That really should go for anything, if no program depended on anything else, it would make installs (Yes I know about emerge, :) ) much easier. I think that Mozilla's financial status is completely irrelevant to this story, and in no way affects their program. In fact, if they pull in money, they can use it to make their browser/emailClient much better. This article has some truths, but also some major faults. Im still happy to use Firefox. Ian begin:vcard fn:Ian K n:K;Ian email;internet:[EMAIL PROTECTED] note;quoted-printable:Pentium 3=0D=0A= 500mHz=0D=0A= 256MB RAM=0D=0A= 80.0GB HDD=0D=0A= ATI Radeon 7000 Evil Wizard 64MB=0D=0A= Computer name: PentaQuad=0D=0A= x-mozilla-html:TRUE version:2.1 end:vcard
Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Mozilla Google behind the scenes payola
Hi, On Thu, 11 Aug 2005 09:30:31 +0930 Iain Buchanan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'd vote for a preference setting for prefetching: - disable / enable / enable for the same host only a little bit like cookie handling. from http://www.scroogle.org/gscrape.html#ffox Fortunately, you can disable this feature by entering about:config in the address bar and then scrolling down to network.prefetch-next and toggling it to false Yep, I knew that. But my point was that there should be a third setting, not only enable/disable, but something like allow prefetch only for pages on the same host. Cookie handling already has this, AFAIK. -hwh -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Mozilla Google behind the scenes payola
On Thu, 11 Aug 2005 21:19:43 +0200 Antoine [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: How would you feel if a company bought lots of too-small-to-be-readily-visible flying cameras (like the mosquito-cams in the Dan Brown book Deception Point :-)) and followed you around wherever you went (in these public places, which would certainly include shops but not the bathroom...)? Without you being conscious of it? Very useful to follow someone around to get their (window)shopping habits, and almost certainly completely illegal. How are these different (apart from legality)? Um...you may not know this, but Holly is in the UK. London in particular has cameras all over the place. From what I've heard, it's not possible to walk in public there without being recorded. In public, there is already a trail of her activities. Bob - -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
RE: [gentoo-user] [OT] Mozilla Google behind the scenes payola
-Original Message- From: John J. Foster [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 10 August 2005 01:14 To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Mozilla Google behind the scenes payola On Tue, Aug 09, 2005 at 05:05:34PM -0400, Paul M Foster wrote: On Tue, Aug 09, 2005 at 03:52:10PM -0400, John J. Foster wrote: http://www.scroogle.org/gscrape.html#ffox I've read the linked page(s) and I've also read some other relevant articles. I have not yet seen a clear enough thesis that explains why on this occasion creating a 'for profit' organisation will serve more effectively the public good/end user. If indeed true, then I don't think that private information (search/browsing patterns) being shared without knowledge and consent of the user is acceptable. Car manufacturers sponsoring *privately* funded events (like a TV show) is clearly not the same. These days many companies sponsor events for charitable organisations - the question is to what extend is this sponsoring acceptable. I suggest that it is acceptable only to the extent that it does not compromise the objectives of the not for profit organisation. Sharing our private information (i.e. our own browsing trends) for profit without our consent is evidently not on - whether undertaken by a for profit or not organisation! Any idea how Opera (adware in its 'free' form) behaves on this issue? I suspect it probably does the same, but at least it clearly states so when you first launch the unpaid program. Not sure what happens if you pay for it. -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Mozilla Google behind the scenes payola
Michael Kintzios schreef: Sharing our private information (i.e. our own browsing trends) for profit without our consent is evidently not on This carries the assumption that our own browsing trends is, in fact, private information, which I do not necessarily agree with. Surfing the Internet is a lot like walking down the street. You can see me. The fact of my existence is not private. Because you can physically see me, you know a lot of things about me already. 1. I am human. 2. I am female. 3. I am of childbearing age (you don't know my exact age, but you can see that I am older than 9 and younger than 50). 4. I am of African descent. 5. I am (for the purposes of this example), wearing a wedding ring, so I am or was in a committed relationship, most likely with a man. All of this information is *personal*, but *not* private, and all of our collected knowledge and assumptions about these conditions can be legitimately applied to the information you have about me, if you choose to communicate with me, in order to improve the odds of successful communication (whatever your purpose in successfully communicating with me may be). Now, if you don't happen to be looking out the window at that moment, or if I go out of my way to disguise myself in order to conceal as much of this information as possible, you won't see me, or you won't see me as I am, but that does not make the above information private. It just makes it public information that I am keeping from you. The Internet is a public street. The fact that I'm on it is not private. The location that I started from and the location I'm going to is not private, any more than the fact that I left my house and went to the butcher's three blocks away is... and now you know I'm a meat eater, or closely associated with one. Oh, dear. So if a gossip (Google) is actively watching and remembering that I went to the butcher (and not the dry cleaner), and therefore, when next in conversation with me, makes a point of mentioning information of interest to meat-eaters (a better-value butcher, problems with the butcher I use, some health information related to meat), is that some kind of crime? And here I thought that was forming a relationship. I understand that just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you, but this seems a bit excessively cautious to me. Not to mention that all of this watching and remembering is done by Google, not Firefox per se-- especially if you control your cookie settings (Preferences=Privacy=Cookies=Enable only for the originating website). I mean, if a Google search sets cookies from not-visited websites, and those cookies generate a profit, who are the not-visited websites paying? Not Mozilla... they'd be paying Google, who has already paid some portion of those profits to Mozilla for the default search engine spot and is unlikely to be sharing further revenue. Why would they? These issues are indeed worthy of watching (business practices usually are), but honestly, don't we have higher-priority privacy and security issues on our plates? Holly -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Mozilla Google behind the scenes payola
Hi, On Tue, 9 Aug 2005 15:52:10 -0400 John J. Foster [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Just wondering if anyone had heard of this. Although, if true, it certainly doesn't surprise me with todays corporate ethics as they are. Just a bad mark on Mozilla. This is to be separated: #1: Google is implemented as Mozilla's #1 Search Engine in the list. #2: Google uses the Mozilla Browser's prefetching feature ad #1: If that makes Mozilla a bad browser for you, you're free to fork your own source tree and have whatever-you-like as #1 search engine. ad #2: Certainly this imposes a privacy leak. But it's a feature you can disable - as well as, e.g. including images from foreign web sites. That cookie argument doesn't count: any image linked from other sites can do the very same. -hwh -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Mozilla Google behind the scenes payola
On Wed, 10 Aug 2005 14:13:30 +0200, Holly Bostick wrote: Sharing our private information (i.e. our own browsing trends) for profit without our consent is evidently not on This carries the assumption that our own browsing trends is, in fact, private information, which I do not necessarily agree with. It also assumes that Mozilla are making a profit from this. Being non-profit doesn't preclude any sort of income to cover costs. Gentoo is non-profit but sells CDs, mugs and t-shirts, as well as accepting donations. Netscape/AOL put a lot of money into Mozilla when they separated it, and some more later. Why was this OK but taking money from Google is such a sin? If it has been Microsoft I could understand the resistance, but when the World's best search engine takes out advertising (and this is what it boils down to) on the World's best browser it is nothing more than a sensible arrangement that helps both get better. Firefox and Mozilla have to have one search engine as the default, that would have been Google anyway, so they are simply accepting payment to maintain the status quo, while not forcing any restrictions on their customers. Now, how much are KDE getting for doing the same with Konqueror? -- Neil Bothwick 30 minutes of begging is not considered foreplay. pgpQDNvEu8oKU.pgp Description: PGP signature
RE: [gentoo-user] [OT] Mozilla Google behind the scenes payola
-Original Message- From: Holly Bostick [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 10 August 2005 13:14 To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Mozilla Google behind the scenes payola Michael Kintzios schreef: Sharing our private information (i.e. our own browsing trends) for profit without our consent is evidently not on This carries the assumption that our own browsing trends is, in fact, private information, which I do not necessarily agree with. Good point! Perhaps I should have added that I would wish it to be as private as possible . . . Do the cookie settings under preferences override FF/Google's preset cookie flow? -- Regards, Mick -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Mozilla Google behind the scenes payola
Hi, On Wed, 10 Aug 2005 14:28:18 +0100 Michael Kintzios [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Do the cookie settings under preferences override FF/Google's preset cookie flow? Yep, the FF/Google cookie flow, yes. But I think you mean the cookie flow from Google's search result pages' links? No, probably the cookie settings won't allow to influence this (well, they'll do if you construct fine-grained per-domain cookie settings). I emphasize it again: It's NOT google-specific. Prefetching just fetches everything linked as being next, and Google just uses this fact. Prefetching with a different set of general cookie acceptance permissions than normal website visits would be kind of pointless. You'd better disable prefetching completely, then. I'd vote for a preference setting for prefetching: - disable / enable / enable for the same host only a little bit like cookie handling. -hwh -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Mozilla Google behind the scenes payola
050810 Michael Crute wrote: the guy who wrote that silly little article is a nutcase that is waging some weird holy war against google. His other sites are: http://www.google-watch.org/ http://www.gmail-is-too-creepy.com/ So check those out first and that will squash what little credibility that article started out with. This guy is really of his rocker. No more than Groklaw, I'ld say, in fact probably somewhat less. He has a link to an interesting mathematical analysis of Google counts : http://aixtal.blogspot.com/2005/01/web-googles-counts-faked.html Just for the more general record, I see nothing wrong with Firefox making some money out of its default search engine: as others have pointed out, it's easy to change to another. There's nothing wrong with earning an honest loonie (buck, quid etc): it's when you bully or deceive that real questions arise. -- ,, SUPPORT ___//___, Philip Webb : [EMAIL PROTECTED] ELECTRIC /] [] [] [] [] []| Centre for Urban Community Studies TRANSIT`-O--O---' University of Toronto -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Mozilla Google behind the scenes payola
On Wed, 2005-08-10 at 13:51 +0100, Neil Bothwick wrote: On Wed, 10 Aug 2005 14:13:30 +0200, Holly Bostick wrote: Sharing our private information (i.e. our own browsing trends) for profit without our consent is evidently not on This carries the assumption that our own browsing trends is, in fact, private information, which I do not necessarily agree with. It also assumes that Mozilla are making a profit from this. Being non-profit doesn't preclude any sort of income to cover costs. Gentoo is non-profit but sells CDs, mugs and t-shirts, as well as accepting donations. The website http://www.scroogle.org/gscrape.html#ffox was saying that sure, their (mozilla's) 2003 revenue of 2.3 million seems reasonable, but their reported (from insider information) 2004 revenue of $30 million was not acceptable. While I don't agree with everything they have to say, I think if there is an evil one out of google and firefox, its google. Like someone else said, if firefox wants to accept money to maintain the status quo, then so what? If the mozilla foundation really is restructuring by spinning off the Mozilla Corporation, a for-profit subsidiary then time will tell. They can't delay Form 990 for ever. The reason google is so good is because it takes lots of measures to try and get the best search results, and its inevitable that this will include information about my searching habits to better tailor results to me? If I don't like it, I can use another engine. Just some thoughts! -- Iain Buchanan [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Mozilla Google behind the scenes payola
On Wed, 2005-08-10 at 15:42 +0200, Hans-Werner Hilse wrote: Hi, On Wed, 10 Aug 2005 14:28:18 +0100 Michael Kintzios [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Do the cookie settings under preferences override FF/Google's preset cookie flow? I'd vote for a preference setting for prefetching: - disable / enable / enable for the same host only a little bit like cookie handling. from http://www.scroogle.org/gscrape.html#ffox Fortunately, you can disable this feature by entering about:config in the address bar and then scrolling down to network.prefetch-next and toggling it to false -- Iain Buchanan [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Mozilla Google behind the scenes payola
On Tue, Aug 09, 2005 at 03:52:10PM -0400, John J. Foster wrote: http://www.scroogle.org/gscrape.html#ffox Just wondering if anyone had heard of this. Although, if true, it certainly doesn't surprise me with todays corporate ethics as they are. Just a bad mark on Mozilla. I'm trying to figure out what's wrong with this. Google pays Mozilla to make Google the default search engine for Firefox. Mozilla could have made it Yahoo or someone else, but Google paid them and that's bad? This seems the same to me as Ford offering a television show free cars so that whenever you see a car in the show, it's a Ford. This is as old as advertising itself. Mind you, all the link has is rumor and innuendo to go on. No solid proof. A supposed insider blogger makes an accusation, they ask for corroborating documents which haven't yet been filed, and the principals have no comment for them. They've interpeted the silence of those involved to mean their guilt. Despite the fact that they aren't _required_ to disclose any information about the matter, either way, except perhaps in quarterly filings. While they may indeed be guilty, this is scant evidence to even make such an accusation, much less grant it any credence. Paul -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Mozilla Google behind the scenes payola
On Tue, 9 Aug 2005 20:14:26 -0400 John J. Foster [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Even IF only one of those allegations are true, I'm disappointed in Mozilla's choices. They were, until a few days ago, non-profit. Google may be the best general purpose search engine out there right now, but IF Mozilla made it the default for cash, I have a problem with that. If Mozilla knows that a Google search deposits cookies from sites never visited, I have a problem with that. So, I checked and it seems that Firefox has Google as the default search engine. But it lets me change that search engine to Yahoo and even add search engines. And it saves my preference. And you're saying that taking money to continue to support development with the return of having Google as the default is bad? Even though the end user can still tailor that default? IF anything in that article is true, and you think that that type of underhandedness (is that a word?) and deception is OK, fine. I don't. What's underhanded about advertising? That's all it is. The end user is not locked in to a specific search engine. Underhanded is locking the search engine choice after taking money, not rotating a specific engine to the top as a pre-configured default. Bob -- - Are you living in the real world? - -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
