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Top 10 Internet Annoyances

2003.01.14

Here are ten things you see on the Internet that sort of annoy me. Everyone writes one of these "Top 10" lists around this time of year. It's compulsory, like dropping AOL when you get high speed Internet.

1. The term "Blog"

With apologies to Ren and Stimpy and various "neojournalists:"

What types down stairs wearing old underwear

and leaves you in a fog?

What's great for a laugh and cuts downloads in half?

It's bLog, bLog, bLog!

 

It's bLog, bLog, it's long, it's wordy, it's weird.

It's bLog, bLog, I think I'll stop shaving my beard!

Everyone reads a blog! You're gonna love 'em, bLogs!

Come on and write your blog! Everyone needs more bLogs!

2. Pop-Positions

The only thing I find more annoying than pop-up ads are the various mangled terms used to describe the variants. Pop-under, pop-over, pop-after, pop-before, pop-in, pop-out, pop-left, pop-top, hop-on-pop, pop-up video, soda-pop, don't-call-me-pop, pop-up, pop-down, pop-it-all-around....

If you've never seen a modern American male teenager attempt to run across campus while wearing stylin' hip hop jeans, you just have not lived to see it all. One hand behind holding up the pants while the other flails helplessly attempting to maintain balance. While carrying a backpack. In the rain. More fun than a rabid squirrel in a tent revival. Pull your pants up, kid, while they'll still stay up of their own volition.

3. Use of chat room spelling on papers and advertising.

Sry this is l8, and so on. This is about as goofy as the trend of young male teenagers wearing their pants down under their derrieres.

I have the same exact reaction to people who are attempting to spell words by typing upside down and backwards. 7734, son, I used to do that with my old Casio.

I really shouldn't write this stuff after watching a Tommy Lee Jones movie.

4. Microsoft and innovation in the same sentence.

'Nuff said.

5. Ease = Cheap

If Microsoft's IIS is cheaper than a free Linux server because its server software is easier to use, then logic forces me to conclude that an Xserve is the cheapest server of them all - for the same reason.

6. Did you know Satan's contractual obligations with Mike Dell end in Q2 2003?

7. Niches

Computer articles that use the new buzzword for Apple: "niche" is the new "beleaguered," only with less hate mail.

8. Internet Research

"Internet" and "research" in the same sentence makes my blood boil. Just watch: "I got all of my references from www.google.com." BAM! Owwww, that hurts.

9. Cause of the Day

Soapbox issues that seem really important at one time but not at all at another. Mine, for example, is the banning of rumor site writers from Macworld press functions. What's up with that now? Not much. Just look at GraphicPower, which was such a hotbed of activity a few months ago for MWNY. Kid's off on a completely different tangent now. Ahh, youth.

10. At Number Ten

End of the year Top 10 lists, especially those that have contrived items just to round off the lists. Puh-leeze. At least we waited for the new year to publish ours. At least most of ours are related to the Internet one way or another.

Recent Lite Sides

• What if Apple thought like a PC company?, 11.01. Apple has innovated and blazed its own trail. But what if it had followed the path taken by the PC copycats?
• How Microsoft can turn Vista lemons into lemonade, 10.22. How Microsoft could profit by no longer allowing manufacturers to sell new PCs with Windows XP installed.
• iPods that never passed beta or focus groups, 09.13. "What most Apple fans don't realize is that there were a few iPod variants that never made it out of beta testing and the focus group stage."
• More in the The Lite Side index.

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• Wouldn't life be great with an iSlate?, John Hatchett, Recycled Computing, 07.04. PDAs and smartphones are too small for some tasks, full-fledged Tablet PCs are overkill, and ebook readers are too limited. Apple has the tech to own this niche.
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• More links in our archive.

<go to the Lite Side index>

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