Still Eggplant

You know why I don’t use My Space? It’s because so many goddamned pages have automatic music that starts up! I hate automatic music. Didn’t that go out some time around 1998 with Front Page designs?

I use my computer to play music. I use it to play DVDs. I use it to watch television captures. I watch videos on YouTube and Google. I listen to my NPR through podcasts on my computer. And then I go to some godawful, heavily loaded, poorly designed web page that has that person’s favorite song set up to play as soon as I click over to the page. I’m listening to the Sunday puzzle from NPR and all of a sudden some dance re-mix plays right over the latest clue! I get mad, mad, mad!

This has got to stop. It’s an infestation. Just because I go to your web page I should not be forced to listen to your music. If I’m interested in your music, let me click on it. But don’t force me to listen to it!

And the sites that encourage this should be shot. Or rather the site owners who set up their sites to encourage this. I use tabs for my computer, damnit! So, I could be listening to one person’s stuff on one tab when I click over to another tab and get slammed by someone else’s musical choice.

Well, people being good netizens probably is not going to happen. So, Firefox, can you help us out here? Please, set it up so that I can turn off the automatic music loading. I want to stop feeling like I’m being accosted by web sites. And while you’re at it, stop automatic video loading. While not as egregious, it can still be an annoying problem. Sometimes I got to an innocent seeming site and before I know it’s loading up a 20 MB video that I have no intention of watching causing me frustration and costing me time having to stop it.

Somebody, please do something! Invasive sounds must be stopped!

Technorati Tags: ettiquete, firefox, front page, google, internet rant, myspace, netiquette, NPR, racism, real player, youtube

Everyone who is for gay marriage should read this article in Slate. Essentially, it's author, William Saleten, argues that the reason that marriage isn't as well supported as, say, gays in the military, is that marriage is not seen as a right but as a privilege. Marriage is seen as the bedrock of civil society. No matter that the facts are that divorce is tearing this bedrock down bit by bit. It still maintains that mythology.

This tells me that gay marriage advocates need to look at a different tact in terms of advocating for it. People resent going through the courts because it feels like an end run around this very important issue. Perhaps there's a way to reposition marriage. Perhaps there's a way to reposition why gays are wanting marriage. Either way something needs to change in the approach.

I've long thought it was too soon for that. Let's be incremental. Let's get some of the other things done first.

Technorati Tags: gay, gay marriage

Right now Congress is considering ways that use of the Internet might be taxed. I know there have been lots of things like this out there before. But this time it is coming from the pipe. That is, the telecoms, the ones who control access to the Internet, are requesting that bigger players pay a “tax” for their usage of the Internet. It’s not a consumer tax. It’s not really a tax but a levy, I suppose. But it could really change the way that people get their information on the Internet.

For more information about this awful plan, go here. Read up on it. Sign a petition. Call your legislator. Whatever you can do, do it!

Technorati Tags: internet tax, net neutrality, netroots, att, moveon

I’ve been reading an awful lot about the Netroots and their disgust with the Powers That Be. I’ve also been reading a lot from the centrists folks who trust the PTB. Clearly there’s a divide here. And that divide just isn’t going to work for very long. Something has to give.

Technorati Tags: daily kos, gay marriage, illegal, immigrants, MyDD, netroots, powers that be, abortion, vouchers

Continue reading The Netroots vs. The Establishment…

There are a few things out there that have been bothering me of late. And I propose to tackle them here. One at a time. So, look out, cause I’m back.