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Belkin To Offer Firmware Fix For Router Hijacking
L-Train8 writes "Belkin has an announcement at the bottom of their homepage about the spam router. They have decided to disable the 'feature' that hijacks a random http request every 8 hours and redirects to a webpage advertising their parental control system. This will require a firmware upgrade. The message says details will be forthcoming.
Interestingly, while I was preparing this submission, the message changed. Originally, it included a snippy remark about how what they were doing was not spam, despite what everyone on the internet says. The new version is much less testy."
- Installing ads onto a router.
- Redirecting all non-existant domains to "sitefinder"
Is this the year for the most stupid marketing ideas on the planet?
"Feature"?... Dear lord. There must be some really, really fine crack going around in industry circles these days. Belkin sounds like they've taken a hit or two off the SCO crack pipe.
I wonder if they use their own products in-house. That would be a fitting punishment if it ever came down to a class-action suit.... Force Belkin to use their own products.
Bowie J. Poag
Every 8 hours you get redirected to a page saying "Sorry, we won't do it again. Promise."
Sorry if everyone's seen it already, just saw someone post it on another messageboard I read.
UserFriendly ad
Don't worry.
They'll think of something else that's worse, more intrusive, etc. every eighteen months or so.
I hereby dub this law to be known as "Xeno's law"
The first corollary is that the average IQ of marketers is thought to be a monotone decreasing function which tends to zero.
Reminds me of how initially having a logo on an article of clothing seamed insane
:)
pa-dum chshhh!!!
The web? Isn't that like AOL?
Sorry, that was too easy. I should probably lose some of my cynicism :P It's been reinforced too much by end users.
In all seriousness though, I think "web interface" would confuse them, whereas if you said "We are going to a special webpage in Internet Explorer" or something along those lines you'd have better luck. Or maybe not. Never underestimate the stupidity of an end-user....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
We apologise for the fault in the router. Those responsible have been sacked.
Mynd you, moose bites Kan be pretty nasti...
We apologise again for the fault in the router. Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked have been sacked.
--Humba
Yet in order to decrease to 0, it first must decrease by half.
:)
In order to decrease by half it first must decrease by half of that.
In order to decrease by half of that, it must first decrease by half of that, and so on.
So it would seem that the IQ can never actually decrease at all.
This would imply that the IQ must start at 0.
You could call this something spiffy.. Xeno's Paradox maybe.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
In case you would like to apply for Mr. Deming's job, it's available. (Scroll down to "Marketing Manager"). Or, just write careers@belkin.com.
Of course, Belkin won't accept just anyone. The "right candidate" must be able to "strategize, initiate, and execute". He or she must be able to "drive revenue" and "leverage knowledge" about "end-user sell-thru strategies" and must be able to "align resources" and "translate raw content".
Ignoring Newton makes Baby Jesus cry.
Brownian Intelligence?
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
I tryed typing http://myrouter in the address bar but nothing came up... the Internet must be down
Dude. You're supposed to say that to THEM when you apply, not here. Granted - with dialog like that, I'm sure you're a shoe-in. You're speaking their language.
In AD 2003
War was beginning
Manager: What happen?
Sys Admin: Somebody set us up the router
User: We get page
Manager: What!
User: Main Monitor Turn On
Manager: Its you!
Belkin: How are you gentlemen?
Belkin: All your requests are belong to us
Belkin: You are on the way to destruction
Manager: What you say!!
Belkin: You have no chance to survive make your backup
Belkin: HA HA HA HA...
User: Boss!!
Manager: Take off every 'port'!!
Manager: You know what you doing
Manager: Move port
Manager: For great justice
I am Monkey, the Great Sage, equal of heaven!
Thank you.
:)
I just wish there was a more adequate explanation of UPnP in the manual. Here's a copy of it, taken directly from the manual:
"UPnP is short for Universal Plug and Play which is a networking architecture that provides compatibility among networking equipment, software, and peripherals. The DI-604 is a UPnP enabled router and will only work with other UPnP devices/softwares. If you do not want to use the UPnP functionality, it can be disabled by selecting "Disabled".
It should read:
"Leaving this stupid fucking feature on leaves you bent-over and spread-cheeked for when a piece of malicious software comes along decides block every damn port on our router. UPnP allows changes to be made without your knowledge OR consent--it allows any program to totally bypass user/admin authentication. As an added bonus, entries commited via this backdoor^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H"feature" cant' be removed without first factory-defaulting the whole goddamn router and rebooting it. Anyway, Microsoft wants us to put it here and leave it on by default. Click the box to disable it."
I think my explanation is much clearer, don't you?
Bowie J. Poag
Instant poll:
Who smoked the most crack in 2003?
(_) SCO
(_) Belkin
(_) Verisign
(_) CowboyNeal
(_) *A
(_) All of the above
Ceci n'est pas une signature
The stock photo on the Belkin front page is the same one that is used on PNCBank ATM Machines...
:)
I guess she gets around