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UnBox Calls Home, A Lot
SachiCALaw writes "It turns out that to use UnBox, the user has to download software from Amazon that contains a Windows service (ADVWindowsClientService.exe). Tom Merritt over at C|Net reports that the service tries to connect to the internet quite frequently. Even tweaking msconfig could not prevent it." From the article: "So, in summary, to be allowed the privilege of purchasing a video that I can't burn to DVD and can't watch on my iPod, I have to allow a program to hijack my start-up and force me to login to uninstall it? No way. Sorry, Amazon. I love a lot of what you do, but I will absolutely not recommend this service. Try again."
Check out Unbox's 12 monkeys and the special edition DVD with over 2 hours more video.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
3. Unbox Video Player
In order to download and view Digital Content using the Service, you will need to install the Unbox Video Player (the "Software") on an Authorized Device and agree to the Microsoft Software Supplemental License Terms set forth as an Addendum below these Terms of Use (the "Software License"). The Software may operate on your Authorized Device continuously for a variety of reasons, including the management of your Digital Content. The Software also will access the Internet in order to perform a number of functions including as described below:
a. Software Upgrades. The Software automatically checks for upgrades, but the Software will not automatically upgrade without your consent, except as provided herein. If you do not consent to an upgrade that we make subject to your consent, the Digital Content may no longer be viewed on your Authorized Device. You must keep the Software on your Authorized Device current in order to continue to use the Service. We may automatically upgrade the Software when we believe such upgrade is appropriate to comply with law, enforce this Agreement, or protect the rights, safety or property of Amazon, our content providers, users, or others.
b. Information Provided. Amazon respects your privacy, and the Software will not access computer files or other information on your computer that are not used by or otherwise related to the Service. Among other things, the Software will provide Amazon with information related to the Digital Content on your Authorized Device and your use of it and information regarding your Authorized Device and its interaction with the Service. This information will enable Amazon to manage rights associated with the Digital Content, allow Amazon to help you use the Service more effectively and otherwise help Amazon to enhance and improve the Service. For example, the Software may provide Amazon with information about the Digital Content from the Service on your Authorized Device, whether it has been deleted and whether it has been viewed. The Software may also provide Amazon with information about your Authorized Device's operating system, software, amount of available disk space and Internet connectivity, such as whether your computer or other device is available online. This information will, among other things, help us deliver Digital Content to you more efficiently and effectively. The Software may also provide Amazon with information about the transfer of Digital Content to portable devices to help us ensure compliance with our rules concerning portable devices.
c. Removal of Software. If you uninstall or otherwise remove the Software, your ability to view all Digital Content you have downloaded to the Authorized Device will immediately and automatically terminate and we reserve the right to delete all Digital Content from that Authorized Device without notice to you.
please correct me if I'm wrong but other then the intial authrorization, I think the only phone home that itunes does is to plug things for the mini-store advertisments at the bottom of the page. ANd you can turn that off. I don't think it runs services that phone hope besides the application itself. Perhaps on windows it's different than on macs?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Lots of spyware requires a net connection to uninstall. This is just more spyware. It won't be long before Windows itself requires a net connection to run. WGA is mighty close to that. Claria(or whatever they call themselves now) is alive and well. People who buy new machines won't notice and won't care. It's all good news for the phisherman...who will be hanging out at your local landfill where your machine will end up when you get tired of waiting ten minutes for it to finish booting up. For now the best way to protect your system is to use a live CD.
What?
Amazon is clearly catering to a single party -- motion picture copyright holders.
I've outlined my opinions here (warning: web site plug).
But it's pretty simple. Costs too much, doesn't provide value, intentionally confuses customers, and doesn't support the right hardware.
If this software has blatant spyware in it, I wouldn't be surprised a bit.
>Imho there ought to be a config option to allow you to specify that you don't have an iPod and so won't be needing the service
funny that you're complaining about a few kb of memory being used for this, WHILE YOU'RE RUNNING FREAKING WINDOWS.
drop cf. ocean.
From the Fine Article:
I noticed that the Amazon player had launched itself. Annoying. I looked in the program for a preference to stop it from launching itself, and there was none. Typical. So I went to msconfig and unchecked Amazon Unbox so that it would definitely not launch itself at start-up. When I rebooted, it was no longer there. However, my firewall warned me that a Windows service (ADVWindowsClientService.exe) was trying to connect to the Net. I clicked More Info in the firewall alert and found it was Amazon Unbox.
As a Debian user, all of the above is so much meaningless mumbo jumbo to me, but the details are unimportant. It did not do what he wanted it to do despite great effort. He finally figured out that it would pretend to uninstall itself if he allowed the still loaded client unrestricted access to the internet. Without a system audit from an independent operating system, there's no telling if it finally did what he wanted but ultimately the service failed him: this is not a good way to watch movies.
It's crap like that that keeps me away from non free software and non free media. I'm not going to give up control of the machine that gives me my mail and news just to hear a song or watch a movie. It's bad enough that the greed heads force me to watch adverts on rented movies when I play them through a set top box, bad enough for me to one day build a mythTV box. But install spyware on my normal computer or gateway? You have to be kidding.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
All iTunesHelper.exe does is sit dormant until an iPod is connected, after which it fires up iTunes and syncs tracks. There's no "phone home" activity as described in the grandparent post.
"Sufferin' succotash."
iTunesHelper isn't a "useless service." It simply waits for an iPod to be plugged in, after which it starts up iTunes and syncs your tracks. There's no "phone home activity," and you shouldn't be surprised it messes things up when you stop it manually. Are you actually surprised that when you messed with an iTunes background service, it affected the app's functionality?
You don't give specifics for any of your other complaints, so I can only assume you're just bitchin' and whinin' about nothin'. Furthermore, you claim your experience with iTunes resembles the Amazon Unbox experience described in the article. So you're saying you weren't able to play a video without messing with the progress bar, iTunes started up automatically, and you had problems uninstalling the application? Or were you just making a meaningless comparison as an excuse to vaguely bitch about iTunes?
"Sufferin' succotash."
That's a statement I am so fucking sick of reading on this site. It would be applicable if the entertainment companies weren't pretty much the only game in town. But 99% of everything to do with media entertainment available is from them, so you have no damn choice but to deal with them. This "well you don't have to buy their products" line is bullshit, and over-used, dead tired bullshit at that.
You absolutely have a choice, you have the option of not consuming mainstream media. It may not be a choice that you like, but it's a choice nonetheless. Just because you don't want to do something doesn't mean the option isn't available to you.
It's obviously not a simple choice, to be sure. It's a tradeoff between two different interests, you can't have your cake and eat it too. Most people do decide to purchase mainstream media, they value access to that content over whatever money or rights they have to give up to get it, and they have the option to do so. Don't make the mistake of thinking that the fact that lots of people make a particular choice means it's the only choice anyone could possibly make, though.
You and fotbr are exactly right. Unfortunately, most people aren't willing to make any sacrifices whatsoever and instead prefer to whine about it incessantly. I'm so sick of hearing people say that they don't have a choice. I stopped watching TV and mainstream movies completely just over a year ago and there are plenty of alternative forms of entertainment to keep me amused.
I have no problems with people who choose to partake in these forms of entertainment, however, I do have a problem with people who whine constantly about having no choice in the matter. Especially those who advocate that the government or groups like the EFF should step in and force the media companies to deliver the content in a manner that they personally prefer.
"A Lisp programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing." - Alan Perlis
Let me be more clear: Using the correct registry entries, you can make any application run when your particular device is connected, regardless of whether or not it is a "mass storage device". I know this, because I have done this for devices my company makes. It's not a "workaround". It's the Windows mechanism for detecting and dealing with devices. Sitting in memory all the time to do the same thing is the hackish workaround.
The issue isn't that a particular program takes "just a little" memory. It's that every goddamn application vendor takes "just a little memory" and "only one tray icon", etc, etc. It's a tragedy of the commons scenario that files up everyone's machine. Still, if you at least give the user control, that's not so bad. When, like unbox, you don't allow the user to say "no, I don't want you to run every time I boot", it sucks.
The cake is a pie