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[Supermercado]

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-5541802.html

I've never had any major problems with spyware, but I know the problem is huge. It's past time for the government to step in and make spyware illegal and start putting some of the bastards that write this stuff in federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison.

[Catfish]

They need to do that and freaking pronto.? Screw the P2P stuff (people aren't losing that much money), spam and spyware are costing money (passive vs. active, so these two are worse imo).? Especially considering the overall load on the net and MTAs from nothing but useless spam and spyware traffic...

And this isn't even mentioning how hard it is to uninstall or how unstable they make your system (or that they install OTHER spyware once they're installed)...  Illegal asshats.  Go rot.

[Supermercado]

You should have seen the eruption of hatred that followed one guy playing what now appears to have been a practical joke at AnandTech one day. He said that he worked for a spyware company. His user rating plummeted, every post he made was followed by several flames. It was great.

Bonzi Buddy and Gator and all that crap... they have home offices, don't they? Someone has to sit down and code this crap. I'm surprised the offices haven't been burned down or something.

[Catfish]

Problem is they're some of the more reputable ones.  People know they exist.  When bothers me are the silent installers with no uninstaller save something you have to download from another website and then read every screen carefully and decipher of Yes and No what button you have to pick to get the uninstaller and not eleventy-three more installers.  Those are the kind of companies whose management I want to take out in the street and run over repeatedly with a golf cart, dropping burning buffalo chips on them.

[Supermercado]

Couldn't have said it better myself. It should be illegal to make spyware and legal to kill those who do.

[Catfish]

Kill is much.  I'm more a fan of maim.

[Supermercado]

Maim and then kill?

[Catfish]

1. Maim & Kill
2.
3. Profit.

[Supermercado]

Hehe. People say that all the time on AT.

1. something
2.
3. Profit!

[jitspoe]

I was reding an article about the negative effects of the Can Spam act -- they have made spam illegal, so now spammers do things to avoid getting caught.  I don't remember the details, but the gist was something like:

- register a domain name in the middle of the night.
- send a bunch of spam using that domain name.
- cancel the domain registration.

Then all the mail gets sent, but when mail servers try to resolve the domain name, they can't.  This protects the spammer from getting nailed easily, but it also brings mail servers to their knees.  Ever type in a nonexistant url?  Know how it takes forever to tell you that it can't resolve the name?  Well multiply that by 100,000 or however much spam comes through at any given moment... yeah.  Not good.  Mail servers are having to upgrade to like 10x's as many servers just to handle the load.

[Supermercado]

Hrms... how do they register the domains without any sort of credit card number or anything?

[elmono311]

Oh, I've had to completely format my computer one time because of all that crap. Super knows what I'm talking about. Of course, my computer was due for a formatting anyway

[Supermercado]

Any computer with factory-installed crap on it is due for a format the second it's plugged in

[LostArtofRolando]

word, the ONLY computer i would buy prebuilt and loaded is a laptop, and thats cuz its hard to do it any other way.  Everybody ive ever known with a mass produced PC has had major problems (especially COMPAQ, they are complete POSes)

[Supermercado]

Right. Laptops are the only things I'd buy that I didn't have some part in building. Heck, even when I got my laptop, one of the first things I did was format it and put WinXP Pro on it.

[Catfish]

lmfao, yeah, mine made it past the Dell license agreement screen before it found an XP CD-ROM waiting to nuke it... I don't think my factory install ever got run

[Supermercado]

Mine was run for a little bit while I got used to the idea of a laptop. I'd never really held one in my hands and looked at it and all. And the wireless was so spiffy that I didn't want to do anything but surf the internet from the couch in the living room, hehe.

[Catfish]

haha, mine was mainly a class and travel tool (though mine is powerful enough amongst its RAM, CPU and GPU that it can still handle about any processing [short of Half-Life 2] that I can throw at it).  Sadly, one of my batteries started to turn towards the less than straight side and is taking a nosedive... wtfe, it still works for now so see if I care enough to spend another $80... Only problem I've had with it and the battery is still working fine, just returning an error code :shrug:  Additionally, wireless is quite fun (hence my $400 in wireless hardware that I have, not counting PCI/PCMCIA cards, hehe)... Though on a side note, I'm anxiously awaiting my new desktop...

[Supermercado]

New desktop?

[Catfish]

*snaps out of dreamland to answer John's question*  Huh?  Yeah, someday 

[Supermercado]

Oh, I thought you were planning your new rig now and were getting ready to order it or something.

[Catfish]

Lots of planning... and years of getting ready 

[Supermercado]

Can't plan for years, though, hehe. When I bought my machine a year and a half ago, it was pretty close to top-of-the-line but now it's way outdated. And it's still a P4 with 800MHz FSB. I guess that's really the way to go... buy close to top parts when you buy it. They'll last longer. I can still play the best games at reasonable levels. HL2 is a thing of beauty and I'm sure I can push it higher than it's set at now.

[Catfish]