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What Software Do Cable Installers Place on Your PC?
{e}N0S asks: "The cable guy came over to install a cable modem at my Dad's house. As I watched him do his stuff I noticed he was installing something called Broadjump Client Foundation. I know you don't need software for a cable modem to work so I asked if it was necessary. He said he had to do his list of things, and we had to sign that he did his list of things, otherwise he couldn't leave it with us to use. Since I can always remove the software, I agreed, but I noticed while he was flipping through the install, he was clicking 'agree' on every EULA that came up. Doing a search on Google for 'Broadjump Client Foundation' comes up with some pretty scary stuff as far as what it does, like: 'Builds a database of subscriber demographics and buying behaviors to help evolve and refine marketing efforts.' Now, how does this affect us? Neither myself or anyone in my family agreed to the software; the cable guy did. And is there anyway to get cable companies to stop doing this as I can imagine since the cable company is a monopoly in this town, that the percentage of people who still have this software on their computers is pretty high."
Step 3: Profit!
Someone hates these cans.
I always wanted those mission profile sunglasses with the autodestruct. Too bad you can't throw it away 1sec before detonation...
I don't even like my wife messing with my computer, nevermind some complete stranger.
:P)
(Side note: Yes, she does have her own computer. So there.
funny. I'd have thought her credit-card and other vital info are as important as yours.
I actually think one should take MORE care with a non-technical spouse's security.
Working for necessity's mother.
Capitalism is a short-sighted system that puts profits before people, dollars before the environment.
Bloody hell. Capitalism has nothing to do with ethics or justice; it's simply a resource allocation method -- a means of getting things to places where they're needed and encouraging production. If you think central planning (the only real altenative) works better, you need to take a good look at just how many cities in the Soviet Union had access to such necessities as (say) aspirin, or at how effectively operating funds were allocated to infrastructure (where economic conditions which in a capitalist economy would have been compensated for by a shortage of service instead resulted in the railways system being run into the ground unmaintained).
Capitalism doesn't put profits before people, people do. It's not a problem with the system, it's a problem with human nature -- and human nature is one thing you just can't fix. Have a minimally controlled economy, and people will play dirty to stay on top of it -- but the market itself will punish them if they play too dirty. Have a highly controlled economy, OTOH, and anyone who wants to play dirty needs but to get the support of a relatively small group within the governing agency; the market (that is to say, the public) no longer has its highly direct say (in the choice to buy or otherwise).
Take that macroeconomics course, and understand the consequences of the available systems. When you understand what it is you're arguing for under the guise of social ethics and justice, then your arguments will be worth listenening to.
You pay for MS Office, and most offices have it. But in order to USE Excel, Word, Access, etc, you have to LEARN how to use it. Most of the current work force was educated before the advent of the PC and many more before WINDOWs and OFFICE became defacto standards.
The cost of training people to work on computers isn't going away just because you bought COMMERCIAL software. In fact, Learning Linux is not any worse than learning some of the older and less user friend software packages that are still in use today. Linux is cheaper, unless it can be demonstrated that it will significantly increase the total cost of ownership. The total cost of ownership is expressed as: Cost per liscence, terms of liscence, hardware required, training required, and risk that the software will be obsoleted before its useful life is over.
Just because Linux doesn't look or work like WINDOWS doesn't mean that it will be that much harder to learn. Many people in computer intensive operations worked on mainframes and other systems that were hard to use. Training is always required.
Creative Spelling Copyright (2002). May use without Persimmons
"where economic conditions which in a capitalist economy would have been compensated for by a shortage of service instead resulted in the railways system being run into the ground unmaintained".
This describes to a tee what happened with the british rail system- run into the ground unmaintainted. ever tried to catch a train. Ever paid the excessive faires, only to be met with stinking dirty, crowded, late trains, running a bumpy ride on potentially dangerous tracks, with non-working signals, drivers that are so poorly trained that they miss the ones that do work, and a customer service blanket information restriction.
The wierd thing is- that happened after privatisation- which being the act of dividing the tracks among large companies(virgin for instance), is a purely capitalist method. Now I am to some degree a capitalist- I work as a pro-dev and expect to take money home for it- more than my local garbage collector does. I agree it has nowt to do with ethics or justice. The sad truth is that systems will be abused either way. The commune or the corporation would both be sucessful models if people were trustworthy... But how many of you would leave 5 grand on the side in your parental home? I bet most people dont even trust their family that much let alone someone else. This is the climate we live in..
OrionRobots.co.uk - Robots From sol
There are some problems with existing capitalist systems, especially in the U.S. where the "free" market is tinkered with almost more than certain "communist" economies. But thank you for the excellent description of capitalism. I've been saying for a while now that capitalism, used correctly could seriously increase the amount of democracy in the world... after all, public ownership of corporations gives investors exactly what we all think we are lacking: control over corporations.
If more people would buy stock in companies (not mutual funds), they would actually get a vote in matters of import to the company that is exactly the same as the way they get a vote on the President or their Senators or whatever. And as a shareholder, there is *nothing* that can be done to prevent them from attending annual meetings and proposing wacky stuff like "maximum wages" for the CEO to be put on the proxy for a general shareholder vote.
And now on-topic: I know when my cable guys came out to install TimeWarner (ick, but I had no other broadband choice), TW was encouraging self-installs at the time... probably to increase number of possible installs in a day. Fine with me, since all they really need to do is plug the cable "modem" into the cable wire, authorize the MAC address of the cable "modem" with HQ, and then it's up to me to get DHCP working, etc. Which was a breeze using Debian GNU/Linux. Had they insisted on mucking with my software I had a Mac set up for that.
I do not have a signature
How do you distinguish between inflexible bureaucrats and a conspiracy?
I know the typical image of a conspiracy is a *small* bunch of people of people gathered together in a darkened room... but that's just drama. People only hide their identity as conspiracy members if they think someone is out to get them for it. If you're part of a powerful one, like a corporation, then you don't need to bother with that.
What? You don't think that a corporation is inherently a conspiracy? Then what do you think a conspiracy is? Unions, corporations, businessmen's clubs, gardening clubs, are all coeteries of people gathered together to enforce their vision upon a resisting world. They are all people "breathing together" in meetings (which is what the word means, if you follow it's roots).
Now if you want to justify some more restricted definition (reasonable, as the contexts in which it is used seem to imply that some more restrictive meaning is needed), then you need to specify what the definition should be. But just looking at the physical observables, it seems to me that telecom corporations count as conspiracies. (Any you've got to include the employees. You don't have a conspiracy without followers as well as leaders.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Ok so the short answer is that it is a back door. There is just no way I'll hand over root access to any of my machines. Sorry.
Any tech installing crap like this in any of my systems will be facing a judge. Cracking is cracking regardless how it is done.