Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Annoyances abound
The Internet: a great and vast resource of knowledge, merchandising, and even some less-savory material. I use it day in and day out and without a doubt, it is a wonderful resource for communication and collaboration. However, all this bliss must certainly come at a price. There are some things about the Internet that aren't so great, and I'm not talking specifically about porn or criminal activities, though these things certainly do their part to ruin a perfectly good system. So, I think, with my current experience on the internet, both as a user and a provider, I will post a list of my top ten most annoying things on the Internet.
10. Microsoft. A software giant founded in 1976 under the premise of empowering every man, woman and child with a personal computer. This is a worthy goal, but in the process they have blatantly disregarded established standards and forced everyone into a mold. ...and they have systematically erased people's concept of how to properly run a computer.
9. Viruses and worms. These [not so] little software gems serve no other purpose in life other than to afflict and torment mankind. They are responsible for the general slowdown of Internet traffic and the insecurity of online data. Keep your system protected and browse smartly and these shan't offend much.
8. Instant Messengers. Oh how I could go off on these! Since they were invented, their only usefulness is to interrupt people while they are online. Sure, they may be great communication tools, but very little annoys me as much as signing on to the Internet and being assaulted by IM-ers.
7. Emoticons and other net-speak. Does this annoy the heck out of 'u'? :) :) :) :) LOL. POS. ROFL!!!!!!!!!! Good grief! With the introduction of cell phones and instant message clients, our language is slowly being eroded into a form of UNIX that even makes UNIX gear-heads like me cringe. Have you seen kids' spelling and grammar lately?!
6. Online advertizements. Sometimes these can be in the form of a harmless banner ad or the annoying popup window (or pop-behind as in the case of Firefox) that spawn thousands of other windows when they are closed. It is these of the second kind that are of particular nuisance. Even the mighty Firefox browser is often the victim of cunning advertizers hell-bent on getting an ad to the casual browser.
5. Internet porn. Pornography was once considered only part of an underground red-light district, only accessible to those who risked being seen entering and exiting XXX stores and viewing explicit magazines. Now, with the advent of the Internet, pornographers can easily peddle there wares into the home of every person with a connection, embarassment-free.
4. Active-X. Who thought of this crap anyhow? It could have been a really cool technology in which programs from the Internet run on Windows machines thereby giving added functionality to web sites. Good idea, bad implementation. It is a huge back door for less-savory users to gain control or access to a computer.
3. Internet Explorer. Along with Microsoft, it's "madre de crianza," Internet Explorer has singlehandedly done more to hinder Internet growth and imagination than anything out there. Its blatant defial of Internet standards is obvious and leads many a web developer to use sloppy code and to only cater to the Microsoft audience. Also, IE natively allows and supports Active-X applications and is very closely tied to the Windows operating system.
2. QuickTime. Slow. Huge. What more need I say? Yes, they are developing new codecs for viewing video in mega-screen and listening to audio in 10,725.1 THX certification, but at what cost? Oh, about 4GB of disk space and all the RAM you can muster.
1. Embedded media. I am just about at the end of my rope with this one. Often times, I find myself browsing the Internet in relative calm when out of the blue a page loads and BAM! Sound and video are playing on the page without my invoking any sort of play() function. I really hate those embedded Flash movie trailers that start playing as soon as a page loads. Nearly as annoying are the MIDI files embedded into the HTML code of a web page.
Runners up:
1. Spam. No, not the processed meat product. Everyone hates spam emails. However, they aren't a big issue for me because I only give out certain email accounts when filling out online forms, so therefore 99.9% of my spam is sent to places that I have set up specifically to collect it.
2. Peer-to-peer file sharing applications. Probably second only to Internet Explorer in the spreading of malicious programs.
3. Winamp. Slow. Resource-intensive. Have you ever looked at your system monitor graph when running Winamp 5 with a nice skin on and playing some cool tune? Only redeemable feature: Lots and lots of online music stations at your beck and call.
4. iTunes. Slow. Huge. See QuickTime above. Disclaimer: iTunes isn't really an "Internet" application, but it does have it's roots with QuickTime.
10. Microsoft. A software giant founded in 1976 under the premise of empowering every man, woman and child with a personal computer. This is a worthy goal, but in the process they have blatantly disregarded established standards and forced everyone into a mold. ...and they have systematically erased people's concept of how to properly run a computer.
9. Viruses and worms. These [not so] little software gems serve no other purpose in life other than to afflict and torment mankind. They are responsible for the general slowdown of Internet traffic and the insecurity of online data. Keep your system protected and browse smartly and these shan't offend much.
8. Instant Messengers. Oh how I could go off on these! Since they were invented, their only usefulness is to interrupt people while they are online. Sure, they may be great communication tools, but very little annoys me as much as signing on to the Internet and being assaulted by IM-ers.
7. Emoticons and other net-speak. Does this annoy the heck out of 'u'? :) :) :) :) LOL. POS. ROFL!!!!!!!!!! Good grief! With the introduction of cell phones and instant message clients, our language is slowly being eroded into a form of UNIX that even makes UNIX gear-heads like me cringe. Have you seen kids' spelling and grammar lately?!
6. Online advertizements. Sometimes these can be in the form of a harmless banner ad or the annoying popup window (or pop-behind as in the case of Firefox) that spawn thousands of other windows when they are closed. It is these of the second kind that are of particular nuisance. Even the mighty Firefox browser is often the victim of cunning advertizers hell-bent on getting an ad to the casual browser.
5. Internet porn. Pornography was once considered only part of an underground red-light district, only accessible to those who risked being seen entering and exiting XXX stores and viewing explicit magazines. Now, with the advent of the Internet, pornographers can easily peddle there wares into the home of every person with a connection, embarassment-free.
4. Active-X. Who thought of this crap anyhow? It could have been a really cool technology in which programs from the Internet run on Windows machines thereby giving added functionality to web sites. Good idea, bad implementation. It is a huge back door for less-savory users to gain control or access to a computer.
3. Internet Explorer. Along with Microsoft, it's "madre de crianza," Internet Explorer has singlehandedly done more to hinder Internet growth and imagination than anything out there. Its blatant defial of Internet standards is obvious and leads many a web developer to use sloppy code and to only cater to the Microsoft audience. Also, IE natively allows and supports Active-X applications and is very closely tied to the Windows operating system.
2. QuickTime. Slow. Huge. What more need I say? Yes, they are developing new codecs for viewing video in mega-screen and listening to audio in 10,725.1 THX certification, but at what cost? Oh, about 4GB of disk space and all the RAM you can muster.
1. Embedded media. I am just about at the end of my rope with this one. Often times, I find myself browsing the Internet in relative calm when out of the blue a page loads and BAM! Sound and video are playing on the page without my invoking any sort of play() function. I really hate those embedded Flash movie trailers that start playing as soon as a page loads. Nearly as annoying are the MIDI files embedded into the HTML code of a web page.
Runners up:
1. Spam. No, not the processed meat product. Everyone hates spam emails. However, they aren't a big issue for me because I only give out certain email accounts when filling out online forms, so therefore 99.9% of my spam is sent to places that I have set up specifically to collect it.
2. Peer-to-peer file sharing applications. Probably second only to Internet Explorer in the spreading of malicious programs.
3. Winamp. Slow. Resource-intensive. Have you ever looked at your system monitor graph when running Winamp 5 with a nice skin on and playing some cool tune? Only redeemable feature: Lots and lots of online music stations at your beck and call.
4. iTunes. Slow. Huge. See QuickTime above. Disclaimer: iTunes isn't really an "Internet" application, but it does have it's roots with QuickTime.
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