How I would make those Internet wiseguys pay for their folly

References to Microsoft would be removed from all computer history books.

technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

How I would make those Internet wiseguys pay for their folly

Oct. 9, 1999

By Al Fasoldt
Copyright ©1999, Al Fasoldt
Copyright ©1999, The Syracuse Newspapers

   If I were king, I'd make my own Internet rules of the road, and everybody would be forced to follow them. They'd go like this:
   1. Internet Service Providers would be forbidden from pretending that you need to use Internet Explorer. They'd be required to tell you, in plain English, French, Spanish and Russian, that any Web browser works fine.
   2. Designers of Web pages that create windows that reopen themselves after you close them would be sentenced to 120 days in a pit full of slimy creatures. Show them no mercy.
   3. AOL would be fined $233 a day for every user who's compelled to use America Online's e-mail system. A worse e-mail program I've never seen. This would guarantee that AOL would wake up and provide its users with normal e-mail. (The rest of us have been using normal e-mail for a long time, so all you AOL losers would finally join the modern era.)
   4. All those totally free, no-frills and no-support Internet service providers would get a bill from me for all the support I've given to their users. Wake up, America. You get what you pay for.
   5. Web sites that sport little signs saying "Best viewed with Internet Explorer" or "Best viewed with Netscape" would be shut down forever and the site designers would be forced to write "I am a ninny" in tiny print on the back of a Linux T-shirt.
   6. The person who invented the Web cookie would be shipped to Antarctica.
   7. References to Microsoft would be removed from all computer history books in retaliation for Microsoft's claim that it was an Internet pioneer. Microsoft paid no attention to the Internet until after Windows 95 was introduced. (You didn't even get Internet connection software with Windows unless you bought it separately.)
   8. Anyone who sends an e-mail chain letter to someone else would be required to do 20 hours of community service -- in Barrow, Alaska, preferably in February. How can millions of otherwise sane people really believe that Bill Gates and Disney World are going to send them $5,000?
   9. The FBI would be required to begin a worldwide search to bring to justice the inventor of "wake up on ring," a PC "feature" that makes the computer turn itself on each time the phone goes ringy dingy. Any dumb snit can turn on your PC that way, and there goes all your security. Can you spell V-I-R-U-S?
   10. Compaq, which inherited the AltaVista search site when it bought Digital Equipment Corp., would be issued a "slowing" ticket -- that's the opposite of a speeding ticket -- for turning AltaVista into an advertisement for sloth. Paint dries faster. Whatever happened to plain old Web searching?