CookieRevised,
Thank you very much for the feedback. I appreciate it.
quote:
Originally posted by CookieRevised
Errrr.... hence the term 'sponsor' and 'ads'...
By your definition, everybody who has ads on their webpage are being dishonest and/or stealing money? Including the children who let their parents and family sponsor them per km they run in that yearly schoolrun? etc... Their is absolutely nothing dishonest about earning money via sponsors.
Fair point, but I did not claim all who use sponsors or ads are dishonest. The original comment was that he is making "honest money" from his "own creation." All I said was that he is not making money from his creation, but rather, from a sponsor.
quote:
Originally posted by screen317
Errr (again).... It is not because somebody does not read a, VERY visible, mandatory* choice that the author is being dishonest. Nobody is tricked here! If people don't care to read what they install then it is they who need to change their habits. In the real world you also don't go buying and signing stuff without first reading stuff. And before you reply with "but the small print...": it is very clearly stated in 'normal' print, before the EULA (aka small print), what the optional sponsor is and will do. This is a far more honest way of using a sponsor than most other programs on the net!!!!!
I understand that it is clear as day. You and I would not install it because we are both conscious about what we install. It is very clear
exactly what is going to be installed, for those of us who read the EULA (and the text that appears before the EULA). Unfortunately, in the real world, people do sign for things they don't quite comprehend. It's why people sign up for credit cards and accumulate debts of thousands of dollars, in addition to other similar cases. The population we live with is not the brightest, I'm afraid. However...
quote:
Nope it is not, as it is VERY clearly explained on that same page what is being installed though. There is no trickery involved here. Trickery is when there is no clear and very visible text explaning what is being installed.
...it does not matter how clearly it is explained, people are still going to ignorantly click "I accept." No one (that I've met)
wants the sponsor software. If people wanted it, they would not come to our forums and complain about popups. Clearly something is not right here if people who do not want the sponsor software are still installing it (by their choice).
quote:
In some circumstances (with real malware) you are correct, but in this case you do far more 'damage' using 3rd party tools since there is not a single 3rd party application which properly uninstalls the optional ad sponsor from C2Media which is/was bundled with Plus!. Not even apps like Spybot S&D, Hijackthis, etc! They all leave traces behind and/or even damage the uninstaller.
Fortunately, we use programs which do a better job than HijackThis and Spybot S&D, otherwise you would be right in that they do not do a thorough job of removing the sponsor.
quote:
Your policy, as a decent PC-repair dude, should be: Check the official documentation and/or official forums and/or other official knowledge bases first, where people base their stuff on facts, not on hear-say or their own incompetents. And use a virtual machine to check if the uninstaller works as it should be for yourself. And if so, use the provided uninstaller! Otherwise, and I am sorry to say, I don't see you as a real PC-repair dude who knows what he is talking about, but instead simply bases his 'knowledge' on hear-say and other (wrong) assumptions.
Yes that is absolutely right; checking the documentation should be priority. However, myself and my colleagues are not PC-repair professionals. We are volunteers who devote what spare time we have to PC repair. We do not have infinite time to investigate every document and forum for every suspect program in existence. It just isn't feasible. We do what we can to solve the problems of the people who come to us. We have (hidden) discussions from 2004 regarding LOP.com malware and its association with Messenger Plus! Yes, uninstalling it removes it. It's been proven through plenty of testing, regardless of how much or how little we may trust the makers of that.
Since that is the case though, why do people still come to our forums and request assistance with it? I suppose this is my ultimate question and hope:
Would it be at all possible for that piece of information (that the sponsor can be uninstalled) to be displayed somewhere more clearly and more obviously, for the less clever among us on the Internet?
