Uninstalled software shouldn’t hijack your browser

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

Finding myself with an idle 20 minutes on the train to work this morning, I decided to give my laptop a long overdue spring clean (it’s July, after all).  I started by uninstalling a handful of applications that have served their purpose.

Once removed, no fewer than two thirds of them (yes folks, that’s two out of three, but I’m building for dramatic effect here), arbitrarily fired up my browser and sent me to their websites to fill out a survey demanding to know why I had the temerity to remove their software from my system. Bloody cheek.

Software that automatically fires up your browser and sends you without warning to a strange website is a hair’s breadth away from malware, in my book. And how long will it be before genuine malware writers find a way to adjust that URL, and send unsuspecting uninstallers off to a site that automatically executes something far nastier than a customer retention questionnaire?

The fact I’ve chosen to uninstall a piece of software means that application should no longer exert any control over my PC, let alone fire up my web browser on its way out. If software companies can’t be trusted to act responsibly with their uninstallers, then Microsoft needs to take that power away from them.

Tax return system works, um, smoothly

Sunday, February 1st, 2009

After last year’s tax return debacle, which saw the Inland Revenue site collapse when 204,000 people attempted to enter their return on deadline day, it’s reassuring to see that this time it just worked.

Purely for the sake of research, and by no means due to me putting it off for a number of weeks for no particular reason, I found myself going through the various steps between 10.30 and 11.30 last night. And it worked without a hitch.

Perhaps part of the reason is because HMRC has greatly simplified the procedure – for instance, I wasn’t forced to enter all the details of The Guardian when declaring the magnificent £75 I earned for a piece on its website – but perhaps a bigger reason is because the team behind the system has done an excellent job in load testing and simulating.

It’s great to see a company, or in this case public service, learn the lessons from previous problems and rare that they get praise for doing so. Somehow, I doubt HMRC will get as much attention this year as they did last: people love to read, talk and write about failure, whereas success just doesn’t make a good headline.

Which rather reflects life as an IT professional as a whole. Make a mistake, everyone notices. Get something right, nobody seems to give a damn.

The joy of backup

Monday, November 24th, 2008

I think it’s fair to say I’m all things that are wrong with man. I’ve known for many years that I really should have an organised backup plan in place, but – just like putting in my expenses form – I’ve been putting it off in favour of, you know, writing articles about backup. That sort of thing.

But about three weeks ago, after a brutal personal slur on my character by PC Pro’s deputy editor David Fearon, I finally did it. “For [insert preferred deity here]’s sake Tim, we’ve got the software on the cover disc, just load it up and follow the wizard.” (more…)

The NeverEnding Beta (Google, 2004)

Thursday, September 25th, 2008

Remember when Gmail first arrived? Unless you’re unlucky enough to be called John Smith you probably got the username you wanted first time, and without having to add six digits on to the end. Then you experienced the fun of sending invites to your mates so they could join you in your exclusive little club – after all, Gmail was still in beta, they couldn’t have every Tom, Dick and Harry overwhelming it before it hit its stride.

Fast-forward four and half years and guess what? Google Mail, as it’s now known, still has that little BETA label under it, and it shows no sign of buggering off.

Over at the Royal Pingdom they’ve gone through the whole Google catalog and counted the applications that are in beta today. While 22 out of 49 may sound reasonable – Google is always coming up with innovations, after all – when you realise that these include Google Mail, Docs, and Product Search, you have to wonder if Google interprets the word beta in the same way as the rest of us.

(more…)

China: no source code, no sales

Wednesday, September 24th, 2008

China is apparently considering demanding source code from hardware manufacturers, and banning the sale of products from companies that don’t comply. It’s being called an “obligatory accreditation system for IT security products,” but to me it sounds more like a worrying ultimatum.

This would be a drastic move for any Government, but manufacturers are extremely worried about giving such information to China in particular because of its, shall we say, lax attitude to copyright and patent law. In fact, MI5 has even gone so far as to warn UK companies in the past about the threat of Chinese hackers going after trade secrets.

Many products available for sale in the country bear a striking resemblance to Western products, and lawsuits have been filed in the past with varying levels of success, so tight security seems to be a better method of protecting IP than litigation. Under the new rules this strategy could be impossible.

The implications of this are bigger than you may think. On my recent trip to Korea to visit Samsung I was surprised to find out that a lot of consumer devices are physically identical. Samsung makes the same panels for its own televisions as it does under licence for Sony, for example, but the software that controls it is proprietary, and accounts for a lot of the picture quality. The code is far more sensitive than the hardware.

Standing up to UK rip-off prices

Monday, June 23rd, 2008

Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro Extended is one of the best pieces of software to be released in the past five years. It’s breathed new life into what we thought was a tired product, with excellent features such as embedded video and hassle-free collaboration.

But we’ve decided that it can’t get a PC Pro Recommended award for one simple reason: in the US, it costs $699. In the UK, it costs £619. With VAT, it actually costs £727 – more than the dollar price.

We’re well aware of the arguments given for prices being higher in the UK (and indeed the rest of Europe and Australia) than the US, and these might justify a 20% even 30% price hike. But almost 100%? (more…)

Self-deleting sent emails

Monday, May 12th, 2008

I’m not sure if it’s the worst thing about being editor of a national magazine or the best thing, but I get many, many emails from readers every day. Sometimes they’re nice; other times they’re not. And sometimes they’re quite simply useful – such as this one.

“Hi, I am looking for a program for deleting (my) sent emails over a short period of time. I have heard of such programs, but I do not know if there is one out yet/name of it.

(more…)

Unbundle me

Friday, May 9th, 2008

I installed Windows XP SP3 on my home PC this morning. The process went smoothly, and surprisingly quickly; but after the inevitable reboot a screen came up pestering me to turn on automatic updates. This I do not appreciate.

It’s not that I think automatic updates are necessarily a bad idea.* But why bug me about it now? I can only surmise that Microsoft really hates the fact that I’ve chosen to manage my own computer; so they’ve decided to tack a nuisance requester onto an unrelated process in the hope of nagging me into quiescence.

This sort of opportunistic piggybacking used to be the preserve of spyware. But, sad to say, these days I’m increasingly finding unrelated crap bundled into otherwise legitimate packages. (more…)

Xobni – it’s brilliant you know

Wednesday, April 16th, 2008

I wrote a review about Xobni in the new issue and normally I’d leave it at that – but once again the program’s surprised me by its brilliance.

This morning, I received an email from a reader I hadn’t heard from for a year. How do I know? Not due to my enclopeadic brain (my brain is anything but), but because the moment the email dropped into my inbox it came up with a brief history of my correspondence with him.

As it happens, that’s just two emails – but it’s enough to prompt me to look at the previous emails and give them a quick read.

This is great for me, but for a company that thrives on customer relationships it’s surely invaluable.

The world’s worst software?

Friday, April 11th, 2008

Software, I’ll happily admit, is a subjective thing. For instance, I really like using Windows Vista, while it brings PC Pro deputy editor David Fearon out in hives.

But the worst software, in my opinion only (my PC Pro hat is over there, resting), is RealPlayer. So much so that I’ve avoided installing it, despite numerous invitations from websites, on this laptop.

Now my run is at an end. I’ve been left with no choice. If I want to listen to You and Yours via Listen Again (and I do, because I missed it and I briefly was on there talking about the IT skills gap – Thursday 10 April if it’s still up there) then I’ve got to do the deed.

And maybe, just maybe, it’s not as bad, invasive and generally annoying as it once was. I’ll see. But judging by the install procedure, where I had to untag about a dozen different options or it would have become my default word processor, I doubt it.

Here, for no particular reason whatsoever, is a list of my top five hated pieces of software:

1. Apple iTunes. Again, it wants to take over my computer. No. You can’t.

2. All bloated disc-burning suites. They used to be a 20MB download, now it’s closer to 200MB. I really don’t need a disc-burning app to bundle antispyware or be my backup utility. Stop this silliness.

3. RealPlayer. See above.

4. Adobe Reader. Why is it so big? It just needs to read PDFs, surely!

5. QuickTime. I don’t need it, I really don’t, so please stop trying to install it every time I visit any Apple-related site. Please!