Doughnuts and the Evil Internet Exploiter Empire

Last Updated on September 30, 2010 by Dave Farquhar

Doughnuts. My phone rang last night. It was my sister.
“What are you doing?”

“Eating doughnuts.” Actually that wasn’t what I said, but it sounds better. People tell me I should label it when I write fiction. Usually they mean that as an insult. But they can get over it. Nobody makes them read me. But I took their words to heart. So that line is fiction. The rest is true. If I told you what I really said, you’d think my mind wanders, and I don’t want you to think that.

“I see.” (And probably you do too.)

“I was real tired after church. Brad told me I looked fried. So I went out and got doughnuts.”

“And what’s that have to do with being tired?”

“Nothing. I just felt like some doughnuts.”

“I see.”

“I got a dozen so I can have doughnuts for breakfast too.”

“Da-vid! You got a dozen doughnuts?”

“Yep.”

“It’ll take you a year to eat a dozen doughnuts!”

“Nuh-uh. I had two already. So I’ve got 10 left. That’s enough for breakfast. Besides, doughnuts are good for you. They have wheat, and… What else is in doughnuts that are good for you?”

“Not a thing.”

“There’s gotta be something.”

“Sugar’s not necessarily bad for you, but there’s nothing else I’d call good. I wouldn’t eat them for breakfast, lunch and dinner, but–“

“Now there’s an idea. Wait a minute. I can’t. I’ve only got 10 left. If I weigh 300 pounds next time you see me, you’ll know why.”

Internet Explorer. The word is out about Internet Explorer and why you shouldn’t use it. Because Microsoft in its infinite paranoia wisdom decreed that a Web browser is an indispensable component of an operating system (just like pinball), IE has a vulnerability that can allow it to run arbitrary code. Because no other browser on any other platform feels the need to join itself at the hip, elbow and head to an operating system, the vulnerability doesn’t exist elsewhere. I wanted to point out this problem in Optimizing Windows, but if I recall correctly, my editor’s comment to that section was, “Spare us the editorials.” Or something. That’ll teach me to insult his favorite Web browser.

So now I know that I was right, and that O’Reilly are Microsoft lackeys. But I can tell you something useful too.

You can liberate your computer from the Evil Internet Exploiter Empire. Your computer doesn’t have to be part of the Browser Wars Battlefield.

Now you’re probably expecting me to say something about Linux for the umpteenth time. But you don’t even have to run Linux to set yourself free. Head over to www.98lite.net and download IEradicator. It’ll remove IE from Windows 9x, and it’ll even remove it from Windows 2000, as long as you’re not running SP2 yet. So remove IE, then install SP2. You’ll get a faster and more secure OS. And you can run your choice of browsers. Opera’s not half bad. Mozilla’s not half bad. And if you like small and lightweight, there’s K-Meleon, which is a small, browser-only IE lookalike that uses the Mozilla engine. And there’s Offbyone, which fits on a floppy. Offbyone isn’t full-featured like the others and it’s only HTML 3.2 compliant, but it’s a great emergency browser you can use to download something better in a pinch. It’s saved me at least twice now. You’ll never find a faster browser in Windows, so if you’re in a hurry and the site you want to see renders fine in it, you can have the site up in Offbyone before one of the other browsers has finished displaying a splash screen.

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3 thoughts on “Doughnuts and the Evil Internet Exploiter Empire

  • December 20, 2001 at 11:45 am
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    I’m wondering if there wasn’t something besides "wheat" and "sugar" in those donuts!

  • December 20, 2001 at 6:25 pm
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    Hey, Dave!

    Using the informal comm system (and letting others know):
    your SWBell email may be hosed again; I’m getting ‘delay’ and ‘undeliverable’ notices here at work.

    dan

  • December 20, 2001 at 7:56 pm
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    It’s working as far as I can tell. I’ve received numerous messages to that account today, from as near as St. Louis and as far away as Germany.

    Must have just been a routing problem.

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