TANSTAAFL
Why oh why is there so much spyware? Could it be because people just don’t care anymore? “Sure looks like it.”:http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,65906,00.html
Frankly, I think it’s amazing what people will trade for “free.” I thought sharing some of your attention and brain-power on advertising was bad enough, but now some people feel it’s worth trading _every click in their browser_ for a little free program or three. In fact, some people think there’s no choice:
bq. Even data entered on secure websites — such as passwords, creit card numbers and bank account numbers, information that is supposed to be viewable only by the sender and the intended recipient — is accessible to Marketscore, since the company has developed a method that allows it to view encrypted information. But some users of iMesh didn’t seem to be troubled by the actions of Marketscore. Users at iMesh forums chided those who complained, posting messages stating that “without spyware there’s no such thing as free software. [ "Spyware on My Machine? So What?":http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,65906,00.html ]
It looks like “some people”:http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html are having trouble getting their message out, and I’m *not* talking about Democrats. As someone who’s career is built on spyware-free _free_ software (the Linux OS, the Apache webserver, the MySQL database, and the PHP programming language — otherwise known as LAMP), I find this notion profoundly disturbing.
What do you do for people when they _refuse_ to look after themselves?
