Topic: Too Damn Late
It's roughly 1:24 AM CDT & it's time once again for Too Damn Late!
WARNING: Too Damn Late is not written in front of a live studio audience. Since it's written after midnight, the contents in here are uncensored by anybody as an act of first amendment rights. Therefore, if you are easily offended by swear words or outrageous thoughts, STOP READING THIS BLOG ENTRY NOW!!! I don't want to hear any complaints from anybody because you read this with ample warning. I don't like writing these warnings, but I do so to protect myself here. By reading beyond this warning, you hereby consent to such adult content. VIEWER DESCRETION IS ADVISED!
Despite the storms that have past through a few hours ago (when this was written) that have now died down, there's one thing that I'm finding totally ridiculous here: Microsoft advertising Internet Explorer 8 on TV.
Microsoft is advertising IE on TV with a "Fake Bank" ad where people are giving away practically every piece of their personal information to a rediculous level (would anybody actually care if you're wearing boxers or briefs? Unless your a girlfriend or a wife... I'm guessing the interest level is practically 0.000%) to open an account which they give you $500. While I am aware that Microsoft is trying to bring a parallel of scams from online to the real world here, but really... do they really need to?
First of all, anybody with HALF A BRAIN would be perfectly aware that you can't get free money without some type of string attached to it. Pay Pal originally gave away $5 with new accounts, but you had to deposit $50 into your account. If all you had to do in order to score $500 is to fill out some paperwork, the bank would be going into the red so fast that it probably would qualify for a federal bailout. The other issue is the rediculous level of information requested in the fake bank's paperwork. Most banks & credit unions only ask for your name, address, social security number (for tax reasons) & a minimum deposit (usually between $5 & $100 for savings). They wouldn't ask for your pet's name, undergarment choices or a hair sample (for DNA). The same thing tends to be standard for online banking. The only exception is Pay Pal as they don't require any deposits, but they want you to link a bank account (or a credit card) to your account for transfers. Pretty much anybody who had any common sense would catch on to the obvious scams.
Second of all, nearly ALL BROWSERS have some type of anti-scam measures in place. Usually these are in-place by default when you install them. Most browsers except for IE utilize Google's "Blacklist" to protect & warn users about questionable websites. Microsoft does it's own thing & doesn't utilize public blacklists, so they're doing things the hard way. It could be protecting you, but it could be doing better. I know that Firefox gives you a big-ass warning page with a big red box with a warning message on a black (or heavily darkened) background. HOWEVER, this protective measure can be disabled by true idiots (those born without a brain stem, which I know a good number of... a couple, I had to rescue their sorry asses from their own idiotic actions)... & trust me, I know a few idiots that would be dumb enough to do this (as well as go online without an anti-virus program).
Third, Internet Explorer doesn't have the add-on support that other browsers have... especially where security is concerned. Firefox & Chrome allow you to pick up add-ons like NoScript (which prevents sites running scripts on your browser WITHOUT your permission, which can help prevent hackers from attacking you) & Ad Block Plus (which blocks ads from websites, which doesn't necessarily prevent hacker attacks, but block spyware tracking ad servers) which adds a "Paranoia Level" of protection. Explorer doesn't have this... or at least to the point I'm willing to cough up $20 for such support (at the last time I actually bothered to check). Even if I have to work on a computer without an anti-virus program (which I'd work quickly to remedy & seriously give the computer owner a talking to in the process), NoScript would give me some protection against the unknown. Even if the site that I was visiting included a poisoned script from an outside server, NoScript would protect me as it wouldn't have permission to run.
Finally, NO BROWSERS ADVERTISE OFFLINE!!! Firefox doesn't advertise offline, except for some public stunts done by people... but they have practically no advertising budget, yet they get people through word-of-mouth advertising. Chrome, while created by Google, does no offline advertising either. However, Google does a lot of shameless plugs on their network & sites, but their browser is pretty solid & a bit open-ended (not fully open-source like Firefox, but it gives users & developers a lot of freedom). Even Opera, one of the few ancient (by today's standards, originally released around 1995) & originally commercial browsers (it's now available freely for computers, but they may charge for special mobile versions) doesn't advertise offline either... or at least in the US (as it's origins are in Europe... around the Norway / Finland area). While I must note that Netscape (Firefox's spiritual predicessor) did advertise offline, but they were promoting their ISP services & throwing in their browser... or at least until AOL (who owns Netscape) officially killed the browser to leave it's spiritual successor, Firefox (as both were originally created by Mozilla) to live on. Apple doesn't even advertise it's own browser Safari offline, or at least without an iPod, iPhone, iPad or iMac running it. While they're showing Safari, they're mainly advertising their hardware & NOT the software.
This kind of advertising idiocy tends to be Microsoft's Standard policy to problems: Throw money at the problem & hope it goes away. Problems with Windows ME? Throw Money at it! Problems with XBox 360's dying? Throw Money at it (by replacing people's systems)! Bad Press with Vista? Throw Money at it with advertising instead of dedicating that money towards improving Vista (or expediting the development of Windows 7). It's just an obvious thing that Microsoft does that even Apple made a jab at it with one of their "PC-Mac" commercials. If practically everybody is dissing your product, trying to generate buzz with advertising isn't really going to work... or at least with the reasonable smart people (those who generally don't get themselves into trouble with scams & phishing attacks). If it's a flop, you're just better off improving the product OR JUST LET THE THING DIE!
If Microsoft worked a bit harder on quality instead of market share, a fair number of people (mostly Mac & Linux users) wouldn't be dissing them on a near-daily basis. Until Apple gets off their pretentious asses & permit other computer makers to run their OS (& therefore, make Mac OS X more accessible to people) & until Linux gets relaxes their security measures a bit to increase user-friendliness (to the point that you don't need a degree in rocket surgery to install a simple outside application), I'm begrudgingly forced to use MS Windows to fire off my rants. I know you may brand me a hypocrite for using a MS product to diss MS themselves... but until something truely better as an OS comes up, I'm stuck here.
It's now 2:55 AM... I'm off to bed.
