Slashback: Pie, Election, Alarm 158
Does he feel like Reese Witherspoon? Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier writes "After many years of trying, Branden Robinson has finally won the Debian Project Leader election. Linux Magazine has an in-depth interview with Robinson about his plans as DPL, the problems that face Debian, and what it's like to finally win the election."
(We mentioned Robinson's election a few days ago.)
In lieu of perfection, fixability is a good start. gyardley writes "After discovering that a company called United Virtualities was making use of Flash's Local Shared Objects to silently restore my deleted cookies, I decided to combat this marketer behavior with a Firefox extension.
Objection 0.1 adds a 'Local Shared Objects' line to Firefox's Options > Privacy panel, allowing you to delete them as easily as you'd delete cookies. It's still pretty rudimentary - all or nothing deletion, working on Windows only - but Slashdotters are more than welcome to improve it. Since Local Shared Objects have the same functionality as cookies, we need the same amount of control over them as we do over cookies - and built into the browser, not tucked away in some obscure Macromedia page."
Sure, come on in, there's still some punch and snacks left, I think. orv writes "The Unichrome project has issued a response to VIA's recent open source announcement covered on Slashdot.
The response (and further comment) clarifies the current Unichrome driver situation and whilst welcoming VIA's move suggests that VIA should become more involved in existing open source projects rather than simply issuing repeated grand sounding press releases. The Unichrome project has provided and supported a full open source driver, including MPEG support, for the Unichrome and Unichrome Pro chipsets for the past two years."
But this implies that 'perky' is the desired state. dhalsim2 writes "Yahoo reports of a Smart Alarm Clock Set for Perky Wakeups. On the heels of Clocky comes this new alarm clock that will monitor a sleeper's brain waves to determine the best time to wake him up. The device uses a microprocessor within a headband that wirelessly transmits brainwaves to the clock. When the person is in a light sleep and is likely to wake up 'perky,' the alarm will go off. Brain wave monitoring? Sounds a lot like Plankton's Plan Z."
Smart Alarm Clock for Perky Wakeups (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, but make sure you don't get the Darth Vader edition of the Smart Alarm Clock for Perky Wakeups.
That one not only reads your brain waves, but instead of adjusting itself to help you, it uses the dark side of alarm clock force to ring just a little bit too much
Re:Smart Alarm Clock for Perky Wakeups (Score:1, Funny)
Best. Alarm Clock. Ever! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Best. Alarm Clock. Ever! (Score:2)
I really don't get the idea behind that. When I need to get up, I set a second alarm on the other side of the room (these days it's "at x:yyam\n xmms -p" on the command line, but same idea). I have to get up to turn it off, regardless of whether it "hides" or not.
First one wakes me up, I turn it off and snooze for ten, second one fires off and I have to get up to turn it off. Very simple.
Re:Best. Alarm Clock. Ever! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Smart Alarm Clock for Perky Wakeups (Score:1, Funny)
"Well what's wrong with feeling perky?"
"Ask a pot of coffee."
Re:Smart Alarm Clock for Perky Wakeups (Score:2)
Re:Smart Alarm Clock for Perky Wakeups (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Smart Alarm Clock for Perky Wakeups (Score:1)
CNN Radio homepage [cnnradionet.com]
Re:Smart Alarm Clock for Perky Wakeups (Score:2)
I know. When I travel that's what I tune to on the alarm clock, if they don't have NPR.
Seriously.
So an evil alarm clock will be tuned to Faux News, and a good alarm clock will be tuned to CNN radio (or at least NPR).
The thing is, one the days when the evil alarm clock purposefully doesn't wake you up, it will laugh in the dark laugh of Darth Vader, who as we all know is CNN's intro voice by James Earl Jones.
Broken Link (Score:4, Informative)
http://unichrome.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
The whole PIE thing really bugs me (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm sorry, I can't see it. Advertising is not an industry known for it's string ethical stance, and let's face it, such plagues as popups and flash ads were rife long before most people started disabling cookies.
Logging in isn't such a big problem. I allow session cookies where they have a clear and useful purpose, so I only have to click that button once or twice a day.
And besides which, my surfing habits are none of their business.
Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me (Score:2, Interesting)
> for it's string ethical stance
I wonder why?
"Hey," says the advertiser, "we'll give you free internet service if you use our special browser that shows you ads."
"Why, that *is* a good deal," says the consumer, who signs a contract and gets online with the free account.
Then he runs off and downloads a program that hides the ads, so he doesn't have to see them. Now he's got free internet service at the advertiser's expense, but the advertiser isn't getting to advertise.
Eventually, the people who buy the ads realise they don't get any business through this advertiser, and they go to another one. The advertiser loses all his sponsors, can't afford to continue providing internet connections, and shuts down.
"Hey!" shouts the user. "We had a DEAL, scumbag."
Ethics, like morals, are a luxury. You have them when you can afford to have them. When times get rough, ethics start getting fuzzy, and eventually they disappear altogether. So the advertiser has few if any ethics, because he cannot afford them.
But what's the user's excuse? He signed a contract and took his share of the bargain, but wouldn't honor his own obligations.
"Of course not," scoffs the user. "It was an obligation to an *advertiser*. Advertisers are scum, and have no ethics, and never keep their word. So it's *okay* to lie to them, and cheat them, and steal from them."
Self-fulfilling prophecy, ne-c'est pas?
Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me (Score:2)
I pay for my connect time in cash. Your hypothetical user may operate a double standard but your scenario hardly applies to the majority of internet denizens.
On the other hand, the amorality of internet advertising is far from hypothetical. Just look at the prevalence of popups and popunders. Look at the ads that jump, flash, play sounds and generally attempt to prevent the user from attending to his online pursuits.
All these deliberate distractions waste my time. If we accept the notion that time is money, and my time is most definitely worth money, then these advertisers, by wasting my time, are stealing from me.
And the response of the advertising community to the complaints of users has been to research more intrusive advertising techniques. Popups without close buttons, popups that launch new popups on exits, browser traps and re-directs...
If the ad industry is suffering at the hands of advert blockers, they have only themselves to blame. This software was developed in response to the overly intrusive nature of online advertising, and its popularity only reflects how widespread the is dislike of current advertising methodologies.
In any case, cute as your story is, I still don't see a compelling case why I should enable cookies and allow advertisers to compile a dossier on my web browsing habits. Like I said, it's none of their business.
Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me (Score:2)
> is money, and my time is most
> definitely worth money, then these
> advertisers, by wasting my time, are
> stealing from me.
No, they're not. You *trade* watching the ad for using the web site, so you don't have to pay any actual money.
But you're stealing from *them* when you use an ad blocker. Either they paid for something they didn't get (showing you the ad), or you DIDN'T pay for something you DID get (viewing the web site).
Which is just like my example. Only instead of getting your WHOLE internet connection for free, you get little slices of it, and the cost is spread out among all the various people who operate web sites you like. So when you really think about it, you're hurting THEM, not the big bad advertiser.
And besides, it's people like you that give the advertisers an excuse to make all the ads that waste MY time. They have to try so much harder to make their numbers, you know, because of all the ad blockers!
Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me (Score:2)
One thing that seems beyond dispute is that your argument has no legal force.
My computer means my rules. If you want an explicit contract, make your site subscription-only and I will not view it at all. If I attempt to access that site without paying and in full knowledge of the terms and conditions, then, maybe I could be convicted of theft. Other than that your assertion is debatable at best.
If you don't like that, you could try making ads that don't actually annoy me, and then I would not block them. I have no objection to well behaved ads and I only block those that are overly distracting, intrusive or that try to install malware.
Unfortunately, not annoying people doesn't see to be a high priority with online ad agencies. Which is what prompted me to install adblock and privoxy in the first place. believe it or not, I was strongly in favour of the first few web ads I saw. This was back when all you saw were discrete banner ads that didn't get in the way of my conducting my online business.
You still haven't made anything resembling a case for why I should leave cookies enabled on my browser. In fact unless you count personal insults, you haven't even made a case for why I should allow any advertising at all.
I'm still not convinced
Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me (Score:2)
According to the site's owner and advertisers, which outvotes *you* at least two to one.
> For my ad blocking to be considered
> theft, I would have to have made a
> formal agreement.
Not really. If you do something that costs me money, and you *know* it's going to cost me money, and I haven't agreed to let you do it, most legal precedents I've seen seem to be in agreement that you are in fact liable.
Of course, nobody is going to sue you for two bucks, so it doesn't make much practical difference to YOU; it only makes a difference to the webmaster with thousands of people who *all* steal two bucks. But that's not your problem, is it?
I have noticed a certain pattern where people who don't produce anything of value seem to believe that they should have free and unlimited access to anything *I* create, if they find it valuable. However, I propose that the time I spend *creating* something is more valuable than the time you spend *consuming* it, and that through the act of consuming it you necessarily place yourself in my debt. I also propose that while the give-and-take sort of evens out in the grand scheme of things among serious content creators, the vast majority of content *consumers* are not content creators at all, let alone serious ones.
(After seeing your comment about insults, I feel compelled to clarify that the above is not a personal accusation, merely an observation of a pattern.)
> One thing that seems beyond dispute
> is that your argument has no legal
> force.
It's *legal* to take things out of someone else's cart at the supermarket, because technically it's still the property of the supermarket until they buy it. That doesn't make it right.
> Unfortunately, not annoying people
> doesn't see to be a high priority
> with online ad agencies.
The highest priority at ad agencies is to sell more ads, which they do by making better ads. How do they do this? Why, by tracking consumer response. Viewing ads and accepting cookies is how you vote, and if you don't vote, you can't complain.
And since you don't vote, you're the most convenient place to dump garbage! Consider this: an advertiser has a contract to give five thousand ad impressions to a company that makes cool stuff, and another five thousand to a company that makes crap. Looking over the tracking cookies he sees, everybody hates crap, so he shows the cookie-accepting viewer ads for cool stuff. Unfortunately, he still has to show crap five thousand times... but luckily, here you come with no cookie! Maybe you *like* crap! We certainly have no evidence to the contrary, so you get to see a bunch of ads for crap.
Believe it or not, advertisers WANT to make better ads, but if you don't tell them what's wrong... well, they can't fix it. That's how things work.
> In fact unless you count personal
> insults
Where did you see a personal insult? I don't even *know* you.
Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me (Score:2)
That presumes that my computer is a democracy and that you and your advertisers are citizens of it and have votes. I know that none of you paid for the hardware, nor for the electricity or connection costs, so it's "no representation without taxation" as far as I'm concerned.
But assuming for a second that your logic is sound: There are you and your advertisers on the one hand. That's how many? A dozen? No more surely. Now how many on my side. Let's assume that your site has a thousand visitors. Given the popularity of software like adblock, it's likely that the majority of them dislike your adverts. At one thousand to a dozen, I think you'll find that we outvote you. Or are you going to tell me that I don't have a vote on your computer?
Isn't it interesting the arguments you can construct when you abuse the notion of democracy?
So once again: according to whom?
Let's say you run a stall selling apples. I walk past and do not buy an apple. You then say "By willfully not buying my apples, you are costing me money. That's against the law!" I can't see this one flying in court.
Historically, the web has always been free to access except in cases where a formal agreement is made in advance. Even today there is enough free-to-access content that I think court would find that a reasonable expectation. If you cover your costs by making an agreement with one or more advertising companies, that agreement is between you and them. It does not compel me to view the advertising.
If you don't like that, then take your site subscription only. If you do so, then and only then, are you in a position to dictate the terms under which I view your site. That way I know in advance how much access is going to cost me, unlike adverts where I pay with my time, again and again and again. But if you do go for a subscription model, I shall expect it to be advert free.
But you seem to think it's OK for popups and other distractions to steal twenty minutes of my time for each hour I surf? I charge by the hour for my time. Bad adverts can waste as much as one third of my browsing time. And they do this to everyone. Do you not think you're operating under a double standard here?
I can sympathise with that. For what it's worth I do offer the fruits of some of my labors [fvwm.lair.be] to the world. It's not a huge contribution on the cosmic scale of things, I'll grant :)
See, this is the problem I have with your argument: When it's the website owner or advertser, it's ok
Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me (Score:2)
> democracy and that you and your
> advertisers are citizens of it and
> have votes.
Nope. It presumes that your connection to my web site is a shared property, because you are on one end and I am on the other, and if either end is dropped the connection doesn't exist. Your end of the connection contains exactly one person: you. My end, on the other hand, contains all the people involved in the maintenance of the site. So you get one vote on how this connection is used, and we get several... but you still have the right to veto the entire connection at will.
Your example is flawed, anyway, because there's no rational reason I couldn't turn it around and say every web site you ever visit has a vote over your browser. That would be clearly wrong, so your converse argument is probably just as wrong.
> Let's say you run a stall selling apples.
Bad analogy. We're not talking about passive failure, we're talking about active subversion.
Let's say I make some lemonade, and an advertiser agrees to pay me for the lemonade by counting how many cups people throw away and giving me a nickel for each one. So I put up a sign that says "free lemonade".
You come over with your *own* cup, and you fill it with lemonade. (This is an ad blocker that DOESN'T leave you counted as having seen the ad.) It's not illegal! I said "free lemonade". I didn't say "free lemonade in my cups but not yours".
So I say "hey, you know, I don't get paid for the lemonade unless you use my cups; my advertiser counts the cups in the trash every day". You say "oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know" -- and you throw away a few cups. (This is an ad blocker that DOES count you as having seen the ad.)
Not the perfect analogy, but somewhat closer. If you want the lemonade, someone has to pay for it, and if YOU don't want to pay for it -- you have to deal with the conditions someone *else* sets on paying for it.
> You do not get to define the rules of the
> game to suit yourself.
I didn't. I defined the rules of the game as they currently exist: advertisers don't share information. They consider the information they have on who likes which ads to be a "trade secret", so each of them has to research and discover these things separately. Attempts to centralise -- most famously, DoubleClick -- have been met with suspicion at best and complete outrage at worst. So instead of having one election, we have a whole bunch of them.
And while I sympathise with your decision never to vote in any election, and fully support your right to make such a decision, those votes still don't get counted. Installing ad blocking software isn't a vote, because by its very nature it can't register that vote with the advertiser. Standing up and screaming "I refuse to vote!" is not a vote.
> I have no faith in cookies as a feedback
> mechanism.
It doesn't matter; they're the only feedback mechanism we have. We need to say "who are you?" and get something back that can be looked up in a database to figure out what ads will suit you best. Cookies can do that. What else can do that?
> I'm not offering so much to change my
> behavior as explaining how to craft an
> advert in such a way that I will suffer
> its presence on my desktop.
Surely you understand that to gather this kind of information from EVERYONE is an overly large burden without automated response systems, right?
But you've opted out of the automated systems. You're making things harder for the advertisers, and then complaining that they still haven't gotten it right.
This whole thing is a massive Catch-22. The advertisers say "give us your information", the public says "what about our privacy?!", and the advertisers say "trust us!"... which obviously means you can't.
My take: it will get worse before it gets better. We need to just bite the bullet and let the advertisers gather their data for a while, bec
Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me (Score:2)
Odd, I could have sworn you told me that I was not entitled to do as I wished on my own computer because you and your advertisers outvoted me.
Damn right it's flawed. It's your logic.
Do these cups follow me down the road making notes on my activities for the day. Do they interrupt my every conversation, my every sentence, telling me how great your lemonade is, sometimes long after I've left your stall? Do they jump up and block my path when I try to leave?
No? Then it's hardly analogous, is it?
I keep asking you this question and you keep ignoring it. According to whom? You cite these supposed "facts" of yours in a tone of absolute authority, but you have yet to offer any evidence in support of your theories. Until you do, all you have for me is opinions, and mine are at least as good as yours, possibly better since I don't attempt to misrepresent mine as facts.
More abuse of the notion of democracy. The system under discussion is not a democracy, there is no common constitution, and kindly stop trying to project electoral stereotypes onto me, thank you so very much.
I could certainly debate the notion that cookies are the only feedback mechanism we have. You'd have to be blind not to realise how hated are some tricks of online advertising, not that the industry seems to pay any attention. Indeed the adblock software you complain so bitterly about is itself a feedback signal. One of deafening magnitude, I should have thought.
But that's not really the issue. The issue isn't even one of whether the industry will pay any attention to these supposed "votes". The biggest flaw in your argument is this: Cookies cannot convey my dislike of an advertisement, and without that information the only "improvement" will be in the level skill manifest in the adverts which seek to manipulate me.
Suppose I see some popup ads and allow them to plant cookies. When the data gathered makes it back to home base, the agency says "hey, he's seen a whole bunch of these popup ads - he must like them. Let's send him a whole load more". Or are you now going to tell me that to "vote" I have to click on the damn things as well?
Cookies cannot convey my hatred of popup and popunders. They comminicate neither the loathing I have for animated flash banners that make sounds to draw my attention, nor the depth my dislike of ads that flash, jump about or masquerade as system error messages. All cookies do is tell if I've viewed these ad
Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me (Score:2)
Let me spell it out for you. My company *used* to do web advertising. We never used popups. We never installed malware. We just wanted people to accept a cookie so we could gather data.
Unfortunately, people were so reluctant to accept cookies, we couldn't gather valid data. We'd have twelve thousand impressions in a week, and only two hundred cookies returned. So no matter *how* much we wanted to cater to people's preferences, we didn't have the information to do it.
We're not in the web advertising business anymore. We're not in the SEO business, either. We've had to retarget our entire company focus, because you can't succeed in those businesses *honestly* anymore. We won't conduct dishonest business, full-stop. Not gonna happen.
So I have something of a problem with your position, because I *enjoyed* working in web-based marketing. It was fun. For a while, we could actually make decent money from it. But today, you don't make anything unless you're ready to operate in the multi-million impression range. That's where you start getting enough economies of scale that you can sell trash to idiots at random and make a profit.
And blocking cookies doesn't hurt those people, because they don't care what you think *anyway*. Blocking the ads doesn't help, because they don't *expect* you to click; you're not their target market. So what you're doing DOESN'T WORK. It is never GOING to work. It just drives the honest companies out of the business. And that's sad.
But if that's what you want, you go right ahead.
Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me (Score:2)
I also agree that this is getting tedious, so I'll try and be brief.
I applaud your moral stance, I acknowledge your propriety in your business methods. I even sympathise over the failure of your advertising business, since lord knows the world could use more ethical advertisers.
[ My initial comment that you took such exception to, was that the ad industry is not renowned for its strong ethical stance. Here you are echoing that sentiment. After all this effort... ]I'm not objecting to you, or to any of the companies out there who do business honestly. The trouble is I never seem to see any of them, just doubleclick and their ilk. I'm sorry that they've given a bad name to an industry that you enjoyed working in, and I acknowledge that this is not your fault.
But that doesn't mean the bastards have stopped being bastards. And as you say, they rather outnumber the ethical organisations.
I don't want to hurt them particularly - I just don't want them to know any more about me than is absolutely necessary. Because if they have that data, they will use it, and since we seem to be in agreement on their ethical standards, I hope you can understand my reluctance.I regret the impact on honest businesses. On the other hand, I don't leave my front door unlocked. You could argue this makes it harder for my friends to visit, and that it doesn't bother the thieves who will just go steal from someone else. Nevertheless, I lock my door just the same.
It's not what I want, but I don't see myself as the author of your misfortune. Your anger would be better directed at those agencies who earned the distrust and hatred of so many people by their relentless exploitation of the online community safe in the (as it turns out fallacious) knowledge that there was nothing we could do about it.As you describe your business, I doubt I would have blocked your adverts anyway. I try to block only on need, when something gets in the way of my getting the job done.
I doubt I'd have enabled cookies though. Do you remember what it was like five years ago even trying to block cookies? Every widget on a page had it's own cookie. There were webbugs from companies that had no ads on the page and no connection with it - other than that they wanted to know where I'd been and what I was doing. It got to the point where, at dial up rates, a significant part of my surf time was being spent downloading cookies.
And there comes a point where you say "whose machine is this, anyway?"
Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me (Score:2)
As for the shear crap called adds. Sorry for years they have had highly targeted adds. (just under a different name so it has to be something different right? A rose by any other name is someones patent. One thing they have learned. 2 kinds of adds get noticed. Really Good ones. Really bad ones. Most people don't remember the company attached to the really good ones. Everyone remembers the company attached to the really bad ones. Guess which one causes the most revenue increase.... yep. The one you love to hate.
Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me (Score:2)
That's why I have my browser set to ask me what I want to do with cookies, then I use per-site allow/block settings depending on whether I need to log in or not. If I don't need to log into it, or don't need settings to persist, then I don't let the cookies get set. (Although MSN/Hotmail/Passport is a real pig, as it seems arbitrary as to which cookies are required for Hotmail to load)
But at the end of the day it's up to me which of these do and don't persist on my computer.
And as for advertising, well I don't care as I mostly ignore them anyway. If I lack the money/justification to pay for a subscription to a site than I probably lack the same for whatever the adverts are trying to sell at me.
The ads here on Slashdot are about as relevantly targetted as they will get for me. But that doesn't change the simple fact that these days if I do want to spend money I'll go do my own damn legwork. Adverts really don't encourage me to seek out a product.
Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me (Score:4, Interesting)
Regarding Javascript, I REALLY don't like the idea of my browser automatically running code that someone else has written without me having the chance to check it out first. I don't think javascript is evil as a language, I just don't like the idea of going to a website and blindly running code from there. I don't care that it's in a sandbox -- all it takes is one exploit for the code to break its way out of the sandbox and boom. (And hopefully I'm running Linux and the developer is too focused on Win32 for his payload to do anything once it's out of javascriptland, but you never know.)
Seriously, I'm never going to put instant, blind trust in anything online until I've checked it out first, and even then on general principles I won't enable cookies or jscript unless there's a compelling reason to do so.
(3 the session-only feature in Moz browsers) =D
Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me (Score:2)
I think we should try to design trustworthy sandboxes for using javascript because the problems you list could just as well apply to other incoming files from the net such as images, or html. I know that these types of file are not usually considered turing-complete, but that is not a requirement for an exploit that would have the same effect as one in a javascript sandbox.
- Brian.
Wow. I just died a little. (Score:2)
Just to clear up a misconeption (that I helped perpetuate) about cookies, they generally aren't used for collecting or distributing information. As I stated in a post below they are more used for revenue sharing partnerships between sites and for tracking ad campaigns. Not to mention the most basic session cookie which allows you to login to many sites because passing a session ID around in the query string is a fat pain and quite a database hit.
I don't have a problem with a few paranoid experts clearing or selectivly disabling cookies, my problem is that the myth that cookies are evil has made it to the masses and they are making my life difficult. I mean these people somehow think they are making themselves safer by turning off cookies & javascript yet they are perfectly willing to enter their credit card number to get access to my site. Not that I'm complaining about the latter, but the dichotomy astounds me.
Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me (Score:1)
If I want to browse with Lynx, and miss your fancy graphics and stuff, Why. Do. You. Care?
Why do you need to know that I spend 94.3% of my time on /., particularly when you also (think you) know my employer? (If I have /. open in a tab in the background all day ... what does that prove?)
I don't know what sites you've developed, but I think that, in general, web developers are too demanding of their viewers.
Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me (Score:2)
Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me (Score:1)
Why is it that no one uses the HTTP authentication mechanism for logins, and instead makes cookies do the job?
Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me (Score:3, Informative)
Because the standard HTTP authentication mechanism is a bit
The standard, most widely supported 'Basic' version makes the browser send the username and password in plaintext on every page request. Okay, without SSL, any login mechanism will transmit the password at least once, but 'Basic' makes it a bit too easy for packet sniffers and the like.
Also, a bit more seriously, there's no standard way of getting the browser to clear its cached username and password beyond quitting the browser completely. It's as if someone entirely forgot that part of the standard, and thus it's a bit annoying.
Cookies are a useful side-route around these problems; I rewrote my standard login system thingy recently to use a cookie containing a username and a long 'hash' string - the password is only transmitted once, then that login session is tied to a specific IP address (or rather, range of addresses to take account of multiple proxy servers and similar). It's hardly hyper-secure, but it's an improvement, and it's far easier to do with cookies than with any standard HTTP authentication.
I do agree that cookies are horribly overused. I only ever set them when I absolutely need to store information client-side (and then it's only ever a reference to stuff stored in a database on the server) - other programmers seem to set as many cookies as they can, in the hope that some might be useful...
Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me (Score:3, Informative)
And it's tied to the domain of the site placing it, not the IP. Many sites have an image from the ad trackers (a single, invisible pixel, aka web bug) for placing the cookie. Those images can also be in e-mails that are rendered as HTML (look below the final </html> in the message source, they're commonly there)
Re:The whole PIE thing really bugs me (Score:2)
Just what we need (Score:5, Funny)
But If I wore my tin foil hat, it would be kind of counter productive ....
Wouldn't it?
Re:Just what we need (Score:3, Interesting)
FWIW, I know that I feel much better after four hours of sleep than I do after six; I always assumed that the reason the extra sleep left me groggy was that I was being jarred awake from deep sleep (details here [upmc.com]). I find sleep fascinating, and always enjoy reading the disussions on it -- especially on how to get the most out of it. It seems like quite a safe tuning parameter to optimize, and a lot easier to get into than nootropics [ceri.com].
I gladly, and with out hesitation, welcome our brain-monitoring alarm clock overlords.
Re:Just what we need (Score:4, Funny)
That's why you should be sleeping in a Faraday Cage [wikipedia.org], of course. Problem solved.
Re:Just what we need (Score:2)
Wakeup watch... (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.sleeptracker.com/ [sleeptracker.com]
Re:Wakeup watch... (Score:2)
Looks interesting - If I'm not woken during a light sleep-phase I am completely wasted myself, it would be nice to have something to help
Re:Wakeup watch... (Score:1)
Re:Wakeup watch... (Score:4, Interesting)
Looks interesting - If I'm not woken during a light sleep-phase I am completely wasted myself, it would be nice to have something to help
It does sense when I'm mostly awake and starts beeping which fully wakes me up. I'ts still an exercise to pull myself out of the soft, warm, fluffy bed at 6:30 in the morning. Goddamn corporate job, sucking the life right out of me!
Uhhhh (Score:3, Interesting)
What if I go to sleep late? Will this thing let me sleep till 2PM? I don't really understand the use of this thing.
Re:Uhhhh (Score:5, Informative)
of course (Score:2)
Re:Uhhhh (Score:2)
That's what it sounded like to me -- that you'd set it for a time range, long enough to be pretty confident of hitting a light-sleep phase. It sounds like a really great idea; something I think I'd love to have. I just have one question:
Who gets to wear the headband -- me or my girlfriend?
Re:Uhhhh (Score:2)
Re:Uhhhh (Score:2)
Okay... and when does the alarm go off? When I'm in the optimal light-sleep phase, or when she is? (I thought that part of the question would have been obvious from my original post.)
I'm thinking the real solution would be to have small speakers mounted the headband itself, right near the wearer's ears, with the alarm only loud enough to wake up that person; then we could each have one and both benefit.
Now we just need ATi... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Now we just need ATi... (Score:2)
Currently, nVidia has a stronghold on the linux market and it shows. It is simply ridiculous that I cannot buy a new model ATI card, plug it in, and have it work with video games under linux. Not only is it ridiculous, it is embarassing.
Re:Now we just need ATi... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll give the Free software thing a try soon, but it hasn't been a high priority for me, as I don't use my hardware acceleration near as much as I thought I would (I thought my nice job would give me money to play games: it did, but took away my time!).
Or they could be smart about it. (Score:2)
But so would not having them feel as if they have to write the damn file from scratch. Is it like totally impossible to just go to the part of the file that it cares about and edit that? I mean, in your universe, they would still have to just modify the fields that they want, they would just have a little less effort to do it.
Additionally, if they (and ATi might not do it, but someone would) break it in a registry-looking thing, it's a pain in the ass to put back together. No matter how fuxx0red my machine has gotten, vi has always worked.
Basically, the issue is with ATi, not X.
And you know this, even.
Morning Wood (Score:3, Funny)
Hardware hack, anyone?
Warbraining anyone? (Score:3, Funny)
If you want to make it to work in the morning, you've gotta take the tinfoil hat off before you go to bed. And pay no attention to the black van with the three dozen Pringles cans mounted on the roof. We^H^HThey are not monitoring your dreams. Honest.
Open source drivers/and so forth... (Score:1)
Firefox and cookies (Score:5, Insightful)
Hear^2! (Score:3, Insightful)
it is really annoying to have to mouse over to the button that I choose the most often.
btw, if there is anyway to change this behavior short of recompiling, I would love to know how. :D
'alt-d' doesn't work on a Macintosh (Score:2)
HOWEVER, after trying one more combination, I am ready to kick myself in the head. Thanks for putting me on to this line of thinking.
Control-d works perfectly!! :D
I withdraw my earlier complaint (though it still kind of makes sense, at least to me, to have deny as the default choice in that dialogue). Cheers. (^_^)v
Re:Firefox and cookies (Score:2)
As for flash local shared objects, that's easily defeated simply by not installing flash. If I wanted to watch animated commercials I'd be watching TV (I don't allow animated GIFs either.)
Re:Firefox and cookies (Score:2)
Re:Firefox and cookies (Score:2)
I can't say I particularly like it, but, it is a perfectly valid use of third party cookies.
Cookie Culler can ease your pain. (Score:2)
Well, until they do that, I've found the Cookie Culler [mozdev.org] extension very helpful for clearing out the dead wood quickly without killing the cookies that I actually do want to keep.
Slashbacks really need a tag line (Score:5, Funny)
Slashback: Because you enjoyed these articles the first TWO times around.
or
Slashback: The nice way to say DUPE!!!
or
Slashback: This time we realized we've duped a story before we posted it.
OTOH, what's to prevent unscrupulous editors from going back and editing the topic from Linux, YRO, etc. to Slashback in an attempt to cover their butts?
Re:Slashbacks really need a tag line (Score:2)
Am I the only one?
I submitted a story about PIE (Score:1)
I don't want "perky." (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I don't want "perky." (Score:5, Funny)
Why? How many different people have to worry about your wife waking up grouchy? :P
Re:I don't want "perky." (Score:1)
>Why? How many different people have to worry about your wife waking
>up grouchy?
at least as many as the Private Eye he hired told him
about...
Re:I don't want "perky." (Score:2)
Geek of Tech wins: HUMILIATION.
Re:I don't want "perky." (Score:2)
Sure, sometimes they seem like they are in a good mood -- but behind that facade, they are just waiting for the right time to blow up.
Re:I don't want "perky." (Score:2)
I just want a clock that'll make my wife wake up non-grouchy
Isn't that called "divorce followed by property settlement favouring 90% your ex wife followed by child support payments totalling 80% your take home to your ex"?
Alarm clock?!? (Score:3, Funny)
2) I don't need an alarm clock to annoy my spouse -- I can do that just fine all by myself!
3) I've never actually used an alarm clock. I tell myself what time it is and what time I want to get up just before I go to sleep, then I wake myself up at the optimal point in my sleep cycle. Only problem with this is I tend to wake myself up too early!
nonononononononoononononono!!! (Score:1)
Curse my n00b skills! (Score:1)
Cookie Madness (Score:5, Informative)
"Disable cookies on all images that are being pulled from another domain."
That is, if a web page grabs an image from another domain (a banner, pixel, etc.) then pull it but don't send any of the cookie information for that image.
I mean isn't that the way that most developers track access across websites? You put a one-pixel image and set the cookie through there. Then by reading the http_refer, you know where they've been and associate it to a single user. To track across sites though, this pixel is usually on a separate domain than the site being accessed.
By the way, I originally thought to disable cookies on all images but realized some servers may do security checking via cookies before sending an image. But there is very little legitimate use for sending cookies on images that are outside the domain.
Also, the same could be said of ANYTHING that is pulled off a different domain including scripts, css, etc. If it is on the same domain, send the cookies. If not, then make the request but don't send the cookies.
I would say precious few sites would depend on this behavior and it shouldn't break anything except for the tracking (which we want to break). Not saying that a site couldn't be made to break on this but I can't think of many reasons why a site would.
By the way, I think cookies are great for the most part. SlashDot uses them, I use them, anything with a login (mostly) uses them. I find it humorous when people insist that cookies are evil and you shouldn't have a single one. You can just as easily fake a cookie for a session by sticking an ID in the URL which, personally, I think is worse. Now your personally identifying tracker is available for all to see.
Re:Cookie Madness (Score:2, Insightful)
A session key in the url allows you to log in multiple times, and possibly as multiple users.
It's not something that you need to do every day - but when you're trying to set up something like a CMS with varying levels of access control, it becomes a pain in the neck to either have to keep logging in and out to verify the way it looks to different users, or have IE, Opera, Mozilla and Firefox all open at once.
Re:Cookie Madness (Score:2)
I personally think things should be built to work well and coherantly for the average person, but not screw up the rest of us.
Which will waste more time in total?
You opening up a few web browsers
People having to log into sites a lot more
Ya know what'd be worse? web browsers sharing cookies, then you'd have to use multiple computers.
soap boxing to counter your soap boxing?
Re:Cookie Madness (Score:2)
Seems to me that'd be a great way to deal with image leeching on the web. Not the only way but not a bad way. One of the neat features of the web is that it can be so inter-connected, but since bandwidth costs money, not everybody feels those features are so neat.
I don't have a strong opinion either way (frankly, I like the idea of having the client specify whether it'll accept the cookies or not), but nearly ANY feature can be both useful and abused.
Re:Cookie Madness (Score:2)
IIRC, the W3C even recommends that HTTP clients do not send cookies across domains.
Re:Cookie Madness (Score:2)
Re:Cookie Madness (Score:2)
I think you might have missed the point of webbugs...
If you let the image itself load, the site that hosts it doesn't need you to allow a cookie, you've already given them 90% of what they want... Any site they partner with, that you visit, will record you as visiting in their log file. If, on any of those sites, you enter some personal information, they can then go back and correlate all that information.
"At 1113572714, 66.35.250.150 visited partner-X, who reports the visitor gave email address foo@bar.com. At 1113572790, 66.35.250.150 visited partner-Y, who reports the visitor gave the name John Doe. At 1113572842, 66.35.250.150 visited partner-Z, who reports the visitor gave a zip code of 64105. We therefore know that John Doe, from Kansas City MO, has email address foo@bar.com".
See the problem? As mere humans, we tend to think in terms of what we ourselves know. Data colleting corporations will quite happily go through a few hundred tiny chunks of data to piece together a profile of you with such detail that your own mother probably wouldn't know it all.
VIA Open Source & the binary MPEG driver (Score:2)
Re:VIA Open Source & the binary MPEG driver (Score:2)
This is more likely simply an attempt to control the provision of the API to their own proprietary VMI (VIA MPEG Interface) SDK. Basically an attempt to tie people to their platform, so that once you write yoru code to work on VIA systems, you'll have to write it over again if you want to use anyone elses hardware.
Is it just me... (Score:3, Funny)
Personally, I don't want anything attached to my head while sleeping that was built by this buncha goobers. - http://www.axonlabs.com/images/group-daniel.jpg [axonlabs.com]
You don't need to bookmark the Macromedia page... (Score:2, Informative)
(Actually, I find it more disturbing that a Flash object in a web page could access a local webcam or microphone. Has anyone seen this capability in use?)
Thanks to "bigtallmofo" for bringing this to our attention in the previous YRO article. Who knew?
Alarm clocks (Score:4, Informative)
This may beat the 90-minute rule.
Sleep cycles are about 90 minutes long, so setting the alarm at a 90-minute interval from when you fall asleep will make it more likely that you'll wake up on the high side of sleep, and more likely that you'll feel refreshed. The rule fails if something disturbs your sleep pattern, though, which is where this device (if it exists) would be better.
Re:Alarm clocks (Score:2)
From my own experience, it definitely seems to work. If I take I nap and I wake up before 1.5 or 3 hours, I feel really groggy. If I wake up in the morning after getting less than 3 cycles (actually about 8.5 hours for me), I generally have more trouble motivating myself to move. In fact, it seems to be harder to wake up after 7 hours of sleep than 6, I assume due to the cycles. Thank goodness graduation is less than 3 weeks away. Then those horrible all-nighters in the lonely engineering lab will be over.
How is this different? (Score:1)
Actually come to think of it
Kind of like iron . . . (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Kind of like iron . . . (Score:2)
The problem is, the rest of the Linux world just won't stand around and wait for Debian... I just wish they'd go and say "ach, to hell wi'it..." and shovel it out the door and then issue a service pack some months down the road... you know, like Microsoft do...
Flash bypassing cookie protections (Score:5, Informative)
I find it easier just to use the Flashblock extension. In the (very rare) event I need to run a Flash display, I just click the play button.
Alarm clock idea? (Score:2)
Should have gone for the patent back then ;-) Actually, my problem isn't a lack of ideas, it's not having experience with starting a startup...
Call me a dinosaur if you like (Score:2)
BUT I prefer to 'wake up feeling perky' the old fashioned low tech way.
Sarge and Ubantu comparison (Score:3)
I asked this in the earlier Debian/Ubantu article [slashdot.org] but I think I was a bit late for it to be seen, so I'll try again.
Is there much of a reason to actually switch from Sarge to Ubantu? Right now I'm running a workstation and a laptop on Sarge. It seems to work very nicely, and it's very up-to-date because I keep it up to date with the Sarge repository, which with the occasional exception (eg. still waiting for x.org), is about as up-to-date as most other distros.
I was quite surprised to see the total bashing of Debian in the earlier article in favour of Ubantu. Complaining about Debain and its slow official releases might be justified for everyone who needs official support, but the only advantages I was really able to discern from people's posts was that the installer is apparently a lot nicer, and that it has official releases more often.
In my case at least, the installer isn't an issue. I already have Sarge installed and configured and it works very well. As a home user running it on my desktop, I'm also not too concerned about the official-ness of the distribution. Although "official support" doesn't yet exist for Sarge, there's stacks of unofficial support out there, whether it comes from the community in general or the Debian maintainers who are looking to keep their packages working.
I'm really just interested if it's worth me bothering to nuke Sarge to try out Ubantu. Is there anything other than its regular official releases and and an installer that makes it worth switching?
Re:Sarge and Ubantu comparison (Score:3, Informative)
Xorg (I bought an NVIDIA card just to use its new features). Fading and transparacy is awesome.
Much better art.
Community
Newer version of GTKPod.
Re:But this implies that 'perky' is the desired st (Score:2)
Bad troll alert (me or the post above) (Score:2)
Overclocking to run a desktop application seems kinda silly. What are you going to do? Overclock your modem so mozilla loads pages faster? Time check the time it takes openoffice to print a page? Better replace the motor on your printer so the head can move faster!
Nah this guy is a troll. He is not consitent. He first claims that both desktop applications AND games are lacking on linux but only proofs this for games.
As for the overclocking crowd being important. HAHA. Yeah right, grow up. That market is so tiny that only the smallest companies care about it. The real hardware market is in office machines. Look at the prices on IBM/HP-Compaq desktops vs the hardware costs and you can easily spot where the real margins are.
I know the crowd of linux desktop/windows gamers all to well being one of them. MS makes great software. It runs my games perfectly (windows 2003 server). It is everything else I don't trust it with. This in turn helps gaming performance no end. You will be suprised how many of the weenies above overclock and tweak and bitch about +1 fps when they got torrents, virus checkers, that really funny wallpaper, those handy free icons all running in the background.
Linux can do without those people. Those who think linux is secure have never seen what a true idiot can do.