Welcome to another edition of "In the Scope". In this column I
talk about things that piss me off and that I think should be in the crosshairs of a
sniper scope. As per usual, I'm this is not a threat toward any person or thing, this is
just a means to express my opinion. After all, they're just words.
In this edition, I will be looking at the nuisances of the internet, namely pop-up windows
and spam. The internet is one of the greatest things that Al Gore…errrr….I mean
man has ever created. With it you can keep in contact with family and friends all over the
world, download movies and songs that haven't even been released yet, keep yourself up to
date on all varieties of information, shop for almost anything you would ever want, and
even find yourself a girlfriend/boyfriend. With all that is great about the internet,
there are some things that make "Surfing the Web" an unpleasant and frustrating
experience. One of these things is the ever-annoying pop windows. These things seriously
piss me off. You'll be there browsing the net when you get to a site and all of a sudden
another window comes up. That's not much of a problem with a fast connection, but when you
are on a 56k and it takes damn near 5 minutes for a window to download fully, another
window trying to feed it's info through the small-ass bandwidth of a phone line really
slows your web surfing experience. On my cable modem, it's become nothing more than a
minor nuisance. Except of course for the time I made the mistake to venture onto a Warez
site and was the unwilling participant in a pop-up gang-raping. Window after window would
pop up after the previous was closed, it lacked any form of sleep. If I wanted to deal
with pop-up, I'd go visit a porn site, I don't want any hassle when I'm trying to download
pirated music and videos damnit!!! The plus side was that the annoyance of pop-up was
limited to a handful of sites. Most if not all of the sites that I visited were pop-up
free. However, in the last several months, more and more of my favorite sites have begun
to have pop-up including IGN and Yahoo. I understand that pop-up provides a small means of
income to the sites that have it, but seriously how many of you actually take time and
read the page that pops up? As soon as a pop-up site opens, I immediately close it and I
imagine that many of you do the same. So how much money can these organizations be making
by having pop-up on other sites? Not only do I not want their products, but in most case
just having their organization have pop-up windows makes me not want to have anything to
do with them. And what's up with these stupid ass wireless surveillance type camera pop-up
windows that are everywhere?!! What, is there not quite enough porn on the web as is, they
need to market a device that to create a surplus?!! What I find amusing is the add, that
says, "For security and fun". Security huh? Yeah, cuz I always feel secure with
a camera the size of a ballpoint pen making sure no one is at my front door. I'm sure the
women who are being filmed in a dressing room, because they can't see the lipstick sized
camera feel real secure when they finally see themselves on the internet. And the wireless
aspect allows the person filming to be a good distance away, what a great idea! I'm glad
to see that we are creating technology to make it easier for perverts to spy on people. As
for fun, how much fun can it be. Sure it's fun for the people watching, but not for the
people who are most likely getting spied on with it. Why don't they just put a slogan that
denotes it's real intentions, "For spying and invading privacy". And the add
always shows a girl in some form of undress, which just goes to prove my point these
cameras serve no purpose other than to create porn. I also find it odd that a site like
Yahoo would allow this camera window to pop up. It would be expected if it was a porn
site, but apparently the makers of the camera thought that Yahoo would give their product
credibility. How wrong they are. If these organizations would just use banners instead of
pop-up windows, I wouldn't despise them so much. Banners don't hurt anyone, you can simply
ignore a banner, but the pop-up is right in your face.
Another aspect of the almighty internet that pisses me off is spam. No, not that shatty
rendered meat in a can, I'm talking bout the unsolicited crap emails that always seem to
end up in my inbox. Unfortunately, spam doesn't like to travel alone, for me they always
show up in dozens. And it's always the same crap, better finances, get out of debt, you've
been approved for a great new credit card, come see me naked, blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah. Ok, to start off, I'm still in college so haven't quite yet racked up any debt, but
how bout you go bother Tom Shook, that guy's middle name is debt. Second, I despise credit
cards, I believe they were forged by Lucifer himself. I'm not diluted, I know that I will
eventually have to get a credit card, but it sure as hell won't be because I got an email
from them that drives me to go and get one. Finally, I despise the stupid ass emails from
porn sites. Most people don't need directions on how to get to porn sites. Hell, you
miss-spell one word in a search engine or web address and you'll find yourself staring at
some weird-ass farm sex site. I find it very shady that web sites that I give my email to
for purposes of registration or something similar decide that my right to not be harassed
by numerous web sites, is less important than the money they get paid for handing my
address out. Much like the pop-up windows, I just despise whatever organization it is even
more for sending my these e-mails. I've used up all my address blocks I can on the junk
mail I've got so far, and all I can do now is delete the several pieces of crap mail I get
every couple hours. Once in a while I find an email that is nice enough to include an
unsubscribe link, though I never subscribed in the first place at least I can cross my
name off of one mailing list. I like the fact that some organizations hire people to send
you the information. They figure that you can't block them all and after a while you'll
give in….yeah, right. The organizations themselves also do this themselves in a way.
You'll block their address, and then you'll get an email the next day from the same
people, but with the address modified slightly. I wish I could find these people that are
hired to do this and beat them with a sock full of quarters. They are no better than
telemarketers, cuz at least telemarketers only solicit ya a couple times a month as
opposed to a couple times every hour. All in all, I like spam e-mail about as much as I'd
like to take a bite out of a big greasy chunk 'o' spam "meat".
My final gripe with the internet will be kept short as I have bitched about it before.
That complaint is, the stupid ass online subscriptions namely IGN Insider. These things
lack more sleep than an insomniac on Vivran. They bitch about how they have little to no
money and that paying to view the info they post is the only way they can keep their site
up and running. Here's an idea, why don't you just fire some of your overpaid wise-assed
staff members. We here at Gyeah.com do this shite for free, cuz we love to do it, that and
because compared to a lot of the rest of the internet, our opinions and rants seem almost
sane. Insider used to be a minor nuisance, because it only allowed subscribers to certain
features, but there have been times when I've gone to IGN and not been able to read one
article, because they were all Insider only. If IGN keeps this up, they are gonna be sh*t
out of luck, cuz there are many other sites like Gamespot that give you the same info and
sometimes even more for free. I can understand how IGN makes it so only Insiders get the
newest pics and videos first, cuz there are die hard gamers who will pay to see that two
days earlier than anyone else. However, I find it to be one of the dumbest things in the
world to make reviews Insider only for a couple days. So they expect me to pay $25-30 to
hear their opinion?!!! Once again in comparison, here at Gyeah, we give our opinions to
you for free, in some case you don't even want to hear our opinions, but they are there so
you can pick and chose from amongst them. Another point is that why should we pay for
opinions that have in the past proved to be quite unreliable, Crazy Taxi and Fusion Frenzy
are good examples. Plus the fact that most the people that read game sites are gamers
themselves, each with their own taste in games. It just makes idea of paying for opinions
even more inane. I'm not saying I'm gonna boycott IGN, I'll be there tonight and every
night to see what new info I can get my greedy little hands on, but you aren't going to
find me paying $25 for any of that info either.
Well, I think I've rambled aimlessly for quite long enough now, but now you see where some
of my anger and cynicism come from. All these aspects of the internet really piss me off
and I believe are quite unnecessary. After all, I pay for access for the internet, as we
all do. So why should we have to put up with any of this sh*t? Well in my opinion, we
shouldn't. So in conclusion, I believe you should all stick with a website that doesn't
send you spam, that doesn't have pop-up, and that gives you all the information that you
cannot live without. No I'm not talking about Gregpix, I mean Gyeah.com. Long live
Gyeah!!!!!
Voice
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