TC the Terrible

Some days I feel like I’m on a holy quest to get people to dump Internet Explorer. It’s one of the best things that a person surfing the web can do. Now there is another version of IE coming, and you may not be able to stop it.

Microsoft is getting ready to push out IE 7 later this year to all Windows XP users as a ‘high priority’ update to your system. Bear in mind that IE 7 will look a lot like Firefox but will not perform the same. IE will still take longer to load web pages and more than likely will have just as many security issues as ever.

The majority of users are still using Internet Explorer as Firefox has less than 15% of the browser market. I don’t know if this is out of laziness, or ignorance. If it is the former then those people deserve the problems they will have. For the latter group here are two good sites (here and here) that make the case for Firefox. The statistics trackers on this site show that IE users lead Firefox users by only 8% leading me to believe that my followers are very tech savvy.

While Firefox isn’t bullet proof like many people will claim, they do respond faster to problems. When a flaw in Firefox is found the fix seldom takes more than couple of days to appear, and then get loaded to the user’s system automatically. With Microsoft a user often has to wait for weeks to have a ‘patch’ released that addresses the problem. Then they have to find the patch and install it themselves. This leaves many machines unprotected for prolonged periods of time.

IE 7 will be an upgrade for users over the current version. The real test is if it will be enough of an improvement. Looking back at Microsoft’s history, I think it’s a safe bet the answer to that question is no.

Or something along those lines. I’ve been busy working and missed a couple of milestones recently. My car rolled over 90,000 miles a while back and I missed watching that by a couple of miles. (Sort of like I missed when it rolled over 50,000 – 60,000 – 70,000 – etc.) I totally forgot to make a big deal out of hitting 500 posts on this blog. I had meant to give out some kind of prize to visitor number 10,000 but forgot to do that too. And I screwed up and deleted SPAM comment number 500 before highlighting it in a special post.

For the record it was an add for penis enlargement supplements. Those SPAM comments no longer bother me, because I got used to that particular situation years ago. I am becoming concerned over the number of breast enhancement e-mails and comments that I’m getting lately. How large should a 42 year old man’s breasts be anyway?

One event that I hope I won’t miss is getting my first check from Google for my AdSense account. Like that’s ever going to happen. I’m glad that some people are able to make a living by just maintaining a web site and that was going to be the future for all of us a couple of years ago. But you can bank on the fact that 98% of the web sites out there will never make a dime. My buddy Halibut has had her kick ass entertainment site on line for almost four years now, and despite having a shelf-full of awards for it has still never made any money. Guys like the ones profiled in the Post today are the rare exception.

Any way, still no news on the big news from yesterday. Stay tuned for that one.

You know the big thing that I mentioned in my first post today? Well, it didn’t happen. Looks like the first of next week before I have anything to report on that. Sort of the way the government works around here.

It’s hard to watch when the ultra-powerful have to come back down and join the masses. AOL crushed a lot of good companies on their way to ISP dominance over the past decade and now it looks like AOL may be paying for their sins. The so-called media giant is getting out of the ISP side of the dial up business and probably even going to give away all that exclusive content for free. Not that there was ever anything special sitting behind AOL’s protective fencing to begin with. (Could it be this is what they get for destorying the once-Holy-Grail called Netscape?)

The biggest prize in all of this should be a reduction in the amount of SPAM e-mail making it around the globe. Because 90% of the time when some piece of crap hit my mail box, the originator was an AOL user. I can be sure of that because none of them ever figured out how to cut all the header information out of a forwarded e-mail.

If there are 50 million blogs out there to monitor, and only 10,000 of them are getting more than six visitors a day, then why the hell are we even trying to keep up? Is there even any point in trying any more? Shouldn’t everyone just start their day with my blog and go from there?????

BTW, NEW GUY’s wife and new baby are home from the hospital.  Everyone is doing well, thanks for caring.