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

91–100 of 395 posts

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

#91

Post by 0942v8653 »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #41

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 strat…

What does download.com have to do with this? Anyone in their right mind will figure out that it's terrible. I don't think the App Store really competes with download.com. It competes with independent websites that use PayPal downloads and license keys. Download.com, macUpdate, softpedia, download.cnet.com, and the like don't give anyone an excuse to lock down their platform this tight. The cure is worse than the disease. If there are fifty green download buttons on a site, which button are you going to click? Hopefully the red X in the top corner.

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

#92

Post by BitExec »

weavie wrote: post #84
ekianjo wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I feel your pain. Whenever family ask me to look at their computer I spent an hour deleting spyware and such. The worst bit is they do have antivirus and Windows defender, but they do nothing to stop it :/ Once I installed Linux for my folks, all these problems magically disappeared.

I can't find my InDesign icon... where have you put it?

- https://alternativeto.net/software/adobe-indesign/?platform=...

- http://www.opensourcealternative.org/alternatives/graphic-ed...

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

#93

Post by kagamine »

girvo wrote: post #64
markdown wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and download IE11 (if you're on Windows) This has my support :)

Yeah, I'll allow that one to be honest. Also, the Malicious Software Removal tool is probably a good thing too, as it's real and from Microsoft, and will definitely help some non-technical users.

Although a better way to deal with this perhaps is for the "Your download is complete, thanks etc" page you see after clicking download to include recommendations from MS with their seal of approval. I would consider that a welcome gesture from MS, bundle-ware not so much.

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

#94

Post by jeltz »

TorKlingberg wrote: post #55
TeMPOraL wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know. But I wonder how is that those sites haven't yet ended up on Chrome/Firefox "Malware-serving Site" blacklist?

Google itself pays to have Chrome installed as bundleware. I for got which, but it comes with either Adobe Reader, Flash or Java in some geographical locations.

Google has also bundled Picasa in the past.

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

#95

Post by weavie »

weavie wrote: post #84
ekianjo wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I feel your pain. Whenever family ask me to look at their computer I spent an hour deleting spyware and such. The worst bit is they do have antivirus and Windows defender, but they do nothing to stop it :/ Once I installed Linux for my folks, all these problems magically disappeared.

I can't find my InDesign icon... where have you put it?

InDesign is the industry standard.

There may be loads of OS alternatives, but unfortunately for people who can only just use a mouse and have invested years into learning that one package they just aren't going to be willing to invest a lot of time into exploring the alternatives.

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

#96

Post by nmeofthestate »

ZoFreX wrote: post #34

> And no matter how technical you might be, most of the installers are so confusing that there’s no way a non-geek could figure out how to avoid the awful. Or even a geek who is in a hurry. I came very close to accidentally installing crapware when I was downloading things from Sourceforge the other day. It's no wonder regular end-users end up with all this crap.

I installed crapware on a brand new laptop a few weeks ago. I searched for "chrome" in IE, clicked the top paid link on bing.com - malware. Unbelievable.

System restore worked well to fix that screw-up.

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

#97

Post by weavie »

cnvogel wrote: post #67
lucaspiller wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel your pain. Whenever family ask me to look at their computer I spent an hour deleting spyware and such. The worst bit is they do have antivirus and Windows defender, but they do nothing to stop it :/ The common advice to stop it before was "don't use IE". Everyone uses Chrome now, and so that's now where everything installs itself (check the extensions and there is usually something dubious). Google even have a…

I had to deinfect a adware infested computer of a colleague recently. In my oppinion, most adware is very eager to include some proper way of uninstalling, just to not be classified as a trojan/virus/... Even if this is completely leaning to persuade the customer NOT TO INSTALL it: "You will loose precious functionality, your computer will get slower, the locusts will invade your country: Are you SURE to deinstall Cr…

It is that 5% that refuse to go away and then reinstall themselves when you finally work out how to get rid of them that takes up 95% of the time.

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

#98

Post by Roritharr »

dingaling wrote: post #35
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…

Firefox has a very useful setting to block installation of add-ons, which I've taken to setting after installing some of the fundamental, safe add-ons. In about:config, create a boolean value xpinstall.enabled and set false. This does protect against those browser toolbars that people somehow manage to install. However there is apparently a UI feature that prompts to re-enable installation ( though I've never seen th…

That is REALLY useful, thank you!

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

#99

Post by Sir_Substance »

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…

I've always considered the assertion that quality content is only created if there is financial reward to be a flagrant lie.

Expectations of ads fully supporting websites are relatively new even to the world wide web, let alone the internet. 10 years ago, you might at best hope that your ads would offset a bit of the websites hosting costs.

The really good content is put up by people who are in it because they care about the content, not the money. The same is true of software.

My experience is that if you are offering quality, you either give it away for free, or insist on up front payment.

Pay by ad, pay by data and in app purchase are all business models of people who want money and don't care about the content, but know their product isn't good enough to sell.

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

#100

Post by thirdsun »

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…

Non-technological people are very bad at distinguishing bad sources from legitimate ones. I see it all the time - "well, the address bar said freemp3converter.com - it looked legit to me..."

Now imagine a site or software that tries to look just remotely serious. Normal people often just don't see the difference. Plus, it's pretty normal in Windows world to have all kinds of crap installed - Dell, nVidia & Co. install and autostart their little, unnecessary helpers left and right. I think for many people it's hard to tell if that checkbox from the XYZ App is worse than Dell's.

Post reply on HN