Y Combinator is funding the future of spam in Windows

Post by stevoski » Tue, Jan 15, 2013, 4:17 PM UTC

ralphleon wrote: post #213

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 are liars, shady business, IP violators and are downright dangerous." This is completely prejudice! You've never met Install Monetizer, and don't know if they participate in the same activities as the companies that you're referring to. "I believe OP is very polite: There are no good reasons to not shame them publicly." This is childish, and I'd expect better from any contributing member of VLC.

Post by namdnay » Tue, Jan 15, 2013, 4:22 PM UTC

edandersen wrote: post #106

rdl wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing to keep in mind is that YC funds groups. If a team is funded to do one thing, then pivots to doing something else later, it's not like YC is going to de-fund you. (I don't know anything about this specific company)

Surely that can be abused? What could this group have possibly pivoted from? http://www.installmonetizer.com/AT_aboutus.php Plus there are photos of them at YC with their company logo above - they clearly did not pivot.

Post by bencollier49 » Tue, Jan 15, 2013, 4:26 PM UTC

edandersen wrote: post #109

It's even worse, according to http://www.installmonetizer.com/AT_aboutus.php one of the "advisors" - Arjun Bedi - works for Microsoft! Working to destroy his own platform. Classy.

Post by keyboardP » Tue, Jan 15, 2013, 4:28 PM UTC

webreac wrote: post #178

keyboardP wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly is a regular customer going to know what to type and where? Many have trouble with a GUI, let alone a CLI. And Archlinux is just one of many distros and has its own idiosyncracies (e.g. "Pacman" isn't going to work on Ubuntu out the box). Installation of crapware has nothing to do with ease of installation, you've just purposefully made it seem drawn out. You could've just said Google "CD to MP3" and a fe…

I am a linux user (linux mint cinnamon). When I need a new software, I launch the software manager, I type in the search criteria. This gives me a list of software. When I click a software, I have a list of users feedbacks and an install button. When I click install, it asks for my password and that is all. When I am on the command line and I type a command that is not installed, I get: jef@sweethome ~ $ 7z The progr…

Post by jbk » Tue, Jan 15, 2013, 4:29 PM UTC

SwellJoe wrote: post #232

S4M wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

VLC is open source. It would be trivial for a rebundler to remove that warning. If they are violating the license already, there seems to be no impediment to changing the code for personal gain.