Ubuntu install a custom application that does something involving sending data out -> We're doomed! They're spying and tracking you! Grab the pitchforks!
Of course, that's RMS' viewpoint and he's entitled to it, and it often provokes some very interesting discussions around it, but he's terrible at being anything other than over the top. For what it's worth I don't think what Ubuntu did was that a bad a thing, it's a nice revenue stream for those that use it and that's a good thing for the future of the project, but I can also understand the view point of people who are uncomfortable with search results peppered with ad's.
"...it's a nice revenue stream for those that use it..."
I'm not entirely convinced that this is going to make a lot of money for Canonical. It will be interesting to see figures in a couple of releases if Canonical (which is a private company) decide to tell us.
What do we think the value to Amazon is of my random desktop searches for files & stuff on my desktop?
The 'slow typing' problem is real: search is dynamic and can, as a result of network latency and fat fingering show results of unfortunately shortened search terms. There is no content filtering on the results. That is actually why I switched it off.
I'd imagine they'll get some money out of it, even if it's not a huge amount, there's plenty of people who like it and think it's useful. The value to Amazon isn't what you're searching, but that you might go "Hey, that's the album I was thinking of buy", and then you're in their content ecosystem.
I don't use Unity as a daily driver but I switched it off due to the network latency and general slowness inside a VM. Aside from that I thought it was pretty decent, it'd be nice if there was more content sources but you can't win them all.
Which version, QQ or 13.04? I'm on QQ with Unity. Everything Everywhere is having some fun with their 'profile generator' at present, and we have exactly 0.24Mbit/s of bandwidth, so that might be an issue.
Yes, much better. Working off a USB stick with persistent space, (I have the Gnome Ubuntu Remix as PC os at present) and this box has Nvidia graphics, and we have problems with the broadband. So as slow a combination as I can imagine anyone new to Ubuntu seeing.
Searches now seem to be completing before sending to Amazon, and my maths related file name terms were bringing up sensible UK relevant suggestions from Amazon, mainly textbook titles. This 'feature' has got a lot smoother since I first saw it.
Of course, that's RMS' viewpoint and he's entitled to it, and it often provokes some very interesting discussions around it, but he's terrible at being anything other than over the top. For what it's worth I don't think what Ubuntu did was that a bad a thing, it's a nice revenue stream for those that use it and that's a good thing for the future of the project, but I can also understand the view point of people who are uncomfortable with search results peppered with ad's.