[ale] Google Chrome just got a lot better on Linux

Marc Ferguson marcferguson at gmail.com
Sun Jul 12 20:38:49 EDT 2009


On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 12:14 PM, Jeff Lightner <jlightner at water.com> wrote:

>   You’re right there is no way to not leave traces.  My concern about
> Google though isn’t that you’re leaving traces but that they actively
> attempt to track and store those traces all in one location.   I’d rather
> someone had to dig a little if they want information about people.   The
> potential for abuse by one corporation (or one corporation giving
> governments free range) is immense.   Look at the agreements they’ve already
> made with the Chinese government to help suppress freedom of information.
> Should we assume that behind the scenes they aren’t actively providing
> information to that government so they can stay in business?
>
>
>
> It is similar to why I dislike MS.  It wasn’t because they didn’t make
> usable products (not saying “quality” products).  I was because they felt
> that wasn’t sufficient and tried to push everyone else out of the market
> (whichever one they were in) by practices that both the E.U. and the U.S.
> (pre-W) decided were monopolistic.
>
>
>  ------------------------------
>
> *From:* ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] *On Behalf Of *Jim
> Philips
> *Sent:* Wednesday, July 08, 2009 5:50 PM
>
> *To:* Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts - Yes! We run Linux!
> *Subject:* Re: [ale] Google Chrome just got a lot better on Linux
>
>
>
> I care about privacy too and I have thought about this a lot. But if the
> network is going to be the village where you work, play and transact
> business, how exactly are you going to do that without leaving traces
> behind? I don't see any interest from the general public in encrypting all
> e-mail traffic with PGP and obscuring their Web habits with Tor. The simple
> truth is that there is so much of that data that practically nobody is
> especially interested in knowing the real details about you or me. If I get
> a few targeted ads, I'll ignore those to the same degree that I always
> ignored TV ads. Most mega-companies don't have much interest in us beyond
> analyzing our behavior in the aggregate. After that it's not much worth
> doing. I do get rattled when I hear that AT&T and others shared our data
> with the NSA, but they didn't need the Internet to do that. I'm sure they
> were doing it in the days of POTS too. And besides, data sharing doesn't
> just benefit large, faceless business entities. It benefits you and me too.
> When some member of the general public knows about an abuse, he can share it
> on the Internet with an ease that would have been unimaginable at the
> beginning of the last decade(Wikileaks, anybody?). So, on the whole, I'm not
> terribly worried. If I were, I would become a Luddite and swear off the
> Internet altogether. Because that would be the only true defense.
>
> On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 10:07 AM, Jim Kinney <jim.kinney at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I agree with you Jeff. And it's not just the tin-foil hat talking either.
>
> Yet I also think we've already passed the point of no return.
>
> You and many others use (myself included) use Google search daily
> because it works. That ability to work is a direct result of the
> constant tracking that they do. That search allows a data point of
> topic and requester's IP.  The ALE list is mirrored on google groups
> as an emergency backup medium. That means they also have the email
> address of anyone who posts to the list. This now provides a directly
> inferrable "interest route" that can be pegged against the IP address
> and email address. The search links can now correlate between an email
> persona and other people and can also obtain a fair estimate of
> "degrees of separation" based on email correspondence and similarities
> of search data.
>
> Now couple that with "customer loyalty card" data and credit card
> purchase data and it is quite easy to built up a solid profile with
> fairly accurate personality profiles (Yikes! Free software/speech/beer
> advocate alert!).  Google has Checkout already. Do they also provide
> bulk mail services for Kroger and Publix? I don't know but is either
> wanted to make sure their message made it past spam filters, sending
> email coupons through Google mail servers would be a good way.
>
> Somewhere a series of red blinking lights just activated....
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 8:15 AM, Jeff Lightner<jlightner at water.com> wrote:
> > Sorry but a company that keeps tabs on everything you do on the internet
> via
> > little javascript embeds in every web page is unlikely to ever convince
> me
> > to use them for my browser.  Firefox lets me block their little embed.
> I
> > use Google for searching but don’t think it is smart to use them for much
> > more.
> >
> >
> >
> > ________________________________
> >
> > From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of Jim
> > Philips
> > Sent: Wednesday, July 08, 2009 6:13 AM
> > To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts - Yes! We run Linux!
> > Subject: Re: [ale] Google Chrome just got a lot better on Linux
> >
> >
> >
> > Well, this definitely adds some fuel to the fire:
> >
> > http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html
> >
> > The Google OS is going to be a reality.
> >
> > On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 5:37 AM, Jim Philips <briarpatch.jim at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > There are already add-ons in an experimental state. I haven't tried to
> use
> > them in Linux. But the work is under way.
> >
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 1:29 AM, Richard Bronosky <Richard at bronosky.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > Amen.
> >
> > On Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 9:51 PM, Andrew Grieser<agrieser at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >> Is there any plan for add-ons? It seems like they have to do something
> >> similar to add-ons in order to win over Firefox users.
> >>
> >> Andrew
> >>
> >> On Tue, Jul 07, 2009 at 07:59:29PM -0400, Jim Philips wrote:
> >>>    Well, Chromium really. I've been downloading the nightlies from
> here:
> >>>    http://dev.chromium.org/getting-involved/dev-channel#TOC-Linux
> >>>    Today, there was a giant leap ahead in features. You can manage
> >>> bookmarks,
> >>>    save passwords, switch to a GTK theme and do a whole lot of other
> >>> things
> >>>    you couldn't do before today. I don't know if I'll prefer it over
> >>> Firefox
> >>>    or not. But it is *nice* to have a choice.
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Ale mailing list
> >> Ale at ale.org
> >> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> >>
> >
> >
> > --
> > .!# RichardBronosky #!.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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>
>
> --
>
> --
> James P. Kinney III
> Actively in pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness
>
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>
I wanted to bring this discussion back to the Chromium project, for a bit. I
haven't done a real research, but I saw somewhere, boasting, that the Google
Chrome browser was based on the Chromium project? Is this true? If so, I'm
wondering why is the open source version so far behind the commercial Chrome
project? Is it because Google has a dedicated team to work on it?  I'm
grateful for where the project is, since I'm not contributing, but just
wondering - "where the inner lies!?" (Galaxy Quest reference)

-- 
Marc F.

"When life gives me lemons... I make Linuxaide, hmm good stuff!"
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