e.g. Office, CD Creator, RealPlayer, Oracle
True. But the two most egregious, and most reviled, violators of customer machines are AOL and Microsoft. I understand and heartily share your contempt for Microsoft's business practices and their casual disdain for their own customers and business partners. But you don't have to defend AOL to make that point.
When out of morbid curiosity you finally give in and install the hundredth AOL CD you've received in the mail, you really have to know your system software to fully pry AOL Instant Messenger and all of its sticky tentacles from your system.
On the other hand, Microsoft's abuse of your machine is by far the worst I've ever encountered. Many Windows users don't notice this because they consider the contents of the hard disk to be Microsoft's property anyway (which in fact it probably is if you read their License Agreement closely and consider its implications to software controlled by their disk driver software, but I digress). When due to a misclick of the mouse you accidentally launch IE 5 on a Macintosh for the first time, IE surreptitiously installs at least a dozen insidious control panels, system extensions, and background processes that are not marked as Microsoft software. It's VERY difficult to remove these trojan horses. But it's worth the effort because until you remove them, Microsoft tracks every web site you visit, EVEN if you never use IE again and only use Netscape to browse the net.
It's sickening. But still, while AOL's installers may be less damaging than Microsoft's, I still must insist that both companies should be ashamed of resorting to trojan horse installation to get their products onto unsuspecting users' machines.
Dave |
