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CEO of Brilliant Defends Sneaky Installation Practices
Em Emalb and other readers sent in follow-ups to our earlier story about yet more bundled crapware with Kazaa. Kazaa says they didn't do anything wrong; and so does Brilliant's CEO. I don't understand why anyone is still installing Kazaa, given their track record. Brilliant's brilliant plan is to use your computer to distribute their advertising, and give out Altnet resource dollars in exchange.
Gaining access to someone's computer system through deceptive means, and using their resources and information for personal gain? Something like that, perhaps?
This means that the CEO of Brilliant is practicially Osama bin Laden! (or something like that...)
Got Rhinos?
It's like Pinky and the Brain, but less funny and developed by Pinky.
When I went to that news.com link the Gigantic quarter page size ad in that article has big bold letters that says "dont accept the lies"
heh.
air and light and time and space
Why can't someone create a tool for me to pirate my music without any strings attached!!! This is soooooo unfair.
Open source software keeps looking better and better all the time,
as commercial software just gets dirtier and sneakier...
I wonder where the EULA mania will stop?
TERMS AND CONDITIONS
blablabla..
3197 D) All your base belong to us for fifteen minutes..
No f*cking Bonzi Buddy
I think a better name would be Bonzai Buddy a little tiny kamikaze program, that takes xp down faster than a swarm of scourge bringing down a protoss carrier.
badness 10000
I love that the headline reads "CEO of Brilliant..." and not "Brilliant CEO..."
From the article:
.
When does the Altnet system become active, and what should people expect from it?
We're anticipating that in the next four to six weeks, the working components of the Altnet system will be activated or become active...So we expect between the next 60 to 90 days Altnet will begin making contact with the end users.
.
And then it will start to learn.
5 days later it will be fully conscious...
Hmm, This seems vaguely familiar.
-eddy
Excellent! I can't wait to get ahold of some of those Altnet dollars. I wonder what the exchange rate is on Altnet to TreeLoot dollars? I've punched the monkey too many times to want to change to a different currency.
Use KaAzalite and you'll miss out on all that free herbal viagara, low-rate home mortgages, and personalized merchant accounts you'll rack up just for spending a few hours downloading tunes.
"All they want is to add to their 100GB collection of mp3's"
Yea, in an mp3 format limited to 128 bits and sounding like they were encoded underwater. The sound quality of mp3's from Kazaa is roughly that of FM radio.
These people would save us all a lot of bandwidth if they just recorded the songs from the radio.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
There are hordes of people who would download and use Kazaa even if they were aware (assumes alot) of a EULA that said "By agreeing to use our software, you support our policy of rectal electrocution torture of cute furry bunnies for no reason at all except our disagreeable sense of humor. In fact, each IP of each user on Kazaa has it's own bunny that receives a shock for each packet you receive on our network. Have a nice day."
;-P
Jokes aside, you are looking at the future of P2P my friends.
People are entirely willing to make the trade of bandwidth and processing power for services, if they don't have to suffer for it themselves, no matter how slimy the service. If the clock cycles and packet load is small enough, who can blame them?
You want mp3s? Serve ads for me. What the heck is wrong with that, really, from the users point of view?
Slimy? Yes.
Sneaky? Yes.
Underhanded and contributing to the corporatization and monotonization and overall disagreeable nature of the Internet? Undoubtedly.
But: A smart business move? Absolutely.
A win-win for vendor and end-user of a piece of P2P software? Completely.
Do you want me to suggest something UTTERLY EVIL? Howabout an end-user agreeing saying every night at midnight, 100 pieces of Spam will be sent out via their email client. If they write the software that anoymizes the Spam, i see hordes of people agreeing to this! And how far away is this really? And how hard would Spam be to fight then? Kazaa already has a prominent menu item which sends "use Kazaa" Spam to anyone the user wants to, all preformatted and ready to go.
Mark my words: this little "Brilliant" scheme is no blatant out-of-the way one-time dastardly move. It is the future.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'll summarise the instructions.
.cnd files into Windows\Candelabra.
First, wander around the building until you feel the ground beneath your feet vibrate.
Then, reach over to your keyboard (a wireless is best, use a stick if necesarry, but don't move from that spot!) and do the following in exactly this order. You will need to have already downloaded any files mentioned below-
1) copy seven different
2) Go to your sounds control panel and change your error message to "Opening." Cause the error message to be played.
3) You now have five seconds to execute Windows\Candelabra\Light.bat, read Windows\Bookdead.txt and click "Accept."
4) A new button, marked with a double quote (") will appear on your explorer toolbar; this is a shortcut to \Windows\Yendor.exe. Open each and every folder on your hard drive, and click this button. While you're doing this, Brilliant Digital CEO Kevin Bermeister, whom you thought you killed when you got Bookdead.txt, will periodically teleport into your room, and try and seize your keyboard in order to hide the button, delete or rename \Windows\Yendor.exe. You're going to have to kill him several times during this process, so keep a firearm handy.
5) Restart your computer.
6) Dedicate your desk as an altar to Anhur (or some other god, but Anhur is easiest.) Take your desk to the astral plane. Pile your computer on your desk and make of it an offering unto him.
Congratulations, you have now uninstalled brilliant digital's software.
As an extra challenge, try uninstalling the software without depending on divine intervention or commiting genocide.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
Maybe that's just redundant.