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Topic: WTF Digsby (Instant Messenger Talk) (Read 2639 times)
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Morfiend
Terracotta Army
Posts: 6009
wants a greif tittle
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Lifehacker post.Lifehacker has always liked Digsby, and I did too, although I switched to Pidgin like a year ago. Here is a quote from their terms of service. 15. USAGE OF COMPUTER RESOURCES.
You agree to permit the Software to use the processing power of your computer when it is idle to run downloaded algorithms (mathematical equations) and code within a process. You understand that when the Software uses your computer, it likewise uses your CPU, bandwidth, and electrical power. The Software will use your computer to solve distributed computing problems, such as but not limited to, accelerating medical research projects, analyzing the stock market, searching the web, and finding the largest known prime number. This functionality is completely optional and you may disable it at any time.
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schild
Administrator
Posts: 60350
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Eh? What's the problem? It's optional SETI/Folding@Home crap. Doesn't look like something offensive.
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Morfiend
Terracotta Army
Posts: 6009
wants a greif tittle
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Because its on by default, and they hide the way to turn it off. Here:  Also: Think it's just paranoia? This has been reported, on the Digsby forum, more than a few times, and in fact was announced on the Digsby blog as an official way they are going to make some money, with Plura Processing as a partner. The Plura Processing blog confirms that they are, in fact, crawling the web using your computer: Custom Web Crawling – 80legs is using Plura to do distributed web crawling. Rather than having data centers with very fat pipes, they use a portion of the bandwidth of the Plura nodes to crawl the web. In order to improve the success ratio for each work unit, 80legs sends out Plura WUs with very few URLs to crawl. I think thats really shady. |
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Morfiend
Terracotta Army
Posts: 6009
wants a greif tittle
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Looks like a lot more people also thought it was shady, as this is on the Plura site: Update: Digsby is updating their installer today ( http://blog.digsby.com/archives/693) to make Plura more apparent to users. We would like all Digsby users to know that we are currently talking to and working with the Digsby team to change the way Plura is integrated with their application. We have been informed by Digsby that Plura will become “opt-in” during installation, rather than being enabled by default. We support this method of asking users to integrate with Plura and encourage all affiliates to use it. We are always fully committed to keeping people’s computers safe and secure, and hope to deliver on this commitment with this issue. IMO an opt-in is much more "on the level" than a hidden off switch. |
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Samwise
Moderator
Posts: 19324
sentient yeast infection
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Kazaa had the same functionality IIRC. My comp science TA at the time spent a good chunk of class time one day ranting about it.
It's a clever way to make some money with a freeware app. Until everyone starts doing it and there are no more spare CPU cycles to go around.
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Fabricated
Moderator
Posts: 8978
~Living the Dream~
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What's Digsby?
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"The world is populated in the main by people who should not exist." - George Bernard Shaw
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Morfiend
Terracotta Army
Posts: 6009
wants a greif tittle
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schild
Administrator
Posts: 60350
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What's Digsby?
What's Google? |
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Righ
Terracotta Army
Posts: 6542
Teaching the world Google-fu one broken dream at a time.
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The camera adds a thousand barrels. - Steven Colbert
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Fabricated
Moderator
Posts: 8978
~Living the Dream~
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What's Digsby?
What's Google? not googling, not even remotely important enough, even less than this post saying its unimportant |
"The world is populated in the main by people who should not exist." - George Bernard Shaw
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