New favorite 'net radio station

Red Mercury, and not just because for their 192kbps of chewy goth/industrial goodness, but because of this footer on their site:

"This site has been designed to work best with Firefox, Safari and Opera. You need a web browser that supports transparency in iframes, and PNG. You also need Java and Java script enabled. We are not responsible for how fucked up it looks in other piece-of-shit browsers. To comply to our standards, download FireFox NOW."

Now, they may not have the most advanced site in the world (Java? iframes? "Java script?!"), but they have their rivet-adorned hearts in the right place.

I </3 IE

A contribution by: The Ingenious Teresa Lea

IE (aka: Internet Explorer) represents all that is wrong with this world... stupid people.

If by some chance you're confused brain thought "why?" after the previous statement, then please read on - this story is for you.

Imagine yourself in Boston - I know it's hard since you have never been there, but work with me here.

So, you are in Boston and you need to go somewhere, so you find the closest T station - because who wouldn't want to ride the T while in Boston?? Not I. But first, you need T tickets. Luckily, there is a very handy kiosk that will allow you to buy your tickets to ride the T, so you decide to avoid the lines and use the kiosk.

As you go through the menus, you realize that the kiosk isn't selecting the options you are selecting. Instead, the kiosk is picking the selection below your selection. You become a bit frustrated and go back to the beginning of the menu so that you can allow for this discrepancy and get the right ticket for your ride on the T. You go through the menu again and halfway through you realize the kiosk is now picking the selection above your selection - as you go to start over, you hear an announcement of your oncoming train. This time you begin to rush which makes you even more frustrated, you have to make this work - but alas, you can't make it work.

Completely pissed that you've now missed your ride on the T (and really, who wouldn't be completely pissed that they were not able to ride the T?) so you make your way over to the ticket window to ask for a manager. The manager is flabbergasted! She takes you over to the kiosk to see what in the world is going on, and the kiosk walks her right through the menu system, allowing her to purchase your tickets with no problems.

Now you feel crazy, so you try again with the manager looking on so that you can show her that you aren't in fact crazy or stupid. And BINGO! the kiosk is behaving badly again! You exclaim to the manager "SEE!! SEE!! I told you!" and the manager replies, "No sir, I see you pressing the wrong buttons...". In a fit of anger you tackle the manager, enraged by her accusation!! Other passengers come to her rescue pulling you and your crazy ass off of the manager. In the tussle your glasses fall off and break... you've had the glasses since 1973 so you aren't too worried about it.

In your maddened frenzy you pull away from the other passengers and run to the kiosk to show them. You quickly go through the menu and say "SEE! This machine is making me mad!" and you realize - the machine is working... it was your glasses.

In that moment the passengers overwhelm you and you wake up in a looney bin and live out the rest of your days.

This is what it is like making websites for the stupid people that are still using IE - we waste time and go mad trying to make the sites work for some stupid jackass wearing outdated, shitty ass glasses.

Get some new fucking glasses asshat, THEY ARE FREE - so we can be productive with our time and solve real issues, like world peace, hunger and poverty.

That is all.

You may want to think about switching from IE -BBC

You know that huge fucking hole in IE that has had everyone talking lately? The most recent one, I mean. BBC News took that story and put that shit up on its front page, as the highest technology news story: "Serious security flaw found in IE"

I'll forgive their headline writing on this one, which should have gone a little more like,"IE users seriously fucked," or,"IE broken enough to lose second browser war."

"Microsoft says it has detected attacks against IE 7.0 but said the "underlying vulnerability" was present in all versions of the browser.

Other browsers, such as Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Safari, are not vulnerable to the flaw Microsoft has identified."

One of the nice things about the article, aside from its pure fucking domination of the technology news section, it offers direct links to other browsers for you to download.




It also has a nice little feedback form so you can tell BBC exactly how much IE has a long, painful history of security vulnerabilities and a bad fucking habit of not actually fixing their shit. Just keep the profanity to a minimum if you want to see your comment even get close to published...or pile it in there to give them a good sense of the "FUCK YOU IE AND YOUR USER-RAPING COMPANY" way you might feel.

A Very Manley Contribution

Our first contribution comes from Josh Manley (he used the pun first, so don't blame me for that shit), whose site greets people with a typical web developer's life story, and a rallying cry to spread word:

if you are using ie...

...The web browser you are using does not comply to the web standards of the internet developed and maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). As you may or may not know IE *shiver is the worlds most widely used web browser for one reason and one reason alone. IE *shiver which was created by Microsoft is shipped with every Windows *shiver operating system which is shipped with over 90% of all computers sold around the world. By default IE *shiver owns the web browser market.

"Most people don't even know that they don't know." -Ron Burton That basically sums up the issue at hand. Now you may be wondering why this is such a problem. The answer is simple: Because IE defies web standards and in turn the web itself. Please allow me to elaborate.

When I am writing a website I use Firefox and validate my code frequently to ensure it validates under these standards. In the past I would have to then go and check the site in IE and tweak my code to conform to this corrupt browser. Then re validate and repeat this process until my code validates. I have grown tired of this process and find it incredibly vexing.

Microsoft for one reason or another seems to be bent on world domination. They have turned their backs on the world and made it harder for all web developers by intentionally ignoring the standards created to make the web a better place. So what do we do? We boycott IE. Download any of the many free alternatives to IE. Firefox is a good place to start. Tell your friends. Tell you family. Tell your neighbors. Spread the word. Don't conform. Don't be ignorant.

Microsoft says IE6 has ignorant users who know nothing of security

A fantastic quote from the fantastic Register, which features Matt Crowley, Program Manager for IE "extensibility" at Microsoft:

'Why are so many people still using the security-challenged IE6? Crowley gives you the answer you already have. "People who use IE are not the most tech-savvy people. If you ask them about what security they have in place, they think you're talking about your house. It's more ignorance than anything else."'

This seems like a nice, big "FUCK YOU" to Microsoft's key partners. Only companies that suck Microsoft off on a regular basis would still use IE6. Only companies who have fundamentally broken intranet applications which rely on IE6's inherently fucked up "features" would need to force IE6 up the asses of their employees. Only companies with scores of Windows admins around to actually prime the asses of the new employees and do the rough shoving would fall into this category of "not the most tech-savvy people" of which Mr. Matt Program-Manager-at-Microsoft Crowley speaks.

Comment of the week

This week's comment struck me as impressively creative simply due to how many fucking rants this anonymous commenter tried to cram into 75 words.

Well, microshit is doing it's best, and they have bettered any famous criminals to date, short of the Bushyboy admin...........organized crime at its best, thats the way to define vista and ie.........but, alas, in amerca, we now support criminals all the time, just look at the bailouts as an example........

In reality, micrshit is run by a geek, who is wanting to get revenge on the world cuz he's mad and hates himself

Anonymous managed to shove "microshit," criminal behavior, the Bush administration, organized crime, Vista, IE, the United States' social problems, bailouts, and the world/self hating behavior of Bill Gates all into the same, compact comment, like a condensed rock of hate, shit out at the site of an old post. Er...well done? Now go get some fucking ritalin and keep your thoughts on the same topic for more than a few words at a time. I see some good, old fashioned, Microsoft-raping commentary in there dying to get out.

"Compatibility View" "Improvements"

Yeah, I quoted the shit out of that motherfucker, and for good goddamn reason, too:

"Compatibility View"

If your site fails so hard, IE8's wild and drastic use of almost as many standards as other browsers makes it look like shit, Microsoft gives you the "fuck standards" option to make users of IE8 actually use IE7 instead. Fuck them for upgrading.

"Improvements"

If you have a shit site that needs fuck standards mode, and you have a lot of users, Microsoft already knows you can't code for shit. They've had enough beta users flag your sorry, broken ass that they'll preload a list of sites that suck.

So, I first had the reaction of,"Doesn't that defeat the entire fucking purpose of rendering in standards mode by default? Like, by making it not the default?"

But then...I had a fucking fantastic revelation.

This list (navigate to res://iecompat.dll/iecompatdata.xml in the next release of IE8) will go out to every user of IE8, including developers, managers, and the good people at the Web Standards Project, who will then have their very own, pre-fucking-broadcast, live-updated shit list of embarrassment. Mr. Dickens, Program Manager of IE, even called out a few to start us off, saying,

"Looking at our instrumentation, there were high-volume sites like facebook.com, myspace.com, bbc.co.uk, and cnn.com with pages that weren’t working for end-users with IE’s new standards compliant default."

Now, I know they have developers capable of making their shit work in IE8 (except maybe MySpace, which begs the question of what the fuck does a MySpace page look like when it renders like shit?), so don't take this as a call to come down on them like a fuckton of bricks. It does raise the question of why they couldn't even manage to put up their own flag for fuck standards, but maybe they didn't see this advertisement of their site's dirty laundry coming. Maybe some dumb-ass fucking manager decided they couldn't spare the time or effort or bandwidth for that single goddamn header, let alone actually allowing developers to improve their shit.

So next time you talk to someone who works for one of these sites, just mention this casually and see what kind of response you get. You may want to duck, if managers force this humiliation of rubbing shit in their face and then having it advertised to all of their peers and potential new employers.

I, for one, cannot fucking wait for this feature.

Comment of the week

While tempted out of nothing but pure fucking selfishness to choose TeresaLea's declaration of her love for me, I decided that I simply cannot overlook the following gem from one "Rev. I M Pissed," whose use of the tongue strikes me as purtier'n a ten dollar whore.

Thank the great browser gods I have arrived in Nirvana. I have been writing and rewriting and every one of the browsers, except one, reads and displays what I designed. Guess which one. Out of 4 browsers, the almighty, do I hear a Amen, for the self appointed god of the internet. The Great, the one and only, IE.

Yes, that's right, that one and only, the largest, the biggest, Cock Sucking, Mother Fucking piece of hardened Shit, that mortal man has ever devised, and brought us to the lowest depths of hell.

Now go my children, and spread the word, the gospel of standards, I say standards, of the mighty browsers that support those standards, and throw back, the demon, yes, I say the demon, IE back to the fiery Hell where it was begot.....

Yeah, I think I need to bring a little more attention to some of the utterly fantastic rants and cries of,"Thank fucking god/satan/squid I've found others like me!"