Turf Wars

[CYCLOPS]

TURF WARS

The latest: M$ fights with Kodak over default picture software in XP

I don’t know about you, but I am fed up to my eyeballs with every piece of software in my machine waging a constant battle for supremacy. Gone are the days of the computer when it was an infant and all you had to do was feed it some software and change the diaper on occasion. Now the computer has become a full fledged adolescent with all your programs wanting to go off and do things on their own no matter what mommy and daddy say.

Why is it that every program I install, load, run, use, wants to be the default whatever?
I am really sick of that little box that keeps constantly reminding me that this is not my default whatever for this function and would I like to make it the default. I already said NO once! The thing has the attention span of a three year old and five minutes after you tell it no it promptly asks again. I said no, I mean no, and if you ask me again I wish I could spank your butt because I’m really starting to get annoyed!
M$ could do us all a really big favor by putting this in a control panel app where you could make all your default choices and require a PIN number lock in order to change it!
If I never saw that damn box again I would be happy.

Phone home ET. Auto-update was really cool when it first came out. I remember being greatly impressed the first time a program went off on its own and ran an update.
Great ideas, like crabgrass, take root and spread. Like crabgrass taking over the lawn, this proliferation of self updating programs has gotten to the point where the modem is busier than a phone booth at summer camp. All the little kiddies line up and start fighting over who gets to call mommy first. If you are stuck with a dialup connection, expect to wait in line a long time before your turn comes. If you are blessed with an always on cable or DSL, your programs spend more time on the web than you do! Not only do all these programs constantly access the web to phone home, they don’t tell you what the call is about. They may be doing a simple update or they may be sending information about you and your computer back to home base. The age of gathering targeted marketing information means that almost all software now includes spyware designed to gather information about you and send it home! Some even crash out and hang the system because you have denied them permission to call home and won’t give up trying until you let them!
Convenience, you call this convenience? Ok, so the auto-update saves me a little time by refreshing the program. Lost is the countless time you spend because the program has now convinced the OS and all the other software that it’s a new version. Back to that default box again. The firewall thinks it’s a new program so back to “do you want to allow this program to access the web”. Not to mention other settings and interrelated items that have to be reconfigured. Tommy changed his shirt and now the other kids won’t play with him anymore!
I’ll run manual updates myself, thank you. If… I can find the damn box to turn these off!

It’s my computer damn it! Keep your stinkin’ paws off!
There’s a turf war going on all right. What all these programmers fail to understand is that this computer is MY turf! I’ve spent countless hours setting this thing up the way I want it. The desktop is mine. The Systray is mine. The menu structure is mine. I wish there was some form of digital No Trespassing sign! NO, you may NOT add your program to my startup group. NO, you may NOT put your stinking little icon in my systray. NO, you may NOT splatter your icons all over my desktop. NO! NO! NO!
Fortunately, there are a few freebie utility programs that can block some of this and most of the programs now have check boxes in the install to give you a choice of adding or not adding these items. But, and there’s always a but, if you fail to pay close attention to the install process most of these programs are defaulted to spray their icons, shortcuts, pop up or pull down menus throughout your system. You can spend a lot of time after the fact hunting down and killing all this garbage! Some of these programs won’t even install or run correctly unless you let them have their way! Sorry! It’s my turf and if that’s the way you want to be about it then you won’t live in my machine! I’ve actually uninstalled and dumped programs that refuse to do it my way.

Changes, changes, always changes! Every install, every selection, every modification causes some kind of change, and not always for the better. Even legitimate updates and instructions received over the web when a program calls home can have a ripple effect like throwing a large rock into a puddle. How thoughtful! Program X decided that it should change a specific configuration for me all by itself so I won’t have to be bothered!
Of course NOWHERE does it tell me what it did and what it changed while I spend the next two weeks hunting down and eliminating the damage it caused. Program X is running happy as a clam but program Y and Z are throwing a temper tantrum now and crashing the system. Even if I take a knife to program X, the damage is done and I have to hunt it down to be rid of it.
Three weeks or pure aggravation and frustration all because @home or IE6 decided, on its own, that I wanted to use the proxy server! Browser crashes, pages not loading, system lockups, anger levels growing by the day. Hours spent chasing down and identifying strange and mystical files deep in the system looking for the error all to find one simple little check box in a menu I never thought of looking at and found quite by accident!
There ought to be a law! Any program that changes any configuration setting should be required by law to have a readme.txt with a specific list of what heinous acts it just performed on your system, where to find them, how to undo them, and the name, phone number, and email address of the programmer who wrote this crap so you can identify a target for revenge!
But then, if you could get your hands around the neck of some of these programmers there wouldn’t be too much new software coming out.

So about that turf war… IT’S MY COMPUTER! LEAVE ME ALONE! HANDS OFF!