What Happens When You Install the Top Download.com Apps • Hacker News Board

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

#351

Post by larrik » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 8:55 PM UTC

scott_karana wrote: post #297

larrik wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unpopular opinion time: I've had a Mac Mini for 3 years, and I still haven't found any Apple-made desktop software I would call "decent". I've had only iPhones since the 3G came out, too, so I'm not just an anti-fanboy.

Surely you must tolerate OSX, or why would you still use the Mac Mini?

I usually use the Mac Mini solely for iOS development, and (since it's there anyway) iTunes management of my iDevices.

I have a main machine I run Linux on, and use a KVM to switch between them.

I admit that using a Windows keyboard on it is definitely a barrier, though.

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

#352

Post by RaleyField » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 9:00 PM UTC

simias wrote: post #118

thirdsun wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. instal…

It's true, but how can you blame them? Even "reputable" sources like the official Java updater and many others attempt to install crapware. I consider myself reasonably savvy and even I get tricked to install crap on windows if I'm not 100% attentive when installing software. The other day I was setting up a brand new windows machine. I wanted to download chrome so I boot up internet explorer, end up at the bing home…

> I googled for alternatives and found many recommendations for "foxit"

Unless you have some specific need then the only good alternatives are Chrome and Firefox. They both can open PDFs without any extensions and after you tell windows to always open pdf files with one of them you basically get the same experience minus ad ware and shoddy coding.

> You'll notice the first ad has a green URL pointing to google.com, seems legit enough right?

Is Microsoft really as stupid as to put some other domain/url than the one advertised inside href of that link or am I missing something?

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

#353

Post by jpablo » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 9:03 PM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #344

frogpelt wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems if they were that clueless, they would have had many more opportunities to change default browsers without realizing it.

What other browsers auto-install from other software and automatically change your default?

Chrome?

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

#354

Post by grkvlt » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 9:13 PM UTC

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…

> It amazes me how people just put up with [...] having to search via some random search engine that has been imposed on them

Yes, exactly. It's as though your yellow pages phone book had its pages replaced with green paper, the entries were all written in comic sans and all of the entries just gave the same phone number for Dominos Pizza. And yet, you continue to use it to try and look things up, stopping occasionally to phone a friend of yours who works in the dictionary industry to complain, and he tells you to sell your house and move to a different street, so that you will get a new copy of the yellow pages delivered.

Of course that would never happen, so why do we put up with it here?

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

#355

Post by acdha » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 9:15 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #63

simonh wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A colleague managed to get one of thse toolbar things on his computer. It was a nightmare. It installed a second hidden browser plugin to keep re-installign the toolbar and re-setting your default search engine every time the browser restarts. Then there was a startup exe installed to re-install the plugins and toolbar on system restart. Then there was something else rooted in there somewhere that kept downloading an…

On Windows, Restore Point are (still) a good one-stop solution against this kind of crap. The most annoying malware I've removed this way was one that automatically killed any instance of cmd.exe and regedit.exe that you opened.

Malware routinely hides in the restore points – it avoids anything which is configured not to scan them (this was surprisingly widespread a few years back, although I hope it's improved) and might even get someone to reactivate it if you restore for any other reason.

Trying to bolt security on after the fact like this is a losing game.

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

#356

Post by e40 » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 9:21 PM UTC

thirdsun wrote: post #295

e40 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot say enough about ninite. They are brilliant. I moved to the Mac a year ago, and I miss it dearly. I wish they had a Mac version. It's so convenient. And safe. And easy. I paid them for something just because I wanted them to be successful. Single best product I used on Windows!

Wouldn't homebrew-cask be helpful with this? It's basically homebrew for apps. Haven't tried it yet, but I always wanted to start using it with my next clean install/mac purchase. https://github.com/caskroom/homebrew-cask

Hmm, interesting. I'll check it out, thanks.

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

#357

Post by Systemic33 » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 9:24 PM UTC

swies wrote: post #260

e40 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot say enough about ninite. They are brilliant. I moved to the Mac a year ago, and I miss it dearly. I wish they had a Mac version. It's so convenient. And safe. And easy. I paid them for something just because I wanted them to be successful. Single best product I used on Windows!

That's so nice to hear. Thank you! I'd love to make a Mac version someday, but the problems are so much worse on Windows so we're focusing there.

Wow, the co-found of ninite :D

I can't thank you enough! That program is _always_ the absolute first i download on every windows machine, period.

I think i've told all my friend about ninite by now, and everyone is super impressed.

Would you care to elaborate on how it works? do you download from each software homepage, or do you constantly have to download latests versions and then serve from your own server?

Any way you could make a free or cheap one-time pay, for a version that can use a private server to host, and then deliver programs to it this way.

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

#358

Post by ansgri » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 9:24 PM UTC

VLM wrote: post #263

relaytheurgency wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At that level (you're using linux, know what 'root' is, how to access root and how to execute a shell file as root) you're being lazy if something like that bites you in the ass.

Also its possible to screw up a system that way, but its easier / lazier to just install the wrapper package that takes care of everything including dependencies. So on freebsd, pkg install nvidia-driver, or on legacy linux apt-get install nvidia-driver and you're all done. Someone looking for trouble could do it the hard and dangerous way, but why? Also commercial software other than possibly games, is dead man walk…

... and try to charge me money for an editor ...

OK, make an editor that great as Sublime Text, put a msgbox that I really should pay $60 for multi-PC license, and be done with it.

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

#359

Post by lotharbot » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 9:25 PM UTC

scrollaway wrote: post #350

lotharbot wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they somehow came up with the money to buy an iPhone -- $500+ unlocked, or $100+/month on a multi-year contract -- they don't "not [have] the money" to occasionally spend $1 on an app. They've just chosen to spend a lot on the phone itself, which might not leave much left over. Lest you think I'm speaking from a position of not understanding poverty: my salary in 2013 was $21k pre-tax, with a wife and a kid. I had…

> If they somehow came up with the money to buy an iPhone -- $500+ unlocked, or $100+/month on a multi-year contract Looks like you need the reality check I was talking about. I can find you $40 smartphones in countries that aren't the one you're in. And by the way, $40 can still be a huge investment for such people (just like $500 is to a lot of people in the US). Edit: Those downvotes-without-explanation are really…

> "Looks like you need the reality check"

Please stop being rude.

EDIT: saying things like "If you think I'm wrong, you very well may need a reality check yourself" makes it seem like you're not open to dialogue. It comes off as rude, arrogant, and accusatory. That probably contributes to the downvotes.

> "I can find you $40 smartphones"

I can find plenty of $40 smartphones at Wal-Mart and Kroger. But this thread isn't about $40 smartphones, it's about iPhones -- and, in particular, the parent to your prior comment mentioned knowing people "too cheap" to pay for apps despite owning (implied: relatively new) flagship phones.

I know some people who are legitimately too broke to pay for apps, but they don't have new iPhones. Last year I didn't have a $40 smartphone, and definitely not a $500+ iPhone, precisely because it would have been a bigger investment than I could justify for a phone. I get that there are people for whom a $40 phone and $1 per app is too much money, but they don't have an iPhone6 or even an iPhone5, and they're not pirating the sort of apps that only run on those phones. The people pirating those apps aren't too poor, they're too cheap.

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

#360

Post by Retra » Tue, Jan 13, 2015, 9:26 PM UTC

Someone wrote: post #327

zxcdw wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and that it's our own fault Whose fault exactly is it? Has anybody in HN worked with a company which does this crapware bundling, let alone creating? Or does anybody know anyone who's "in the business"? Because I, quite honestly, can't understand how or why people would be doing this. Is it really that "Well, I know this shit is going to infect thousands of machines with software which nobody would like to have, bu…

Our fault, collectively, just as it is our fault that the environment is being destroyed, or that third world clothing manufacturers pay peanuts to their employees. If 'we' wanted to, we would at least work on getting rid of this kind of behaviour. In an alternative world, the equivalent of GreenPeace would parade the C|NET offices, newspapers would write angry editorials about them, harmed users would write them mil…

Nobody has time for all that. Humans just don't have the attention bandwidth to solve problems like this. Not in conjunction with everything else going on in the world.