Last night I did a little maintenance work on my two computers, the one in my room and the "public" terminal out in the living room. In doing so I was downloading stuff from so many different companies for various and sundry programs, and I noticed a really irritating trend.

    Why do all these fucking companies put padlocks and chains on the registry of your computer whenever you install their product? Often these little tricks are hidden in the background of the installation program and you aren’t even given an option of avoiding it. Microsoft products are pretty bad across the board, but now there is one conglomerate that is even worse. AOL. I don’t use their crappy Internet service, I don’t use their damned instant messenger, but I’ve been using Netscape since it was Mosaic. The day they sold out to AOL, I cried. Now, when you install or upgrade that Communicator package, it just grabs hold of EVERYTHING it possibly can in your registry. It took me half an hour to get control of my computer back from this program. I don’t want the half-assed web editor Composer as my default, I like using Outlook to manage my calendar, and just keep your damn hands off my Palm III!

    Microsoft isn’t much better. They’re sneakier about how they shaft you, though. Some of the sites run by Microsoft and their partners refuse to open properly on ANYTHING but Internet Explorer. This reaches farther than you think with the collaboration between MSN and NBC. Now MSNBC news is used widely as the source for news for many portal sites. A lot of the "full story" sites created for each little news blurb will totally wig out Netscape because they are deliberately tweaked to run only on Microsoft’s bastardization of Java.

    Pissing me off…

    Time to give the finger to these big corporations and get a browser that doesn’t want to run your life. Follow half the links in the paragraph above and you’ll get here eventually. It costs a couple bucks, but aren’t a few dollars worth it to let your voice be heard?

    Browsers aren’t the only things that fuck you. Download a media player. Winamp, Sonique, MusicMatch Jukebox… They all want to grab hold of every type of sound file you could ever play on your system, even those that are only half-assedly supported. All these programs have their strengths and weaknesses, and I like to choose whichever one I am using depending on what I want to do. Is that too much to ask? I hate having to fight the setup of the program so that I can use it as a tool instead of having to depend on it like the electronic needle I use to inject my MP3 heroin.

    Have you ever heard a ferret snore? It is somewhat disturbing, really. This little squeaky, wheezy noise is going on to my right and it is sorta wigging me out.

    It’s early in the morning. I can’t sleep because some insane bird is chirping like crazy in the tree outside my window. I need a shower. Bleh.

Back, damn it, Back!

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