> What makes you the most upset: that you've just learned that all > browsers have this function or that Google is using this function?
What do you mean "all browsers have this function?" The browser, as I understand it, can only detect things which have been enabled by you installing something previously. The part that surprised me was that some previous (presumably google) app that I installed, enabled google's webpage to determine various apps installed on my computer, even non-google, non-plugin apps, such as Adobe. I don't know how much power was granted to that application, I don't know what application it is (or are), and I don't know how they will use it. It means that during some previous app installation, I must have casually accepted a EULA (presumably from google) that granted more rights on my system than I expected. When you install Picasa, or Chrome, or Google Earth, generally speaking, you don't expect that you might be weakening the security of Firefox. Incidentally, the same is not true on the mac. When I browse http://pack.google.com in the Mac, the webpage knows nothing. Why? Maybe because picasa isn't installed, or some other app... Or maybe google doesn't care about spying into the macs because they're just not popular enough. Or maybe there's a fundamental difference somewhere that doesn't enable it. I don't know why. _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lopsa.org http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
