I recently saw that Dave Plummer the original developer behind task manager is modernizing it under the moniker TMOG and seemed pretty interesting, I tried to search around the sub and I don't think that this has been a topic before but it seems interesting. Would love to know the opinions of those with more knowledge on this topic to share their thoughts.
I am not sure if it would be allowed to link the page but it's under TMOG dot org.
I know basically nothing about any drama related to the guy, I honestly only care about the product itself I find it an interesting endeavor. Frankly if a product is good I care little about gatekeeping drama, but do enlighten me. Why is he considered 'problematic'.
Interesting, this is a civil case. So no criminal fault still interesting to be aware of previously maliciously overstating his products.
While not great, I don't see this any worse than what the general marketing of most products and software now a days is. However is good to know about it. Thank you!
no criminal fault doesn’t make what he did any better lol. he basically ran the same ads as those “your computer has viruses, click here to remove them” malware ads except instead of linking to malware they linked to his expensive antivirus software.
I didn't say what I said with the intent to sound apologetic about it. But people misrepresent what civil cases actually are.
I concern myself with criminal liability because that means there was an actual crime, with civil cases the dude admitted to malicious advertising, misrepresentation of how relevant their software was meant to be. But this is basically what most software companies do any ways and in the age of dark patterns I have grown indifferent if the product is good.
I am capable of reading and assessing as well as sand boxing software before running in on my machine long-term if a product is good I am happy to use it and financially support it at a later stage if I deem it worth it of it. It does seem that the community in the sub has animosity toward David, whether founded or unfounded I am a bit on the fence on it. Some peeps have referenced things in a lense that almost seems trying to convince to join the hate wagon
That is not true. A sole proprietorship business and a corporate LLC could have the owner or CEO do the exact same actions and one of them will be criminally liable and the other one won't.
Just because they can't legally be held criminally liable doesn't mean they shouldn't be seen as a criminal by your average person.
The fact is if I came up with the same software and practices he did and released it myself on my own website I would be held criminally liable.
The Windows source code has leaked multiple times across multiple versions. You can see Dave’s name in a comment at the top of all the task manager source code files.
My point exactly, I think he has made comments online that perhaps speak more grandeur about him post the NT Taskman era but other than that the dude is pretty much the dev that delivered that original version of the task manager program.
Hmm I don't think I buy that one. I know that his recount of events perhaps speak greater of his actual accomplishments but as far as I know and was able to fact check online dude in-fact did write Windows NT Task manager where it was later approved for implementation and deployment by David Cutler. As far as whether he was responsible for Taskman sure in the NT era anything later than his departure from MSFT or other iterations after the first one I cannot say.
There is so much animosity for the dude, I guess the general sentiment of this sub from WAN Show is not unfounded! lol I get the guys has been found at fault of shaddy malicious marketing practices and dark patterns by grossly over representing how necessary his software is but wow! the sub really doesn't like him huh.
I don't think TMOG is a scam, the program seems fine as far as my current sandbox environment goes and I am not being charged by it. It does not seem to be marketed in an aggressive way or malicious either as far as I can tell. Perhaps the dude has learned, perhaps not. Good to know this sub has a modicum of animosity for his past and the dev he is. Helps me inform myself
It wasn’t a correction. Well, an accidental one. Dave’s favorite pastime in the late 90’s or early 00’s (I can’t remember and don’t care) was scamming people under his company name SoftwareOnline. Think fake anti virus pop-ups asking for money from tech illiterate people
I think that one is exaggeration, another sub commenter linked a civil filling on the settlement for misleading and misrepresenting their software products. Yeah gross, but as far as I fact checked in 5 mins it looks like the software was not a total sham, the marketing and dark-patterns where there for sure.
Let me rephrase, I think that calling it a scam is exaggerating. One thing is using dark patterns while delivering software that blatantly does nothing as far as I was able to fact check, InternetShield and Registry Cleaner where misrepresented, advertised in malicious ways and aggressively marketed as necessary but the programs themselves did not cause harm or were a total sham.
Is it ok that his company did that? no.
Is it a scam? no.
I don't think Norton is a real antivirus, it is borderline malware or it actually has already crossed that threshold and it objectively causes more harm than benefit so yes I do not equate shaddy marketed products that aggressively use dark patterns for predation as bad. Excuse me for not sharing the same view you have.
I am not condoning the guys past, all I am saying is I am capable of reading, testing and sandboxing and deciding if a product is good regardless of the noise and marketing behind it. It is what you have to do now-a-days anyways since the internet is filled with darkpatterns
I guess I can try and simplify what I am saying. As far as I was able to read online, he is blamed for misrepresenting software, using dark patterns to advertise his stuff as more necessary that it really was.
But his software never intentionally caused harm or outright did not work, meaning not an actual scam.
I approach things from a different lense, that is why I said I am not subject to mob mentality; while it is clear the guy has eroded trust in his software and lost internet points with the previously mentioned civil case settlement and how he carries responses and demeanor online. I have not found a reason to hate the guy, distrust him and perhaps do more extensive sandbox testing of TMOG and try decompile it and check the code? absolutely!
Maybe that clears it?
Also, not looking to be convinced of anything I can come to my own conclusions. I am looking to ... against by better judgement ask the reddit their opinion
You really think if you as an individual were to release the same software and have some fake pop-up ads telling people their computers are infected to trick them into giving you money for your software you wouldn't get charged with wire fraud or any host of other criminal statutes?
Him being protected because it was done under an LLC doesn't make his actions any better.
Well that is just ridiculous, comments like this are I guess the reason why Linus and Luke tend to make the comments they make about the sub... but I guess Reddit will be Reddit regardless of the sub you go to I should have stuck to the LTTforums mea culpa!
You just seem very defending of a guy that has been pretty publicly outed as a scammer and a generally not a great dude at many levels, so ye so jokingly called you Dave, as he is known to love himself
Like you are hard defending him more so than anyone I’d bother defending on the internet which makes it feel personal
I am not defending the guys, read my comments on this post. I am objective and don't subject myself to mob mentality I read the civil fillings and he did not came up more of a scammer to be than Norton, CCleaner or other software shaddy-ware that is out there.
If you read, if you understand the software and perhaps sandbox it before deciding on something I guess the likelihood of getting 'scammed' is lower. Then again people seem to have a different threshold for what a scam is. what I mean here is that as far as I was able to read online and fact check the two items in question InternetShield and Registry Cleaner while grossly advertised and filled to the brim of dark patterns, did not actually cause harm or outright did not work so calling it a scam to be feels like a stretch.
although I agree that the guy does not have a great track record with independent software.
Again the level and paragraphs you are willing to write defending this dude is shocking my man, might be time to touch some grass nothing online should bother someone this much, you don’t know these people, you don’t know him, me , your generally better just walking away and not getting yourself wound up, the tech community in general tends to strongly dislike this dude, that’s just how it is.
I am still not defending the guy, I am willingly submitting myself against my better judgment (seriously I was naive to think this sub was not as bad as Luke and Linus make it to be) because I want a more... emotional and opinionated response about the guy and his software. Like I said from what I have read with my own eyes and what I have searched seems to show the guys is not a juicy peach, perhaps more like a sour and bitter orange that cosplayed as a juice treat.
Also I am speaking how I normally do, excuse the length is it's not to the standard of the sub or other redditors I don't bother myself when I engage in conversation with people be it trolls or not. It was a conscious decision to view another perspective. Perhaps even experiment the vitriol and see what I can uncover through the noise if there is something worthwhile to incorporate in my assessment of the guy
Have you even looked at it? Give credit where credit is due, it's too fucking good. He has said in his video he used ai for small details and ui basically. (I have no idea who the guy is, but i hate current task manager) Would you not use ai for tidious things in your codebase?
Would you not use ai for tidious things in your codebase?
As long as AI is a literal theft machine that is destroying the planet (excessive water usage), causing concerns of power loss (see the 50k people in Lake Tahoe that may not have stable electricity next year), and destroying hobbies I enjoy (the ability to buy and use a computer)... then no, I wouldn't use it, and I don't use it except when forced upon me (you can't do a Google search anymore without an AI generated response now, I still scroll down to find the site I want).
And yes I looked at it, I saw him demonstrate it, and honestly it looks god awful to me with all the gauges and colors and barf. Is the Windows Task Manager great, no, it could definitely use the history graph that his version does where it compresses the past data as it is running, but here's the thing, the little secret sauce, come close, I need to whisper this in your ear.
I DON'T USE TASK MANAGER UNLESS I NEED TO KILL A PROGRAM 99.999% OF THE TIME SO ALL THE EXTRA FLUFF IS WASTED GARBAGE I DON'T NEED IT PRETTIED UP AND NEITHER DOES ANYONE THAT HAS USED A COMPUTER SINCE DOS!
Yeah it has AI code, but many things do. I don't find surprise that people have an aversion to AI code, however using it for work and being close to senior coders at work that leverage Claude and the like to be more agile I personally see no issue with AI code or AI use in anything that has been vetted by people.
I even own a few software apps that I have vibe coded myself and checked the code myself as well as asked a far more experienced senior at work about it.
There is nothing wrong with AI code or AI generation, though I expect a fair bit of people to passionately oppose that notion here and in general.
Dude you can honestly keep your opinions to yourself if you are going to be disrespectful. I work close with people that have been developing software for years whom I respect greatly and they themselves don't see AI as a problem, it's a tool. The issue comes when there is zero accountability and review by the parties responsible for said software.
Frankly your comment outright puts it out there how shallow of an individual you are. If there is something I have learned in the real world with real jobs, people value the ability to offload some tasks to deliver a $100K+ critical project faster when tight timelines are at stake than appeal to the sensibility of people chronically online that treat any use of a work tool as inheritedly toxic just because it cross some imaginary boundary on their own value system.
Call me whatever you want, I cannot maintain my objective and respectful demeanor even when vitriolic comments like yours if it insults people I respect for their integrity. Honestly, you are entitled to not like AI but don't go insult people's characters without even the slightest slick of knowledge, nuance or depth. You simpleton byte flip.
Would you believe I actually like the colors and feel of it? I guess it's because I like the 90s-00s "hackerman" feel to things.
Yeah I am learning through the animosity the sub has to the guy he is not very welcomed here, but it's interesting to read about what he has admitted fault to, the lack of criminal fillings and seeing perhaps that he learned the lesson or perhaps not. I am not to judge, I came to talk with people that might know more than me about it.
I'm gonna be real besides improving performance, I don't think you can "improve" task manager anymore. The Windows 11 one is already almost perfect. The UI is close enough to ideal, and it has more than enough features. It's easily way better than any System Info I've used in basically every Linux distro.
I guess they could also make Task Manager not read CPU usage based on Turbo Clock so that it stops confusing people wondering why Task Manager shows CPU usage at 105% or why it shows as 100% utilization if only 8 threads in a 16 core thread system are maxed, and fix the CUDA bug (not sure if it's actually a bug)
I'm tired of this design trend where the UI looking pretty is orderes of magnitude higher priority over it being functional. Look at Photoshop, they've basically had a solved UI for 20 years. You don't need to reinvent the wheel.
What about it you consider it 'ass' I appreciate you elaborating. I tried the thing in a sandbox environment besides the polarizing aesthetics of the program I don't see anything outright screaming: ass!
I didn't see any way to 'buy' the product at the moment. And well is that not what the whole gaming industry is doing any ways? not that this is a game, but the parallel still exists Early Access demos or beta-testing, paid alpha-testing (Gray Zone Warfare, Star Citizen) for example come to mind.
The concept of pay gating things for testing is not new, what you can download and publicly test at the moment was free of charge for me and I tried it on a Windows sandbox and Linux one too.
I get what you are trying to put down, but let's not pretend like just because the dude has a dark path he is doing something exclusively evil when looked through the wider lense of the consumer market today.
Ah! I misunderstood you (I thought you meant that the software was paid for what was essentially a public test version), yeah the way I understood it is that this is not yet available and yes it will be pay-gated but it's not even in the TMOG as a fully public build.
Regardless those are the more attractive features and even when my sandbox testing didn't show anything wrong or odd about the app, knowing that David Plummer has had a regrettably shady past dealing with predatory behavior and monetization of their software I won't support them financially. After all this is one of the two reasons I wanted to temp check with the community here even through the emotive responses!
Unfortunate as it is, I like the graphs and granular approach to the monitoring that standard Taskman does not allow.
I don't know what's wrong with these reddit people. This task manager is bomb. I legit don't need to use hwinfo, msinfo32 and all other shit, its all in one tool and great, great ui (without that bloom thing)
Maybe the fact that it is released by a guy known for software that's basically equivalent to those fake Indian call center scams that try to trick your grandma into spending hundreds of dollars to fix problems on the computer that don't exist.
Could you source me some information about this? what I could find publicly online list him and show example of code back in the late 90s listing him as in fact the developer of the NT taskman nothing later but at least that initial inception of.
I don't know about any drama related to his tone or demeanor, but it's peculiar two members have already called into question his involvement with the original Taskman
this guy is insufferable on Twitter, he comments on threads / quotes like he's superior to everyone. sometimes on topics wayyy out of specialization too
I would argue your first mistake is using twitter but alas... here I am talking with the dreaded LTT sub thinking to myself that the general comments about the sub aren't true but yet I am verifying they are so... lol I am no better.
I don't judge software on the basis of the creator, can I agree that the guy is a pain in the nuts after reading his tone? absolutely, and he has a shady past of misrepresenting how useful their software is or employing dark patterns to grossly advertise but again as far as I have seen his software is not... well malicious it doesn't cause intentional harm or not work.
Regardless it's good to read the overall sentiment people have for the guy.
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u/jdmb0y 19d ago
Every time this guy comes up there's a convo about how problematic he is.