Are there time pirates?
Dec. 11th, 2003 01:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pseydtonneYou know that computer I was fixing? I gave up on rescuing its existing setup. Spyware has rendered the existing system inoperable. I have installed a bigger drive, partitioned and formatted it from scratch, and am now installing a fresh copy of a stable Windows (2000). I will bring the owner's files to the new machine after I've gotten everything working.
Now I'm left with a gnawing question: why would anyone devise software that ties up a computer so completely but doesn't make the computer do anything other than be tied up? When someone steals a car, one takes parts for other cars or goes for a ride or sells the whole car; one doesn't get in the car, rev the engine to 5000 rpm and leave it in neutral while the owner tries to open the door.
Why then would a corporation (Gator, recently renamed Claria; maybe they hired the same PR firm that named Philip Morris 'Altria') provide one piece of semi-criminal software (KaZaa), sneak a bunch of other burdensome pieces of software (the Gain/Gator suite of toolbars and crap that hog clock cycles on the home computers of America), and then not sell anything or keep these hijacked computers running long enough to use their CPU power or bandwidth? How do they make money on breaking computers if they don't have techs roaming the country offering to remove the software for $100 a pop?
Do you see my point? It would make sense if Claria, formerly Gator, (CfG) had placed a screen saver into KaZaa: while the screen saver was running, it would use the spare CPU time to calculate racing odds or send "amazing penis rubbing drug" spam. That doesn't happen. Machines just crash. You put as much RAM as you can into the computer, but it'll all disappear and it'll crash within thirty seconds of plugging in the ethernet cable.
It would make sense if CfG were a bunch of teenagers trying to hax0r their leet asses into everyone in America, like some Guinness World Record for obnoxion. Nope.
They make a lot of software that, when working properly, crashes your system. That's all it does. It crashes too fast to send a message to someone saying "Victim 5678 crashed for the 98th time, my Dear Leader! Juche!"
Who stands to gain from... Gain?
Time privateers.
Hear me out.
Ever notice that the first pieces of evil SpyWare the KaZaa suite installs are clock-related? One is an appointment calendar and the other is called PrecisionTime, which should reset the victim's computer clock to synchronize with online atomic clocks. These pieces of software become the most obvious facet of the victim's hijacking: they set in the system tray, letting you know the horror has begun. You lose more and more time as your systems gets tied up and all you can see are these icons on the lower right of your screen.
Someone is using your frustration. Someone is feeding off this loss. Psychic vampires? Yes. Where are they, though? They need to be in your presence to take that energy, right?
Maybe a race from the future, with powers of time travel, are visiting us. They need bad vibes to stay alive, but everyone in the future has shunned them. So they travel back in time, see us frustrated (just as Santa sees us doing naughty things) and feel empowered.
Perhaps I've pushed this line of thinking a little too far.
Maybe Luddites run Claria. They want the world to devolve, lose its computers, and slip into failure. Then again, Luddites don't tend to stick with computer science education.
Okay, I'm nuts. I still can't understand it. Anyone else know stuff about Spyware and its goals?
-postulate and reboot, Ps/d
Update: After days of work on this computer, I think the motherboard may actually be shot. It lights up and turns on the computer, but throughput keeps leading to data loss. CD-ROM drives fail, all sorts of stuff goes off but works when I put them in other computers. Things just fail to recognize. It's like Alzheimer's for electronics. I'm sad about this.
I also found out the XP Pro drive that is the original drive had the SubSeven trojan horse on it. That's why it crashed every time I plugged the ethernet cable in -- it really does report to a central machine the the host is online and brings it down.
Now I'm left with a gnawing question: why would anyone devise software that ties up a computer so completely but doesn't make the computer do anything other than be tied up? When someone steals a car, one takes parts for other cars or goes for a ride or sells the whole car; one doesn't get in the car, rev the engine to 5000 rpm and leave it in neutral while the owner tries to open the door.
Why then would a corporation (Gator, recently renamed Claria; maybe they hired the same PR firm that named Philip Morris 'Altria') provide one piece of semi-criminal software (KaZaa), sneak a bunch of other burdensome pieces of software (the Gain/Gator suite of toolbars and crap that hog clock cycles on the home computers of America), and then not sell anything or keep these hijacked computers running long enough to use their CPU power or bandwidth? How do they make money on breaking computers if they don't have techs roaming the country offering to remove the software for $100 a pop?
Do you see my point? It would make sense if Claria, formerly Gator, (CfG) had placed a screen saver into KaZaa: while the screen saver was running, it would use the spare CPU time to calculate racing odds or send "amazing penis rubbing drug" spam. That doesn't happen. Machines just crash. You put as much RAM as you can into the computer, but it'll all disappear and it'll crash within thirty seconds of plugging in the ethernet cable.
It would make sense if CfG were a bunch of teenagers trying to hax0r their leet asses into everyone in America, like some Guinness World Record for obnoxion. Nope.
They make a lot of software that, when working properly, crashes your system. That's all it does. It crashes too fast to send a message to someone saying "Victim 5678 crashed for the 98th time, my Dear Leader! Juche!"
Who stands to gain from... Gain?
Time privateers.
Hear me out.
Ever notice that the first pieces of evil SpyWare the KaZaa suite installs are clock-related? One is an appointment calendar and the other is called PrecisionTime, which should reset the victim's computer clock to synchronize with online atomic clocks. These pieces of software become the most obvious facet of the victim's hijacking: they set in the system tray, letting you know the horror has begun. You lose more and more time as your systems gets tied up and all you can see are these icons on the lower right of your screen.
Someone is using your frustration. Someone is feeding off this loss. Psychic vampires? Yes. Where are they, though? They need to be in your presence to take that energy, right?
Maybe a race from the future, with powers of time travel, are visiting us. They need bad vibes to stay alive, but everyone in the future has shunned them. So they travel back in time, see us frustrated (just as Santa sees us doing naughty things) and feel empowered.
Perhaps I've pushed this line of thinking a little too far.
Maybe Luddites run Claria. They want the world to devolve, lose its computers, and slip into failure. Then again, Luddites don't tend to stick with computer science education.
Okay, I'm nuts. I still can't understand it. Anyone else know stuff about Spyware and its goals?
-postulate and reboot, Ps/d
Update: After days of work on this computer, I think the motherboard may actually be shot. It lights up and turns on the computer, but throughput keeps leading to data loss. CD-ROM drives fail, all sorts of stuff goes off but works when I put them in other computers. Things just fail to recognize. It's like Alzheimer's for electronics. I'm sad about this.
I also found out the XP Pro drive that is the original drive had the SubSeven trojan horse on it. That's why it crashed every time I plugged the ethernet cable in -- it really does report to a central machine the the host is online and brings it down.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-12-11 04:39 am (UTC)No, no, this is the age of the internet. They only need to be at the other end of a net connection to feed off your frustration...