Hiding Your Choices And Saying You Made Them 537
An anonymous reader writes "Lawmeme's Paul Szynol describes how during installation RealPlayer hides checkboxes that elect that the user receives spam, making it look like the user chose to make the selections when in fact he probably just didn't see the options. "This is essentially a cheap and dirty marketing tactic which creates an illusion of informed acceptance by the user where no such acceptance really exists." Other people have posted similar examples from other applications. Is this illegal, or just annoying?"
Implied Consent (Score:5, Funny)
BTW, isn't it ironic that the acronym for I Am Not A Lawyer is I Anal??
They deserve it! (Score:4, Funny)
Oh no! (Score:3, Funny)
If BillG read this, he'll likewise hide the EULA textbox or change the button to "I agree" and "I agree".
Re:Simple solution... (Score:4, Funny)
Yet another reason... (Score:5, Funny)
A central server compares all the files in realtime and averages them to compensate for any typing errors/drunkennes.
It's a surprisingly efficient system. Right now I'm listening to the White House's response to the leopard inspectors in Iraq who just found a forbidden stash of Gucci pants in an Iraqi bunker.
I'm eager to upgrade to a 28-cat system, thus effectively doubling my sample rate and allowing me to listen to stereo feeds and possibly even allow video by... er.... damn, I gotta get a life...
Use the right fake address (Score:2, Funny)
A lot of people will put foo@test.com in. Don't do that. The test.com mail admin will hate you. Use something @example.com instead. example.com is never going to be a live domain.
Re:I firewall Realplayer. (Score:2, Funny)
There's a rapid-response high-security button on most computers with a little symbol that looks like a capital Q rotated 135 degrees counter-clockwise. You'd be surpised how much more effective it is for managing your misbehaving software installations. Sometimes the mangufacturer is even nice enough to label it "power", as in, it gives you the power of the computer.
Unfortunately, the evil empire figured that button had too much power over their misbehaving software a few years ago, so a standard called "ATX" was introduced that gave their misbehaving software some control over it. They haven't beaten us yet though. It's still possible to make a hardware mod with just a little soldering that restores the power to you, the user.
Re:Illegal? (Score:3, Funny)
It's also fun to put a real.com e-mail address in...
Re:And? (Score:3, Funny)
For some reason I can't quite identify, I somehow doubt that CmdrTaco is getting any more spam because of your actions...
Just do the obvious (Score:3, Funny)
Alternatively, you can give support@real.com as an address, so support becomes unmanageable.
It could be worse... (Score:2, Funny)
Well, they could've gone even further:
[ ] I would like to receive more Real spam.
[ ] Don't check this box for more spam.
[ ] I would not like to not receive more Real spam on days greater than Thursday, 01/16/03 (inclusive) as long as I don't opt in.
[ ] No quisiera más Spam.