The last time I posted a reply here about a Firefox article, mentioning how I didn't feel it was as fast as IE (and a couple other little reasons), and that I would stick to IE or Opera for the time being because of it, I was jumped all over by the Firefox fanboys, insulted numerous times, and got all my comments moderated down to Troll. It was really rather welcoming.
This post may get that as well (though that isn't my intention), but I hope that this study teaches some people that perhaps you should consider other peoples opinions without immediately attacking them and saying they're wrong and stupid just because you don't agree with them.
This is to anyone who replied to my comment at all, and anyone who considers making any further comments.
I won't be reading any more of them.
I am utterly appalled at the lack of respect from people. I in no way bashed your precious Firefox, and in no way gave any indication I was an "IE fanboy", yet my harmless comment has lead to just another flamewar.
People are going to pick apart every comment I make and gang up to try and make me defend my usage of an IE-based browser. That's rediculous, and I won't fall into your childish trap.
I can honestly say that the total arrogance displayed here today has lessened any will I had to continue developing for or using Firefox. You people will never have the #1 browser position as long as you go shoving your opinions on everyone and implying they're all stupid for not following along behind you.
I in no way ever imagined my comment would turn into this, but now I understand the kind of people I'm dealing with. It's a lose/lose situation for me here, because no matter what facts I stated about IE, the Firefox people will pick those apart and twist them around, trying to turn them against me and make me look stupid. Emphasis on "try".
I'm sure there are plenty of perfectly decent Firefox people out there who saw my comment and had no qualms with it, so I don't direct any ill-will towards you. But anyone who implied that I "don't deserve to be a web developer" and other such things, when they have no idea what I actually develop, can kiss my ass.
Show some respect to people once in a while, why doncha. I tried to do that to you all, but I won't continue to waste my breath.
Part of what you said makes no sense at all, so I will just ignore it.
I love the fact that Firefox can be altered easily due to the way it uses such an open method of configuration and theme files, but this very thing also makes it slower. Parsing these files takes time. Using XML and such for application settings may make a program much more configurable, but it's just not good for speed.
But whether IE fully supports the standards is irrelevant. People have turned my originally innocent comment into such an opportunity to flame the IE user. It's rediculous.
The fact remains that IE controls the market, and that's not changing anytime soon. I am not an IE "fanboy" just because it's what I choose to use. I often have dislike for various things about it, but I use it because it's what works best with a lot of the web.
Whether people want to accept that or not, that's up to them. They can start flamewars over such a silly topic till they're blue in the face for all I care. It just shows me how arrogant some of the alternative browser users can truly be.
In the meantime, I'll continue using Avant, and develop for the websites I'm hired to develop for, and not think twice about all the crying that people did here over me deciding to use an IE-based browser.
Many things aren't part of the W3C standards, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't use them. If enough features are used on the internet which people enjoy, then it will force W3C to catch up.
That's not to say that alternative methods shouldn't be employed for browsers which don't support these things. I'm all for making a site usable for everyone.
That's all you have to say, and you posted it anonymously?
You people are so childish. I guess you're pretty cool for hating those scrollbar colors! It's the worst thing ever invented! I sure hope no other browser ever supports it!
Oh whoops, they all already do.
Yes, clearly because I use a browser other than what you do, that of course makes me a fanboy of it. Grow up already.
Scrollbar coloring is supported by many browsers, and the fact that the Mozilla line of browsers doesn't is a failing on its part. Opera allows this to be toggled, which is one of the reasons I've always considered it superior to Mozilla/Firefox when it comes to alternative browsers.
I would also be willing to bet that the Mozilla team simply can't support scrollbar coloring in the first place because not all of the OS's it's compilable for even support it, and if they added a Windows-only feature like that (God forbid!), then Mozilla fanboys like you would piss yourselves.
I guess that makes you pretty awesome though that you know PHP and Visual Basic. Maybe you know how to put the square peg into the square hole, too!
Due to all the flaws in IE that pop up so often, I'm always very tempted to use something else other than my IE as my main browser. But, until Firefox decides to start supporting things like scrollbar colors, give it somewhat more configurable toolbars, and perhaps optimize it a bit better for speed in Windows, I'm just not going to switch.
I also do website development, and considering such a large portion of my audience is and I'm sure will continue to be IE users, I sway towards using a browser in which I can see exactly what my viewers are seeing. Though I always test my work in Firefox and Opera, just to make sure.
I only have one word to describe this program: UGH.
Do I say this because the program itself is bad? Not really. I only ran it once, played around with it a little, and decided I might use it sometime if I had a hard time locating something on gnutella and such.
Now I generally use Avant as my browser, but by pure coincidence, I happened to open up IE this evening. After closing it, I got some kind of popup for some comedy place. An icon appeared in my system tray. Then another popup. I suddenly realized what had happened.
UGH is to describe the fact that eXeem is now classified as garbage software in my book. The very idea that they would include spyware and adware with it has tarnished their reputation with me forever. It's just plain wrong to distribute trash like that with an application.
I decided to give Microsoft's AntiSpyware a run for its money and started it up. LOW AND BEHOLD, the spyware and adware started being detected. I want to point out that I ran this very scan only a few days ago, with nothing found. Nothing has been installed since which would have installed this stuff. And since eXeem is known to install adware/spyware, I know that it's responsible for ALL of this garbage, as I'm very very careful as to what I put on here for that very reason.
I actually want to give kudos to Microsoft for it doing such a good job at finding and removing everything. They did some good work with this program it seems.
Just to note, one of the pieces of junk in particular is said to allow other software to be downloaded and installed. WTF? Who writes this garbage?
I'll tell you who. Greedy, greedy people. The internet is becoming overrun with ads by such people. Even television is being raped by ads, which appear all over your television shows while you're trying to watch'em. The same is happening with websites, where these Flash ads will appear all over the screen when you're trying to see something. It's pathetic. What has our media come to? But the worst evil of all of this is adware.
So, I say this to every person out there that sees this and writes adware/spyware. I'm anxious for the day when the laws come into place, which will send you all to jail. This is where you deserve to be, for writing this virus-like software. It's no less destructive than anything else any "hacker" puts together, with the exception of sticking ads in peoples faces. There's no excuse for it, and people won't tolerate it.
I suggest that everyone boycott eXeem in whatever way possible. Don't use it, don't mention it (at least in anything other than negative light), refuse advertisements on your sites for it, don't let people link to it on comments or forums (by editing the post to remove the url or something, or posting a follow-up about the adware), etc.
And I don't just mean this particular program. I'm talking about all the software of this nature which installs junk like this. If enough people spread the bad word about them and prevent anyone from possibly downloading it, these people will slowly get forced out of business. I have no problem with these people standing in the unemployment line to look for real jobs.
The fact of the matter is, if something isn't done about the explosion of advertising, there's just not going to be anything left BUT ads.
The results of studies like this just seem to further push our schools into using more and more technology in place of decent teachers. They're buying all of these top-of-the-line machines every year for the school systems, when this money could be used to give teachers a raise, hire extras, or build more classrooms, all of which are always in demand, but can never be afforded.
Whatever happened to just making a child learn out of books and use a pencil and paper? Schools are making children so dependant on computers and technology that if you removed all of this from them, they wouldn't know what to do with themselves. A child should not be required to have a PC at home to do schoolwork. There is just no excuse for this.
The first step of this was of course calculators. While a calculator is a very important tool, it's being allowed use in class more and more. My younger brother, for example, is taking a pre-algebra class, and they're already requiring him to have a graphing calculator. For pre-algebra! The graphing and calculations you learn in such a class need to be taught solely on paper, to force a child to be able to mentally evaluate these problems. If they don't learn it early on, they're much less likely to be able to figure out how to do it once they get into more advanced math.
And like I mentioned, many schools are getting top-of-the-line machines almost every year nowadays, but to do what? When I was in school, they taught you things like typing, basic DOS commands, spreadsheets, word processing, presentations, etc. They're teaching pretty much the exact same thing now, with the exception of Windows instead of DOS. So I ask you: Why do you need hundreds of 3ghz machines in order to type Word documents? The answer is simple. You don't.
It probably doesn't help matters than the technical support in many schools is very poor. Many of these machines are choked to death with adware, worms, viruses, games, and Lord knows what else. As a result, many times they're just pulled off the table, and replaced with another. More machines are purchased because they think newer technology will help them solve these problems. But many of the problems continue to exist because of incompetence of the technical teams.
I participated in the work-study program when I was in high school, and while the computers and school network were much more primitive than it is now, it was still riddled with vulerabilities. Students who knew how to do the simplest of tricks could hide malicious software all over the network, not to mention view teachers files, all because the people in charge apparently had no idea how to secure it. I spent every single day during my work-study time cleaning viruses off of machines, and fixing simple problems which should have been prevented. And the school network was down all the time, and is in just as poor a state this very day, despite the millions of dollars in technology upgrades which should be making these peoples jobs much easier. Computers these days are MUCH more capable of being secured than those in the past, but it just isn't being done.
So this is where the tax dollars go. Computers which are overused/misused and not properly maintained, and overpaid technical staffs who spend most of their time cleaning up after mistakes which they never correct, and just give the excuse of needing "better equipment".
Computers are not the solution to helping children learn better. They're just being used as a babysitter for the lack of good teachers. Good teachers which could be hired, ironically, if not for the huge technology budgets.
Slashdot isn't software which is installed on your machine. Slashdot, TV, radio, magazines, movies, etc, these things are all things you choose to view. If you don't wish to see the ads these things offer, then you don't have to.
Spyware and adware, on the other hand, behave just like a virus. They attach themselves to your machine in as many ways possible and cling for dear life, preventing themselves from being removed, and usually reinstalling themselves if you attempt to do so. They affect the normal operation of your machine, and decrease productivity as a result. Some types use loopholes and flaws in Windows to "infect" your machine, without you having the chance to refuse it. And sometimes adware/spyware scanners even have trouble removing certain types, because this kind of software is just that insidious, and gives no way to uninstall it once it's on the machine.
So no, it's nothing like the things you mentioned, at all.
And as if it weren't fairly obvious these days, many "spyware removal" companies are also likely to be partners with these spyware companies.
There was a particularly nasty adware on my brother's PC once, and during my time trying to see where it came from, I happened to click on one of the ads, which boasted to help you "get rid of spyware and adware". The ad took me to a generic "search engine" page, filled with spyware/adware "removal" programs.
But did I see things like Ad-Aware or Spybot listed? Why hell no. I saw a bunch of removal programs which I had never ever heard of in my life. And yes, they cost money.
So answer me this; why would a piece of adware give you an advertisement on how to remove adware, unless the companies that sell you the removal software are in on it too?
And you know that the companies know they're showing up on these adware "search engines", because there are referrer ID's in the urls. After confronting a company about it with my brother's infested PC, they of course pretended to know nothing about it. I find it very hard to believe that they could have a referrer ID from an adware search engine, and it be total coincidence.
So yes, I'm 100% convinced that many adware companies are allied with adware removal ones, if they aren't in fact one in the same many times. Just think of how many people actually end up clicking those ads and buying that software, just because they don't know any better.
Since adware companies are basically virus writers, with ads as their payloads, we can only hope that more laws will start to pop up to nip it in the bud. But in the meantime, perhaps Ad-Aware or Spybot can strike up some deal with vendors (if they haven't already) to include their software with machines. At least until Microsoft's adware removal tool starts shipping with Windows.
I keep wondering how happy people like Erica Hill and the other folks who left for better jobs must be now that TechTV is destroyed. Hell would have to freeze over before G4CrapTV would ever air a show like TechLive. Or any news for that matter. News is just not cool, you know.
I have great dislike for what they've gone to one of my favorite shows, The Screen Savers. I watched it every single night on TechTV. Even if I knew most of the tips and stuff already, it was still interesting to get the latest news and hardware reviews, along with the occasional mod or hack. And the cast was like a family. True TSS fans really got to know these people, and it was hard to see most of them go.
Change happens though, so I was prepared to handle a new Screen Savers without Leo Laporte, and then later without Patrick Norton. It wasn't a horrible show, but it wasn't what it was. I chose to keep watching, since I had gotten used to Kevin and Sarah at least, from their time on air.
Well then G4 came along and raped the channel of anything worthwhile. They hire Alex Albrecht as co-host on TSS, whose only redeeming quality seemed to be his ability to insult as many types of people as possible during his short time on the show.
During this time, I also came to realize that every single news story they gave, when they even did the news, had come straight off of Slashdot here, or the other top news sites; a blatant example of why they still needed a news crew, like with TechLive. They even stopped reporting on new hardware for the most part, unless it was something that might help a gamer out.
Then to add insult to injury, the fire everyone left who might make the show worth watching. Without the occasional mod from Yoshi, I simply can't find any reason to continue watching this show. The hosts know nothing about tech whatsoever, and even worse, one of them is also named Kevin, just to make things confusing. I don't blame Kevin Rose at all for not wanting to take the helm of this new version of the show, because I'm sure he saw it was a sinking ship. Why have his face on it.
I just despise G4 and no longer watch anything on it. I hope Dan's inside scoop sends fans into an uproar, which leads to the demise of this poorly managed company.
And I wish the best of luck to Dan Huard, who was apparently the backbone to the show for much longer than I realized.
The saddest part to the whole "spyware removal" industry is that a majority of the companies that are out there are in fact either directly or indirectly responsible for some kind of spyware or adware software in the first place.
I had a bad case of adware on my brother's machine once, which replaced his home page and such with a "search engine" thing. He would also get popups, some of which would tell him that his machine was infected with adware, and to click there to "remove them". Clicking that popup, out of curiosity, showed me results in the "search engine" page, linking to several sites which sell adware removal programs.
Now tell me this. Why would adware pop up ads which links you to pages that would help you remove the stuff? The answer, of course, is that those companies are responsible for the adware in the first place, or are paying whoever created it to put their company in their adware "search engine", so that people are sure to find'em. If this were a legit search page, it would take you to a program which actually works, and is free, like Spybot or Ad-Aware. These two things never showed up in the adware "search engine" page. Coincidence? Of course not.
Spyware and adware can be just as damaging and result in the loss of as much productivity as a common virus can. And software like this works almost just like a virus; it fights you at every turn to remove it. It can actually be much harder to remove this kind of junk, depending on which one gets installed. The difference is though, if you write a virus, you go to jail. If you write adware (aka, a virus with ads in it), you make a ton of money.
I can't seem to load it today either. It worked a couple days ago, though. After reading on Alex's site, Alex considered shutting his own site down, so possibly Kevin actually did so with his? He still has thebroken.org after all.
Or then again, maybe the site is just down. Who knows.
I heard about this yesterday after a buddy pointed it out on Alex Albrecht's website, and was very disgusted with the whole thing. The G4/TechTV merger was a disgrace, as it did nothing to preserve what made TechTV what it was. All they did was take the shows that had the most ratings, and scrapped the rest. And now they've turned the shows they kept into garbage.
I won't get into a whole thing about it, since after scanning through the comments, you folks seem to have pretty much summed up all my feelings on the matter. I agree with pretty much every negative comment I saw about the network.
Yesterday I was so aggravated with it that I wrote G4TechTV a very long email about my disliking of what they've done with the shows, and the whole network for that matter. I suggest everyone else flood them with feedback as well, because they've ruined what made TechTV worth watching.
I just wish I had remembered to complain about those stupid sports interruptions in TSS!
Slashdot Mirror
The last time I posted a reply here about a Firefox article, mentioning how I didn't feel it was as fast as IE (and a couple other little reasons), and that I would stick to IE or Opera for the time being because of it, I was jumped all over by the Firefox fanboys, insulted numerous times, and got all my comments moderated down to Troll. It was really rather welcoming.
This post may get that as well (though that isn't my intention), but I hope that this study teaches some people that perhaps you should consider other peoples opinions without immediately attacking them and saying they're wrong and stupid just because you don't agree with them.
This is to anyone who replied to my comment at all, and anyone who considers making any further comments.
I won't be reading any more of them.
I am utterly appalled at the lack of respect from people. I in no way bashed your precious Firefox, and in no way gave any indication I was an "IE fanboy", yet my harmless comment has lead to just another flamewar.
People are going to pick apart every comment I make and gang up to try and make me defend my usage of an IE-based browser. That's rediculous, and I won't fall into your childish trap.
I can honestly say that the total arrogance displayed here today has lessened any will I had to continue developing for or using Firefox. You people will never have the #1 browser position as long as you go shoving your opinions on everyone and implying they're all stupid for not following along behind you.
I in no way ever imagined my comment would turn into this, but now I understand the kind of people I'm dealing with. It's a lose/lose situation for me here, because no matter what facts I stated about IE, the Firefox people will pick those apart and twist them around, trying to turn them against me and make me look stupid. Emphasis on "try".
I'm sure there are plenty of perfectly decent Firefox people out there who saw my comment and had no qualms with it, so I don't direct any ill-will towards you. But anyone who implied that I "don't deserve to be a web developer" and other such things, when they have no idea what I actually develop, can kiss my ass.
Show some respect to people once in a while, why doncha. I tried to do that to you all, but I won't continue to waste my breath.
Part of what you said makes no sense at all, so I will just ignore it.
I love the fact that Firefox can be altered easily due to the way it uses such an open method of configuration and theme files, but this very thing also makes it slower. Parsing these files takes time. Using XML and such for application settings may make a program much more configurable, but it's just not good for speed.
But whether IE fully supports the standards is irrelevant. People have turned my originally innocent comment into such an opportunity to flame the IE user. It's rediculous.
The fact remains that IE controls the market, and that's not changing anytime soon. I am not an IE "fanboy" just because it's what I choose to use. I often have dislike for various things about it, but I use it because it's what works best with a lot of the web.
Whether people want to accept that or not, that's up to them. They can start flamewars over such a silly topic till they're blue in the face for all I care. It just shows me how arrogant some of the alternative browser users can truly be.
In the meantime, I'll continue using Avant, and develop for the websites I'm hired to develop for, and not think twice about all the crying that people did here over me deciding to use an IE-based browser.
Many things aren't part of the W3C standards, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't use them. If enough features are used on the internet which people enjoy, then it will force W3C to catch up. That's not to say that alternative methods shouldn't be employed for browsers which don't support these things. I'm all for making a site usable for everyone.
That's all you have to say, and you posted it anonymously? You people are so childish. I guess you're pretty cool for hating those scrollbar colors! It's the worst thing ever invented! I sure hope no other browser ever supports it! Oh whoops, they all already do.
Yes, clearly because I use a browser other than what you do, that of course makes me a fanboy of it. Grow up already.
Scrollbar coloring is supported by many browsers, and the fact that the Mozilla line of browsers doesn't is a failing on its part. Opera allows this to be toggled, which is one of the reasons I've always considered it superior to Mozilla/Firefox when it comes to alternative browsers.
I would also be willing to bet that the Mozilla team simply can't support scrollbar coloring in the first place because not all of the OS's it's compilable for even support it, and if they added a Windows-only feature like that (God forbid!), then Mozilla fanboys like you would piss yourselves.
I guess that makes you pretty awesome though that you know PHP and Visual Basic. Maybe you know how to put the square peg into the square hole, too!
Due to all the flaws in IE that pop up so often, I'm always very tempted to use something else other than my IE as my main browser. But, until Firefox decides to start supporting things like scrollbar colors, give it somewhat more configurable toolbars, and perhaps optimize it a bit better for speed in Windows, I'm just not going to switch.
I also do website development, and considering such a large portion of my audience is and I'm sure will continue to be IE users, I sway towards using a browser in which I can see exactly what my viewers are seeing. Though I always test my work in Firefox and Opera, just to make sure.
I only have one word to describe this program: UGH.
Do I say this because the program itself is bad? Not really. I only ran it once, played around with it a little, and decided I might use it sometime if I had a hard time locating something on gnutella and such.
Now I generally use Avant as my browser, but by pure coincidence, I happened to open up IE this evening. After closing it, I got some kind of popup for some comedy place. An icon appeared in my system tray. Then another popup. I suddenly realized what had happened.
UGH is to describe the fact that eXeem is now classified as garbage software in my book. The very idea that they would include spyware and adware with it has tarnished their reputation with me forever. It's just plain wrong to distribute trash like that with an application.
I decided to give Microsoft's AntiSpyware a run for its money and started it up. LOW AND BEHOLD, the spyware and adware started being detected. I want to point out that I ran this very scan only a few days ago, with nothing found. Nothing has been installed since which would have installed this stuff. And since eXeem is known to install adware/spyware, I know that it's responsible for ALL of this garbage, as I'm very very careful as to what I put on here for that very reason.
I actually want to give kudos to Microsoft for it doing such a good job at finding and removing everything. They did some good work with this program it seems.
Just to note, one of the pieces of junk in particular is said to allow other software to be downloaded and installed. WTF? Who writes this garbage?
I'll tell you who. Greedy, greedy people. The internet is becoming overrun with ads by such people. Even television is being raped by ads, which appear all over your television shows while you're trying to watch'em. The same is happening with websites, where these Flash ads will appear all over the screen when you're trying to see something. It's pathetic. What has our media come to? But the worst evil of all of this is adware.
So, I say this to every person out there that sees this and writes adware/spyware. I'm anxious for the day when the laws come into place, which will send you all to jail. This is where you deserve to be, for writing this virus-like software. It's no less destructive than anything else any "hacker" puts together, with the exception of sticking ads in peoples faces. There's no excuse for it, and people won't tolerate it.
I suggest that everyone boycott eXeem in whatever way possible. Don't use it, don't mention it (at least in anything other than negative light), refuse advertisements on your sites for it, don't let people link to it on comments or forums (by editing the post to remove the url or something, or posting a follow-up about the adware), etc.
And I don't just mean this particular program. I'm talking about all the software of this nature which installs junk like this. If enough people spread the bad word about them and prevent anyone from possibly downloading it, these people will slowly get forced out of business. I have no problem with these people standing in the unemployment line to look for real jobs.
The fact of the matter is, if something isn't done about the explosion of advertising, there's just not going to be anything left BUT ads.
The results of studies like this just seem to further push our schools into using more and more technology in place of decent teachers. They're buying all of these top-of-the-line machines every year for the school systems, when this money could be used to give teachers a raise, hire extras, or build more classrooms, all of which are always in demand, but can never be afforded.
Whatever happened to just making a child learn out of books and use a pencil and paper? Schools are making children so dependant on computers and technology that if you removed all of this from them, they wouldn't know what to do with themselves. A child should not be required to have a PC at home to do schoolwork. There is just no excuse for this.
The first step of this was of course calculators. While a calculator is a very important tool, it's being allowed use in class more and more. My younger brother, for example, is taking a pre-algebra class, and they're already requiring him to have a graphing calculator. For pre-algebra! The graphing and calculations you learn in such a class need to be taught solely on paper, to force a child to be able to mentally evaluate these problems. If they don't learn it early on, they're much less likely to be able to figure out how to do it once they get into more advanced math.
And like I mentioned, many schools are getting top-of-the-line machines almost every year nowadays, but to do what? When I was in school, they taught you things like typing, basic DOS commands, spreadsheets, word processing, presentations, etc. They're teaching pretty much the exact same thing now, with the exception of Windows instead of DOS. So I ask you: Why do you need hundreds of 3ghz machines in order to type Word documents? The answer is simple. You don't.
It probably doesn't help matters than the technical support in many schools is very poor. Many of these machines are choked to death with adware, worms, viruses, games, and Lord knows what else. As a result, many times they're just pulled off the table, and replaced with another. More machines are purchased because they think newer technology will help them solve these problems. But many of the problems continue to exist because of incompetence of the technical teams.
I participated in the work-study program when I was in high school, and while the computers and school network were much more primitive than it is now, it was still riddled with vulerabilities. Students who knew how to do the simplest of tricks could hide malicious software all over the network, not to mention view teachers files, all because the people in charge apparently had no idea how to secure it. I spent every single day during my work-study time cleaning viruses off of machines, and fixing simple problems which should have been prevented. And the school network was down all the time, and is in just as poor a state this very day, despite the millions of dollars in technology upgrades which should be making these peoples jobs much easier. Computers these days are MUCH more capable of being secured than those in the past, but it just isn't being done.
So this is where the tax dollars go. Computers which are overused/misused and not properly maintained, and overpaid technical staffs who spend most of their time cleaning up after mistakes which they never correct, and just give the excuse of needing "better equipment".
Computers are not the solution to helping children learn better. They're just being used as a babysitter for the lack of good teachers. Good teachers which could be hired, ironically, if not for the huge technology budgets.
Slashdot isn't software which is installed on your machine. Slashdot, TV, radio, magazines, movies, etc, these things are all things you choose to view. If you don't wish to see the ads these things offer, then you don't have to.
Spyware and adware, on the other hand, behave just like a virus. They attach themselves to your machine in as many ways possible and cling for dear life, preventing themselves from being removed, and usually reinstalling themselves if you attempt to do so. They affect the normal operation of your machine, and decrease productivity as a result. Some types use loopholes and flaws in Windows to "infect" your machine, without you having the chance to refuse it. And sometimes adware/spyware scanners even have trouble removing certain types, because this kind of software is just that insidious, and gives no way to uninstall it once it's on the machine.
So no, it's nothing like the things you mentioned, at all.
And as if it weren't fairly obvious these days, many "spyware removal" companies are also likely to be partners with these spyware companies.
There was a particularly nasty adware on my brother's PC once, and during my time trying to see where it came from, I happened to click on one of the ads, which boasted to help you "get rid of spyware and adware". The ad took me to a generic "search engine" page, filled with spyware/adware "removal" programs.
But did I see things like Ad-Aware or Spybot listed? Why hell no. I saw a bunch of removal programs which I had never ever heard of in my life. And yes, they cost money.
So answer me this; why would a piece of adware give you an advertisement on how to remove adware, unless the companies that sell you the removal software are in on it too?
And you know that the companies know they're showing up on these adware "search engines", because there are referrer ID's in the urls. After confronting a company about it with my brother's infested PC, they of course pretended to know nothing about it. I find it very hard to believe that they could have a referrer ID from an adware search engine, and it be total coincidence.
So yes, I'm 100% convinced that many adware companies are allied with adware removal ones, if they aren't in fact one in the same many times. Just think of how many people actually end up clicking those ads and buying that software, just because they don't know any better.
Since adware companies are basically virus writers, with ads as their payloads, we can only hope that more laws will start to pop up to nip it in the bud. But in the meantime, perhaps Ad-Aware or Spybot can strike up some deal with vendors (if they haven't already) to include their software with machines. At least until Microsoft's adware removal tool starts shipping with Windows.
I keep wondering how happy people like Erica Hill and the other folks who left for better jobs must be now that TechTV is destroyed. Hell would have to freeze over before G4CrapTV would ever air a show like TechLive. Or any news for that matter. News is just not cool, you know.
I have great dislike for what they've gone to one of my favorite shows, The Screen Savers. I watched it every single night on TechTV. Even if I knew most of the tips and stuff already, it was still interesting to get the latest news and hardware reviews, along with the occasional mod or hack. And the cast was like a family. True TSS fans really got to know these people, and it was hard to see most of them go.
Change happens though, so I was prepared to handle a new Screen Savers without Leo Laporte, and then later without Patrick Norton. It wasn't a horrible show, but it wasn't what it was. I chose to keep watching, since I had gotten used to Kevin and Sarah at least, from their time on air.
Well then G4 came along and raped the channel of anything worthwhile. They hire Alex Albrecht as co-host on TSS, whose only redeeming quality seemed to be his ability to insult as many types of people as possible during his short time on the show.
During this time, I also came to realize that every single news story they gave, when they even did the news, had come straight off of Slashdot here, or the other top news sites; a blatant example of why they still needed a news crew, like with TechLive. They even stopped reporting on new hardware for the most part, unless it was something that might help a gamer out.
Then to add insult to injury, the fire everyone left who might make the show worth watching. Without the occasional mod from Yoshi, I simply can't find any reason to continue watching this show. The hosts know nothing about tech whatsoever, and even worse, one of them is also named Kevin, just to make things confusing. I don't blame Kevin Rose at all for not wanting to take the helm of this new version of the show, because I'm sure he saw it was a sinking ship. Why have his face on it.
I just despise G4 and no longer watch anything on it. I hope Dan's inside scoop sends fans into an uproar, which leads to the demise of this poorly managed company.
And I wish the best of luck to Dan Huard, who was apparently the backbone to the show for much longer than I realized.
The saddest part to the whole "spyware removal" industry is that a majority of the companies that are out there are in fact either directly or indirectly responsible for some kind of spyware or adware software in the first place.
I had a bad case of adware on my brother's machine once, which replaced his home page and such with a "search engine" thing. He would also get popups, some of which would tell him that his machine was infected with adware, and to click there to "remove them". Clicking that popup, out of curiosity, showed me results in the "search engine" page, linking to several sites which sell adware removal programs.
Now tell me this. Why would adware pop up ads which links you to pages that would help you remove the stuff? The answer, of course, is that those companies are responsible for the adware in the first place, or are paying whoever created it to put their company in their adware "search engine", so that people are sure to find'em. If this were a legit search page, it would take you to a program which actually works, and is free, like Spybot or Ad-Aware. These two things never showed up in the adware "search engine" page. Coincidence? Of course not.
Spyware and adware can be just as damaging and result in the loss of as much productivity as a common virus can. And software like this works almost just like a virus; it fights you at every turn to remove it. It can actually be much harder to remove this kind of junk, depending on which one gets installed. The difference is though, if you write a virus, you go to jail. If you write adware (aka, a virus with ads in it), you make a ton of money.
I can't seem to load it today either. It worked a couple days ago, though. After reading on Alex's site, Alex considered shutting his own site down, so possibly Kevin actually did so with his? He still has thebroken.org after all.
Or then again, maybe the site is just down. Who knows.
I heard about this yesterday after a buddy pointed it out on Alex Albrecht's website, and was very disgusted with the whole thing. The G4/TechTV merger was a disgrace, as it did nothing to preserve what made TechTV what it was. All they did was take the shows that had the most ratings, and scrapped the rest. And now they've turned the shows they kept into garbage. I won't get into a whole thing about it, since after scanning through the comments, you folks seem to have pretty much summed up all my feelings on the matter. I agree with pretty much every negative comment I saw about the network. Yesterday I was so aggravated with it that I wrote G4TechTV a very long email about my disliking of what they've done with the shows, and the whole network for that matter. I suggest everyone else flood them with feedback as well, because they've ruined what made TechTV worth watching. I just wish I had remembered to complain about those stupid sports interruptions in TSS!