Thank you, Microsoft, for not disappointing

[thewayne]

It'’s so nice to be not disappointed. It'’s nice to have constancy in life. It’'s nice to have things that don’'t change. When life sucks really bad, you can go to Restaurant X and have a good meal of comfort food and at least feel better metabolically.

Microsoft has recently provided this service for us!

Several months ago, MS released an anti-spyware product. This was greeted with some trepidation by the professional market, it wasn'’t a home-grown (MS) product, it was one that had been on the market for a while, was mature, didn'’t crash too much, fairly well respected.

Then MS bought it.

The naysayers were afraid that MS would screw it up like so many things that it touched. But then MS started releasing updates, to both signatures and code. All seem good! Had we been wrong about MS all this time? Was MS going to become a good company?

Well, we weren'’t disappointed.

MS has totally screwed the product over.

There is a particularly nasty piece of spyware known as Gator by an outfit called Claria. It’'s ad-serving software and as I understand it, a bitch to get rid of, and does not follow any of the government guidelines to not be classed as spyware. Other programs, i.e. Ad Aware and Spybot S&D, will get rid of it for you.

MS has reclassified Gator, and several other pieces of spyware, as non-threats, and will no longer remove them. And guess what? Rumors are spreading that MS is interested in buying Claria.

Sigh.

If you'’re interested in more info on this garbage, there'’s lots of news stories online and you can also see one here: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1835770,00.asp

Comments

[greyweirdo.livejournal.com]

Ah Microsoft, the filthiest whore on the block. Isn't it nice that their donwgrading the threat from a company they intend to buy? It's so convienent that way, they don't have to block the company their going to buy.

[kylejcrb.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I switched to McAfee AntiSpyware (from MS AS) a couple days ago, and that I still use SpyBot and AdAware. Though since I've been using FireFox, I haven't had much of a spyware problem. ;)

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

I use Spybot S&D myself, with having Zone Alarm Pro up and being very conscienctious of my online behavior, I've never had more than cookies. I found a virus in a file on my laptop recently, but I'm fairly sure it was dormant.

So, how's things going? Haven't heard from you in a while.

[kylejcrb.livejournal.com]

Well, things could be a lot worse, but I'm still looking for a job after leaving the HTC. It's proving to be more difficult than I expected...