Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What Happens When You Install the Top Download.com Apps

howtogeek.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 395 posts

Re: What Happens When You Install the Top Download.com Apps

#41

Post by aaronbrethorst »

And this is why Apple created Gatekeeper and made the Mac OS X App Store so ridiculously onerous for developers[1]. The software world is, for all intents and purposes, a thin sheen of gold flecks and diamonds atop a veritable cesspool of shit.

You can just imagine the conversation at 1 Infinite Loop:

    Marketer: The Panic guys are considering pulling
    out of the App Store. Maybe we should reconsider
    our App Store strategy to make it more inclusive.

    Product Manager: Have you seen the top 10 downloads
    from Download.com? They literally destroy your
    operating system.

    Marketer: ...
All that said, I'm disappointed with many of the restrictions that Apple places on iOS and OS X developers, but, after reading an article like this, I'm reminded why these restrictions exist, and that it's our own fault.

[1] and sandboxed iOS apps, and made the iOS App Store the only way to install iOS apps without jailbreaking your phone.

Re: What Happens When You Install the Top Download.com Apps

#42

Post by weavie »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #21
weavie wrote: post #11

I regularly get called by people complaining that their computer no longer works. Pretty much every time it turns out that their machine is loaded with crapware. It amazes me how people just put up with random browser windows popping up and having to search via some random search engine that has been imposed on them. At the minute I just have to put up with spending a few hours removing the worst offenders and then r…

Back in the day I was an intern at an elementary school, and the computers there had a piece of software installed that basically disallowed any change (unless entering a password by an administrator like myself), and if a change did happen it was undone at a reboot. I'm not sure how it worked or even how it's called, but that's another option. I'm sure it didn't keep browser history either though, although I'm sure…

The problem is that is an all or nothing solution. Sometimes they legitimately need to install something.

Re: What Happens When You Install the Top Download.com Apps

#43

Post by rmc »

cturhan wrote: post #39

I really wonder why people prefer some other websites to download the product instead of its own website. When you type "ccleaner", "kmplayer" etc on google, the first one is always the product website. The second and third ones are the websites distributing product with adware/spywares.

I've seen non-technically people enter "www.facebook.com" into the google search bar.

Re: What Happens When You Install the Top Download.com Apps

#44

Post by pjc50 »

apetrovic wrote: post #27

Microsoft dropped the ball with lack of App Store. With all app store's drawbacks, that's the place where regular user can pay easily without thinking will someone steal his/her credit car number, the place where applications should be harmless, and the place where (and this is important) the user can compare prices between similar applications. Windows doesn't have the app store. And nobody (read: very, very small p…

App stores are hardly a silver bullet. There's all sorts of quasi-spyware and cloneware in the Play store.

Re: What Happens When You Install the Top Download.com Apps

#45

Post by syllogism »

apetrovic wrote: post #27

Microsoft dropped the ball with lack of App Store. With all app store's drawbacks, that's the place where regular user can pay easily without thinking will someone steal his/her credit car number, the place where applications should be harmless, and the place where (and this is important) the user can compare prices between similar applications. Windows doesn't have the app store. And nobody (read: very, very small p…

When I finally left Windows for Linux on my desktop, this was why. The $0 app market on Windows was terrible.

Even if it wasn't installing malware, everything was implicitly user hostile. I remember in the early 2000s, the form this took was every application eventually tried to steal your media file associations.

The last straw was when I had to do a fresh install, and the Nero CD burning software was 200mb, because the CD burner had decided it also needed to be a media player.

Re: What Happens When You Install the Top Download.com Apps

#46

Post by mcx »

jenscow wrote: post #2

This is the #1 reason Windows is no longer on my kid's computers; it's too easy to install crap-ware no matter what security package you use.

Recently I visited my dad and his laptop was just full of crapware. I noticed the only thing he uses is the web browser, maybe editing the occasional word doc. So I just wiped the machine, put on ElementaryOS and hopefully there will be less problems. Haven't heard any complaints so far.

Re: What Happens When You Install the Top Download.com Apps

#47

Post by easytiger »

austinz wrote: post #10

Even the Windows Java client installer tries to get you to install the Ask toolbar (or at least it did; I haven't seen an update recently). I imagine it must be quite lucrative for Oracle; either that, they stopped caring about Java's reputation as a user-facing technology for web content or desktop applications, or users just don't notice these things.

There was a discussion on here recently. Apparently Ask.com makes something like $400+ mil per year. Mind boggling.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8762663

Re: What Happens When You Install the Top Download.com Apps

#48

Post by TeMPOraL »

dspillett wrote: post #23
TeMPOraL wrote: post #8

> Because when the product is free the real product is YOU. I disagree with this conclusion. Also, I have a related issue with some of the opinions I hear e.g. on HN that confuse me. Many a person says in defense of ads - "but surely authors have to support themselves, otherwise there'd be no site/software", "TANSTAAFL", etc. But this seems to me to be in disagreement with observable reality. What I see is a strong a…

> That's why I also feel no guilt for browsing with AdBlock on I understand the reasoning, but you seem to be taking it to a logical extreme. There are some reputable and useful sites that use ad income, I don't routinely use AdBlock or similar for that reason. If a site annoys me with its ads it gets DNS blacklisted (pointed towards my "you don't want to go there" page via local DNS config. > neither the ads nor the…

> There are some reputable and useful sites that use ad income, I don't routinely use AdBlock or similar for that reason. If a site annoys me with its ads it gets DNS blacklisted (pointed towards my "you don't want to go there" page via local DNS config.

This is something that sometimes actually crosses my mind. I acknowledge the existence of good people who rely on ad income (assuming they get something from ad views; I pretty much don't click on ads at all) and I'm willing to modify my behaviour to accomodate them. I sometimes unblock pages when they ask nicely (e.g. episodecalendar asks you if you could unblock ads when you have a free account, and since I actually get a real value out of this site (having my favourite shows pop up in Google Calendar, so I don't need to manually track new episodes), it was only fair that I unblock them).

From the division of Interesting Ideas That I Have No Time To Make, here's mine: an ad-block that instead of blocking ads, replaces them with crowd-sourced images of your choice - like "best of DeviantArt", Banksy pictures, ads for effective charities, etc. It was inspired by this picture I found once: http://editorial.designtaxi.com/news-banksycoke2405/big.jpg.

Re: What Happens When You Install the Top Download.com Apps

#49

Post by kiproping »

favadi wrote: post #30
serf wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ubuntu is bundled with crap-ware , too; it's just more subtle. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/ubuntu-spyware.html http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/09/ubuntu-bakes-amazon-...

I wouldn't call it crap-ware. Sure, it's turned on by default but there is an option to turn them off.

fixubuntu.com ?

Re: What Happens When You Install the Top Download.com Apps

#50

Post by briandear »

favadi wrote: post #30
serf wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ubuntu is bundled with crap-ware , too; it's just more subtle. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/ubuntu-spyware.html http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/09/ubuntu-bakes-amazon-...

I wouldn't call it crap-ware. Sure, it's turned on by default but there is an option to turn them off.

The question I have is why it's turned in by default -- and why it's there in the first place? If it's there for revenue, then Ubuntu really isn't free.. You're paying by essentially leasing your computer to this revenue generating 'stuff'. Your 'payment' isn't monetary, but it's still a payment. Why can't we just buy stuff with actual money instead of going through the illusion that it's 'free?'

I honestly don't have much experience with Ubuntu or this sort of thing, so I really don't understand it.

Post reply on HN