That's one example of management being utterly technologically incompetent, which unfortunately is the case in a lot of Chinese companies.
s/Chinese//
It's not we haven't thought about replacing management with shell scripts...
Lenovo's Response to Its Dangerous Adware Is Astonishingly Clueless
61–70 of 225 posts
Re: Lenovo's Response to Its Dangerous Adware Is Astonishingly Clueless
#62I warned all my friends and colleagues who use Lenovos, and their answers were all the same. "Who'd be crazy enough to use the default install? First thing I did was (a fresh reinstall of Windows|install Linux)." (Edit: Obviously this is not representative of the general population, and I didn't mean to suggest it was. I was just noting that my efforts to warn people about the untrustworthiness of Lenovo were thwarte…
This is repeatedly recommended, but I think it's overlooking that not all manufacturer customization is entirely evil. You then to hunt down all the drivers for bits of the motherboard. Are you sure your power consumption settings etc are optimal after you've done this? Have you installed all the drivers "manually" via their inf files? (e.g. Nvidia drivers come with their own pile of bloatware)
Re: Lenovo's Response to Its Dangerous Adware Is Astonishingly Clueless
#63Great... I'm the last person in the startup world still using a PC, and it happens to be a Lenovo.
Hey, I use a desktop machine. That paints me as some kind of startup weirdo. Granted, it runs linux, but still, it doesn't fold in the middle or have it's own monitor and keyboard built in.
Re: Lenovo's Response to Its Dangerous Adware Is Astonishingly Clueless
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
The key word is significant . They're not claiming they didn't preload this software for money, they're just saying it wasn't for very much money. Such a small amount of money that they have no problem ending the relationship now that it's causing them problems. My wild guess would be they got in the ballpark of $0.25 an install.
For me the key word is "enhance". Why would Lenovo go to the trouble of bundling this, knowing full well that it doesn't actually enhance anything for end users? Hint: It starts with $ and ends with $.
"Enhance" is the weasel word you use when you want to try to convince someone something is better, but you can't actually explain in detail what's better about it. Whenever you see a marketing claim that something is "enhanced" the warning bells should be sounding.
Re: Lenovo's Response to Its Dangerous Adware Is Astonishingly Clueless
#65"Beijing-based computer maker Lenovo has reportedly been blacklisted for years by spy agencies worldwide, as concerns about government-sanctioned Chinese hacking persist. According to the Australian Financial Review, Australia, the UK, Canada, New Zealand, and the US have all rejected Lenovo machines for their top-secret networks since the mid-2000s, though the computers can be used for lower-security tasks that don'…
I'd be curious to know what brands or models are considered safe by these agencies.
Re: Lenovo's Response to Its Dangerous Adware Is Astonishingly Clueless
#66It tickles me that Superfish is a DFJ-funded [1] start-up based out of Palo Alto. Reporters are focussing on Lenovo's Chinese lineage. Yet this bubbled up out of our backyard, from our own lack of diligence (or scruples).
[1] Edit: Draper Fisher Jurvetson, the $4 billion Menlo Park VC firm that backed Baidu, Hotmail, Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter.
Re: Lenovo's Response to Its Dangerous Adware Is Astonishingly Clueless
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, it was only installed on their consumer oriented machines. Their T model Thinkpad don't have it installed. Now the question is of course what else are they installing and what other yet undiscovered issues we'll find. It sounds like FUD but so far based on their response, they seem either incompetent (stupid) or malicious. And I don't exactly like either...
I never quite got this distinction between consumer and non consumer machines, when you can buy high end ThinkPads (but not the blocky T models) at a retailer, and are just as nice as big old blocky good old ThinkPads. I'm really interested if a high end (but "consumer") ThinkPad like http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Lenovo-T... that you can buy at a retail store (in this case, a special MSFT Store…
I loved (well still do) my T model. It has a strong magnesium case. Very solid. Heck it lasted 7 years. Including travel and other abuse.
It didn't have bloatware crap installed (as say US govt or big companies would not like that). It came with a smart card reader and such. Had a fingerprint scanner (back when there were not common).
Initially also they didn't have all these "consumer" models (Y,G,W,...).
Re: Lenovo's Response to Its Dangerous Adware Is Astonishingly Clueless
#68I warned all my friends and colleagues who use Lenovos, and their answers were all the same. "Who'd be crazy enough to use the default install? First thing I did was (a fresh reinstall of Windows|install Linux)." (Edit: Obviously this is not representative of the general population, and I didn't mean to suggest it was. I was just noting that my efforts to warn people about the untrustworthiness of Lenovo were thwarte…
The CD for the clean install is included in the Home versions? Interesting.
It's not, but you don't need one. You can make your own disk or USB pretty easily: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/create-reset-re...
Re: Lenovo's Response to Its Dangerous Adware Is Astonishingly Clueless
#69I warned all my friends and colleagues who use Lenovos, and their answers were all the same. "Who'd be crazy enough to use the default install? First thing I did was (a fresh reinstall of Windows|install Linux)." (Edit: Obviously this is not representative of the general population, and I didn't mean to suggest it was. I was just noting that my efforts to warn people about the untrustworthiness of Lenovo were thwarte…
This is repeatedly recommended, but I think it's overlooking that not all manufacturer customization is entirely evil. You then to hunt down all the drivers for bits of the motherboard. Are you sure your power consumption settings etc are optimal after you've done this? Have you installed all the drivers "manually" via their inf files? (e.g. Nvidia drivers come with their own pile of bloatware)
Yes, not all manufacturer customization is evil. But my point is that no one in my circle trusts the manufacturer enough to leave any of it on their machine.
Re: Lenovo's Response to Its Dangerous Adware Is Astonishingly Clueless
#70Kudos to MS, srsly. lol the amount of positive press that MS has been garnering recently on HN is impressive.
Don't think it is purely happenstance. There is absolutely and unequivocally either brigading Microsoft fans, or paid shills, hitting HN hard. There was a garbage post on the front page yesterday and I left a completely benign post that didn't go with the pro-Microsoft/anti-Google narrative -- saw -11 within less than 60 seconds.
shrug. I thought someone needed to do machine learning as a service, especially that can be accessed from Python, so I upvoted an article on Azure. I think presentation should be separate from data, so I upvoted a comment on posh.
I'm a OS X / Linux person (my name's probably in your distro somewhere) and sometimes Microsoft does good stuff.