10 ms·

“grep -R doesn't automatically search amazon”

325 points by shrikant 14y ago

bnr 14y ago
Great to see Shuttleworth taking it easy... > grep --universe might be a better shortcut ;) https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-terminal/+bug/1055766/comments/13 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-terminal/+bu...
- engtech 14y ago
  I find "grep --universe" confusing because that should be a shortcut for searching Amazon for Carl Sagan cooking books. http://www.neatorama.com/2009/12/31/carl-sagans-apple-pie-recipe/
famousactress 14y ago
My favorite bit appears in the comment chain: >akeane, please stop with the snark. Why is my bug report a "snark", I have in good faith reported what I consider a bug with Ubuntu, namely the functionality that is being added to the GUI is not also being consistently added to the CLI tools that some many of us rely on. You have chosen to mark my bug report "invalid", which is your total prerogative and I have total respect for you doing that. I am saddened, however, you have chosen to resort to personal insults (being labeled a snark nearly made my monocle drop out!), rather than focusing on the technical issues presented.
- TallboyOne 14y ago
  I lost it at the monocle bit.
- blahedo 14y ago
  And this, from further down: grep --universe would be a good shortcut, except that i think we all agree this important functionality should be present by default. showing these results from places other than my local computer should be opt-out! how about grep --no-universe ?
jbermudes 14y ago
It amazes me how easily this whole thing could have been prevented if they had just made the Amazon results show up in a separate shopping lens instead of the default lens. Then even if it's pre-installed there'd be some reasonable expectation that a program designed to show you shopping selections would have to connect to a 3rd party server and send your query.
- cooldeal 14y ago
  What amazes me is that people make it sound as if they did not consider this. Of course what they considered doing that but also realized that it will raise very little revenue since 99.99% of folks will not click on the Shopping lens. With this way, people are forced to see Amazon results and a few of them clicking on irrelevant results and buying will result in a lot more revenue comparatively given that it's certainly an affiliate deal.
  - yobbobandana 14y ago
    Until everyone stops using Ubuntu because for some mysterious reason they suddenly hate it.
  - krichman 14y ago
    It's just a total misfire to take Linux users, many of whom are in the Venn diagram intersection of "computer savvy" and "libre software advocate", and then try to force them to watch advertisements on their own desktop. Even people that don't know computers would probably prefer to use Windows or OS X, since that's going to be a nicer experience.
- s_henry_paulson 14y ago
  Literally no-one would opt-in. The obvious solution that was missed is 2 versions. You have a paid version with no Amazon integration, and a free version with Amazon enabled by default. This works 3 ways: (1) The people who don't want amazon, but don't want to pay can just modify the free version. No big deal, small amount of effort to get ads out of your free software. (2) Lots of people end up paying for the software, not because they don't want to be bothered modifying the free version, but because they actually want to support the product. (3) They still get tons of revenue from all of the people that download the free version, but never turn the Amazon off. Almost nobody complains, and everyone wins. The solution that they chose is probably the worst possible option, and has put the entire operating system's future at risk.
menacingly 14y ago
The decision to include Amazon results (by default!) is not in itself a terrible move, but it is an incorrect one. The fact that it is so patently incorrect to so many outside observers forces me to consider whether the internal vision of the project is completely distorted. No, it's not a big deal, it's just a silly & inappropriate use of your time, and potentially a symptom of a distressing detachment from the real.
mkup 14y ago
New kind of trolls detected in the wild: bugtracker trolls.
- BasDirks 14y ago
  not so new; happened a few times on github (hello ruby community).
  - k3n 14y ago
    I still consider Github "new".
- DannyBee 14y ago
  Bugtracker trolls have been around a while. When we started using bugzilla for GCC (many years ago now), within the first 100 bug reports, i think there were 5 trolls. This also isn't very advanced trolling. Advanced trolling is indistinguishable from the thing they were trying to parody.
  - juan_juarez 14y ago
    Ubuntu bug #1 did sort of set a precedent... https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu//+bug/1 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu//+bug/1
spartango 14y ago
While this is amusing, it's also rather disrespectful. You may not agree with the decision by the Ubuntu team to incorporate a feature...and that's fine. There are plenty of ways to voice that opinion (blogs, email, forum). Putting patently invalid(joke) bug reports in a system that's designed for actionable bug fixes just makes life a bit more troublesome for people actually trying to fix things. Harassing them about it through this channel seems like a waste of their time. Seems like Shuttleworth responded to this gracefully, though. :)
- eckyptang 14y ago
  It's akin to a sit in protest. I think it's adequately placed.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - kstenerud 14y ago
    And adequately impotent. When you insult someone, they stop listening to you.
    - k3n 14y ago
      Ignoring something in a public forum like this won't simply make it "go away", though. There are 100's if not 1000's of eyes on this already (and likely 1000's more now that it's being shared on news aggregators).
  - marshray 14y ago
    A sit-in-protest has some properties of a physical DoS (denial of service). This was mere words, and no great quantity of them. This to me looked more like a good old fashioned cleverly-constructed reductio ad absurdum argument and Launchpad seems an entirely appropriate forum for such feedback.
- chao- 14y ago
  >Putting patently invalid(joke) bug reports in a system that's designed for actionable bug fixes just makes life a bit more troublesome for people actually trying to fix things. Harassing them about it through this channel seems like a waste of their time. Let's consider protest via sit-ins at Local Business Foo for its socially-irresponsible but entirely-legal policy/action of Bar. There are plenty of places to protest those actions/policies. Various municipal bodies (city council, chamber of commerce) and private bodies (better business bureau, etc.) are all channels designed for handling complaint. It is precisely because of these channels exist that more a unconventional method of complaint is more notable and thus potentially more effective. In such cases involving a local business, you are most definitely wasting someone's time, far beyond the bounds of deleting or invalidating a bug tracking ticket. As a qualification, I recognize that, depending on the topic of protest, there can be a gap/disconnect in the severity of the topic of protest. The cultural go-to for the words "sit-in protest" evokes imagery of the American civil-rights era, whereas this is an affiliate monetization scheme for an open source operating system. Yet there are other topics which have drawn sit-in protests over the decades, and drawing upon these I feel that my metaphor is apt. (edit: eckyptang beat me to the punch while I was typing this longwinded and nuanced response)
tomrod 14y ago
Snark aside, it's a valid point. Shouldn't CLI tools mimic GUI tools?
- phogster 14y ago
  No.
  - peterwwillis 14y ago
    Why?
    - loungin 14y ago
      Just throwing out a quick response (I'm not GP) but because they are different interfaces. While they both may display the same content and in the broader overall sense behave similarly, how you interact with the content and program itself is different.
    - jlgreco 14y ago
      Would you expect curl to exhibit the same url suggestion/correction behavior as firefox does? These tools are only CLI/GUI equivalents of each other in a very superficial sense.
      - tedunangst 14y ago
        No, because the suggestion behavior is a direct function of the UI. I may expect my shell to offer suggestions or autocomplete based on previous history, however. With either program, I expect them to both perform the core task of "download stuff". Dash and grep may have different interfaces, but if their core purpose is "search stuff", it is not wholly unreasonable to expect them to be able to search the same stuff. [grep is probably the wrong tool. perhaps the output should be included in find instead.]
        jlgreco 14y ago
        > if their core purpose is "search stuff" As I said, they are the same tool only in the most superficial of senses. Is the purpose of this ubuntu thing even to grep input streams or files? Or did the submitter of this 'bug' actually mean to file a bug for slocate, mlocate, or find? Does it do both? These tools have completely different purposes and uses. How about this for another reason though: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/grep.html http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/gre... GNU is bad enough, having Ubuntu tack on whatever shit they feel is "user friendly" would turn the situation into a usability nightmare. PS. Is this thing seriously called dash? If so, that is terrible. The name 'dash' is already taken... in the FOSS world... by Ubuntu's daddy distro Debian. Hell, Googling "ubuntu dash" returns first results for the proper dash. What the hell were they thinking?
ChuckMcM 14y ago
It would have been a more effective snark if it came with a pull request.
- kami8845 14y ago
  Then it wouldn't have had this bit: >Please can you change the grep warez to have this feature, and just install it on my machine while I'm down the pub, after all you do "erm, have root", so it should be easy for you to do :-) which made the post for me
benwerd 14y ago
Awesome that Shuttleworth replied, and in good humor. I still totally buy that ads are step one to Ubuntu integrating more closely with Amazon, and the latter making a pretty bold device play.
ww520 14y ago
Are people this bored that they start trolling open source bug database?
- ahi 14y ago
  You read it, then commented on it. So I think you answered your own question.
creat0 14y ago
The saddest part is this probably offended some people. For the troubled Ubuntu user who still has a sense of humor and an ounce of common sense, I recommend Linux From Scratch. Time to start over.
- gbaygon 14y ago
  For the "lazy" power user that doesn't want to build everything from scratch I recommend Archlinux.
  - creat0 14y ago
    The thing with LFS is that it would cause Linux users to learn. Not necessarily a bad thing. And I would predict it could lower their tolerance for the lots of the garbage that many ditributions force on them. (Like this brilliant move by Ubuntu!) Who knows, it could lead to a more DIY capable userbase. They would not have to ask anyone how to remove things or plead with decision-makers to implement their desired changes, they'd just do it themselves. But yeah, from what I know the Arch Linux distribution imposes a very minimal amount of "pre-configuration". I've always found it easier to add stuff to a bare bones OS configuration than to remove it from a pre-configured one (you have to thoroughly understand what you're removing first; it's easy to break someone else's delicate Rube Goldberg contraption). But maybe that's just me.
    - jamespo 14y ago
      idealism is a wonderful thing but really it would just get more people on mac or windows
    - icelancer 14y ago
      >The thing with LFS is that it would cause Linux users to learn. Not necessarily a bad thing. This is exactly why I stopped using RHEL and other distros back in the late 90's. I am very interested in learning - to some extent. Writing my own goddamned drivers for my ADSL modem was not what I had in mind. Canonical and Ubuntu have made huge strides forward for Linux in the marketplace.
FuzzyDunlop 14y ago
This lacks ambition. $> cd ~/Movies/Avengers ... people who changed into this directory were also interested in Marvel Avengers Assemble [DVD] £10.00 $> ls ~ Desktop Downloads Movies Music Pictures ... related items Intelliplug - Desktop Version £12.95
- dchichkov 14y ago
  $> gcc -o test test.c test.c:1:22: iostream.h: No such file or directory ... people who encountered this error often purchase GCC For Professionals [Hardcover] £12.95
SilasX 14y ago
Can someone explain the context of this? I'm not getting the references. I mean, I know what grep is, and I know the -R option, but ... Is the joke that grep obviously has nothing to do with searching a server you're not on, and the submitter is pretending to be someone who expected that it would search Amazon for results? If so, that's stupid, and not even a clever joke. However, from some of the comments, it sounds like real users (ones actually competent enough to be using grep) are expecting this functionality -- perhaps it doesn't work on some Amazon storage site?
- cynwoody 14y ago
  This is a reaction to the fact that, as of 12.10, the Ubuntu Unity "search lens" now includes Amazon results. http://www.pcworld.com/article/2010538/now-in-ubuntu-linux-12-10-integrated-amazon-search-results.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/2010538/now-in-ubuntu-linux-1...
  - SilasX 14y ago
    Okay, then he gets a solid "thumbs up" from me!
- ksherlock 14y ago
  Ubuntu 12.10 will include amazon ads on the desktop http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4558049 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4558049
- noobplusplus 14y ago
  Slightly OT: But what are the characteristics of a clever joke? I found it funny enough. Just to analyze my own sense of humor.
gizmo686 14y ago
Shouldn't this be a bug in locate?

325 points by shrikant 14y ago

bnr 14y ago

Great to see Shuttleworth taking it easy... > grep --universe might be a better shortcut ;) https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-terminal/+bug/1055766/comments/13 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-terminal/+bu...

engtech 14y ago
I find "grep --universe" confusing because that should be a shortcut for searching Amazon for Carl Sagan cooking books. http://www.neatorama.com/2009/12/31/carl-sagans-apple-pie-recipe/

famousactress 14y ago

My favorite bit appears in the comment chain: >akeane, please stop with the snark. Why is my bug report a "snark", I have in good faith reported what I consider a bug with Ubuntu, namely the functionality that is being added to the GUI is not also being consistently added to the CLI tools that some many of us rely on. You have chosen to mark my bug report "invalid", which is your total prerogative and I have total respect for you doing that. I am saddened, however, you have chosen to resort to personal insults (being labeled a snark nearly made my monocle drop out!), rather than focusing on the technical issues presented.

TallboyOne 14y ago
I lost it at the monocle bit.
blahedo 14y ago
And this, from further down: grep --universe would be a good shortcut, except that i think we all agree this important functionality should be present by default. showing these results from places other than my local computer should be opt-out! how about grep --no-universe ?

jbermudes 14y ago

It amazes me how easily this whole thing could have been prevented if they had just made the Amazon results show up in a separate shopping lens instead of the default lens. Then even if it's pre-installed there'd be some reasonable expectation that a program designed to show you shopping selections would have to connect to a 3rd party server and send your query.

cooldeal 14y ago
What amazes me is that people make it sound as if they did not consider this. Of course what they considered doing that but also realized that it will raise very little revenue since 99.99% of folks will not click on the Shopping lens. With this way, people are forced to see Amazon results and a few of them clicking on irrelevant results and buying will result in a lot more revenue comparatively given that it's certainly an affiliate deal.
- yobbobandana 14y ago
  Until everyone stops using Ubuntu because for some mysterious reason they suddenly hate it.
- krichman 14y ago
  It's just a total misfire to take Linux users, many of whom are in the Venn diagram intersection of "computer savvy" and "libre software advocate", and then try to force them to watch advertisements on their own desktop. Even people that don't know computers would probably prefer to use Windows or OS X, since that's going to be a nicer experience.
s_henry_paulson 14y ago
Literally no-one would opt-in. The obvious solution that was missed is 2 versions. You have a paid version with no Amazon integration, and a free version with Amazon enabled by default. This works 3 ways: (1) The people who don't want amazon, but don't want to pay can just modify the free version. No big deal, small amount of effort to get ads out of your free software. (2) Lots of people end up paying for the software, not because they don't want to be bothered modifying the free version, but because they actually want to support the product. (3) They still get tons of revenue from all of the people that download the free version, but never turn the Amazon off. Almost nobody complains, and everyone wins. The solution that they chose is probably the worst possible option, and has put the entire operating system's future at risk.

menacingly 14y ago

The decision to include Amazon results (by default!) is not in itself a terrible move, but it is an incorrect one. The fact that it is so patently incorrect to so many outside observers forces me to consider whether the internal vision of the project is completely distorted. No, it's not a big deal, it's just a silly & inappropriate use of your time, and potentially a symptom of a distressing detachment from the real.

mkup 14y ago

New kind of trolls detected in the wild: bugtracker trolls.

BasDirks 14y ago
not so new; happened a few times on github (hello ruby community).
- k3n 14y ago
  I still consider Github "new".
DannyBee 14y ago
Bugtracker trolls have been around a while. When we started using bugzilla for GCC (many years ago now), within the first 100 bug reports, i think there were 5 trolls. This also isn't very advanced trolling. Advanced trolling is indistinguishable from the thing they were trying to parody.
- juan_juarez 14y ago
  Ubuntu bug #1 did sort of set a precedent... https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu//+bug/1 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu//+bug/1

spartango 14y ago

While this is amusing, it's also rather disrespectful. You may not agree with the decision by the Ubuntu team to incorporate a feature...and that's fine. There are plenty of ways to voice that opinion (blogs, email, forum). Putting patently invalid(joke) bug reports in a system that's designed for actionable bug fixes just makes life a bit more troublesome for people actually trying to fix things. Harassing them about it through this channel seems like a waste of their time. Seems like Shuttleworth responded to this gracefully, though. :)

eckyptang 14y ago
It's akin to a sit in protest. I think it's adequately placed.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- kstenerud 14y ago
  And adequately impotent. When you insult someone, they stop listening to you.
  - k3n 14y ago
    Ignoring something in a public forum like this won't simply make it "go away", though. There are 100's if not 1000's of eyes on this already (and likely 1000's more now that it's being shared on news aggregators).
- marshray 14y ago
  A sit-in-protest has some properties of a physical DoS (denial of service). This was mere words, and no great quantity of them. This to me looked more like a good old fashioned cleverly-constructed reductio ad absurdum argument and Launchpad seems an entirely appropriate forum for such feedback.
chao- 14y ago
>Putting patently invalid(joke) bug reports in a system that's designed for actionable bug fixes just makes life a bit more troublesome for people actually trying to fix things. Harassing them about it through this channel seems like a waste of their time. Let's consider protest via sit-ins at Local Business Foo for its socially-irresponsible but entirely-legal policy/action of Bar. There are plenty of places to protest those actions/policies. Various municipal bodies (city council, chamber of commerce) and private bodies (better business bureau, etc.) are all channels designed for handling complaint. It is precisely because of these channels exist that more a unconventional method of complaint is more notable and thus potentially more effective. In such cases involving a local business, you are most definitely wasting someone's time, far beyond the bounds of deleting or invalidating a bug tracking ticket. As a qualification, I recognize that, depending on the topic of protest, there can be a gap/disconnect in the severity of the topic of protest. The cultural go-to for the words "sit-in protest" evokes imagery of the American civil-rights era, whereas this is an affiliate monetization scheme for an open source operating system. Yet there are other topics which have drawn sit-in protests over the decades, and drawing upon these I feel that my metaphor is apt. (edit: eckyptang beat me to the punch while I was typing this longwinded and nuanced response)

tomrod 14y ago

Snark aside, it's a valid point. Shouldn't CLI tools mimic GUI tools?

phogster 14y ago
No.
- peterwwillis 14y ago
  Why?
  - loungin 14y ago
    Just throwing out a quick response (I'm not GP) but because they are different interfaces. While they both may display the same content and in the broader overall sense behave similarly, how you interact with the content and program itself is different.
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    Would you expect curl to exhibit the same url suggestion/correction behavior as firefox does? These tools are only CLI/GUI equivalents of each other in a very superficial sense.
    - tedunangst 14y ago
      No, because the suggestion behavior is a direct function of the UI. I may expect my shell to offer suggestions or autocomplete based on previous history, however. With either program, I expect them to both perform the core task of "download stuff". Dash and grep may have different interfaces, but if their core purpose is "search stuff", it is not wholly unreasonable to expect them to be able to search the same stuff. [grep is probably the wrong tool. perhaps the output should be included in find instead.]
      - jlgreco 14y ago
        > if their core purpose is "search stuff" As I said, they are the same tool only in the most superficial of senses. Is the purpose of this ubuntu thing even to grep input streams or files? Or did the submitter of this 'bug' actually mean to file a bug for slocate, mlocate, or find? Does it do both? These tools have completely different purposes and uses. How about this for another reason though: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/grep.html http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/gre... GNU is bad enough, having Ubuntu tack on whatever shit they feel is "user friendly" would turn the situation into a usability nightmare. PS. Is this thing seriously called dash? If so, that is terrible. The name 'dash' is already taken... in the FOSS world... by Ubuntu's daddy distro Debian. Hell, Googling "ubuntu dash" returns first results for the proper dash. What the hell were they thinking?

ChuckMcM 14y ago

It would have been a more effective snark if it came with a pull request.

kami8845 14y ago
Then it wouldn't have had this bit: >Please can you change the grep warez to have this feature, and just install it on my machine while I'm down the pub, after all you do "erm, have root", so it should be easy for you to do :-) which made the post for me

benwerd 14y ago

Awesome that Shuttleworth replied, and in good humor. I still totally buy that ads are step one to Ubuntu integrating more closely with Amazon, and the latter making a pretty bold device play.

ww520 14y ago

Are people this bored that they start trolling open source bug database?

ahi 14y ago
You read it, then commented on it. So I think you answered your own question.

creat0 14y ago

The saddest part is this probably offended some people. For the troubled Ubuntu user who still has a sense of humor and an ounce of common sense, I recommend Linux From Scratch. Time to start over.

gbaygon 14y ago
For the "lazy" power user that doesn't want to build everything from scratch I recommend Archlinux.
- creat0 14y ago
  The thing with LFS is that it would cause Linux users to learn. Not necessarily a bad thing. And I would predict it could lower their tolerance for the lots of the garbage that many ditributions force on them. (Like this brilliant move by Ubuntu!) Who knows, it could lead to a more DIY capable userbase. They would not have to ask anyone how to remove things or plead with decision-makers to implement their desired changes, they'd just do it themselves. But yeah, from what I know the Arch Linux distribution imposes a very minimal amount of "pre-configuration". I've always found it easier to add stuff to a bare bones OS configuration than to remove it from a pre-configured one (you have to thoroughly understand what you're removing first; it's easy to break someone else's delicate Rube Goldberg contraption). But maybe that's just me.
  - jamespo 14y ago
    idealism is a wonderful thing but really it would just get more people on mac or windows
  - icelancer 14y ago
    >The thing with LFS is that it would cause Linux users to learn. Not necessarily a bad thing. This is exactly why I stopped using RHEL and other distros back in the late 90's. I am very interested in learning - to some extent. Writing my own goddamned drivers for my ADSL modem was not what I had in mind. Canonical and Ubuntu have made huge strides forward for Linux in the marketplace.

FuzzyDunlop 14y ago

This lacks ambition. $> cd ~/Movies/Avengers ... people who changed into this directory were also interested in Marvel Avengers Assemble [DVD] £10.00 $> ls ~ Desktop Downloads Movies Music Pictures ... related items Intelliplug - Desktop Version £12.95

dchichkov 14y ago
$> gcc -o test test.c test.c:1:22: iostream.h: No such file or directory ... people who encountered this error often purchase GCC For Professionals [Hardcover] £12.95

SilasX 14y ago

Can someone explain the context of this? I'm not getting the references. I mean, I know what grep is, and I know the -R option, but ... Is the joke that grep obviously has nothing to do with searching a server you're not on, and the submitter is pretending to be someone who expected that it would search Amazon for results? If so, that's stupid, and not even a clever joke. However, from some of the comments, it sounds like real users (ones actually competent enough to be using grep) are expecting this functionality -- perhaps it doesn't work on some Amazon storage site?

cynwoody 14y ago
This is a reaction to the fact that, as of 12.10, the Ubuntu Unity "search lens" now includes Amazon results. http://www.pcworld.com/article/2010538/now-in-ubuntu-linux-12-10-integrated-amazon-search-results.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/2010538/now-in-ubuntu-linux-1...
- SilasX 14y ago
  Okay, then he gets a solid "thumbs up" from me!
ksherlock 14y ago
Ubuntu 12.10 will include amazon ads on the desktop http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4558049 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4558049
noobplusplus 14y ago
Slightly OT: But what are the characteristics of a clever joke? I found it funny enough. Just to analyze my own sense of humor.

gizmo686 14y ago

Shouldn't this be a bug in locate?