Category: Uncategorized

Broadband Report users are fuming (rightfully so) over Lavasoft’s new comfort level with the WhenU program, an adware app that suddenly wasn’t being detected by AdAware. No notice was given, no patch was availble. Oddly, WhenU also cut deals with other spyware removal apps at the same time Lavasoft’s product changed, but Lavasoft has yet to cop to a deal with WhenU.

Their public response hit today, and if Lavasoft thought it had a problem before, the poop storm is in full effect now.

User: cdru
2003-05-14

So it would be ok for Symantec or McAfee to not detect certain viruses because it wasn’t high on their threat assessment chart?

Ad Aware was (notice past tense) a program that removed adware and spyware. When you start removing that functionality because the authors no longer feel that its a threat to your system it defeats the purpose. WhenU is still adware and it’s still installed on infected systems. It doesn’t matter if WhenU is the greatest software serves a useful purpose. It’s still adware.

The fact that Adware has a free version is beside the point. If it wasn’t paying the bills it’s not the public’s problem. Their business method was flawed. When your product is advertised as doing one thing, yet it fails at it, then that is the problem.

Adware simply sold out. From the official response: “The new TAC will not only allow us to retain, but will allow us to add more content, as well as highlight improvements in vendor offerings through a detailed color assessment code that will be more obvious to the user and thus provide better information for their decision making.” (Emphasis added). When changes in adware/spyware goes from being bad for your system to highlighting “improvements in vendor offerings”, something is seriously wrong.

I can’t say it any better. Goodbye Ad Aware; you just gave Microsoft a huge void to fill.

Lavasoft Responds – About as clear as mud…

Why do people find the need to associate their businesses with their politics? Aside from a few, lucky people, mixing your personnel politics with your business is just plain stupid. Business is about conversations and by asserting your political views to a potential customer, before you’ve even started a conversation, is akin to leading off a conversation with “How ’bout those women; now they want to vote!”

That might be a bit extreme [ed. a bit?!?], but the point remains. I had it hit me today, just casually surfing. I was in my daily tech-site surfing, and hit a link to infowarrior.org. The link was from a site which had an article about Cisco routers; very tech focused.

Then, I get to infowarrior. The top of his page has the standard nav elements: articles, books, events, consulting. Obviously this is this persons store front. And right there, on the bottom of the page, is a nice big political sound bite. He hates Bush, good for you. But by choosing a polarizing political issue, he’s basically threatening you to express your views. For most of those around me, this would be a hearty “good for you”. Maybe he doesn’t need the other half of the country as a potential customer, I don’t know. I wouldn’t rule him out because of it, but I could have. And I’m sure someone has.

And then there’s Joe Welinske, a Something at WritersUA, a tech writers conference. Joe thinks the world of himself, so much so that he decided one day, I hope without the blessing of his co-workers at WritersUA, to post a link to his personnel website prominently on the business’s homepage. If you clicked through to Joe’s personnel web page, you’ll notice a few things.

1. Joe’s not a big fan of the current administration. Bully, but a bad thing to advertise on the front page of your business.
2. Joe’s almost got a handle on this Internet thing, but not quite. For someone who is a very public face on a company dealing with online publishing, he’s certainly behind the curve.

If Joe hadn’t linked to his page from the front page of his business, no one would have ever wandered over to his page. Maybe that’s the point. The problem is that when you do that, everyone sees your page. And when did he put this link on the front page? When registration was open for the next conference. Brilliant. People flamed tech writing lists (which finally prompted me to unsubscribe from most of them) and cancelled plans to go to the conference. And for every holy warrior on a mailing list, there are at least two dozen lurkers. Memo to Joe’s co-workers; he cost you money.

As a side benefit, Joe cost three mailing lists at least one subscriber: me. Two of those lists run on advertizers money. Guess who’s not reading those ads anymore. Joe’s now costing other people money. Bet they’re happy about that.

Which leads me back to the beginning. Why do people find the need to associate their business with their personnel political views? For infowarrior, the impact is minimal. He’s likely an independent contractor; business he looses only affects him or the small group he works with. Small groups tend to be idealogically cohesive (not always, of course), but minimal impact just the same. With WritersUA, the link came down in a hurry, which implies that it may not have sat well with everyone at the company. Joe’s opinions also directly impacted his business and reputation. It indirectly impacted the businesses of others.

I don’t understand the compulsion. But, then, I’m not a business owner, so I get to express myself semi-anonymously without fear of affecting business.

The Freep says it best:

He painted Eve as God created her: nude.

And when he finished including the bare-bosomed Biblical first woman, he inscribed the word “love” on the mural that covers the outside wall of his Roseville art studio.

In Ed (Gonzo) Stross’ eyes, his variation on Michelangelo’s “Creation of Man” mural is art.

In 39A District Judge Marco Santia’s eyes, it’s a crime.

Santia ordered jail time, a fine and probation — a sentence that sounds a little harsh to a state senator, the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan and fellow artists.

Santia ordered Stross, 43, to serve 30 days in jail, do two years’ probation and pay a $500 fine for violating a city sign ordinance. Roseville officials said letters were prohibited on the mural and Eve’s exposed chest is indecent.

*sigh* I thought this kind of crap was confined to the West side. Congratulations Roseville, you’re officially more idiotic than the Zeeland city council.

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Questionable Content is a strip I’m currently catching up on. I’m up to #209, which made me laugh out loud. Check it out.

The cynic in me says that this legislation will never pass. This time. But it’s a great start and some really good ideas.

Keep in mind that I said that as I tell you the proposal and who proposed it.

Some good news on electoral reform: Today Senators Barbara Boxer, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, working together with Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-Ohio, introduced the Count Every Vote Act, a bill that proposes several necessary improvements to the way Americans conduct democracy. Among other things, the legislation would require that all electronic voting machines print paper ballots; that ex-felons be allowed to vote; and that Election Day be made a federal holiday, so people don’t have to worry about the consequences of being away from work while waiting in a line at the polls. The law, Boxer said in a press conference, “is meant to ensure [that] the election debacle of 2000, and the serious election irregularities of 2004, never ever happen again.”

Aside from the partisan BS that Boxer is unable to not vocalize (seriously, Democrats, tone down the hate and I’ll vote for you!), these are really good ideas and needed reforms. The paper labels (aka:. receipts) are an awesome idea. Someone in one of those three offices has a subscription to Wired.

Oh, and I can’t let this go. It’s petty and cheap, but, honestly, if you’re a Senator, don’t use the phrase “never ever”. All I hear is cheesy British melodrama.

West Michigan isn’t as “thrifty” as it used to be (anyone remember the Woolworth’s on River? Big Ten on US 31?). But the area does have that nostalgicflair for the, uhm, cheaper pleasures in life. Something I’m dealing with right now, trying to get the folks a hotel room in the good ole’ Double-A

Oh, and John, we need to get you set up with a blog. Seriously; if anyone needs a venue to get stuff off his chest (intelligently, I might add), you’re the one. Email me, man. (P.S. I might want the dirt on former employers.

Mention grad students; check. Point out ridiculous union stance; check. Post to highly-trafficked, local blog; check.

Get your flamewar over at AAiOR!

Man, I don’t check AAiOR for a couple days and I totally miss out on being called “dense”. Damn.

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Yahoo! has this feature that let’s you put news-type blocks on the front page of your My Yahoo! page. Until today, ZDnet was occupied a five-line block on my page. Then I read this article by Lance Ulanoff.

PC Magazine, ZDNet, can we talk? I know I’m nobody; I don’t rank in the Top Anything on these here Internets, but I am one of the “consumers” that Mr. Ulanoff speaks of. I do not think everything should be free. I do not think the Web is some Wild West of the technologically clued-in. And if you’re stupid enough to employ someone who publically rails in generalities like Mr. Ulanoff, then I will stop consuming your ad-funded “free” content.

Since the dot com boom and bust cycles began, pundits and soothsayers have been raving about the need to “tax” the Internet. No one knows how to do this, of course, but they know it’s somehow “right” to do. There’s no real need to do so either; there aren’t any starving, homeless web admins we need to care for, but somehow, somewhere, someone is missing out on a lot of revenue, I mean, money due to them.

Mr. Ulanoff plays the 321 studios card (again) as so many other clueless opinion writers have. DVD Xcopy was not a program that “depended on illegal activity”, anymore than Sony relied on illegal activity for their VCR business oh so many years ago. This agrument that, since some illegal activity is possible with a product, all uses of the prodcut should be illegal is tired beyond words. If your writers don’t “get it”, you need new writers.

Freakin’ sweet! It’s on the front page. Out 29 April. Go before Slashdot posts it.

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Oh sure, now Iowa has something cool. The 120-foot scroll on which Jack Kerouac wrote “On The Road” is on display for the first time at the University of Iowa Museum of Art. It goes to Vegas at the end of March.

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