411–420 of 468 posts
Y Combinator also funded our solution to crapware. http://ninite.com Basically we automate multiple installers and decline toolbars just like you would. Users range from the nontechnical to NASA. We even have a huge blind user base because these installers are frequently hell to navigate with a screenreader. We make money selling a Pro version with extra features to businesses and school IT departments. It works well…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
However, it's still preferrable to Apple's draconian policies.
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…
The really sad part of malware that is tied to freeware or shareware is that the whole thing is a self-inflicted downward spiral. The software authors will tell you they need that malware money because nobody pays for shareware anymore. You know why I stopped downloading and buying shareware years ago? Malware. And the really unfortunate thing is that a few big bad apples can and did ruin it for everyone else. I don'…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If Linux on the desktop were to get popular, I'd hate to imagine what might happen to the open source Fedora and Debian/Ubuntu repositories. Nothing. In case you haven't been paying attention, Debian repositories were "app stores" before there were app stores. The software goes through extensive vetting and rigorous testing; no, I'm not saying every line of code is inspected, but to claim that a Debian maintainer wou…
...through extensive vetting and rigorous testing... I wanted to upvote your comment, but then I almost died laughing when I read that. Most Linux distributions are better about it now than they were many years ago, but I still remember being absolutely floored when RedHat had packaged a Perl module with a syntax error some years ago. Same goes for Debian; some of the more "fringe packages" (those of upstream project…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suspect Partition Magic is intended merely as an example of the crapware-and-misleading-download-buttons trend. You can spot similar scamminess on (for example) http://getpaint.net/ and http://tortoisesvn.net/ .
The commenter purports to have a degree of technical expertise - they're running a VM and have some need for Partition Magic. Those features place the scenario many standard deviations from typical Windows user activities. More importantly, any person looking for Partition Magic in 2013 is likely to be an ideal candidate for crapware. They are performing system administrative tasks. They don't perform such tasks on W…
the great irony being that the solution would be to use a gparted live disc.
So when earlier it was mentioned, I assumed "They have to have a different angle on this; they're a YC company." And seeing a strong thread title and no evidence for it other than "The industry they're in is ridiculously seedy", I thought maybe HN was in rush to judgement mode. So I thought I'd try, you know, installing something. Make your own call: http://images1.bingocardcreator.com/blog-images/hn/its-not-a...
Some folks mentioned that this could be misleading, so to clarify: my research methodology, to the extent it can be called that, was a) open up the IM website, b) take a look at their advertiser partner wall (they don't have a developer partner wall, so I wasn't able to view the end-user experience directly), c) Google the first name that popped out: [babylon translation software], d) clicked the first link and downloaded, e) clicked past the first screen, which let me override my system default of Japanese such that y'all would be able to read the rest of the installer, where industry experience suggested to me that the action would be.
Sorry if I gave folks the impression that this was the InstallMonetizer application -- the impression I was trying to leave was "This is the core line of business for one of their marquis advertisers."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can confirm that it is tenacious. I don't know how since I always check for crapware, but I ended up with babylon having taken over my firefox browser. I removed it, but - just checking - oh look, there it is again. Luckily, chrome is my go-to browser, (which explains why I haven't tried more brutal removals), but it is definitely not as simple as uninstalling. It seems to be worse than I thought. http://support.mo…
Jeez, I'm surprised that the people who created this filth aren't in prison. It's one TINY step away from botnet territory, which actually lands people in prison.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
...through extensive vetting and rigorous testing... I wanted to upvote your comment, but then I almost died laughing when I read that. Most Linux distributions are better about it now than they were many years ago, but I still remember being absolutely floored when RedHat had packaged a Perl module with a syntax error some years ago. Same goes for Debian; some of the more "fringe packages" (those of upstream project…
Usually there's a few tiers of packages, with the first tier packages being extensively tested and maintained, and the second tier packages mostly just provided as a convenience. I believe Debian calls the first-tier "main" and the second-tier "contrib" (and Ubuntu calls them "main" and "universe").
Debian has the unstable, testing and stable distros, that move on different speeds and are subject to different amounts of testing.
Likely they got funded because they have a real way to make money! Unlike whoever offers the next airbnb for dogs. From an ethical standpoint, better the devil you know? Windows freeware developers deserve some compensation for their work, and this seems less scuzzy than other drive-by downloaders. If it became widespread it might break out of the user-exploitation ghetto and pick up real, actually synergistic softwa…
Hmm. I've actually heard of dumber ideas than that. Dog owners would prefer not to board their pets with commercial kennels, because you always get your dog back with some bug or another. A service that hooks up vacationing dog owners with local families who agree to take care of small numbers of other peoples' dogs might make some sense.