Oliver's /dev/null replacement

It took me a while to understand the subtle humor in one of LS’ slogan after being pointed to it by a good friend. The slogan is very prominent on the main website and says:

You have enough to worry about, WE’LL RELIEVE THE WORKLOAD.
(Source: lavasoft.com)

Here’s a screenshot of the part with the slogan:

Let’s face it, with a mug of coffee and a non-working computer anyone is relieved of the workload for a while. A subtle but well-thought-out slogan!

// Oliver

In this blog entry I outlined that the new approach LS takes to keep malware from the customer’s machine was due to downtime. Suddenly people start complaining about it, although this strategy was clearly shown during the beta phase in each and every of the betas.

Join the club.
At least you caught yours before it destroyed the operating system.
The new 2007 took 45 miinutes to eradicate my registry.
And no-one has responded, either on these forums or via e-mail to a support request sent earlier in the week.

How does System Restore work for you?
If I can get this open once, I need to know if System Restore (XP Pro, SP2) will fix it.
(Source: LS support forum)

First asking for protection and then complaining about the implementation details, as if they weren’t clearly outlined in advance 🙄

// Oliver

Have you ever looked at LS’s management website? The fact that the number of (management) people seems to be shrinking in the last few months is well-known and I will leave it to my reader to compare the photos and this interesting video.

Maybe it is about bragging rights again? … maybe it’s just cool to stand in front of the capitol in Washington D.C. and talk about spyware, who knows. I am convinced any other place would have done as well here, if it wasn’t for the US-centric view on a global problem. What I was amazed about, was the fact that most of the stuff they (especially one of them) said was not right away wrong, but this doesn’t keep me from nitpicking, does it? After all I am a German ¹
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1. … meaning I cannot handle humor of any kind [↩]

On LS’ blog, the latest entry is bragging about the positive press AAW 2007 got. Well, not press in the traditional sense, because real journalists would have investigated thoroughly. Let’s nitpick a bit.

One of the first applications built to find and remove adware and spyware, Ad-Aware 2007’s excellent reputation is well-justified.

The first such utility was not written by Lavasoft, but by Steve Gibson under the name Optout, although LS officially claims: “We are not just any anti-spyware company, we are the original anti-spyware company”. While Steve Gibson is by far not an undisputed expert, the kudos is his, not LS’. Furthermore the whole statement was bullshit given that AAW 2007 was released in 2007, while other AS-companies (even LS themselves) have released products prior to that. So how could it be one of the first? Bad wording or negligence? As to the reputation, I ask my readers to visit the LS support forum to check by themselves (unless it’s being cleaned up). They even got a special rant thread – woohoo.
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This seems to be the case in Lavasoft’s support forum. Now, while there are some people not satisfied with the products of my company as well, it is not solely Ad-Aware 2007 which is to blame as it seems:

This is a JOKE!! I HAVE WASTED 90 MINUTES SO FAR ON A SYSTEM THAT SUCKS!! UNDER ORDER # xyz ON 6-10-07 I PAID GOOD MONEY AND NEVER GOT AN E-MAIL WITH A SERIAL NUMBER EITHER! JUST LIKE YOU, THE SYSTEM SAID MY E-MAIL ADDRESS IS NOT RECOGNIZED. FUNNY THEY HAD NO PROBLEM TAKING MY MONEY!! HORRIBLE !!!!!!!!!!!!!
(Source)

The username says it all: “MAD AS HELL” 😆
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