The Lizard People are after your Linux distro

Moving on from all things open sourced, we find ourselves wandering down spyware lane. A refreshed Spyware Doctor has the users up in arms:

What Michael Greene fails to mention (or maybe notice) is that we never had these problems with any previous version of Spyware Doctor. And many people (if not the majority), who try the program out and have problems, won't go to the forums and post concerns. They will just stop using it, write it off as unreliable and move on to something else. So the number of those who have experienced trouble with version 5 is probably much higher than he is letting on. Spin doctoring is not the way to success. To keep a program available that is causing users this many problems is a slap in the face to those who have supported the company for years.

Jim

From your article about Spyware Doctor 5 I noticed the following point "He apologised for the inconvenience suffered but suggested that only 50 people were posting about issues with the product. "

That may well be true but I'm sure there are many others like me who had just got a new vista machine or upgraded. I tried the beta, it froze my system so I uninstalled it waiting for the full release. When it came out I reinstalled it.

If I was lucky it just stopped my mail arriving. If I was unlucky it stopped all internet activity and froze my browsers. If I tried to double-click the tray icon it froze the machine. I uninstalled it and went to the forums only to find it was full of people having the same problems as me. I could have posted bringing the number to 51 but I didn't as my problem seemed to match those already reported.

I hope they get the software fixed soon as 4 was a very good piece of software. Sadly unlike the XP users suffering I can't revert to the good version under Vista.

Mind you if you want to see truly upset customers try the Creative forums for people waiting for Vista drivers. I've got a new webcam sat on my desk doing nothing as it appears the whole Vista thing took them by surprise. Maybe I dreamt the betas, RCs and tonnes of print about it.

Matthew

Next, a stolen laptop brings out the silly in you:

Kid's details, eh? Who'd've thought there would be such a palaver over the addresses of a few small goats.

Richard

Get your coat...Oh, we see you already have.

"Security experts, never slow to engage in a spot of ambulance chasing, said the case illustrated the need to use full disk encryption in order to protect sensitive data from prying eyes."

Well, yes, security experts are a bit of this type, but, frankly, they have a point, no ? Nothing is better than disk encryption + good passwd practises and shutdown of PC at night to protect from data theft, since anyway, laptops are stolen and will be stolen !

If you guys pushed the point harder, as compared with the always laughable "it was passwd protected" routine the embarassed company always propose as an downplay schema, we wouldn't have massive data theft problems ...

My 2 humble and respectfull cents :-)

Herve (my professionnal laptop is encrypted, and fixed to my table, and I lost the key !)

Then, we all got scared about losing our jobs to robots. Except here at El Reg, where the threat is always from those big rooms full of monkeys:

You did forget the _most_ important one: politician. Robots are the perfect marionettes, mimicking all the daily junk we are used to digest and learned to ignore. Just like our current politicians, across international borders I might add, garbage in, garbage out. It would actually be no surprise if most of the them already were mechanised, electronicised and computorised internally. The skinjob is of fantastic quality though (see also cylons #1..7). -- Greetings Bertho

Conspiracy or cock-up. It is an eternal question and one which was examined first in print, and on the comments board below. The conclusion? We'd tell you, but then we'd have to kill you:

Did you make up all those posts in the comments section?

Dear me, I can't tell who I'd like least to have a pint with between the liz^H^H^Hdebunkers and the ... others.

Rgds Damon

PS. Am I allowed to make up theories about IR35 and Ms Primarolo not having gotten over her hatred of, and complete failure to understand, freelancers? OK, I have my coat...

Anybody with the word 'chemtrails' on their website needs to a) take GCSE physics or b) start wearing one of those comfy jackets with the pockets in the back that you get from the nice men in white coats.

Sheesh! Alain.

What conspiracy theorists never seem to think of is that the "people in charge" are just like you and me (frightening, isn't it?!) and you should never underestimate the people's capacity for incompetence. Obviously, that's not to say that there aren't any conspiracies, just that most of them a cock-ups. If you change your story, it'll be a conspiracy for ever.

Fraser