New playground bullies: ISPs, software developers Analysis/Commentary Since December, when my ISP was taken over by a bigger ISP, my service has declined. Here's an e-mail I sent to my new bigger, supposedly better, ISP: Please be advised that I am NOT at all happy with the service I have been getting at blankety-blank.net -- constant disconnects, low bandwidth, and what appear to be blocked URLs.* I plan to write the FCC and the Better Business Bureau, get an alternate provider, and request a refund for the service I purchased from you. (*I was trying to find a free ISP, and many of the URLs weren't working. Are they intentionally blocked? Who knows.) Of course, who has time to write the FCC or BBB? Not me. This month, still fed up, I subscribed to Earthlink. Which only goes to show that if you try to take on a big ISP, you're up the creek without a paddle. No recourse, no-how. Who do you call? -- Yeah, I wish there was an ISP-buster. I wish even more that the government would start regulating software developers. Microsoft is the worst for giving you what you didn't ask for, don't want, and can't fix without spending money. I made the mistake of buying Windows 2000, and all of a sudden I have an integrated desktop that dumbs down every intelligent action I try. Who wrote this thing, a software engineer? Which leads to my next rant. Microsoft (and this goes for Netscape too) apparently feels that all facts are equal. Nothing has priority. If you want to do something important, like saving your document or getting a print preview, you have to start pulling drawers and drilling down. Chances are you waste half an hour trying to do something really simple. And the new operating systems? They are mind-twisters. It took me three weeks to connect two Windows 95 desktops to my Windows 2000 laptop via a simple hub. The peer-to-peer network configuration (Duh!) was just that complicated. And, in the end, I can "see" my two PC desktops from my laptop, but I can't "see" my laptop from my PCs. Obviously, Microsoft is trying to protect me from myself. Which leads to my final rant. Documentation is a sine qua non -- for you non-latinists, a must. My laptop computer-maker gave the most limited documentation possible, and of course Microsoft's online help is useless. I really think the government should specify that software developers provide adequate documentation. The modus operandi (more latin, for method of operation) is part of the product. So there you have it. Let's clean up the playground. February 14, 2001