Rants of the day...

So it has been awhile since I've gone on a rant. I've been trying to keep my blood pressure down by ignoring the news but it can no longer be helped. I have to rant.

First up, the AT&T and Verizon war. Do we really care? All cell phone providers suck in their own way. Is Verizon a bigger network? Sure, maybe so. But they are also running it on a dated CDMA network. Does AT&T coverage suck? Sure, in places. But then so does Verizon's and T-Mobiles, and Sprint. And for the record to the nay sayers out there. AT&T is the ONLY network where you can talk on your phone and surf the web same time. The ONLY network that has that capability. So cheer for your provider of choice, but just like a hot girl someone somewhere is sick of her shit.

My two cents on why it is absolutely retarded to bring gitmo terrorists to Illinois jails. Those in favor say look at the 1900 jobs it will create. Think how awesome it will be for our economy. People like me who are smart will say, ummmmmmm those jobs are state jobs hence payed for by the taxpayer. And how many hundreds of thousands of dollars per inmate does it cost taxpayers to keep people in jail? How do those two things help the taxpayer? How does adding more cost to the regular Joe improve the economy?

Healthcare...I've covered this rant before but my god. Let us do the math here shall we. At this point in time 10-11 million people are unable to get healthcare. Under the obamacare plan at least 17 million people will be unable to get healthcare. Score 1 for no change. Right now it costs us 4 billion (that is with a b) each year to care for ILLEGALS. Stop doing that already. I know people that did not go to the doctor because even with insurance the bill would be too high. Yet someone that is not even a legal citizen of this country can march in an emergency room, state they are illegal and be seen for free. Something stinks about that whole policy. How bout call immigration next time that happens. Sorry you are sick, go back to where you came from and try coming back here legally next time. And no I do not care if our system makes it too hard for them to do it properly. It is that way for a reason. The bottom line is obamacare will cost us 8 billion more a year to cover less people than our system already does that we have in place. So the figures I see just do not add up. Change for the sake of change is not the kind of change we need.

The TERRORIST from Ft. Hood has been brewing as a rant for some time now. If it walks like a duck, acts like a duck, and looks like a duck, then it is a duck. This mass murdering jihad freak is nothing more than a domestic terrorist. No, he was not suffering from PTSD like the media whores want you to believe. You kinda have to be deployed to get that, he never was. Besides, he was a head shrink so a deployment for him would have been nothing more than getting used to a warmer climate anyway. It makes me sick how the media is trying their hardest to paint this guy as some type of victim. The only thing he is a victim of is being a religious fanatic nutcase. I hope he suffers horribly before dying sometime soon. I'll just pray for that right now.

My solution to ending terrorist acts against this country is very simple. When we catch you, we will execute you by firing squad. But here is the kicker. It will be a FEMALE firing squad. Why you ask? Because these nutjobs believe that if they are killed by a woman they will not get their virgins. Kill a few of them with women, like asshole from Ft. Hood and see terrorist missions against the US decline. Hell, I bet membership to the cause would decline. Who would want to risk not getting their virgins?

Which Browser?

Back in the early 90's you had only a few browser choices. Most people used the default AOL browser because it was already there. Others used Internet Explorer, and another group used Netscape Navigator. That was about it as far as choices went. IE and Netscape had the largest share of users in the mid to late 90's. The browser war was on, with each side inventing standards not supported by the other. Surfing the web had almost become a nightmare. Some sites were IE friendly, others were Netscape friendly. You almost had to use two browsers to experience everything, and that sucked.

Finally the World Wide Web Consortium or W3C was formed and web standards implemented and the rest is history. Slow moving history as the standards always seem to be slowly implemented due to the lack of people upgrading. Why do they not upgrade right away? Why do some people still insist on using IE6 even though it is many many years old? Netscape Navigator has died, or transformed rather in to Firefox, IE is still around and dominant, while a batch of new browsers has emerged. Which one do you use? Which one is the best? At this stage of the game, the best is most likely a matter of opinion.

Since IE has been in the game for quite some time I'll start with them. I don't use it. I stopped using IE several years ago when Firefox was born and never looked back. Newer versions are typical Microsoft. Copy, copy, copy. Nothing new, no trend setting. Like a 2nd rate designer using played out trends Microsoft just doesn't seem to know how to innovate. Sure, corporations love them because they work with their infrastructure but so would many of the other alternatives if given the chance. At one time I really liked IE, until I started designing web sites. They are the worst for implementing web standards, and even when they do it is still wrong. Oddly enough, most of the population still uses this browser so all the above is really just my opinion.

Next I'll go to Firefox because it has been my go to browser for quite some time now. The fact it was more secure from spyware, the add ons, the themes, and those awesome tabs made it an instant hit in my eyes. Lately it has become a bit bloated and is in need of an overhaul. My second favorite feature was the bookmarks bar. With a slick little add on I could shrink the bookmark down to just a favicon. I could have 25 links across the top and not even be half way across my screen. The fact I could add folders to the bar only increased the amount of visible bookmarks and is much more convenient than the bookmark menu. I also loved how FF dealt with saving my passwords to sites so I didn't have to remember them anymore. Then I bought a MacBook Pro and things changed for me.

Safari is where I'll go next. I've always hated Safari. The bare bones "chrome" look, no add ons, the way it displayed fonts compared to other browsers. I just didn't care for it much. But when I got my Mac and Safari 4 I thought what the heck, I'll try it out. Somehow it slowly grew on me and I found myself using it more than Firefox. I'm not sure why. Maybe it was because much of what I liked in FF now was included in Safari. Rather than a bulky plus sign for new tabs, I just have to double click. I like that feature. Two things I do not like! I hate where Safari put the refresh button. Why is it separate from the rest of the navigation and way on the end of the URL bar? I also wish that I could favicon only the links in the bookmark bar. Anyway, now I found myself using both browsers at the same time. One for certain sites and tasks, the other for different sites and tasks. It seemed to be working out fine, until a friend showed me the Mac build site for Google Chrome...

Downloading Google Chrome was exciting. I had been wanting to try it out for quite awhile. Favorite feature, one box at the top of the screen for everything. Searches, URL's, whatever. Very slick, speedy, and handy. It was also fast. I could click on FF, Safari, and then Chrome. Chrome would be open by 5 or more seconds faster even though it was the last one clicked. It included most of the features I loved about FF and Safari, with a few tricks of its own. Plus it is speedy. The only reason I don't use it exclusively is because it is still a build, not even a beta so quite buggy and not full featured yet. I can not wait until it is.

So now I use three browsers, often all at once. Then Opera comes out with Opera 10. I had tried Opera before but didn't care for it. It wasn't as customizable as FF and using it seemed awkward to me. Version 10 is much better and adds some new features not seen on the other browsers. The thumbnail view is cool at first, but then to me anyway becomes a who cares feature. I don't need it. Some things I do not like at all are biggies in my book and put it in the bottom of the list for browsers I like. Well, above IE which I can't use on a Mac now anyway. The fact the tabs are on top is weird. Why put them so high. It makes switching with a mouse more of a burden than it should be. Sure, it is only like a half an inch further up, but it is further than I want to go. Second, it doesn't recognize the track pad gestures on my Mac. When I swipe three fingers to the left, I expect to go back a page. In Opera 10, nothing. So far it is the only browser to not support this feature. So after using it only a day I'm not fond of it at all. It does have quite a few widgets though. For those that like to collect them, Opera 10 is worth checking out.

So for now I guess I'll keep bouncing around with FF, Safari, and Chrome. I'm pretty sure Chrome will be my browser of choice once it is finalized for Mac. For now, I'm undecided on which browser is my favorite. Let me hear your thoughts on what you use and why.