Talking trash to talking flash

(Credit: eNecessities)

Given that we just saw a USB drive that you can smell, it makes perfect sense that we'd find another to assault our senses in a different way. The "Exclusive USB Sound Flash Drive" from eNecessities is, contrary to its manufacturer's name, hardly something we must have. Quite the opposite, actually.

The last thing we need is a USB key or any other device to start chattering away on its own from the moment it's plugged in. Everything USB notes that the sound files, which can play for 10 or 20 seconds, are designed to make advertising pitches--most likely ones that are unsolicited but too late but impossible to avoid once they begin. If this is the price we have to pay for a complimentary flash drive, we might go back to floppy disks.

[logan1337]

u could always disconnect the speaker :)

I doubt it would be particularly hard to break open and just take the speaker out and then you've got a free flash drive! You could probably even put a resistor in there if there were some kind of failsafe to simulate a speaker, but I have a feeling it wouldn't be necessary.

[dUc0N]

Canning the spam?

It's a nice idea, don't get me wrong. I'd maybe even sub in an LED light in place of the speaker, so I can look down and be reminded of the advertising message that I'm *not* hearing. They'll probably team it up with other delivery methods though... from a simple autorun script that launches their homepage, to the slightly more invasive auto-installer that plants software on every computer it contacts "for your convenience", to the downright shady script that could harvest all kinds of marketing data from your machine, then call home so they can send all kinds of targeted ads to your email address(es)... also nosed out during the harvesting process.
Make no mistake... they want their ad in your face as much as possible, and they'll stop and no end to make it so.