Top 10 Things That Piss Me Off About Computers and The Internet

Above Image: A Visual Representation of The Internet


1. Firefox 3

What the effing EFF Mozilla?! Where are my browser links? Why arent some pages working? What happened to several cool features, and why have they been replaced by useless crappy ones? I registered to make some complaints, other people agreed with me in the Firefox forum, and the thread was promptly closed because the complaints werent technical issues, we were just talking about design flaws. They've also made Firefox 2 harder to find on their website, to discourage people from going back. At first, I was like, OK, FF3 sucks but I'll get used to it. But Im not getting used to it, Im just getting more and more pissed off. The update cleared my address bar without alerting me, and that adress bar contained about 2 dozen really useful links, now I dont remember half, and the ones I do remember, it messes up. Before it just had xbox.com, now it has 3 (three) different xbox.com addresses stuck in the bar (Friends list, My Profile, and Messages) and I cant remove them or replace them with a single xbox.com entry. Several addresses, like www.newegg.com, wont stay in the address bar at all, no matter how many times I type them in. What the effing EFF!!!!

2. HTML

I never bothered to learn HTML, and Im sure as hell not about to start now. But, half the time on my blog the HTML is broken, and all the links on the right, like my gamercard, get smooshed all the way to the bottom. It has something to do with unclosed from my video links or some crap. Eventually, the posts with bad HTML go all the way down and off the first page, and all is normal again.

3. DRM

DRM is "Digital Rights Management" is one of the dirtier phrases in the English language. Basically, it means that you pay for something, like you would in a store, but unlike a physical purchase, you dont really "own" the item, and are actually only granted temporary use or use of the item under particular circumstances. Such is the case with content on XBLA, where if you download something on one 360, thats the only 360 you can use it on unless you are signed into xbox live, or you go through some license transfer nonsense. SPore, the new game by Will Wright, sadly has been crippled by EA's prohibitively nasty DRM policy. When you buy a digital copy of Spore from the EA Store online, you are actually only buying a 6 month license to download the game. After that? Another $50. Unless of course, you plan to ever upgrade your computer, or any part of it, or have hardware failures, or a virus, or have windows decide to suddenly stop working. And because those things never, EVER happen, EA offers you an "extended download plan" for $7 which gives you the rights to download the game for up to 2 years. How generous.

4. Windows

Vista is an overpriced steaming pile of horse excrement. And Microsoft has discontinued its perfectly fine and dandy XP Pro to help boost Vista sales, please investors with some rosy numbers, and give the MS stock price a nice jolt. What a freaking sham. Many of the features that Vista promises either dont work or arent necessary. Some sweet freeware you got off CNET? Forget it, not vista compatible. Direct X 10 support? Great, now try to find an application that actually benefits from it. 16 GB of RAM? Sweet, if you need to handle 16 megapixel photos all day everyday, but how many people do? A sleek user interface? Waste of system resources. Overall, Vista makes Windows 98 look like Linux in comparison to XP. Im building MD a new computer, and it looks like copies of XP are going for more than they did new. All I can say is WTF OMG BBQ. Amazing.

5. Blogs

Blogs suck, and this post is an example of a blog sucking. Who cares about your baby pictures, your infantile opinions, and your whiney complaints about the world? Shut up, nobody cares, and nobody is reading. 90% of the blogs on blogspot.com suck tremendously, just try clicking on the link at the top, "next blog." Blogs are a huge waste of time for everybody involved, why do we even bother?

6. Ebay

OK, ebay is the source of all evil, when Dick Cheney goes to sleep at night he actually plugs himself into the wall and on the other side is a fiber optic cable leading right to the heart of the ebay servers, sucking the excess evil juice out of him and spreading it throughout the internet.

7. Kotaku

They banned me from making comments, because I didnt say what they wanted me to, apparently. Yet, being a "games journalist", technically speaking at least, they have me by the balls, because most of the news gets posted there first. Bastards.

8. Email

Who invented this crap? Now I have to check it all the time, lest I miss someones message and incure their wrath. Email is like regular mail, but crappier. Remember when you would get mail at summer camp? Those letters from Mom ruled. Didnt matter if you wrote back. Emails from Mom in 2008? Not so much. Case closed.

9. Online Games That Dont Work

OK, we wanted to play the XBLA version of Worms, a turn based strategy game, the other night, (sure I could edit this sentence so that it was gramatically correct and made sense, but I am in a fight to the death with the English language, and if I let it wrest control away now I may never recover). Phew. So anyway, surprise, it didnt work, we kept getting dropped and one player couldnt connect. Even though technically speaking, we should be able to play the non real time, turn based game Worms on a 14.4K modem without it affecting the gameplay, XBLA decided our 1M cable connections werent good enough and said no.

10. Big Brother

He watches you, recording everything you do and everywhere you go, compiling it all into a nice, neatly organized database log that can be accessed by computers from any number of state agencies. The database - which records ever phone call, email, internet page click, video conference, or VOIP communication from every American and from millions of others around the globe, is the largest database in the world. Attatched to that database is the worlds largest and most powerful computer, so large, that the NSA recently ran out of power for it. Just makes you feel all warm and fuzzy when you go to sleep at night, doesnt it? If you would like to read more about the NSA and its project ECHELON, Wikipedia has some basic info which will lead you on your way.