Gator

Mark Anthony Rogowski, or "Gator" as he was better known, was one of skateboarding's biggest rock stars in the 80's. He was good looking, charming, and arrogant, all the makings of a lasting celebrity. That is probably why his downfall was so surprising.

Gator was born in Brooklyn and moved to Escondido, CA with his mother following her divorce. In 1974, at the age of 7, he took up skateboarding. By 10, he was getting attention. By 14, he turned pro and was pulling in money for the family. By 17, he was making over $100,000 a year.

Gator was incredibly famous, and lived a wild life. He would have a photo in every skating magazine, gave skating tips in Sports Illustrated for Kids, and won tons of contests. He appeared in the Tom Petty video Free Falling with his girlfriend, Brandi. He drank, smoked, and did blow with her a lot too.

After an incident at a party where he jumped out of a second story window, Gator found God. He talked with a local surfer/evangelist who eventually became his mentor, and began preaching to everyone he could. Brandi left him because he said they couldn't continue to have premarital sex and use drugs. This affected him deeply.

Gator became extremely edgy, and started calling Brandi and harassing her. At one point, he broke into her home and stole all the gifts he had given her, including the car. Sadly, this wouldn't be the last of the things he would do on his downward spiral.

Brandi's friend from out of town, Jessica, unaware of their break-up, called Mark a few weeks later, asking him to show her the sights. Mark complied, and later brought her back to his apartment. There, he beat her with his car steering wheel lock, raped her for two to three hours, and strangled her in a surfboard bag. He then took her body 100 miles out of town and buried her in the desert.

Mark Rogowski turned himself in for the crime two months later, and said that his motivation for the crime was a misplaced hate for his ex-girlfriend. He made no excuses, and said that his lifestyle was terrible, and had no good influences prior to his conversion, including episodes of sexual abuse and pornography addiction. He is currently serving a life sentence in the San Diego prison, and will be eligible for parole when he is 43.

Gator is also an application which stores your passwords on your computer, and automaticly fills them in when they're required, so if you're forgetful, it remembers for you. It also remembers addresses, Phone numbers, and credit card numbers.

And, unfortunatly, I used it once, but thankfully that was before it went into spy ware. This program now spies on your computer, and view your consumer choices. Although I don't think that it'd steal your personal details or your Credit Card number, I would warn all to beware of this application.

Also the nickname for one who is a fan of, or attends the University of Florida in Gainesville, Fl; USA.
The rival of any respectable Gator is a Florida State University, or Seminole, student or fan.

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Growing up I was in a constant state of flux, emotionally torn between these two schools...I had elder relatives who attended college in a time when the two schools were separated by gender. Grandmother went to FSU; great uncle Maynard went to UF. Ho hum.

The Gator spyware application not only stores your passwords and personal details (alledgedly on your own computer), it also builds a comprehensive profile of your web surfing habits.

It records every site you visit, how you got there and how long you stayed there.
It also comes bundled with a nefarious piece of software called Offer Companion. This is a piece of ad-delivery software. If a person using gator visits a site with a banner ad for say, an online book store, this software is able to place a pop-up window with the same dimensions of the banner directly over the legitimate (paid for) banner ad, thus depriving the webmaster and the original advertiser of potential revenue. This is done seamlessly so most of the time the surfer isn't aware of what is happening.

The Gator Corporation, the creators of the spyware Gator, have recently launched an advertising network known as GAIN (Gator Advertising Information Network.) According to The Gator Corporation, the main intent of GAIN is to keep software that participates in GAIN free by running advertisements in the programs.

However, GAIN is a pop-up window machine, often spawning new windows from your taskbar whenever you visit a popular site, such as gap.com, ebay.com or even certain news sites, like abcnews.com. Secondly, it will occasionally open new browsers such as Netscape and Internet Explorer (always the opposite of the one you use to browse the web), which obviously becomes annoying when browsing the web for anything.

The travesty concerning GAIN is that all programs that use it force the user to install GAIN and agree to its licensing agreements. If choose not to, you can't use the free software. So, the inevitable catch-22 comes into play, forcing you to decide whether you want the free software or not.

GAIN also is a piece of spyware. It tracks your website choices for purchasing things online, though it does not track your history of sites that you have visited. GAIN then uses this information, and advertisers will pay GAIN more to pitch specialty advertising to a consumer.

Personally, I think GAIN is a bunch of consumer tracking bullshit. Forcing you to install it with the freeware is unfair, and since you can't uninstall GAIN without removing the freeware also, they force you to either accept their terms or walk away empty handed.

However, I think I have found a way around GAIN. Take a look in your Windows folder, and look for a file called GatorPdpSetup.log. This contains all the runtime information for GAIN's installation. Find where the files are, and go delete them. Next, there will be a few registry entries you must delete. You can find the location of these a few lines below where the GAIN files are listed. After all of this is done, you have removed GAIN's spyware from your machine.