|
Dan Daily and The "Dan Daily" Sites presents Living With Your Computer To go to the Main Tips Site; Click Here For A Printer Friendly Version of this Page; Click Here
To stop the music, click the stop button below.
Don't Forget To Check Out The Store! Click--Here
Hey Gang, the Members sites are over 30 times the size as these free sites. I have much, much more then just computer tips! Membership includes the free "Danny's Gold" CD! Check it out: Click Here
What Has Happened To My Beloved Internet? Written by: Dan Daily
Hi Gang! Today I'm doing something different. This is an editorial so to speak. Or a Plea, if you will... Let's go! .
"Who Needs a Rationale, When You Have Insanity?" A Chronology: I remember when I first got on the Internet, so long ago. I signed up for AOL (aol2) and the net really didn't do anything except supply information. I started beta testing for AOL, the new AOL3. It was way kewl. I could go to chat rooms and explore the AOL system as well as the net. Aol was growing. It's main web site was simple but nice. So was MSN's. If there was conflict with these two companies, it didn't show. The term Spam mail hadn't even been invented yet. I, like many, was doing "Danny's Daily's" in an email format. It was fun, and the magic of wonder was in the air! What's next? What will this Internet thing become? There were no answers but wow! what an exciting time to be alive and connected.
AOL 4 Then I tested AOL4. Wow! Pictures in email? Fonts and colors? Unbelievable. I could see the future evolving for Danny's Daily's. This was going to be great! No more just copy and paste, I could invent! Wow! The term spam mail had not only been invented by this time, but it was now becoming a real pain. And a new term was invented: "The New Economy," hadn't I heard this some place else?
AOL 5 Testing went really good, there were issues that AOL knew about in the software; they went ahead anyway and got sued for their short sightedness. Why would they do this? Perhaps listening to your beta people would be a good idea, isn't that why you have them? Spam now was way out of control; Congress was poised to outlaw it. Virus's were starting to make themselves known. Virus? Don't I go to the doctor's office for that??? The President of the United States said our economy was now recession proof. This was a "New Economy." There's that word again...
The Internet Boom! Oh, it was great alright. Companies were sprouting like flies! I was so proud to be on the vanguard of it all. I was so excited that we were making a real presence in the world. I was getting subscribers that were in their 90's, wow! The net had world attention, we were the darlings. But, all of a sudden, there were ads everywhere. And if I went to the net, screens would popup advertising this or that, then screens would popup from those when you tried to exit the popups! What the hell? Is my computer going insane? Does it really think I need Life Insurance, a larger penis or a new credit card? Is this the result of the boom? Is this the New Economy? I don't want any part of it...
Virus Alerts All of a sudden virus's were killing whole systems! Trojans were everywhere; seemingly from a bunch of children who had no supervision and never had a spanking in their life! Can this be real? Ads were everywhere, you couldn't move without getting plastered with them. AOL was full of them, all the sites were. The "Dan Daily" Sites was invented and it's "Prime Directive," NO ADS!" And I didn't and don't. But without ads, how is this thing going to support itself? It was a very disillusioning time, confusing and worst of all, a heartbreaker. What was happening to my Internet? Internet start up companies were at an all time high. I got DSL high speed broadband for my computer. It worked great! At first...
AOL 6 Was burning down so many computers it couldn't be real, could it? AOL actually released this piece of garbage? Meanwhile the net was going crazy. People were becoming multi-millionaires over night. How long could this commercialism last? Companies were coming out with more crap that would never sell, NEVER! Were they nuts? An Internet Appliance? You've got to be kidding. These companies were squandering hundreds of millions of R&D dollars. Pure craziness, I could have saved them so much money! All they had to do was ask. Who gets these asinine ideas anyway? What kind of people are these? Burning money for the sake of it? If this is the "New Economy" it's just a huge pile of bull and is going to crash mightily...
It Couldn't Last And with a mighty blow it all fell. Seemingly overnight these companies fell, and continue to fall like flies. You didn't know if a link would even work anymore, most didn't. Spam mail, at a rate so high, I couldn't have possibly imagined it. And Congress? Seemingly paid off to shut up about it! They claim these companies have as much right to spam your email box as they do your mail box at home. At least junk mail costs them something to make and send! The net was becoming nothing more then a banner!
The Aftermath: What's Left? The mighty have fallen, companies big and small all going under turning the landscape into a wasteland. No wonder new user rates are dropping like a rock. You can't go into a chat room anymore because the spam mail will fill your mailbox in an hour. A new screen name? I tried that, right under the welcome email from AOL was spam! How could that be? To quote my hero John C. Dvorak: "Well, the cult is dead, and the new economy is just the old economy. We're left with an Internet that is a spam-riddled shambles. We have streaming-media nonevents, thousands of dead dot-coms, broadband malaise, and a tech industry left in a mess." The "New Economy" has left me having to run Zone Alarm, Pop-Up Stopper, Ad-Subtract, Ad-Aware, and periodic visits to Housecall just to give my poor computer half a chance to even survive. Let's hope we don't have to go through this again anytime soon... No more "New Economies" Please! Danny
|
