Things I hate

Things I hate was Originally Posted on September 18, 2006 by lavarock

There are a few things that irritate me and I could scream!

1st, software that loads things that you don’t want, just because they get paid to do it. For example, if you load WinAmp, Real Player and others, you have to read each config screen closely. Some of these programs grey out items so you think they are disabled, yet you can still turn them off. One program has all the things on your screen disabled, but when you scroll down, there is stuff enabled that you may not want.

I loaded the new version of Google Earth and at the end of the installation, I hit one too many OK’s and ended up adding Google Search to me Firefox address bar. What this does is allows you to type a keyword in the address/location bar. If Firefox doesnot see a HTTP at the beginning, it sends the thing to Google to do a search. I personally HATE automatic searches from the address bar (see my previous post this week). I won’t even get into the problems you can have by searching for personal information in search engines. Recently, a serach engine search terms were posted on the internet and those terms contained names and social security numbers…

So it took me an hour to find out how to undo the search ability. Firefox talks about a config file which appears to no longer exist. I finally found if I typed “about:config” in the Firefox address bar, I could edit out the Google search criteria. WHEW!

By default, it you have a telephone or mailing address, you automatically receive spam. To take yourself off the junk Telemarketers list, go to http://donotcall.gov and register every telephone you have (cell, home, fax and yes, even voip numbers like Vonage and Packet8).

To remove your name from mailing lists, Clark Howard (ClarkHoward.Com) suggests this: http://clarkhoward.com/topics/mail_list_doc.html

If you are not already a faithful Clark listener or don’t read his website, I *HIGHLY* suggest it. Sometimes I even call in from Hawaii, just to get advice! Clark lives back in Atlanta, my previous home.

Anyway, that is enough for tonight.

Aloha for now!