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Digsby IM Client Quietly Installs Badware
An anonymous reader writes "IM company Digsby has quietly included malware in an update to their client software that utilizes users' computing power and bandwidth while idle for a quick buck. When questioned, developers at Digsby claim that they have done no wrong and that users should not complain because the client software is 'free.'" The money-making distributed computing software is in addition to six "crapware" apps that users must refuse during installation. The terms of service that no one ever reads does describe the CPU- and bandwidth-robbing moneymaker, and its off switch is located behind the "Support Digsby" menu item.
Again, Ubuntu didn't do anything wrong. They just changed the default "new tab" page from about:blank to the Ubuntu-themed Google search page that's already the default home page. They log usage of their web search service, like everyone else.
Also paying for software doesn't protect you from crapware. Just because they have less incentive to include that stuff doesn't mean they don't.
Did we already forget that Ubuntu also installed such and without consent [slashdot.org] (and Linux Mint) - here you atleast have the change to disallow installing it.
As someone mentioned here, it's not alarming as you make it seem. It's only in the alpha version and not meant for the release version. Granted, I would have liked them to be a bit more forward about it, I'm not terribly upset.
However, open source means that if enough people complain, someone is going to release a fork of it removing those "features", maintain compatibility for patches, and end up with a better product. For example, Chrome had some annoyances, for one its privacy was questionable at best and it had no adblocker, but since Chrome had an open source project (Chromium) developers were able to fork that and make SRWare Iron ( http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php ) which removes these privacy issues and adds in an adblocker. Forks are a natural part of software development and occasionally are forked to prove a point to the often stubborn developers, after the fork gets popular usually the developer relents and adds in or removes the offending code and the fork ceases to exist.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
The power of choice: change IM client. There are tons of free IM client, just change it to something else like Pidgin.
Agreed, Digsby on the other hand is utilizing what should be idle horsepower. While this may seem innocuous since it is not being used by other stuff, it does not come without cost.
I have a computer tuned to speedstep down and use less power when idled. That means I spend less money per month to run that system. Power costs money, so in effect, Digsby is costing you money by doing this. Granted this may only be a fraction of a cent, multiplied by a few people monthly...well I'm sure you all saw the movie.
IT IS A BIG DEAL.
Free or not, hiding (or not mentioning it, or putting it in the .000001 point fine print, or burying it in a 100 page EULA - IOW: obscuring the truth) something that you know people will object to is deceptive, dishonest and wrong. You have to ask yourself, would people not install my "free" software if they knew what it was doing - if the answer is anywhere close to yes, you have a moral obligation to reveal the details.
This is part of the bargain - if you give away something for "free" and advertise it as "free", it needs to be "free" - as in not just that the costs are hidden. Otherwise, it really is a Trojan Horse.
Don't reap the goodwill of the public when you're secretly using them.
DISCLAIMER: This post was not checked for speling and grammar- if you complain- you're a whiner
Perhaps this is a good point in time to switch to Pidgin (multi-platform and my personal choice), Adium (Mac OS X), Empathy (Gnome), Kopete (KDE), or some other, more trustworthy client?
Again, Digsby didn't do anything wrong. They just changed the default "install options" and to use computer's idle resources, like everyone else.
Also not paying for software doesn't protect you from crapware. Just because they have more incentive to include that stuff doesn't mean they don't.
Sarcasm aside, I think what is "right" or "wrong" would have to be defined here. Is it wrong to use a computer's "resources" when it is "idle?" I suppose most would react and say "YES!" ... at least, it is unethical without prior consent ("Do you want to ..." during install). At least there's a way to turn it off.
GP was correct though. Open source just means the source is open. It doesn't mean the developers are any more ethical.
I was about to try this out. Now I'm keeping Pidgin. TY Slashdot for the save!
Define "free."
Why not use one of the many free competing IM clients?
My favourite is Miranda (Windows only, free but not open source)) because it's incredibly lightweight, uses the default Windows UI, and has an incredibly active plugin community.
Then there's Pidgin (multiplatform, free open source) which is also an excellent and mature IM which is also very extensible.
No crapware whatsoever on these similar apps. Support the projects that contribute to the initiatives of free software with your downloads and your dollars. Snub the software that steals control of your computer for monetary gain.
My mistake! I'm happy to state that Miranda is both free and open source!
If a company did this "openly" with full, in-your-face disclosure, there wouldn't be such a bruhahaha.
Then again, as a for-profit, they would lose a lot of users. People don't mind giving up resources to non-profit find-alien-life or fine-a-cure-for-cancer projects nearly as much as they mind giving resources to corporate overlords.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
free as in Willy
Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
If you've paid for your software, you can usually [expect] that they wont fuck you over with that crap
So why are there ads in some PC games that cost over fifty bucks to buy?
Free Martian Whores!
... if someone were to hack the malware. It would be very bad if they changed it so it downloaded copyrighted stuff, say whole CDs of recent music, to Digsby's machines, and then sent email to RIAA saying it's there. It would be a very, very bad thing indeed if this were then redistributed and thousands of unsuspecting people installed it and remained unsuspecting as the usually do, while it did its job then erased itself, because otherwise it would have been a Simply Awful very, very bad thing.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Here's your problem:
In other words, they told you about it in documentation you agreed to and said your read but didn't. This sounds kind of familiar. I think it is because of all the people I have heard say "I didn't know that was in the contract. I signed it but didn't read it. You know, just like all those people with the "sub-prime" adjustable rate mortgages that ballooned after 2 years.
It is called due diligence and everyone should practice it, not just lawyers and businesses.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
I know in computing it's fashionable to make up words, but badware? That's just crap. Besides, there's already a suitable word: malware.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
give it away for free with no strings attached without any need to release the source.
I have hidden code in it to kill switch the software for users I don't like and more hidden code that detects their username from their internet cache and bans them from ever using my software again if they're already on my bad list.
Sic.
Yup, always look for well used open source projects before turning to free (or payed) ones. In my opinion, I like free projects about as much as payed ones. They are free, but you won't get any support as you do with open source packages that are doing well. And most of the time they are single man jobs, or side jobs of commercial companies. This means that they are much more likely to contain crap-ware as well. Payed software is only OK if it includes some kind of statement about support and upgrades. If it doesn't you may be in trouble when the first bug hits you.
I won't say that it is impossible to get quality free, non-open source software, but the chances are much higher that you get crap than with pure open source.
I hope you have some asbestos underwear, and outerwear, and overwear.
And, some marshmallows.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
It's not free if it costs you electricity to run the CPU at full power 24/7. All modern processors have idle states in which they reduce energy consumption. These are not just "wasted cycles" that could be put to some use anyway.
A large amount of people also have metered bandwidth connections which might get impacted by this.
users should not complain because the client software is 'free.'
A malware spreader saying this is like a person who knowingly spreads HIV saying his victims shouldn't complain because they got sex for free. I was going to say "rapist" but digsby doesn't install via drive-by download.
Despite what people would like you to believe, willful ignorance is never an acceptable excuse.
Unfortunately, paying for software protects you from "that crap" to roughly the same degree that paying for cable protects you from ads, or paying for DVDs protects you from involuntary trailers...
There has been countless numbers of open source projects that also do this. Just because it's open source it doesn't mean you're safe from such tactics - it just means the source is open. You can check the source and remove those parts, but not many of us do so.
To extend this, I'm going to take a wild leap of faith and assume the summary is correct when it states:
The terms of service that no one ever reads does describe the CPU- and bandwidth-robbing moneymaker
I'd ask, then, what are you (the end user) going to read? If you aren't willing to read the TOS, are you really that likely to peruse through the source code of an application just because you happen to have it available?
After an article in MaximumPC magazine that reviewed several IM clients. I downloaded Digsby and when I went to install it I noticed all that crap they wanted to install so I canceled the installation and deleted the installer. I wasn't about to follow through after all that crap they wanted to install. Now I'm glad I didn't try it.
This can add up to much more than a fraction of a cent per person. Comparing electric bills with BOINC stuff running, and without, showed a difference of over $100.
The FTC gets around to doing something about it when a Senator falls victim to it.
Since the state and federal computers are fairly tightly controlled, and most of their "computing" is done by interns, don't expect much to happen for a while. Unless a lot of people make a lot of noise.
Cynical yes, but not exactly a rare circumstance.
Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
It's is a shame that Digsby went down this route and will result in me installing one of the suggestions above.
Digsby had a lot of potential with their integration with Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites. I have noticed that many of my friends are no longer using IM clients as much as they used to because they simply post everything to Twitter or Facebook.
Digsby was a single application that allowed me to keep tabs on all of these streams, but now I will have to find alternative (probably open source) solutions.
Java has no friends.
Bullshit, they'd cost the same as they ever did except they figured out they could add ads for just about nothing and increase their profit margins even more.
If you really believe that in-game advertisements subsidize the cost of games then you really are ignorant.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
Yup, always look for well used open source projects before turning to free (or payed) ones.
Any ideas for good Free alternative to video games such as Halo series, Animal Crossing series, Super Smash Bros. series, or Mario Kart series?
Aren't there about for zillion great free IM applications out there already? Why would someone use this one? What is the specific draw?
Ubuntu's meant shit, and LinuxMint just changes your search pages.
Get over it. Move on.
This Digsby one is where your fight should be.
And they were right. They could add ads. And they did. And likely increased their profit. I don't see the problem here, really... it's up to them to decide whether or not they can sell ads. It's up to game players whether or not it's worth $50 to them or not. If the gaming community is willing to pay $50, I don't honestly see why they can't charge $50.
users should not complain because the client software is 'free.'
Oh, I'd love to kick that guy in the nads and when he says "Dude! What up?" I'll say "Shut up! It was free!" and then he'd be all weepy like and I'd be all laughin' up in his face. Yeah, good times.
How many people do you know that actually ready the TOS before they purchase the product?
There's no need to pull ancient ethics philosophy debate into this discussion. We all know very well what we consider bad practices in a tech context.
It will make your computer like used! Slightly shotgunned!
Seriously, this is old news. I've been using Digsby for a few versions now, and knew about this from the beginning. The option to turn it off via the "Support Digsby" dialog has always been there. The very fact of the presence of this "feature" scared me off at first, but the quality of the app won me over in the end.
So no, I'm not a fan of having this be part of Digsby, but at least they disclose it (I'm pretty sure there was a blog post on the Digsby Blog a while back about it, and how to disable it) and allow you to opt out.
From steve: digsby developer
@All: This issue will be addressed first thing in the morning. As for performance, the functionality has actually been off this entire time. It is in the TOS because it was planned for the future and Digsby has not been using your CPU/Bandwidth when idle so if you have had performance issues it is not Digsby related.
This started up back in December of last year according to the forum posts. To top it off, Steve the administrator, shut off the research module since then. Why the stir now? Plura is the one that needs to be hammered that provided the software for this.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
From TF Wikipedia A:
"Presently, interception of Google searches is a permanent effect of the Digsby install process, and cannot be removed through the uninstall process."
That's pretty nasty.
if you have digsby
Unless you've done the market research, studied the budgets of the developers, guaged the economy, researched the public willingness to buy games that have ads, and considered inflation and any number of other factors, your opinion is worth about as much as anyone else's. Acting like it's so blatantly obvious that your opinion is better than his doesn't put you in a very good light.
Whale
Again, Digsby didn't do anything wrong. They just changed the default "install options" and to use computer's idle resources, like everyone else.
"Well, if everyone else was jumping off a bridge..." </mom>
Your sig sucks and so does mine. Now watch my videos.
The games cost $50. The ads come free.
TBH the cost for game development has sky rocked... The uncanny valley is an expensive one. Developers and Artists need to be paid, and the only real incoming funds are from the publishers, and we have all seen what publishers have done to the game development industry. Ad revenue for a developing game or one that has servers to upkeep makes monetary sense, even though they are moderately annoying.
Honestly I'd like to see the 2d side scrolling exploration games like Metroid or Castlevania come back, but I don't see it happening. The idiot masses drool for higher and higher graphics each year at the expense of game play.
RES PUBLICA NON DOMINETUR
Who the hell is Digsby and why should I care, when there's other perfectly free alternatives available that don't bundle crapware with them.
> Power costs money
Knowledge is power.
I KNOW how you can save money...
What is interesting is to plug your computer into one of the Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor devices and you can measure the energy usage change directly (input the electricity cost and it can show you how fast you're spending money too) - and applications like BOINC (and even screensavers) do indeed make a significant difference. It's pretty much the same as watching CPU core temperatures with a load and without.
But the user gets hit multiple times when their computer works hard. They get to pay for the extra electricity, in warmer seasons they also get to pay for extra cooling, and if the extra load runs CPU core temperatures up too high, they can also see increased failure rates in their CPUs over what they would otherwise see with their normal usage habits.
I agree that it is a big deal. I know my running BOINC on multiple computers adds significantly to my home electric bill. It's my choice to do that. But for a company to not make it crystal clear they are doing that behind your back is a bad thing. Digsby apparently publicized the research module on their web page blog and mentioned it in the click-through license, but something like that ought to be clearly spelled out in no uncertain terms.
Software companies can always find ways to increase profit margins per unit sold. Some people prefer it come from advertising, rather than coming from price rises or developer lay-offs.
Basically, it makes a difference.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
You typed all that crap, but all I could see was "I use public toilets and piss on the seat / I walk around in the summertime saying 'HOW ABOUT THIS HEAT?!'" Think about how you come off with that rant.
Your sig sucks and so does mine. Now watch my videos.
Holy crap, mod parent off topic. If you can't find any popular computer related topics using Google, in general they don't exist.
For me it's about a $30-$40/month bump when I run BOINC. Granted it is on multiple computers but that also includes the extra air conditioning to keep the place cool. At least during the winter they all act like heaters - something I would be doing anyway.
Logic bomb!
"Well, if everyone else was jumping off a bridge..." </mom>
I'd go last so that there would something softer than the ground to land on
rewriting history since 2109
Am I behind times? Is this what the "in" crowd calls Windows now a days?
It's Digsby's right to install whatever they want, as long as they do reveal it on their agreement with the end user. Stop whining.
However, it's our right, as users, to forget about Digsby and use another IM client.
Catalin Braescu
Ofaly.com
I don't need the source code. It sounds like your policy's implemented in the client; given some legwork, I can hack that. Maybe in a week. Good job with the security by bullshit attempt though, that's the number one fuel for major stupidity award.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
That's how the IE search bars started out. A little search page change here, a little redirect there. Next thing you know it's Bonzai Buddy all over again.
-- I'm old enough to have lived through six different meanings of the word "hacker."
Except it wasn't transparent until they got called on it. It's #15 in the TOS. The way to opt-out was to go to "Help" then click on "Support Digsby" then find it in the list of 12 or so options.
If this had been an "opt-in" via check-box, similar to the crapware with the installer, I wouldn't be searching for a new multi-client IM program now.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
Then there's Pidgin (multiplatform, free open source) which is also an excellent and mature IM which is also very extensible.
And crashes twice a week, thrice if the wind blows hard. What made me finally stop using it was the 4 crashes in one day.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
Wow, this is considered "badware"? It seems like a feature to me! Can I install the "badware" without getting Digsby with it?
Yea, it's so super that I get to not pay for games that have adds, especially when they can be patched in later.
I hate adverts with a passion. The whole concept of an advertisement is that someone is saying, it's a scientific fact that it's in my best interest to get you to believe stuff, and at some level you'll believe it just from seeing it, so that's worth it to me and sucks to be you!
So, I avoid them whenever I can. I don't watch TV, I have adblock installed, and that's a lot of ads right there I never see. So if a game has them, then I'm pretty much stuck not playing that game. Super.
The point is that when companies do that, it basically *punishes me*. Sure, I have the choice to not play the game, but are there enough of me to matter? I don't think the market cares about me enough to insure that I'll actually have games to play- I think the only reason I don't see ads in *all my games* is that the developers still have integrity, they are still good people who aren't just out for the fastest buck no matter what.
So fuck ads in games. If you don't see the problem, you aren't looking. And you probably think that ads "don't work on you".
In my area, hydro costs roughly 11 cents per kwh. A device using 1 watt, 24 hours a day works out to roughly one dollar a year, thus a PC using 200 watts costs roughly $200/year to operate 24/7.
If you let your PC idle on Speedstep (or equivalent), saving maybe 30-40 watts for 16 hours a day, you're "saving" between 20 and 30 bucks a year vs having Speedstep disabled. If you put the machine in S3 sleep (aka Standby), your PC's power consumption drops to 5 watts or less. Those savings are what Digsby's crapware is gobbling up by maxing out your processor. As a rule of thumb, I factor $20/month to power each standard PC.
At the other end of the scale, if you run a balls-out media workstation or gaming rig like me, peak power consumption might be closer to 800 watts. That means if I install Digsby and their PPI garbage, it's like taking $60 out of my wallet each month to flush down the toilet. Oh, let's not forget the heat output... I have to crank up the A/C, which also doesn't come cheap. You can bet your ass Digsby doesn't get $60 worth from taxing my CPU, so the end result is the power company makes a buck, Digsby makes a few pennies in the short term and eventually lose a chunk of their audience from all these shenanigans.
The sad part in all this, is they probably would make more money AND be less hated if they had simply asked for donations. I'd rather give $20 to a deserving developer, than to the dirty electricity tycoons. It's pretty lame that a company would rather screw their clients behind their backs and inflict greater indirect expense, than be upfront and honest about their financial expectations.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
... or bone the CEO's wife when he's not around.
"Dude, she's just lying there idle anyhow."
Yeah but who CAUSED the price to skyrocket? I would argue that the game companies did, with their "my graphics is teh roxorrz!" epeen bullshit!!! Talking to many of my fellow gamers many agree that graphics passed the "damned good" stage at Far Cry and Riddick, Butcher Bay. Those were...what? 2004? How many games have you played lately that this review would fit-"Game looks great, but AI and gameplay sucked" because I have played WAY too damned many.
Big name games like MOH:Airborne, where the Nazis will gladly line up to get the exact same spot where you have piled their friends up like cordwood! And if you crank the difficulty? Then you get "rubber band" AI where you can have perfect cover but the bad guys see a giant sign saying "HE IS OVER HERE" with an arrow over your head, where green ass grunts can snipe you with a crap rifle from 100+ yards away without a scope, and where they can take more rounds than the Terminator. What fun.
The point is THEY are the ones that started the epeen graphics bullshit, and NOT us. Do you really give a shit if the game has such perfect physics that every shard of a building lands in a perfect position when compared to reality? NO! You just want shit to blow up real good, with lots of fire and smoke and shit! Give us decent Ai like Far Cry 1, where they gave us a decent fight. Stick with Butcher Bay and Far Cry level graphics and you will find many quite happy by the way the game looks. oh, and quit this "multiplatform" shit when it is really an X360 game badly ported to PC. Give us real PC controls or don't bother. But all this epeen "meh graphics is betters than yurs!" crap does is cut many out of your potential audience due to high system reqs, and by focusing so much on graphics, and now its sister epeen physics, you end up with pretty games that suck ass. And THAT will kill the game companies more than any ads ever will.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
It's a fraction of a cent on the mains. When you're running on battery, you also get less 'up time.'
I'm all for supporting the developers. I don't care how many pages of opt-out I have to do when signing up. Just don't try to trick me.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
"If you've paid for your software, you can usually [expect] that they wont fuck you over with that crap"
So why are there ads in some PC games that cost over fifty bucks to buy?
Probably because the average gamer is less likely to notice shenanigans and get upset by them. Wipeout had ads added, they were pulled because of gamer outrage, but most of that was likely because the ads noticeably slowed down the loading times. I suspect if there wasn't a slowdown, gamers wouldn't have enough of a problem with it.
Keep in mind that most gamers are young not to realize that advertising shouldn't be something you can't help breathing constantly, and many just don't care. I admit I still play burnout paradise even though there are in-game ads.
It wasn't in the TOS when I started using it.
I was never told about it when it was added.
And it's 3 clicks, but under "help," and "support digsby." Not exactly intuitive to disable a "feature."
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
This article made it seem a lot worse than it really is. I have been using Digsby for about a year now, think its great and was almost about to uninstall it after reading this article until I saw Digsby's post on the options added. It can be read here http://blog.digsby.com/archives/693 #2 article even tells you that you can disable the software from from allowing this option from happening. As long as they are honest about it and I can actually turn this function off I am fine with what they have done. I just wish they would have told you more about it upon installing it instead of finding out about it this way.
Well, I can't give you a number, but I have found that many crapware installing "free video converters" that I've had to uninstall from clients PCs are just GUIs on top of FFmpeg, which is LPGL and GPL V2. There of course isn't any code distributed with them or offered, and like you said seems to be an excuse to give toolbars and crapware. But quite a few MPG and AVI converters are ripping off FFmpeg for the engine.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I'm not sure what the issue is. When I opened Digsby today, it updated and with in a few mins it displayed a message directing me to a FAQ. It clearly tells you how to disable the feature if you don't want it.
The point is THEY are the ones that started the epeen graphics bullshit, and NOT us.
Nope, we, the customers, did drive this trend towards ultra-graphical gaming. How many generations of bleeding-edge video cards did people buy to play bleeding-edge games, and how many bleeding-edge games did people buy to make the most of their bleeding-edge graphics cards? I seem to remember this trend lasting from around the time of Quake I, until a couple of years ago. This was a customer driven thing, no one "needed" the cutting edge, they wanted it (along with case-mods with tons of blue lights and piping), we all could have stopped it by demanding higher quality games, or by playing older (meaning past on graphics card generation, or six months or so) games, but we the customers didn't.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
They were caught doing this before, so much that users made a big stink on their forums and they had to respond with a public statement. Apparently they havent learned their lesson.
Then again its probably the only way they can stay in business so they'll do whatever it takes to make some money.
Either way... I dont care. I dont use the software. I did install it recently while looking for an alternative to pidgin.... I now regret that greatly.
How do you Digby employees find the time to put crapware into your product when you're busy here?
Good lord, does Digby have an entire astroturfing department? Genius!
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Sir Lewk was using logic, which is indeed superior to opinion based on lies.
Don't blame me. I still play nethack. Gonna get that fucking amulet too if it kills me.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
In that post, they did say they are moving it to the preferences part. People cried, they responded. Sounds like a good move to me.
Yawn...
And in the meantime the people that don't know or don't understand are being ripped off for power costs while they're making money off your CPU utilization.
Your argument is as fail as this being slipped into Digsby.
Simpler solution:
Don't install Digsby.
Really.
One of these days, I am going to flip out. When I flip out, I'll be back in five minutes.
Put that thing away.
-- I'm old enough to have lived through six different meanings of the word "hacker."
I appreciate the FUD. I see that the proper response to FUD these days, is to mod + for "informative". There are sure a lot of fanbois around, huh?
Lest you have missed some rather important facts, the "malware" you allude to was ALPHA software, being tested by ALPHA testers, who VOLUNTEERED to install the software. Citing feedback from those volunteers as evidence of intrusive malware installation is clearly dishonest.
People, mod parent DOWN, FFS.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Sir Lewk was using logic, which is indeed superior to opinion based on lies.
How logical is it to assume things you don't know about the budgetary constraints of game companies? We have to face it that we don't actually know whether or not the games would be more expensive if the ads weren't there, and he has about as much basis for saying they wouldn't as anyone else does for saying they would: no basis. Without hard budgetary data, this discussion is meaningless. It boils down to a bunch of kids in a playground saying "she has cooties!" "No I don't!" "But all girls have cooties, you're a girl, so you have cooties!" Yeah, they have logic...I suppose... :)
-- Joren
This saving of electricity is exactly the reason I stopped running Distributed.net after many, many years of dutiful service, mostly at my employer's electric expense. Now that I'm trying to be much more enviro-friendly I would not have even run it back then. Oh well, make the future better, right?
In the FOSS community, this 'malware' may by itself have interesting features worthy of a fork. Although the purposes to which it has been put are unsavory, it may have useful features.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
A wise man once said, "the price of freedom is eternal vigilance". Yeah, not many of us examine the source-code of each app we download, but if we don't want to inconvenience ourselves with doing that, all we can do is trust somebody else does and will let us know if something's amiss. The advantage of Open Source, however, is that those people you have to trust don't all receive their paychecks from the same corporation.
If you've paid for your software, you can usually except that they wont fuck you over with that crap.
In theory, yes. In practice, no.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
30-40 watts isn't a good estimate. More appropriate would be four. Processors already vastly cut their power consumption when processor usage falls to almost nothing. Even a beefy 95w CPU isn't going to consume more than 10 watts when fully idle. Speedstep saves some more of that.
Note: This doesn't refute the validity of your post. Keeping your CPU busy will cost you lots of money - just not for the reason you think.
If you want to test your own computer's power consumption, I suggest you grab a Kill-A-Watt off newegg.
Knowledge = Power
Time = Money
Substitute into the equation "Power = Work/Time":
Knowledge = Work/Money
Rearrange:
Money = Work/Knowledge
Therefore as
Knowledge --> 0
Money --> Infinite
Regardless of the amount of work done
I am not stubborn. I am right!
And that's because 99% of the users didn't care.
I bet the ubuntu forums would be filled out the ass with protests if it got worse than a firefox plugin that is only for test builds.
Acting like a heater?
You just gave a perfect example of what i was talking about Quake. Quke 1&2? Fun. Quake 3? Fun online, sucked off. Quake 4? Big can o' suck! The problem is they have forgotten that this is a GAME and is supposed to be F.U.N! Deus Ex? Big fun. NOLF 1&2? Big fun. SoF 1&2? Big fun. Most new games? Big can 'o suck with extra shitty on top.
The problem is that graphics has become another Dilbert style "metric" that PHBs use instead of actually making a game worth playing. And mark my words, physics will be next. It will be "uh sir, testers hate this game!" Boss "what do they think of the graphics and physics?" dev "Oh they think those are great sir" Boss-Then ship it! Meanwhile more and more companies will either go under or bleed money not understanding why nobody is paying $65 for their latest graphics penis fest. Hell I've quit buying from anywhere but the bargain bin and even at $20 I often feel cheated. They just aren't FUN anymore. And that is the whole point, isn't it? To actually have fun?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
What choice do gamers have if the price is set at $50? Go without every game released? Piss off. Not our fault douchebag publishers are getting greedier and greedier by the day.
@Mindless Drivel: 100% of Twitter posts ever Tweeted.
Software companies can always find ways to increase profit margins per unit sold. Some people prefer it come from advertising, rather than coming from price rises or developer lay-offs.
That is blatantly untrue, and it shows how much you (and a lot of other people) know about economics.
Advertisement is not some magic revenue generating device, it is simply a new product. When coupled with another product it affects the demand of that product, and could easily cause a net loss instead of a net gain. Advertising itself is essential, because a person who does not know about a product will never, ever buy it. They must find out somehow, and if not via word of mouth the only way they will know about it and decide whether or not they want it is through advertising.
Layoffs reduce developement costs (at least on paper, they may not in reality due to secondary and tertiary factors), which increases profitability. That is unless the quality suffers and market demand is in turn reduced. Again, layoffs can easilly lead to a net loss instead of a gain, particularly if you are already close to your "sweet spot".
The "sweet spot" that yields the highest profit based on the cost to develop the product, the cost to produce the product, the cost to deliver the product, and the market demand for a product. If you are at this sweet spot, no scheme will ever raise your profit margin unless it can generate more demand or lower the costs to deliver the product. Any changes will lower your profit margin.
The developement cost for a particular product is set in stone, it's all the research and developement that went into creating the product. Once done there is never an additional cost unless you alter the product.
The production cost for software is small, at most it is a dollar or two to burn the disk and create the packaging. It is ongoing but small for software. You'd factor in company overhead post-developement here also.
The delivery costs for software are also small, generally $5-$15 depending on delivery method - shipping physical media or via the web.
So after the developement of the software, the only substantial factor for determining the price of the software is the market demand for the software. This has relatively few primary variables, but a vast number of secondary and tertiary variables making it notoriously difficult to predict. You can only react to the market, you cannot anticipate it with any great accuracy, companies generally "find" it by making a rough guess and reacting to the market. Established markets tend to be set at a certain price for a certain type of product, but not always.
So the real question is, what price gets the market demand that nets the highest profit?
For game software, I think it is pretty clear that it has been overpriced for a while. Case in point is Valve's Left For Dead game. They dropped the price from $50 to $20 and demand shot up, I believe it was in the neighborhood of tenfold but it would not have to be nearly that high to yield a much higher profit.
For an example on the maths, assume 1,000 people buy the software at $50, and it costs you $5 to deliver it. That works out to $5,000 in cost and $50,000 income, for a net return of $45,000. If it cost you $40,000 to develop the software, you only made $5,000 net profit.
Now, assume 5,000 people are willing to buy the software at $20, and it still costs you $5 to deliver it. Now your delivery costs are $25,000, but your income is $100,000. With a net income of $75,000 and development costs of $40,000 your net profit is $35,000. That's seven times what you made at $50.
You can't drop the price forever though, because you run out of people who want your software. For example, if only 5,000 more people will buy the software at $10, but it still costs you $5 to deliver it, you have a problem. Your income is $100,000, but your cost to deliver is $50,000. That leaves you with $50,000 net income, and with $40,000 in pro
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
But people seem to be ignoring a key aspect in all of this.
All of this crapware is from the installer, not from the software.
You can check the source code up and down and never see this stuff. The core software doesn't need any ties. However whatever program they use to bundle the software for east-of-use (Installshield for example) can include anything they want. So if you take the source and compile it yourself, you'll have clean software. If you use the convenient easy installer, it's up for debate.
Yeah I missed that since it was buried in the middle somewhere. I'm going to uninstall Digsby now because they did something I neglected to read even though it's something I ostensibly support.
You didn't carefully ready wording:
By adding advertising, clearly the company didn't think that they had reached their sweet spot, and we're ready to extract more money per unit sold through advertising, rather than a direct price rise.
Oh no. There's no such thing as making more money by selling above the sweet spot. That contradicts the definition of the sweet spot.
Dropping the price is standard practice to re-stimulate sales. Once everyone who is happy to pay $50 has bought it, then they can milk the remaining market at $20 (and possibly $10 in the distant future). Once they exhaust one tier of demand, it becomes unprofitable to maintain the same price. The sweet spot moves.
(Have I convinced you yet that I know about market economics?)
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
I generally agree with your premise, but we must be careful to take into account the ancient rule that applies to all forms of media and man-made creation; "90% of everything is crap". Go to your local book or video store (or art museum) and actually look at everything there, you'll find 90% of it is absolute shit. Games have it worse, since there is less of them produced each year than books or movies, so we have a lower selection of that 10% of decent products.
Even before graphics became the be-all-end-all of gaming, there was a ton of REALLY bad games floating around, this just isn't very apparent because of nostalgia and hindsight being great at filtering out unmemorable crap. Right now graphics is just the driver of derivative, unimaginative drivel, there was other motivations for crap and "quick profit" games before that, and will be a plethora of other ones in the futures, especially now with graphics leveling off.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
I don't know if that is true or not. to me there were two 'golden ages' of my favorite genre: the venerable FPS. Now the first one, where DOOM made a splash and you had many imitators? Yeah, there was plenty o' shit then, but to be fair the genre was so new nobody was really sure what made a "good" VS a "bad" game and everybody was trying new things.
But the second golden age? the era of the "Quake 2 engine" games? Now there was gaming! Because everyone was pretty much on an even keel graphics wise you had to do other things to make your game stand out from the crowd. Deus Ex with its RPG elements, and its myriad of ways to play it. real innovation there. Soldier of Fortune 1&2 with its "GHOUL" engine where you could not only disarm a bad guy by shooting the gun out of his hand, if you used a big gun you could take his hand as well! That is what I call disarming an opponent! No One Live Forever 1&2 had humor, Star trek Voyager had the entire game written as an episode of the show, complete with all the actors doing the voices! I could go on all day.
But now it just feels like games are more demos for GPUs than actual games. It is like some Dilbet PHB is running down a checkbox list making sure their game hits all the latest "metrics" without actually bothering to see if the game is even the tiniest bit fun! I bought MoH: Airborne in the 10th anniversary pack, and I actually had more fun with the old Allied Assault and its expansions than I did the newest game! How sad is that? I have been having more fun with the "$1.99 Amazon specials" lately than I have the big name games! At least the cheapo bargain bin game makers know they can't compete on graphics and physics so they at least give you lots of stuff to blow up.
I am so damned sick of companies putting out crap like Airborne where the bad guys are so damned stupid that I can just stand there like Rambo and mow down wave after wave because they haven't even thought about making the fuckers duck! And if any game developers read this, please listen to me. Having an online lame ass CTF bullshit does NOT make up for shitty AI, okay? If I wanted to deal with a bunch of teabagging 14 year olds screaming faggot and nigger, I'd be playing Halo. If games written years ago like Far Cry can have decent AI, why can't you? If you suck that bad license the damned tech from Crytek! Stop wasting our time with these crappy graphical epeen games, and do NOT call your game "multiplatform" when it is just a shitty x360 game badly ported. Give us configurable controls or piss off! Other folks came out with good games with decent AI and good fun factor years ago, so there is no excuse. Quit blowing your entire budget on the GPU and give us a fun game with a good fight. Is that really so much to ask for?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
What choice do gamers have if the price is set at $50? Go without every game released?
WiiWare, PSN, XBLA, and Steam all have games for well under 50 USD.
Check out this rebuttal of the idea that waste heat from electronics is equivalent to heating.
It does depend where you are, but in the UK we mostly use gas to heat houses. Electrically heated houses usually use storage heaters, which use electricity at night when there's lower demand and the electricity would be wasted (because you can't turn a power plant on and off at the flick of a switch).
All intents and purposes. Not intensive purposes.
Another issue that rears it's ugly head for a seller is "Perceived Value."
Your calculations may tell you that your sweet spot based on internal production costs and predicted market volume is $9.99. So you roll out at $9.99. And the sales tank. What happened?
Potential customers are likely perceiving the product as being of poor quality, even if it is really of superior quality. This happens simply because the price is too low for the customer's internal representation of value.
This facet tends to encourage sellers to set an initial high price for the product, and then gradually lower it towards the desired "Sweet Spot" until lowering the price causes only a very small spike in demand. They stop lowering the price even if they haven't reached the "sweet spot" because lowering the price any more will likely cause sales to drop.
And it is funny you call bullshit anonymously.
I have four beefy computers running BOINC on multi-core CPUs. Two run water cooling. All that heat needs to be carried away from the CPUs by the water cooling systems and for all of them, then needs to be taken outside by the air conditioning.
Call bullshit all you want. I went a couple of months last summer without running my computers and my bill dropped by some $30-40 dollars. Maybe there were some cooler days during that time that also added to lowering my bill.
I did not do an exhaustive audit of where the power went. Sorry if that confuses you. This is strictly anecdotal evidence from real-world experience. It was not a carefully-controlled experiment.
But my electricity bill took a big dive when my computers were not up and running continuously.
I call asshat on your post.
It's not really a rebuttal. It's stating the (fairly) obvious.
What I meant was that the heat generated by the computers is not having to be removed by the air conditioning to keep the house cool. The computer's waste heat - even if it came from a high-grade energy source - is at least contributing to something I would have to do anyway - heat the house.
Sure, using off-peak (cheaper) energy to "charge" some storage medium and then recover that heat energy during the day is a great idea. I wish we did more of that over here. I've also seen air conditioning concepts that cool a material at night and then let that absorb heat during the day. Same thing.
The waste heat from electronics, however, is completely equivalent to heating if someone is using electricity to heat their home. All electronics equipment really is are just various sizes of resistive heaters.
Is it equivalent to natural gas heating or geothermal heating? Nope. I didn't say it was. I only said that the waste heat contributes to the heating of the house and does not require additional energy to gather it up and move it outside like it does during the summer.
Electronics equipment, when it comes down to it, is nothing but a resistive heater.
It does no real work (as in lifting a load, moving a load, etc). All that electricity just turns into heat -- Heat that in the summer needs to be removed from the system and moved outside which adds an additional energy tax for computers running where air conditioning is required to keep the temperature from going too high.
I'd agree, but the key thing is to be 100% transparent -- let users know in big bold letters what you're going to do, before they download the client.
Hey, if you're the one who has such a big problem with advertisements that you won't sit through them even after buying the game, that's your problem.
Now, that doesn't change the fact that many companies cross the line into douchiness when dealing with ads, and a certain amount of customer-outrage is deserved on their part, but I find it silly that someone can be so bothered by something as stupid as an advertisement as to essentially throw $50 out the window by never playing something they've already bought again.
They're just ads, not Satan incarnate. They will neither poison your mind, nor suck out your soul. Be a man and deal with it.
Patron: "Waiter, there's a fly in my soup!"
Waiter: "Don't tell anybody, they'll all want one!"
Free Martian Whores!
I'm not talking about the CPU, I mean the entire PC. The CPU may well dial itself down to 10 watts, but the motherboard's subsystems don't seem to save much power when underused, at least not in desktop systems.
I've experimented quite a bit with underclocking, and always found the power savings rather unimpressive. The reason is simple: the CPU is only a small part of the total power consumption. Even if I could theoretically drop the CPU's usage down to a single watt, the board itself would still draw 20-30 watts. An active hard drive will pull another 10 watts, maybe half that when idling.
You can achieve better efficiency with mobile boards, such as the ones typically paired with Intel Atom chips (or the Pentium M of days gone by). Using those power-conscious boards, you can indeed hit 10 watts at idle for the whole system, but you do so by sacrifying performance and versatility.
-Billco, Fnarg.com