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Ah, the joy of ripping someone or something annoying to shreds, even virtually, is inherenly satisfying. Here I let you in on a little piece of that which drives us all nuts. For those of you who share my need to express concern at some of the utter stupidities of this world, feel free to email your laments to be posted right beside my own.
3/27/00 - Hosting, Firewalls and Bi-metal Hole Saws Why is it that every time it looks like you've finally found a good thing, it manages creeps out of the shadows and really looks like Michael Jackson with his hair gel on fire...everything im going to bitch about right now can be classified as exactly that: a wolf in sheep's clothing. When I started laying the plans for this page, I was quite excited about the things I was eventually going to offer. Of course, for all this stuff, there had to be tons of space. No problem...or atleast it shouldn't have been a problem, in a world where you can sign-up for free webspace in under five minutes. But most of these spaces are small and sparse, so you can imagine how I felt when I came upon 50megs.com. How could 50 megs of free hosting be bad? Tis but a simple task when your company ideology is "screw thy customer". First Impressions Almost as soon as I started testing out my page I noticed it...right there at the top of my previously pristine page lay a gigantic blotch, an ugly mammoth box dwarfing the tiny ad centered within it. People who came to this page would see no page without scrolling down. I understand that they need to make money off these ads, but had anyone from their marketing department actually graduated high school, he/she would realize that annoyingly placed banners just make people ignore and hate them more. They seriously need to take a cue from Geocities on this respect, with ads that are not large to begin with, and automatically become less obtrusive if you show no interest. But thats not all I have to say about the wors free hosts on the planet... Yes, I know what you're saying? What else do we have for our sporting contestants Johnny? Johnny: 50megs.com offers nothing less than the tightest file size and type limitations! Even better, they automatically alter your code when its displayed so that none of your links are direct to files! Hell, lets give these people more than twice the average size of free hosting, and not allow them to link files larger than 2 MB from their directory! And thats not all! Johnny, what do we have for our grand prize winners? Johnny: we have nothing less than an automatic deletion of over 40 megs of your files you spent 2 hours uploading! And we'll throw in a page that says it will register your homepage with search engines but actually doesn't work...absolutely free! Sure you say, he's overreacting. I have signed up for multiple free-hostings, and this is bar-none the worst I have ever seen. So many places out there like Geocities, Angelfire and Tripod offer decent hosting for the exact same low price of $0, so it is my opinion that this crap is inexcusable. Firewalls, DSL and Such... You know, sometimes I wonder why the computer industry ever creates anything, seeing as how the uses for these creations are always twisted by some greedy giant or another. Take the firewall for example: to the extent of my knowledge, the firewall was originally created to stop malicious packets, designed to down or disrupt a server or user's computer, from reaching their destination. This in itself is an excellent idea, but it didnt take long for this to turn into, "say...if we can stop malicious packets, could we stop...dare I say it...other packets???". So, as every ISP drooled over the possibility, yours truely was busily signing up for DSL service to La Casa to end the three-way fight over the phone line. Thats when I discovered just how cheap and ruthless ISPs are really becoming. After completeing the installation process, I was taken aback to discover that my IP address was local (read: doled out by a proxy). Plus I discover that I am stuck behind a firewall that allows no unsolicited packets, so ther went my idea for a DSL-backed FTP right away. I soon discovered that just about every ISP offering a reasonable rate was using the same cheapass scheme, leaving me no optiones except to enjoy my fast downloads. But what really pisses me off is this: these ISPs DO offer DSL without a Proxy and allow unsolicited packets. What floors me is what they charge!
Im sorry, did I miss something here? Residential ADSL with 640kbps down and 90 up runs $50. This crap starts at $120 plus the cost of renting the router, and offers only 170kbps up/down! Worst of all, they call this Business DSL...theyre catering this to businesses! Of course, nobody ever considers that at your average medium-sized office, %90 of all internet traffic is DOWNLOADS. Yes, whats most ridiculous about this is the only thing that can benefit from it is a webserver or an FTP server. And when you consider the cost of decent hosting for a small website, the price is a ripoff (I say small because any major retail site would saturate a 170kbps connection) And what about me, your average joe who realized that even his 90kpbs upload is underutilized? Well, thanks to savvy marketing departments and a little thing called a firewall, hes SOL. More on the Illustrious Firewall For one shining momemnt, I consisered the battle between myself and the firewall to have come to a mutual stalemate. But no, that would have been too easy. When I arrived the college campus I call my home 8 months out of the year, I was astounded to find a sparklingly fast T1 line for our use. Two years later, with the total of networked computers %400 higher than my freshman year, that same T1 was brough to a standstill. Yes, its true, the many students on our campus had discovered streamaing media. And just like on other college campuses, the largest and most repeated offenders were the technophiles who did not realize that a "lowly" 150kbps streamed video clogged up %10 of out total internet bandwidth! This included the venerable pr0n, currently the most popular leech of download bandwidth. But the college's cheapass Board of Trustees said "that bandwidth is not being used for educational purposes...so you get no more...hah!" Bandwidth Wars Enter: Napster. What happens when technophiles without a care in the world over their bandwidth use find a program that actually makes it easy for them to download mp3's? INSTANT INTERNET CONNECTION SATURATION! Faced with the fact that our lowly T1 was outgunned, the Trustees broke down and bought a second T1, and had it installed over Christmas break. (yay!) Napster Strikes Back We have the media to thank for this one. Just like school shootings (topic of a future rant), the media (also a future rant) got one whif of Napster and blew it all out of proportion over my Chistmas break. Now Napster wasnt a secret shared among friends; CNN and every paper in the country made certain every idiot knew what it did and where to get it. And what of our second T1 line? Well , lets just say that in under a week after returning, Napster and pr0n managed once again to bring our 3.18 mbps connection to its knees. Return Of The Firewall Ahh, yes, I mentioned something about a firewall at the beginning of this rant, right? Well, now it has come back to haunt me, for the Trustees have decided to REGULATE internet download bandwidth here on campus! The worst part is, the percentages are UNREAL: 10AM to 10PM: Napster and pr0n are allocated %10 of total bandwidth, regarless of traffic levels. 10PM to 10AM: Free For All. Guess the firewall gets the last laugh...
To be finished at a later date. Got a rant of your own? Send it here. |