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This is where I rant (and vent) about stuff that just, ya know, ticks me off or gets under my skin for some reason. For those of you at work that may be familiar with Dan'l's Rants, I don't mean for this to be a ripoff of that work. I'm not quite the writer that Dan'l is. If you're viewing this page from within Symantec, you can visit Dan'l's Rants. (IE works best for that site)
See also my In Trubble list.
To date, I've ranted about:
Well, I've got the storage space and the ideas. I certainly don't expect any real change to come about as a result of my rants, but heck, it certainly can't hurt. I hope you'll read something here and go, "You know... he's right," or maybe at least, "I never thought of it quite that way before."
The 'net has been invaded, taken over, and ruined, plain and simple. The days of it being used for telnetting to your favorite MUD or BBS for some fun are over, ladies and gentlemen. Now, thanks to advertising, the Web is growing fatter all the time and dragging the rest of the 'net down with it.
I distinctly remember the first time I saw a URL on a storefront sign (a flower shop in Westwood), and the first URL in a TV ad (www.aluminum.org, of all things). But now practically every ad you see has a URL attached to it.
So, I have the commercialization of the Web to rant about. Those advertisers view the Web as a limitless resource: get an ISP, put together a site, pay the monthy fee, and bam! free advertising. And of course such advertising has expanded at a frightening rate, expanded and drowned the 'net. Now all of us have to pay for that misguided vision, for we all know that the 'net is not some magical untiring entity, it's just a network. And we aren't likely to regain control of that network any time soon.
On another note, if you're as pissed off as I am about the proliferation of ads on the Web, check out the ad-blocking software that I use and strongly recommend, InterMute.
I could never say anything as good as what's on AOLSucks. Spend some time reading that site. (It always cracks me up that this site is an org.)
What's really angering me lately is the places that have "sites" on AOL, not on the 'net. One of which, sadly, is KTLA.
I carry earplugs with me whenever I go out. I'm really anal about my hearing, since I know that clubs, movie theaters, and other places blast music and soundtracks at unbearably loud volumes, without caring about the damage that they are doing to their patrons' hearing.
November 14, 1996. That was the date of a party thrown for the folks who work in the anti-virus business unit at work. That party was held on a large, rather comfy boat. It had two publicly-accessible decks, the top being the dining area, the bottom decked out like a casino. Now, that's all well and good, except that all along the ceilings of both decks were speakers, blasting music at dangerous levels.
How do I know how loud that music was playing? Well, now whenever I lie down at night, and it's quiet and there's no background noise from traffic on Santa Monica Boulevard, I get a nice loud beeping sound in my ears. And I always will, forever. I wish I knew how many other people's hearing was ruined that night.
In case you're wondering, yes I did have my earplugs with me that night. Why didn't I use 'em? Good question. I wish I had an answer, it was just plain stupidity on my part. As I recall, I was at a craps table, a few minutes into the party, when I realized the music was too loud. But it was my turn to shoot, and that distracted me, and I never thought about the music again.
Fox Trax is the name for the graphics that Fox has on some of their NHL telecasts. It's a little purple halo that is superimposed over the puck, theoretically making it easier to see. And when the puck goes over a certain speed, the purple dot turns into a red trail. Hah! It's insanely distracting and horrible to look at. I mean, if people can't follow a puck on their TV screen then this country's in real trouble.
Note: near the end of the 1996-97 season, Fox made a change to Fox Trax. The constant purple halo is gone!!! It only shows up when the puck is along the near boards, out of view of the standard camera angle. I guess that makes it bearable, although I still would like to see Fox Trax gone entirely.
Thanks to Netscape and Microsoft, HTML is a mess. What started out as a widely-accepted open standard has been turned into a marketing tool for Microsoft's and Netscape's browser developers. With HTML 3.2, many of the formerly-proprietary extensions have been formally adopted, but still the constant oneupsmanship going on in the browser industry hurts us all, notably web authors who have to worry about how their pages will look under various different browsers, which is no easy task since the latest versions of browsers still don't conform to a single standard.
Now, I'm not going to rant about the lack of originality in games these days; you can find lots of people writing about that in the games magazines. I'm ranting not as a reviewer, but an end-user of games.
The thing I cannot understand nor excuse is games that do not let you customize the controls. It's up to the programmers to pick a logical and usable control scheme, and usually they do a good job, but those times that they don't, us end-users get screwed.
There is absolutely no reason why developers cannot include control customization in games. And I'm not talking about having a list of different control schemes -- we should be able to pick what button to use for every game function.
Example: Jumping Flash!. While you can choose the control to a limited extent, the choices you have are inadequate. There are three functions: shoot, jump, and special weapon. But you can only swap the shoot/jump buttons, and use one of the other two buttons for special weapon. That's it. The result is an awkward control scheme no matter how you "customize" it.
An example of exactly how control should be done is Sub Terrania, a Sega Genesis game. The default control is to have the A button used for forward thrust and B for fire, just like Asteroids. :) But ST let me change the control to how I wanted, namely using UP for forward thrust, and A for fire. All game developers should look at ST and learn how control customization should be done.
I have never understood religion, and I probably never will. I avoid religion as much as possible, since the basic goal of religion is to control people. I mean, what better way to scare people into letting themselves be controlled than to say, "Do what I tell you or you will suffer for eternity in Hell {or whatever the religion calls it}"?
And that way of thinking perpetuates itself. I mean, look at how long the Western religions have been around. That's a testament to how good religion is at controlling people.
It's horrible. A couple of years ago I was helping out a friend with a computer science assignment on a Sunday night. We were making progress, and it was due in a couple of days. But suddenly at about 8 PM, she gets up and says, "I have to go to church." Notice the wording, "have to go." She was forced to stay up late working on that assignment the following nights because she "had to go" to church and do whatever for an hour or two, when she could have used that time on Sunday night to work on the assignment, then finish it off Monday night, never staying up late.
The other facet of religion that appals me is the basic belief that every religion has. Namely, in religion X, "We [religion X] are right, and everyone else in the world is wrong, and because they do not follow our [religion X's] beliefs and practices, they will suffer for eternity in Hell {or wherever}." Yeah, that's a nice way to live.
And what is the deal with people thanking their religious figure when they are interviewed? There is an NFL quarterback, I can't remember who it is right now, that always gives this big long thanks to the Christian religious figure during his interviews. WTF? Does he get forgiven for one sin every time he says the religious figure's name on national TV?
Here's another rather sickening display that I witnessed. On the Live with Regis and Kathie Lee
show, Regis and Kathie Lee do their banther at the beginning of the show. Kathie Lee says she wants to show off
something that her young son wrote. How sweet, right? bzzzt! The paper had just one sentence written on
it, "g-d is love." [my editing there]
I nearly threw my TV out the window I was so sickened. We can all thank Kathie Lee for brainwashing her kid. That
right there is the kind of insane behavior that's perpetuated by religion - Kathie Lee has already got her kid
brainwashed into thinking the way her religion dictates, without giving him a chance to decide for himself.
I haven't watched the show since that day.
See the following rant for more religious ranting.
Following along with the Kathie Lee rant is people who force their beliefs on others. Most of the time those beliefs are religious beliefs. The whole prayer in school debate is one such case. Thank goodness that the Supreme Court made the intelligent, correct decision and didn't allow it.
Congress is another blatant trangresser in the area of forcing beliefs on others. It's unfortunate that legislators cannot understand where the line is between making laws that benefit all of us, and dictating their own pet projects in an attempt to coerce us to behaving/acting/thinking/believing the way they do.
The most recent case of someone forcing beliefs on others happened this week here at work. A little background is in order first. Here, when we finish off a software product, we walk the master disks downstairs to the folks who send the product off to manufacturing.
We have a tradition where everyone on the project walks together in a procession, chanting "oh-ee-ohhhh yooooo-hoooo". We also carry a candle with a picture of the catholic Santa Maria on it. The tradition is that the candle has to remain lit, sitting by the disks to watch over them, until the disks are sent off to manufacturing. It gives us all something to look forward to during the last couple of weeks of a project which are always really hectic.
Well, earlier this week I heard that we cannot use the candle for the project that's wrapping up now. Why? Because someone complained that because the candle is a catholic symbol, they did not want to participate in the procession.
Now, let's go through what happened. This person, for whatever reason does not want to be involved with the catholic symbol. I have absolutely no objection to this, although I would point out that the inclusion of the catholic symbol is a joke, and there is not a shred of religion in the procession at all.
What I do object to is that this person complained to a supervisor, and as a result, everyone on the team suffers, since our personal, humorous ceremony, which has been a part of the NAV group for years, is ruined. The complainer has a certain feeling, and proceeded to force that on everyone else (indirectly, through a supervisor, so as to remain anonymous and escape the well-deserved blame that s/he would have taken), making us all act like him/her.
In case you're wondering, no I don't know who the complainer is. I honestly don't want to know, either.
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