The danger is that many people will have very little power to make a real choice, resulting in more powerful businesses being taking advantage of them.
That's the attitude that informs how & why that law was written.
I don’t find this appeal to donate irritating because the Internet Archive is a non-profit, and it does necessary work I’m grateful for. Asking for donations is the main way the IA can keep doing the good things it’s doing, so I wouldn’t want to stop that.
I don’t like the idea of good human works being lost, so I’m glad that the Internet Archive archives lots of media, especially scrapes of websites in the Wayback Machine. I’ve used the Wayback Machine usefully multiple times in the past to find information that would otherwise be gone.
(That said, I didn’t donate, because I feel that I can’t afford to.)
Yeah and those damn pesky charities who have the audacity to ask for donations to help sick children get better or provide clean water and food to families in third world countries... /sarcasm
To answer your question: yes, you are the only one that finds appeals for donations for worthy causes to be irritating. The Internet Archive might not get as much attention as Wikipedia or other donate-able causes, but what they're doing is a very worthy cause and something that will be commended and finally recognised one day in the near distant future. When someone is willing to match a donation 3-1, you can't argue that even the minimum donation of $25 which I am sure most HN users could afford would help them out a lot.
It's attitudes like yours that are the reason sites like Wikipedia have to resort to plastering Jimmy Wales' face over their site and beg for donations to keep the site running. Have some heart, man.
I just donated $50, please consider donating even just $25.
No, you're not. And that's why non-profits have to spend large sums of money on marketing to convince people to give more.
But you say: "Marketing is a waste of money for a charity! Feed more starving kids with it!" That sounds good, until you realize that the ROI on marketing is positive and if the charity wants to grow, it has to spend a portion of each $1 you give to it trying to get the next $1 to help it grow.
Thus we end up with overhead, which ironically, can upset people more and make them want to give less.
It's a vicious cycle people. Spread the love and give.
Marketplace on NPR interviewed an economist researching charity fundraising. Some highlights from the interview:
* 1-to-1 match works well, but increasing the match to 2-1 or 3-1 doesn't do any additional good.
* Raffles. If you're serious about raising money, offer people a prize. And just by doing that you end up increasing gifts by as much as 100 percent.
* "Once-and-done" policy: Since charities know it's annoying to constantly get solicitations in the mail, they give you a choice: if you send in some money today, and check a box opting out, we'll never bother you again. People who are given the once and done proposition, they not only give more money in that particular fund-raising drive, but they do not check the box. And in future months they end up giving more money that people who never received the once-and-done proposition.
FWIW, It's better to stick to the facts rather than spreading even more FUD - "sell it's users searches to amazon"
Ubuntu is not "selling" your searches to amazon. Ubuntu will only get paid any money if you click through, and purchase something from Amazon. Ubuntu is sending your searches to Amazon which may or may not be 'right', but they only get paid if you buy stuff.
I'd guess Ubuntu are desperate for revenue and have run out of other ideas.
Also FWIW, the number of people who use these desktop search things seems likely to be tiny. Particularly amongst those who use linux.
I don't understandd how that can be a legitimate mindset for Canonical.
Ubuntu is on the verge of becoming the major player in the early-stage linux convert market. They have the best supported platform, the largest and most accepting community and userbase, and are beginning to branch out towards more traditional markets like gamers with the soon-to-happen inclusion of Steam.
It would seem a better move politically to make this feature either opt-out or opt-it, and not required.
I've used Ubuntu's dash search when looking for an app that's not readily available. Who keeps things on the desktop nowadays? :)
>Ubuntu is not "selling" your searches to amazon. Ubuntu will only get paid any money if you click through, and purchase something from Amazon.
They are selling click throughs and it is likely for such a system to work they need to send a search off to amazon (to see if it matches any products). Amazon would be insane if they didn't analyze and watch the searches that are being sent from ubuntu, even if no sale comes of it. Ubuntu makes money off of this process, I sure some of the value to amazon is just the search data.
I use my desktop search on osx near constantly. I used ubuntu's search just last night. I don't have data one way or the other, but it seems at least possible that many people use the search (if they didn't why would ubuntu care).
Pagers, in their niche, are better than any other technology available. Considering how often my phone battery runs dead by accident, I feel a lot more comfortable with surgeons having pagers that run for months off a single AAA battery.
A week is a far cry from months. Range, reliability, and delivery guarantees are also an issue with phones.
The only real argument against pagers is that it's another thing to carry around, but in that regard modern pagers are a lot better than dumb-cellphones so pagers still have the advantage (because lets face it, people are still going to want their smartphones).
(Well, that and "they are old, and old is lame", which is not really an argument. ;)
I'd like to know where you're finding a pager that runs for months on a single AAA. My pager takes a AA battery, and it has to be replaced roughly monthly. Why, yes, I do work in Healthcare IS, why do you ask?
I've used the first 2 with excellent results. Obviously you get slightly less than selling on the open market, but you don't have to deal with scammers, and get the cash quickly and without issues.
> " If youre thinking of selling an expensive item on eBay, think again. "
I would say, this type of fraud is exclusively targeted at cellphones, ipods, netbooks etc. If you're selling something like an antique grandfather clock, you should be fine. Of course anything that requires collection, or couriering is going to be more traceable and secure.
I have sold hundreds or maybe thousands of items on eBay. The only one I ever had a problem with was trying to sell an old iPod. As soon as it was listed the scamming started by fraudsters.
One could say the same thing about OP's post.
Yet, it isn't unique by a long shot.
I've also given up on selling via CL because of the scammers. Now I donate to the local Goodwill or other charity (women's shelters want cellphones, for example), and take the tax write-off.
No, because most cellphones/iPods etc will be subject to scammers.
These devices are absolutely simple for scammers to work with. They're high value, cheap to post, and can easily be swapped with phoney/broken identical devices.
I think it isn't that you end up getting scammed on craigslist, but that 9 out of ten replies are from scammers. It creates annoying overhead in sorting them out.
--
Hi!
I am buying this as gift for my Son. Are you firm on the price? Email me back please,though, you may send me a text on the number below because I am hearing impaired but I think email is the best for me.
--
Hello, i saw your listing on craigslist and Am wondering if the item is still for sale. Please do let me know if I'm still able to purchase as i am willing and ready to make purchase,get back to me with the condition asap.Thanks
I think you're misusing the word "precedent" here. This absolutely does set a precedent but whether it constitutes a trend or policy change is debatable.
It's just that the scamming is more common with iPhones. There are many public cases where the similar scam was pulled as the buyer returned an "item not as described" as an empty guitar case full of rocks/synth box full of books/etc.
I want advertising. It tells me about things I might like.
You're perhaps one of the very very few people who dislike being told about things, but thankfully you're in the minority.
The whole "do not track us" idea is ridiculous and a 'moot' issue. Cookies aren't really necessary, you can track people server side based on their browser make up, and they won't know they're being tracked. 99.9% of browsers are completely unique and identifiable back to the computer.
If you really don't want to be tracked (<0.01% of users), then use TOR, lynx, adblock, disallow cookies, etc etc etc
Look also at the recent EU cookie laws, and how ridiculous and needlessly cumbersome they have made websites that have addopted it. Endless clicking confirmation boxes / dropdowns to say it's ok for them to store a cookie. We do not need more of this madness.
I want advertising. It tells me about things I might like.
Assuming that I wanted to be aware of relevant advertising, the signal to noise ratio is absolutely microscopic. Even sites that have massive data dossiers on me (Facebook and Google) routinely abuse my attention.
>I want advertising. It tells me about things I might like.
I hate advertising. Usually the ads are irrelevant and for things I do not and would not ever want, are often scammy, sometimes they carry malware, often get in the way of me retrieving the information I went to a site to see..
I bet if I counted every time I clicked on an advertisement in the last decade, that number would be less than 20.
That said, I agree completely the "tracking" worries are absurd and more borne out of FUD than any concrete privacy issue.
>Look also at the recent EU cookie laws, and how ridiculous and needlessly cumbersome they have made websites that have addopted it.
Due to shoddy implementation of a shoddy law - that does not reflect whatsoever on the concept. And cumbersome? Really? Could you point to an example site?
> And cumbersome? Really? Could you point to an example site?
It's definitely cumbersome. I've hit a bunch of sites recently that threw up an interstitial requiring me to "opt in" to cookies. This is obnoxious, and I go through the same thing on every device. It's not that one site doing it is especially cumbersome. It's the aggregate behavior.
I didn't realize that a new EU law was responsible for this until I read mibbitier's comment, though.
The worst implementations "drop down" a message at the top of the page to tell me they're using cookies. This invariably happens just as I'm clicking on a link. The link moves, and I click on some link I didn't want to click on.
There are no words strong enough to describe how shitty that is, and it's incredibly common, on big, widely used websites.
Recently became required by the EU for all websites to notify users of cookies, so don't expect the notifications to go away. Better implementations don't move content around the page though.
>You're perhaps one of the very very few people who dislike being told about things [...]
The question is told by who, when, and at what cost?
If the answer is, by someone with a vested interest, all the time, and at the cost of someone accumulating massive amounts of very personal information about me, then no, I don't want to be told about things.
I really don't think many people see advertising as valuable information. They see it as payment for a service they want and that's what makes this issue so difficult. I don't like being tracked, but if I have to pay for every single service with my credit card, that's not going to increase my privacy either.
Cookies aren't really necessary, you can track people server side based on their browser make up, and they won't know they're being tracked.
In theory, maybe. In practice, no that's not true. The big web advertising companies all subscribe to the Internet Advertising Board's code of standards which prohibits anything like panopticon-style user tracking.
I just tested at Panopticlick, and it told me my browser is completely unique. Just like it said the last 8 or so times I've been to Panopticlick.
So I question how meaningful that is. Yes, it's pulling enough info to uniquely identify a browser for now, but in a week I'll add a plugin, remove a plugin, change a setting, update Firefox, whatever and the tracking will be lost.
Edit: Also, browsers could be patched to randomize some of the information Panopticlick is using, like the exact way the HTTP Accept header is written, and the order in which plugins are reported.
That you're running Ubuntu is 99% of the entropy. Nobody uses Ubuntu (for certain values of nobody). The fonts you have installed. The versions of the plugins you have installed. &c.
I've long wanted to build a WebKit based browser that simply lies in response to all of those evil questions. Add it to my backlog of Important Projects, I guess.
> nothing in the info it gave back looked especially unusual.
It doesn't have to be unusual, it just has to vary slightly from machine to machine. It's the specific combination of those slight variations that's unusual.
