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Y Combinator is funding the future of spam in Windows

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Re: Y Combinator is funding the future of spam in Windows

#221

Post by joenathan »

S4M wrote: post #182
jbk wrote: post #49

I can speak quite a bit about this "industry": We (VLC) receive 1 of those offers per day. They are liars, shady business, IP violators and are downright dangerous. They have all those great offers for you, but they refuse to give any details as soon as you ask any question. More than half of them are "the biggest in the world" (sic). They lie about download numbers, about download size, about number of software actu…

After reading some comments and noticing that you're one of the VLC lead developers (awesome software, by the way!), I am wondering if you have a way to make VLC notify its users at the first launch (after install) and tell them something like "You have installed VLC, it should have come without any additional software such as tool bars or file compressors. If this was not your case, you probably installed it from a…

The type of person who would read that disclaimer is the type of person who wouldn't have downloaded from the wrong site in the first place.

Re: Y Combinator is funding the future of spam in Windows

#224

Post by jiggy2011 »

MBCook wrote: post #190
danielweber wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

App stores are just are likely to turn to crap. I've had lots of friends complain that they bought an app, and then an "upgrade" shoved advertisements in. It's not third-party ads, it's first-party ads, which is slightly better. Like OP, I have a lot of sympathy for software developers trying to sell in a world full of people who don't think they should pay any dollars for software. They are still gonna pay, just in…

I've had that happen, but the ads only show up in that one app. They can't install ads across my whole iPhone like most adware does.

May be the case on iOS but with Android I've had apps that stick extra shortcuts on my homescreen and spam notifications every few hours. This makes battery life and usability a lot worse throughout the phone until you can find and kill the offending app.

Re: Y Combinator is funding the future of spam in Windows

#226

Post by Shorel »

jbk wrote: post #49

I can speak quite a bit about this "industry": We (VLC) receive 1 of those offers per day. They are liars, shady business, IP violators and are downright dangerous. They have all those great offers for you, but they refuse to give any details as soon as you ask any question. More than half of them are "the biggest in the world" (sic). They lie about download numbers, about download size, about number of software actu…

> They also have deals with download.com/softopedia/softonic

The problem here is that those sites still rank very high in search results.

Re: Y Combinator is funding the future of spam in Windows

#227

Post by jiggy2011 »

Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #181
api wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Desktop apps with built-in ads are okay. I've used a few here and there. I've also seen shareware model software that has ads that can be turned off by registering. That's fine too. In this case the ads are part of the application . They live within it. Uninstall the app, and the ads are gone. Such ads also tend not to invade users' privacy outside the app. They might send stuff about what you do in the app, but if y…

I don't disagree with your overall point but "toolbar" is not in the same class as "HIV". A little perspective please.

The analogy is apt enough. There's something you want whether it be 100 free wallpapers or a blowjob.

Providing you with such a thing required a certain level of "access" which can be used for evil.

Re: Y Combinator is funding the future of spam in Windows

#228

Post by kybernetyk »

jahitr wrote: post #117
rrouse wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cool thing about Mac applications is they are self contained. Very rarely do you see an actual installer. Uninstallation is usually just deleting the application from the Applications folder. I wish other operating systems did it that way. It's very convenient.

It isn't. Since every library the application needs is inside the bundle, you load multiple versions of the same lib on memory. Also counting the installer, the bundle and Brew or MacPorts you have a tons of way to install an app.

Not every. The ones that are distributed with the OS X base install usually are dynamically linked against.

My current project I'm working on links against the standard Cocoa frameworks, zlib, Core Audio, Audio Unit framework and the Accelerate framework. Yet the Frameworks directory in the app bundle is empty.

Re: Y Combinator is funding the future of spam in Windows

#229

Post by simias »

Matsta wrote: post #116

Ok, I think one thing I don't think people fully understand is how these companies actually make their money back. Now in the past they will either try to sell you something or get you to fill in a CPA offer. Now 2012 has hit the IM/Internet Marketing industry hard mainly because people aren't spending money as much as they used to. Like I mentioned in another comment, basically the whole CPA industry is going belly…

Forgive me for asking a possibly stupid question, but google is failing me: what is a "CPA offer"?

Re: Y Combinator is funding the future of spam in Windows

#230

Post by philbarr »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #219
philbarr wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we could write a chrome/firefox plugin that highlights downloads that are from the same domain? Or perhaps hides non-domain ones? Would that clean up most of these issues? You'd probably have to have a button to toggle this on and off.

Most of these freeware download sites tend to use mirror sites for the actual downloads. The download link for the actual product will often really be a redirect to a page with a "your download will start in 5 seconds" and then some JS triggers the actual download. Even the legit download will usually offer you toolbars and crap anyway.

We could add the most common mirror sites as exceptions, you could add your own, and of course you can always toggle it on and off?

I think that may make it useful enough...

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