Rant sent to L. this AM…oughta make his day. 😆
Now, for some industrial-strength bitching (heh):

Our ISP is Charter Communications, a huge corporation that serves all of the midwest, and several areas over the whole country. We’ve had Charter since 2001, and that’s basically because it’s the only broadband option except for crappy 1.5 DSL, provided by what used to be SBC, but then became SBC Yahoo!, and now (I believe) is ATT Yahoo! (who the fuck knows what it’s called anymore–welcome back, Ma Bell…or should that be T-1000?) Overall, I’ve been satisfied with Charter’s service; I suppose I’d give them an 8/10, which is pretty good for a huge corporation where they can’t even find you information unless you give your phone number, including area code (your name or street address won’t do it, not even the account number off the bill will help them find you).

Even when I was still a Windows user, I did not use Internet Explorer. I never used it; back in the 90s, I used Netscape, then I switched to Opera for a while, and have used Firefox since 0.8 was released around 2000 (was called Phoenix back then, until Phoenix BIOS complained). I like FF because not only is it more secure than IE, and allows me to easily block adverts (couldn’t bear the web otherwise), it’s much more customisable. The toolbar looks the way I want it to look with the buttons I want it to have, and the browser behaves the way I want it to behave. I install the extensions that I want to use, and don’t install the ones I won’t use, and about:config is always there if I want to make something work differently. The web….my way (mostly). Anyway, one feature of FF that I really like is the Keyword URL. If I’m too lazy (which is usually the case) to type in “www.ebay.com” (or whatever), then I just type “ebay” into the address bar and smack Enter. FF is set to search Google for whatever I’ve typed, and automatically open Google’s “I’m feeling lucky” result. In all probability, that’s where I wanted to go; “google” didn’t get into the dictionary to mean “to search, esp. with Google.com” for no reason. If I didn’t want FF to do that, I could just change the setting, but I’d always left it because I like that feature. Why take the time to type www.(whatever).com if I can just type the keyword, right?

A couple of weeks ago, I needed to go to some page (forgot where), so I just typed the keyword into the address bar. Instead of going directly to the page, I got a page titled “Charter Web Search – powered by Yahoo! Search”, complete with an entire fscking page of “Sponsored results” (i.e. advertisers paid for top ranking). I thought, “WTF?” and checked my FF settings just to make sure I hadn’t messed with something and forgot I’d done it. Nope, configuration still set so that it should give me Google’s “I’m feeling lucky” result. I tried a few more searches, and each time, got the stupid Charter search page. Then it dawned on me that FUCKING CHARTER HAS SOLD ITS CUSTOMERS OUT TO THAT HEAP OF STEAMING AD-RIDDLED DOGSHIT, YAHOO!. Fucking bastards! I don’t like Yahoo!, I have never liked Yahoo! and I will never like Yahoo!. I use Flickr because Yahoo! (so far) hasn’t managed to fuck it up too much since they bought it, but I do not now and have not ever used Yahoo! services because….I don’t fucking like Yahoo!. I hate their cluttered portal page, I hate their search with its billion links to advertising results before any potentially useful results, I hate their mail, I hate their abso-fucking-lutely everything. I am PISSED. I’m paying that goddamned Charter a not insubstantial amount of money every fucking month (they’re one of the most expensive ISPs in the country) to give me high speed Internet. I am not paying them to override the preferences I have set in my browser, and I’m for fucking sure not paying them to serve me up a page of advertiser-sponsored results when I’m looking for something. If I want to buy something, I can certainly find Froogle on my own. Google does offer sponsored results with it’s normal search (i.e. not “I’m feeling lucky”), but Google gives a few of them, and more if you want (I block the sponsored results anyway). Yahoo! gives an en-fucking-tire page whether you want them or not; if you want the potentially useful stuff, you scroll down, and on top of that, Charter’s stuck a big fscking banner at the top so I have to scroll even farther down for anything that might be a useful result. Yahoo! does not offer anything like “I’m feeling lucky”. Goddamn it, my computer is mine. My screen real estate is mine. My browser preferences are mine. My internet connection is paid for by me, and is mine unless I do anything that violates the TOS, which I do not. My search results should be mine as well, NOT be sold off to the highest bidding advertiser. Charter Pipeline is an ISP. Internet…Service…Provider. Not Advertising Services Provider; if I wanted this bullshit, I’d use AO-fucking-L! Grrrrr! I emailed Charter support (too pissed off to call or live chat) to tell them how much I disliked the new arrangement, and ask whether there’s any way to work around it, but I’m certain that there is not. If anyone looks up my account, I might get a reply (I’ve got *ahem* “notes” on the account that I suspect may contain the words “difficult customer” and possibly even “ill-tempered bitch” LOL), but otherwise, I’m probably stuck with it…unless I switch to ATT Yahoo! DSL, which I will do at the approximate time that King George converts to Buddhism.

I’m so fucking SICK of being bombarded by advertising every time I turn around. A half-hour TV show is twenty minutes, so even though I’m paying a substantial amount of money for my cable channels, one third of what I’m (ostensibly) paying for is advertising, and worse, the volume is at least one-third louder than the show itself. The adverts I don’t want and still have to pay for are shouting at me! Easily half of my snail mail is flyers, credit card offers and junk mail trying to sell me something. I bought a TeleZapper phone four years ago, and I’ve been on the Do Not Call list since the very day it became available, but still, telemarketers find enough loopholes in the laws that I may get as many as ten calls a day (average is about four or five). I can’t listen to the local radio station at all (not that I would–it’s owned by ClearChannel) because they play three songs, then three or four minutes of adverts. Billboards all over the damned town and along the highways, and the ones that don’t have actual adverts have the phone number you can call to get your advert placed on it! Magazines that used to be good are now nothing more than full page ad catalogues. Can’t go to a movie (assuming one were worth seeing) without 20 minutes of ads/trailers before the show starts. Product placement in movies–I couldn’t even finish watching I, Robot because I was so distracted (I liked the story and wanted to see how badly they’d screwed it for the movie). Targeted ads in games–a popular title goes for fifty or sixty bucks at release time, and still they want more? Were it not for FF, Adblock Plus/Filterset.G, NoScript and a hefty hosts file, I couldn’t stand to be on the Internet at all because there’s so much advertising! I don’t give my real email address out on any website, ever (I have “spamcatcher” Gmail accounts for that), and yet I still get spam and “special offers”. It’s got bad enough over the years that if you’re not on my whitelist, you’re probably not getting mail through to me unless I know ahead of time that you’re sending it and can intercept it. Goddamn it, if I want to buy something, I know how to go shopping, and if I don’t know what I want, I know how to compare product features and price, and how to find customer reviews. If I don’t want to buy it, then shoving it in my face is for goddamned sure not going to help your cause. There’s no escape, though; it’s everywhere, all of the time. So far, the park is safe, but the disc golf club was thinking about having local businesses sponsor the cost of concrete tee pads (so you don’t slip on wet grass or mud when you tee off), in exchange for…putting plastic plaques with the business name on the poles. Jesus Christ on a flying moped, juggling flaming batons! I just want the advertising to STOP! Enough!

Okay… *pant* *pant* Whew….I’m tired now.

EDIT: Okay, I found half a solution. At the bottom of the worthless search page, there is a tiny “About this page” link that takes you to a settings page that offers other search engine options, or a regular DNS error page (at least until I clear cookies the next time…*sigh*). I can (and did) set Google as my search, but still can’t use the keyword:URL function of FF. Fuckers!