Now before you get all bend out of shape, this is not a “Windows bashing” post.  Granted, I’m likely to mention Windows once or twice, but it’s a general bash on M$.

First of all I want to say, once again, fuck you Microsoft!!!  I am continually amazed at the lack of intelligence of the people running one of the world’s largest companies.  They must be a group of fucking dick heads with nothing better than to screw and swindle people out of money.  I have come to realize over the years that not only does Windows suck, nearly everything that M$ does it absolutely terrible.

This started many years ago, around Windows 95 I suppose.  Windows was an operation system ahead of its time, something the “average Joe” could use without advanced training.  It was pushed as an alternative to the command line days of old.  And you know what, it took root, countless people jumped on board and loved it.  It was easy, it was “stable” and most of all, it didn’t require any special skills.

Fast forward 15 years.  M$ has released a number of new operating system, some of them were good, some of them were bad (ME, I’m looking at you!).  All in all the M$ has been alright at releasing good operation systems.  Somewhere along the way, however, they strayed from their focus.  The moved from simply releasing operating system to releasing….well everything.  The moved to mobile phone operating systems, search engines, video game consoles, databases, email platforms, and pretty much anything else they could get their hands on.

It’s not the M$ is a bad company, they have just expanded far beyond their means.  They have to have their hands in EVERYTHING.  This isn’t always a bad thing, but they have become so diversified that everything that have turned out is now half-assed, at best.  Instead of focusing on a few things, they have broadened out so much that we are at the point of nearly everything that they make sucks….hard.

Do you really want to know why I’m so pissed off?  Well do you???  Well it goes like this…

I don’t consider myself a *webmaster* but I do manage a number of sites and am pretty damn good at HTML and PHP.  As someone that manages web sites, there is one thing that should be held sacred above all else…..the Apache logs.  Everyone that has ever run a web site, even for a short time, knows that you DON’T FUCK WITH THE APACHE LOGS!

Well….M$ has taken it upon themselves to fuck with the logs.  They create “fake” search referrers using search terms that my sites don’t even show up for.  They flood my logs, disrupt my stats, and all around wreak havoc on all my sites.  I’m not the first to complain.  A search for msnbot and referrer will return a fair number of results of other people complaining of the same thing.

For far too long, M$ has fucked with our OS, our cell phones, PDAs, game consoles, and many other things.  But for those of us that run web sites, you just don’t fuck with Apache logs.  It’s hallowed ground and shouldn’t be manipulated in ANY WAY.  I don’t care if they claim it’s how the help rank sites.  Honestly I don’t give a fucking damn what they claim, they are fucking with things they shouldn’t.

At this point, I have begun a systematic blocking of msnbot from ALL my sites.  If you use MSN to search, well you are a fucking moron as well and deserve to come up with shit-filled results.  MSN search (or Live search as it’s now know) has to be one of the biggest steaming piles of shit on the Internet.  Not only is it filled with completely useless results, it’s also home to many shady practices.

So just to make sure I got my point across, FUCK YOU MICROSOFT!!!!  Fuck all that you stand for.  Fuck your management for such stupid ideas.  Fuck the very space that you occupy….

OK, I’m done….

After reading an article my boss sent me regarding the very low practice now being initiated by Verizon Wireless, I felt the need to vent about this. Verizon Wireless has started a new practice of wanting to share information about services purchased (including specific calls you make and receive), billing info, technical info and location info with ‘affiliates, agents and parent companies.’ The definition for this seems to be suspiciously vague and it would seem that virtually any company can pay to become and ‘affiliate.’ What does this mean? Verizon Wireless can share virtually any information that they have about you with pretty much anyone willing to pay for it. Now seriously, of all the low down, dirty, under-handed practices, this seems like one of the worst. What makes it ever more under-handed is that they have quietly slipped it into your paper bill:

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It just really pisses me off when a company will do literally anything to make a buck! I have had my ‘issues’ with Verizon Wireless in the past but for the most part, they are….were a fairly good company to do business with. That have taken their customer’s trust and smashed it into a million pieces. So in case somebody from Verizon Wireless is actually reading this, FUCK YOU! I also want to make sure that I let all my readers (yes, all 2 of you) know how you can disable this ’sharing’ of data. If you log into you account, it can be easily disabled here:

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I can only hope that the next time ANY company decides to do something for money, maybe they should come down off their greed-induced high and actually think about the implications of said actions before they are carried out. I can only hope that Verizon Wireless manages to screw themselves over royally with this action. Anyway, I’m done, I shall step down off my soapbox now….

So a short while ago I bough and iPod. I know, I had said I would never get one, but they are finally to the point in terms of storage capacity that I can make good use of it. I ended up with an iPod classic 120GB. Anyway, this post isn’t about my iPod, which I have come to love, it’s about the steaming pile of shit software known as iTunes that it used to manage it….

After I got my iPod I wanted to start loading songs right away. So I opened up the instructions (my first mistake) then proceeded to install iTunes (my second mistake). When it comes to operating systems, I will be the first to admit that Apple makes a solid product. I don’t personally own an Apple computer but I have used them and really I find it very easy to use. However, when it comes to software, Apple falls far short of anything even remotely close to good. I’m sure that a number of people here has used QuickTime in the past and I truly doubt that anyone likes it. Up until buying my iPod, I had managed to avoid all Apple software with the exception of Safari (since I do web design, I need to be able to test my pages in various browsers).

But I digress….after installing iTunes, and saying no to all the prompts from SpyBot to allow all these new programs to start with the system, I fired up iTunes. Granted, it did see the iPod without a problem, and did manage to sync all my music. However, it’s so incredibly bloaty, slow to start, and install software I never approved (QuickTime and the damn Apple Updated). Needless to say, I am FAR from impressed. This is the very reason that I don’t install Apple software, I truly do hate it.

While I was waiting for my 9000ish songs to sync, I immediately began searching Google for a better solution. A few pieces of software stuck out, namely SongBird and MediaMonkey. I installed and tried both of them out but since neither were able to sync my pictures (I could have just missed it) I decided that they wouldn’t do. After some more searching, I came upon ml_ipod for WinAmp. Since I use WinAmp pretty much exclusively to manage my music, I figured I would give it a go. The install was VERY simple and the fact that the file was a whole 1MB (iTunes is around 90MB give or take) made me smile.

This plugin works GREAT. I will NEVER go back to iTunes for anything and have since removed it from my computer. I can’t possible believe that a company that makes such great operating systems can make such shitty software. Again, with the exception of Safari, my computer is once again Apple free. So if you are fed up with iTunes, give ml_ipod a shot and see what you think.

So seriously….I call up ATT today with the intent of converting my dynamic IP address over to a static one. I believed this to be a rather simple request….I was wrong…..very wrong. My first challenge was trying to actually get to the orders department (The department that I was told last night I needed to talk with)….their phone navigation system is impossible at it’s best and downright hellish at its worst. I manage to get where I believed I needed to be, only to be wrong and have to be transferred. I should make a note here, each time I am transferred, I have to give them my account number and name all over again. I’m on hold for about 10 minutes here while they are doing God knows what…. Anyway, so I get transferred and the lady says yeah, we can do it, but you have to talk to our business people. She sends me to them and gives me their phone number to call them directly. After another 10 minutes on hold, I manage to get routed to a guy that, you guessed it, has to transfer me. He was at least nice enough to stay on the line to make sure that I got to the correct person. He now sends me BACK to the same damn number I called the first time to yet ANOTHER person that has to transfer me. Him and I sit on hold for about 15 minutes here before I finally arrive at a lady that can actually do this. She confirms all my details, gives me a call back number, and tells me that it will be ready on the 20th. I spend 45 minutes on hold and getting transferred for what took just a minute or two in the end. Now seriously people, was that really that damn hard!?

So after my last rant about Comcrap, I thought I would go right into another rant about cable internet service in general. So this has been really driving me crazy, and pissing me off as well. I keep seeing these ads on TV about how RoadRunner is faster than DSL, and that it “Blows DSL away.” While in all technicality, this is a correct statement, it’s HIGHLY subjective. Let’s take a quick look at the differences between cable and DSL.

- With cable, you share your connection with all your neighbors, so if one of them is a very heavy user, your speed with drop like a rock. In comparison, DSL is a Digital Subscriber Line and you have a DEDICATED connection all the way back to a fiber backbone.
- And along with that, while it is true that the theoretical maximum speeds with cable are usually higher, in very few cases will you actually come close to the maximum speed that they advertise. With DSL, you will CONSISTENTLY see speeds very close to the maximum of your package. (NOTE: Both of these, however, can be affected by line noise!)
- Finally, and probably most importantly (especially if you are an online gamer), is the latency, or better know in the gaming world as lag. With cable, your connection is, for lack of a better term, “frogged around” to make it work. It will make hop after hop, and have to jump through a ton of hoops just to get from your computer to somewhere else on the internet. Once again, since with DSL you have a DEDICATED line, a good portion of this hopping is eliminated. You will see less latency, and snappier responses (in general) with a DSL connection then you could ever hope to achieve with your cable connection. (If you want more information about latency, see this article.)

Now while I can’t really say that TimeWarner is guilty of “false advertising” or anything of the sort, they most certainly are giving select (and misleading) information regarding the quality of cable internet connections. While it’s true that you MAY get a faster raw speed (assuming that none of your neighbors are home)….the quality of that connection is far surpassed by DSL, despite that fact that you may give up a bit of speed. So remember, don’t be swayed by the massive amounts of bandwidth offered by cable companies, because bandwidth is most certainly not everything, and just because DSL (in general) offers lower speeds, that does NOT be default make it worse….in most cases it will perform consistently better than cable.