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No gain without pain?
The internet has brought us many joys. It's rewritten the rules of business and pleasure.
And pain. For it allows what may have seemed like bright ideas at the time ('let's use it to make sure our customers have the latest software', for example) to turn into a stinking pit of misery — usually, but by no means always, after marketing gets its fangs in.
Here are just ten of the guilty parties who try to do the
impossible: to make us hate the internet and wish it had never been invented — and who very nearly succeed.
Talkback
Rupert, you couldn't have said it better, or more accurately. One of the "tricks" that is learned with experience is which programs you will have to go back and disable the "auto-update" feature after installing, or remove the "bonus" software that came with it. I can only think of one major package that you left off the list - Quicken. I still shake my head over the number of "special offers" that get installed with it every time.
Perhaps it would be good to add a new section to software reviews - "Amount of Unwanted Garbage Installed".
You know, the ones that span eleven pages at two paragraphs per page?
A new version of Java is ready for you to install. Click here . . . No update is necessary. You already have the most recent version of Java.
And when will the updater start removing older, insecure builds of the same version when it installs an update?
And don't forget Quicktime's "no upgrades" policy. You pay for the latest version of Quicktime and six months later they introduce a "vital update" that requires you to install the new "free" version and be subjected to their ads once more or pay the full price again. When you pay for ad-free full-screen Quicktime there's no warning that the next upgrade will require you to pay again, ad-infinitum.
If you live in the UK you can download a "neutered", ad-free version of RealPlayer from the BBC website - as long as you've never installed the "full" version you're safe. The BBC insisted on this in return for converting all their audio streams to Real format. There's no "Music store", no "Alerts" and, crucially, no continual prompts to "upgrade". It just does the job, and it does it well.
Rupert maybe you're a little harsh on Java; for the most part it does a good job, quietly in the background (like a good suwer), this toolbar thing it probably a way to make some money off Yahoo, firefox is guilty of the same thing with their google toolbar!
You echo my feelings. Does anyone know how to disable Flash Advertising without disabling Flash altogether ?
dwr50 say:
Greed is the CAUSE...
Advertising is the EFFECT...
Open Source is the ANSWER... Amen.
Rather than even do Real Networks a favour, go find "Real Alternative" -
It does everything you expect a player to do without embedding all the extra dross.
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I read the Telegraph online and it does my head in with all the rollover stuff.
You don't say which browser you use but there is something called "noflash" or similar which acts as a separate program for IE users, and if you are bright enough to use Firefox, there is a plugin called FlashBlock, available from the FF add-ons area. It's great because it just stops the movies playing, but click on the panel and it will then play on...
Application annoyances like these are only the top of the iceberg for most Windows users. Looking at the list reminded me why I finally decided to quit the proprietary software world and go Free, with Ubuntu, GNU and Linux. No piece of software, Free or proprietary, is bug-free, but at least the Free software shows me some respect.
Go get QT alternative. Plays the same stuff, much smaller and lighter, and no Apple to contend with.
....is Adobe Reader. The browser plugins are awful, and the application itself is bloated.
Left to themselves, the users at my office manage to get versions from 4 to 8 all simultaneously installed on their machines and chaos ensues.
At work we use MS Outlook, but I have just been outsourced to another company where they use Lotus Notes.
You can say bad things about Outlook, but Lotus Notes really really sucks.
Yes, it's there and I do try to download it by preference when the occasion demands. It can take a bit of finding, though, and doesn't excuse Real's own hideous habits.
Flash is a technology as a browser is a technology. If you are going to blame the technology for crappy sites then you should list HTML and CSS. Flash enables sites like hulu.com and youtube. Flash is a creative canvas...
Look at it from zdnet's perspective... that's 11x as many ads they can expose you to! ZDNET FTW!!!
Rupert. Interesting to note that everyone seems to have a comment or opinion either about your post itself or on one of the products mentioned. What is of concern to me and something which I focus on as a HUI designer/ developer is that the disparate software products are, in fact, not totally interoperable. They fight for space within the 'one space' - your desktop. Fundamentally, it would appear that the collection of separate utilities everyone has in their computers will, in time, become a major problem for people to navigate. Hence, the term Information Overload or as I would prefer to describe it, Navigation Overload. I can't say too much here, but I can tell you this: there is a system being developed that I am aware of which will bridge the gap between search and navigation. The simplicity of this system is somewhat striking - even sexy. In fact, it will render the model we currently view here on ZDNet obsolete. Your data, meaning YOUR very own data (and I mean all of it) will be accessible through one, secure single information utility. As with Frank Lloyd Wright's 'mile-high' building, where the removing of waste was his single most difficult obstacle, the navigation of information is one of the final frontiers of computing and the person or people that deliver it en masse will claim a prize of incalculable value.
thinkfeeldo
your post... it qualifies of a nice work of humor... what do they say... "a bad master blames his tools" or something like that... Keep posting, it makes me roll down and laugh.
Another Goodwins classic.
Agree with nearly all of the items in the gallery.
How these companies think that what they are doing is good business or in the best interests of their users is beyond me.
Good job there are alternatives such as Real Alternative (to replace RealPlayer). I feel I have to keep swatting off unwanted addons like Mosquitos like the Google/Yahoo Toolbar which seems to be bundled in with everything and the dreaded Safari browser for windows sneaked in with a security update for iTunes.
I suppose we can expect it to only get worse. Once Apple decide to release OSX on PC we'll have entire operating systems installed along with iTunes patches, RealPlayer will insert ads into your word documents and emails and Java will install so many browser toolbars you won't be able to see a webpage unless you have a super high resolution screen.
Can I add another factor to qualify software for the "Rogue's Gallery"? Why do so many (virtually all) software packages think that they are so important that they have to be started automatically every time the computer boots? What is the largest number of "speed access", "update check", "camera download" and whatever other background programs you have ever seen running? Of those, how many did you really need?
Even my current "favorite" programs, Video/IM chat, are guilty of this. All of them set themselves to auto-start on boot when they are installed, and even worse, if you clear that property and then later install an update, they re-set it again, without bothering to check what the current setting is.
if you want to block ads..get firefox and adblock and you will never see another again.
Comparing the static and unevolved Outlook to the current Web Based email systems is not really fair.
Outlook hasn't been updated since about 2002 probably before, Even with Vista there is hardly anything new on it. Most companies use Outlook FULL FAT rather than Outlook unless they are tiny, and those companies that are tiny don't really have much use for anything more than what the outlook express search functionality can offer them.
The other items on here are perfect. Id have added windows Vista as a complete entity in this list of rogue software. Mainly because microsoft moved the interface from the perfect XP to the useless Vista. I have been using it since it came out in that November and i still cannot navigate the system effectively.
I am a windows MCSE and and massively into Vista. XP had the perfect back end admin interface and layout. Vista 2 needs to go back to the XP layout with the flash Vista interface. Would give a much better result.
No - dorks think that new techno toys automatically satisfy a communications craving. How has Facebook enriched civilization?
"Creative canvases" exist in the minds of creative people. Techno-toys / software are not creative in themselves & do not automatically answer a latent craving, as most nerds seem to think.
What has Facebook done for civilisation - except to confirm its dumbing -down. And the only intelligent thing Flash adherents have done is offer users the option to bypass it - (maybe there is hope after all.)
Sounds fabulous - will it be free?
There are lots of other poor software products out there, and Notes certainly has its claims to 'orribleness. I used to use it back when ZDNet was part of Ziff-Davis, and it added to the grey hair count of all concerned.
Perhaps it's nostalgia, though, but I remember it having its good points. The single thing I miss most was the ability to set up a discussion forum that could alert its readers when new information was posted, unobtrusively through the standard email interface. You checked your email, and there was an icon linked to the forum with a new posts count underneath: when something happened, you knew to check, but you didn't have to remember to check first.
That one thing made it possible to set up a company-wide bulletin board that people actually used. After we moved on to Outlook/Exchange (what to call that combination? Outrage? Ex-lax?), I experimented with various web-based bulletin board/forum packages - many of which were easier to manage and had much nicer features than the Notes-based board I'd started earlier. None saw much use, purely because that single extra step - of having to remember to check if there'd been an update - made it a chore.
So Notes is certainly idiosyncratic and plausibly nasty. But it had some good points, even if their true importance is obscure.
... while I was writing the article (and it didn't take long - that was a scream from the soul. Rarely have I so completely meant every word), both Java and Adobe Reader interrupted me and asked to get updated.
Or at least, they would have interrupted me if I'd been using my Windows PC for writing; as it was, that was just there for the research -- which it managed all by itself --- while I bashed the words on Ubuntu 8.04. Which ain't perfect, but by Turing's beard it doesn't foster the mind-numbing idiocy of so much Windows software.
I may be a soft-headed journalist unversed in the way of modern marketing, but I just don't get the soundness of any business model that relies on turning your users into drooling, hyper-apoplectic hate monsters who want to see you hung from a lamp-post with live pike hanging from your genitals.
Why should it be free? Why should such a program, that has taken many years to develop and considerable money to build, be free for anyone to use? I don’t understand why people want technology for free. If you think advertising is going to pay for it, you are wrong. Wouldn’t it be of some value to have a superior means to communicate, engage, interact, inform, search, locate, discover or are you content with the current models?. Wouldn't you pay something to control information?
Then again, perhaps you are one of those people who likes to receive free software programs from friends or colleagues; programs that you complain about at a later stage - programs that corrupt our systems and slow traffic and create congestion and deliver a constant deluge of irrelevant information.
Stop for a moment and glance at the page you're on. Have a good look at the information displayed. How much of any of it is relevant to you right now while you are focused on these words? Does the advertising have any relevance whatsoever to your being here? Why are there so many topics under TOOL KITS and why are there blogs? Did I ask for these blogs? Are any of the subjects relevant to me? And the newsletters - do I want to subscribe to one or all of them? Oh, that's good, I have a choice! Great! Nup. Sorry. None of them are relevant to me. So thanks, but I'll have to pass. Oh and lookey up here at the big Oracle advertisement - all shiny and futuristic - whoo hoo. 'Measure your systems against a sample of your peers'. But wait. Why would I want to do that? Is it true? Is Oracle offering a service here? Or, do they just want to get a little bit of information on me for....surely they wouldn’t… not....for free?!
Do you not interact with the computer you paid for or the mobile phone you use? Free things usually have a catch - you get the thing for free but it makes you do something you don't really want to or it delivers material that you have no interest in or don’t want at the time of delivery. Beyond that, free things are never really cherished.
If the model I mentioned came with a means to control advertising would you pay for it? Incidentally, what would it need to do to make you buy it? What kind of price would you think is reasonable?
TFD
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The BBC version of Real Player is available for download from other countries as well. Having encountered the version which so upsets Rupert in the past, I have been careful only to download the BBC version to the 4 PCs/laptops I have used here in Fiji for the last few years and there is no suggestion in the relevant BBC help pages that there may be problems in any country.
The bit I don't understand is why BBC7 programmes happily download to Real Player, without any prompting or selection of options, whereas Radio 4 programmes are determined, despite my clicking the special option to"listen using Stand Alone Real Player" , to load and play themselves in the decidedly less-user friendly BBC iPlayer , putting my Real Player on "pause"; but this is presumably a BBC problem, not another grievance against the makers of Real Player....
All that software is almost as annoying as your crappy blog gallery!
(Hint: there's this new technology you should look into. It's called AJAX)
Add to the list:
THIS WEBSITE, MAKING ME RELOAD THE ENTIRE PAGE TO CHANGE A TINY BIT OF CONTENT!
thanks for nothing, you bastards.
No mention of ASK? That goddamnedable toolbar has snuck onto my computer again. I know I must have allowed it but I cannot for the life of me figure out when or what it was packaged with! I'm usually so good about reading the extras that installations try to include but it beat me. And you all know how hard it is to get the firefox navigation bar to do a proper google search once that has been tampered with. I'm really pissed.