I like Ubuntu’s Unity interface, but I wouldn’t use it all the time, and I know many of you don’t like it at all. Like me, you like getting your hands dirty with the operating system and Unity is meant for new Linux users. That’s why for day-in, day-out use I’m now using the Ubuntu Linux-based Mint 11.

Instead of Unity, Mint 11, which is now at the release candidate stage, uses the old Linux Mint desktop layout, mintMenu system, and the same desktop elements featured in previous releases. It also doesn’t use GNOME 3.0. That’s fine by me since I don’t care for GNOME 3 at all, but my reasons for that are a story for another day. Today, I want to tell you why I think Mint 11 is a great desktop Linux for experienced Linux users.

To put Mint 11, Katya, which is based on Ubuntu 11.04, through its paces, I first installed it on one of my main Linux workstations. This is a Dell Inspiron 530S powered by a 2.2-GHz Intel Pentium E2200 dual-core processor with an 800-MHz front-side bus. This box has 4GBs of RAM, a 500GB SATA (Serial ATA) drive, and an Integrated Intel 3100 GMA (Graphics Media Accelerator) chip set.

How well did it work? Well, after a week on it, I also installed the Mint 11 release candidate on my main work laptop. This is a Lenovo ThinkPad R61 with its 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor T7500 and 2GBs of RAM. In other words, it not only worked well, it had already proved trustworthy enough that I’d switched to using it on a production machine.

I was willing to make this shift so fast for several reasons. First, Mint 11 is fast. Before this, I was running Ubuntu 11.04, openSUSE 11.4, and Mint 10 on these machines, or in the case of the PC, its twin brother. I don’t know what special sauce the Mint team added to Mint 11, all I know is that it’s faster and more responsive than the other Linux distributions I’ve recently used on these machines. As for Windows 7 SP1, please, these machines are barely adequate for today’s version of Windows.

With the GNOME 2.32 interface, Mint looks as good as ever. This desktop, unlike Unity, also makes it easy for me to tinker with the operating system to get it working just the way I want. GNOME 2.32 has some GNOME 3.0 features though that I didn’t like. For example, some GNOME compatible applications have, instead of a permanently displayed right-hand slider for moving up and down a page, they have a slider that only appears when your mouse hovers over a windows right-side interface. I find this more annoying than useful.

There have also been some desktop application changes. One, which I really approve of, is the switch to LibreOffice in place of OpenOffice for the office suite. Again, the new model office suite was faster than OpenOffice. In addition, LibreOffice does much better with Microsoft Office document compatibility. Most, if not all, of the Linux desktop distributions are switching to LibreOffice. It’s a smart move.

I also like the use of Banshee, which has long been one of my favorite media-players over Rhythmbox. I’m neutral about Mint switching out gThumb for F-Spot as the default photo application.

Since this is Linux, if you don’t like the default applications, you can always replace it. Like the Ubuntu Software Manager it’s based on Mint’s Software Manager makes it mindlessly simple to add new programs. This program does have one default I don’t care for though. When you install a new program, it doesn’t give you a message letting you know when the installation is complete. Instead it simply gives you a momentary 100% installed on the bottom “ongoing action” bar and the application installation page still shows the program as not being installed. You’ll only see that the program has indeed been installed after you refresh the page.

Update May 24, 4:30PM PDT: Apple has now posted a support article on its website: How to avoid or remove Mac Defender malware. A note at the top of the article says:

In the coming days, Apple will deliver a Mac OS X software update that will automatically find and remove Mac Defender malware and its known variants. The update will also help protect users by providing an explicit warning if they download this malware.

How is Apple responding to the flood of customer calls about installations of the Mac Defender malware?

According to multiple tech support insiders, the company has doubled down on its policy of denying any help to affected customers. Meanwhile, despite evidence that a large number of customers have been affected by this issue, Apple has made no public statement and did not respond to two requests for comment.

My sources tell me call volume for Mac Defender-related issues continues to be high. One AppleCare support agent told me last week that 50% of calls in the previous week were related to this issue. A rep in a different location confirmed that number but said volume had dropped this week:

In the first days after Intego identified the issue I would say 50-60% of calls were driven by Mac Defender.

Now still within the 20-25% range….I think Google may be getting a handle on the gamed SEO placements and poisoned links that started the whole fiasco.

So how big is the problem? Apple’s silence makes it impossible to know for sure. However, I’m told that the division that handles Mac support calls receives between 10,000 and 20,000 calls a day. If 25% of those calls are related to this issue, which has been going on for 25 days, the total number of customers affected could be between 60,000 and 125,000, and growing.

One contractor who works for a third party that handles support calls for Apple in North America sent me a confidential document that had been distributed to all personnel at his location. The document contains detailed instructions from “the client” (Apple) that the firm’s employees must follow when dealing with calls from customers asking for help with Mac Defender issues. (I’ve posted a copy of the document at the end of this post.)

The document, which is labeled “Valid as of May 20th 2011 subject to further revisions,” instructs support reps to “Start with an upbeat tone and stay positive.” That’s followed by two blocks that outline the script the agents are expected to follow:

“I am glad that you decided to call in about this issue today. Based on the symptoms you describe it sounds like you may have malware on your computer. I would be more than happy to send you an article about what malware is and is not. Lets [sic] make sure you have all your software up to date.”

“Apple’s [sic] doesn’t recommend or guarantee any specific third part [sic] anti-virus protection over another. However I can suggest several third party virus protection programs that you may want to consider researching to find the best one for your needs.”

At that point the rep is ordered to suggest “at least three or four different programs from anywhere” and direct the customer to the App Store or the Apple Online Store.

In a particularly Orwellian turn of phrase, the anonymous author of the document then notes dryly, “According to the client the point of this is to empower the customers to become more internet and security savvy.”

The end of the document includes a list of “Things you must never do according to the client.” The list of prohibited actions includes all of the steps required to clean a Mac Defender infection:

– You cannot show the customer how to force quit Safari on a Mac Defender call

– You cannot show the customer how to remove from the Login items.

– You cannot show the customer how to stop the process of Mac Defender in their Activity Monitor.

– You cannot refer the customer to ANY forums or discussions [sic] boards for resolution (this includes the Apple.com forums)

The final item on the list contains instructions that prevent support personnel from indirectly helping clients:

– Once you know that the call is about Mac Defender, and then the customer decides to try and ask you general questions to find a loophole (IE: “OK, then how would you uninstall a third party program in general” or “How do I stop programs from starting upon launch”) The point of this is, things that would be considered “general product usage” questions are not allowed to be answered if the customer has already informed you that he potentially has MacDefender and is now asking obvious questions to skirt our policy.

The upshot of this policy is to explicitly prohibit any action that could help customers. For tech support personnel, that’s a bitter pill to swallow.

One rep who contacted me via e-mail describes the current mood among fellow support reps as “horrid,” adding, “We are now under strict orders, of course without distinctly saying it, to help NO ONE with Mac Defender under threat of our jobs … All I heard all day today from other advisors was how Apple doesn’t want to take care of its customers and how this new policy constrained our ability to do our job and directly affects our pay.”

A second rep told me, “The shit has hit the fan.”

You can see a copy of the entire document here:

It should come as no surprise by now that I am not a huge fan of Apple, the company. I do think they make excellent hardware, and my laptop is a MacBook Air running Windows 7. Their business practices, however, are pretty shady, and it’s my opinion that they hold nothing but contempt for their customers.

A perfect example is the new malware attack against OSX, MACDefender. For years, OSX users have crowed about how they didn’t have to worry about viruses or malware, because mommy Apple kept them safe with an operating system that was immune to such things.

No, it was never immune. It was simply never on the radar of malware authors because it wasn’t financially attactive enough to attack. With the hundreds of millions of unprotected Windows installations, it didn’t make sense to bother. Well, there’s enough OSX users out there now to make it worthwhile, and the attacks are starting.

Apple’s response? Sticking its fingers in its ears and shouting “LALALALA! I can’t hear you!”

ZDnet’s Ed Bott interviewed an AppleCare representative, and was told that Apple’s official stance is that they not assist their customers in removing the malware. In fact, in a follow-up article, Ed shows an internal memo that tells Apple support reps to not even acknowledge the existence of the malware on their computer, nor provide them with further help or escalate to a higher support level.

This is atrocious. Even Microsoft, which has a long history of operating system exploits and malware issues, has acknowledged the problems and even provides anti-malware protection for free, as well as providing online and phone support for security issues.

Don’t expect Apple to change their stance until they are shamed into doing it. Because they already have your money. And they know that their diehard fans will swallow anything they tell them, even if it’s against their own best interests.

Burying your head in the sand is NOT a viable form of customer support.

Takeaway: At home you search for something on Google. Ten minutes later, at work, you enter the exact same query into Google, but get different results. Why?

December 4th, 2009 was a pivotal day for the Internet. Still, as Eli Pariser points out in his new book,The Filter Bubble , very few people noticed what the search giant Google had done. Fortunately:

“Search engine blogger Danny Sullivan pores over the items on Google’s blog, looking for clues about where the monolith is headed next, and to him, the post was a big deal. In fact, he wrote later that day , it was the biggest change that has ever happened in search engines.”

Filter bubble? What is it?

“The new generation of Internet filters looks at things you seem to like-the actual things you’ve done, or the things people like you like-and tries to extrapolate. They are prediction engines, constantly creating and refining a theory of who you are and what you’ll do and want next.

Together these engines create a unique universe of information for each of us-what I’ve come to call a filter bubble-which fundamentally alters the way we encounter ideas and information.”

What Google has known all along

Google uses the above data to provide customized-search results to signed-in account owners who give their permission .

What changed?

So what was this dramatic change? Google altered Personal Search, enabling it for everyone not just those logged on, by using what they call signed-out customization :

“When you’re not signed in, Google customizes your search experience based on past search information linked to your browser, using a cookie. Google stores up to 180 days of signed-out search activity linked to your browser’s cookie, including queries and results you click.”

Vendor HotSpot

Here to help you with your Document Management Needs

Read the DocuMentor blog now

Learn More »

Turning Personal Search on for everyone concerned Mr. Sullivan. Calling it the “New Normal “, he explains:

“The days of ‘normal’ search results that everyone sees are now over. Personalized results are the ‘new normal,’ and the change is going to shift the search world and society in general in unpredictable ways.”

To put it another way, Mr. Sullivan mentions:

“Happy that you’re ranking in the top results for a term that’s important to you?

Look again. Turn off personalized search, and you might discover that your top billing is due to the way the personalized system is a huge ego search reinforcement tool. If you visit your own site often, your own site ranks better in your own results-but not for everyone else.”

And, here I thought my articles were getting high rankings because of their merit. Ouch.

PageRank and then some

PageRank is what made Google famous, more than a few people rich, and how Google rates web pages. In 2009, Google altered their holy grail, in order to revamp Personal Search. Mr. Pariser, in his book, points out that Google now uses 57 different variables or “signals” to create search results tailored specifically for you. Some of the known signals are:

• Search history
• Location
• Active browser
• Computer being used
• Language configured

I suspect the other 52 will remain secret, much like the formula for Coke.

What it all means

Ever have one of those feelings that something doesn’t seem right, but you can’t put your finger on it? I suspect that’s why it took me until now to realize the implication of Google’s Personal Search. And, why Mr. Pariser has spent a great deal of time and effort coming to his conclusions.

I’m glad I read the book. Understanding Mr. Pariser’s concerns will help me gage search results more realistically. For the time-challenged, Mike Elgan offers a synopsis of the book, in his blog post, How to pop your Internet ‘filter bubble’ :

“In this column, I’m going to tell you how personalization works, why you may not want it, and also how to pop the bubble and opt out of a system that censors your Internet based on stereotyping.”

I found the following tips by Mr. Elgan useful:

• Deliberately click on links that make it hard for the personalization engines to pigeonhole you. Make yourself difficult to stereotype.
• Erase your browser history and cookies from time to time.
• Use an “incognito” window for exploring content you don’t want too much of later.
• Use Twitter instead of Facebook for news. (Twitter doesn’t personalize.)

Update: As for Twitter and Facebook, I just read a Yahoo Finance article prepared by WSJ and felt compelled to share it with you. The article refers to the Facebook “Like” button and Twitter’s “Tweet” button that is displayed on web pages:

“These so-called social widgets, which appear atop stories on news sites or alongside products on retail sites, notify Facebook and Twitter that a person visited those sites even when users don’t click on the buttons, according to a study done for The Wall Street Journal.”

The article goes on to explain something that may surprise you:

“For this to work, a person only needs to have logged into Facebook or Twitter once in the past month. The sites will continue to collect browsing data, even if the person closes their browser or turns off their computers, until that person explicitly logs out of their Facebook or Twitter accounts.”

How about that?

An afterthought

The advantage afforded those with the ability to manipulate search-engine results is huge. And, I was interested in learning what Mr. Pariser and Mr. Sullivan thought about that. Time did not allow Mr. Pariser to respond. Mr. Sullivan did.

Kassner: Ultimately, my concern is how do we know that queried search results are not forced biases leading us to follow someone else’s agenda?

Sullivan: I think despite personalization, the search results still reflect lots of diversity. I also think that results are only the start of research into a new area. Wherever you end up, you’ll probably get some pointers to other material-and that also leads to greater diversity.

I also think it’s easy to assume the worse. My friends are all liberal (let’s say), so I’ll never see anything but a liberal view of the world. Perhaps. But the reality is that some of your friends will probably point toward some anti-liberal material, as part of their discussions. And that’s exposing you to more diversity.

Assuming the worse, Google could intentionally try to bias its search results to a particular view. But that assumes there’s a particular view on literally billions of unique searches that are done each month. There’s just not. Some of them have no particular slant one way or another. But even if you managed it, as I said, some of those resources (just like your friends) will point toward content they don’t agree with.

The challenge isn’t that we won’t get exposed to contrary statements. The challenge is that people are seemingly more and more happy to ignore contrary material and create their own beliefs without any critical thinking. “True Enough ” is a good book on this topic. Perhaps this really isn’t something new but rather has always been there. But it sure feels new to me.

Kassner:I am seeing people preferring to use links mentioned by Twitter and Facebook. They trust those opinions over the search engines. Are you seeing that as well? Do you see this as a growing trend?

Sullivan: I do see it growing, and it’s because our social networks offline have “caught up” to being as accessible as search engines for quick answers. We can ask many people for answers to anything, and that’s particularly attractive for subjective questions where there’s no right answer, where we want opinions from those we know.

Kassner: What is your opinion on the general health of search today?

Sullivan: I think the general health is actually pretty good. We should look for search engines to do more to increase quality, which means probably relying less on the link-based systems of ranking that worked in the past and more toward using social signals as well as our own behavior.

Kassner: Good advice. I intend on heeding it.

Final thoughts

My goal is to make you aware of what Mr. Pariser calls the filter bubble. And, explain why my Internet is different from your Internet. Just knowing search customization is happening is more than half the battle.

I learned a great deal from Mr. Sullivan about a subject I thought I understood. I was wrong and I thank him for his help.

Judicial decisions are starting to come fast and furious in the movie copyright troll cases – and the trend is mixed but promising for those of us who care about protecting due process.

The good news is that judges continue to recognize the fundamental flaws in these cases. In the Northern District of Illinois, for example, Judge Blanche Manning recently severed Millennium v. Does 1-800, effectively dismissing the case against almost every Doe defendant. The court also suggested that the suit had been brought in the wrong place:

The plaintiff is a Hawaii corporation with its principal place of business in California. As far as the plaintiff knows, none of the defendants are located in Illinois and it merely alleged, without any basis the court can discern, that “on information and belief each Defendant may be found in this district and/or a substantial part of the acts of infringement complained of herein occurred in this District.” Amended Comp. at ¶7. Indeed, apparently none of the Doe defendants who have filed motions to quash are located in Illinois and it appears that easily accessible tools exist to verify the locations of the IP addresses of the other named Doe defendants, see, e.g.,http://whois.arin.net/ui/, many (if not all) of which are not located in Illinois.

Judge Manning has also ordered severance in Lightspeed v. Does 1-1000, on similar grounds.

Another Illinois federal judge has expressed not just skepticism but outrage at the tactics of one copyright troll. Calling the case of CP Productions v. 1-300 both “ill-fated’ and “ill-considered” he not only dismissed the case but read the riot act to the plaintiff’s attorney in open court, demanding to know why, if the case was properly filed in Illinois, he was getting motions to quash from defendants all over the country.

And, as we reported last week the judge in one mass copyright “reverse class action” in the Southern District of Illinois has stayed discovery while it considered whether the plaintiff should be allowed to subpoena the Does’ identities given the fundamental flaws in its case. A hearing on the issue is scheduled for Monday.

These views are not yet universal, however. In late March, Judge Beryl Howell issued an unfortunate decision on motions to quash discovery in three cases filed in the District of Columbia (the plaintiffs are all represented by the US Copyright Group). EFF participated as amicus in one of the cases, Call of the Wild Movie v. Does 1,062. The judge denied the motions, concluding, in essence, that it was too early in the litigation to address deep the procedural flaws in the plaintiffs’ cases. We are particularly disappointed that Judge Howell (1) accepted the idea that using BitTorrent to download the same movie was enough to establish a logical relationship between defendants; and (2) suggested that the Doe defendants are not harmed until they are actually named in a lawsuit, not withstanding the efforts of plaintiffs to extract settlements based, in part, on the coercive effect of being sued far from home with the threat of statutory damages of up to $150,000.

Since then, however, Judge Howell has indicated that she is keeping a close eye on USCG. For example, in one of the cases, Maverick v. Does 1-4350, Judge Howell has ordered the plaintiff to dismiss hundreds of Does where the plaintiff either does not intend to name and sue the Does in D.C. and/or the information for those Does is no longer available. The court noted that “since plaintiff filed its Complaint, it has not named a single defendant in this action” and that while plaintiff had stated it would dismiss numerous Does, it had not bothered to submit a proposed order to that effect, leaving those Does in limbo.

We'll continue to monitor these cases, and to get involved directly where we can.

Related Issues: Copyright Trolls