
Of DOS and Browsers and Problems We Never Had With ADAM

by Ron Mitchell

Browsers Galore

What follows is personal comment. Take it for what its worth. I`d
be interested in hearing from anyone who has experienced the same
problem.

I suppose you could call it the dreaded 'multiple browser' disease.
It is in fact a disease in that it has become, for me at least, a
conditon that adversely affects my ability to perform normal human
tasks. It causes me to feel mentally incompetent, stupid, and like
one whose deck is several feet short of the doorstep. 

You too may have this malady. If you suspect that your online
performance is rendered less than adequate because you cannot
remember where you last filed your incoming mail, read on. This is
in fact a conditon that can occur despite your best intentions to
prevent it. It creeps up insidiously upon innocent users, and ren-
ders them ineffective, and unable to respond to their e-mail. It
causes them to lose files and other vital data. It results in them
being constantly in trouble with their online colleagues. It may
end in wanton violence against family cats, relatives, walls,
offending computers, and anyone within fist range. It is most
certainly a serious matter.

To understand the problem it is necessary to understand its
background. In the beginning there was the tribal drum. It was
operated by a person trained in its use and allowed its user to
communicate matters of utmost urgency to neighbouring villages.
Communications so transmitted and received were not retained past
the time period necessary to act on them. A mesage that attackers
were aproaching from the north, for example, immediately sent
everyone in the south scurrying further south, and that was that.
There were no filing cabinets containing records about how far
south their owners had gone. 

Later, with the advent of the printing press, things became more
complicated. People began to print things on paper. The attackers
from the north suddenly had a record of everything and were tipped
off as to excaclty how far south they would have to proceed.
Everyone in the south was killed off. 

This wanton rape and pillage resulted in a preponderance of
printing presses in the north, and as time went on, northern
attackers spent less time attacking and more time printing messages
to one another. People in the south had no idea what to do with the
all the free thus placed at their disposal. They began to engage in
an activity that became known as browsing; ie. aimlessly wandering
about looking for northerners who of course never materialized, but
were always feared to be hiding just around the next large rock. 

It wasn't long before Marconi and Alexander Graham Bell emerged on
the scene. These two perpetrators of human progress laid the
foundation for efforts that would follow rendering drums and
printing press completely obsolete. It was only a small step from
the radio and telephone to the electronic computing device
connected to a vast world wide fishing contraption known as the
internet. People form both north and south then found they could
insult eachother from a distance, and do it anonymously. 

But that wasn't the problem. All it led to was a state where
neither northerners nor southerners could tell the difference
between an insult and a complement. As it turned out most everybody
reached the point where they were all so busy talking they had
little, if any, time to listen to one another. Most everybody, that
is, except the browsers.

The browsers were a group of complete misfits who evolved from
earlier attempts to look for attacking northerners. Eventually the
browsers forgot what they were looking for, and contented
themselves with just looking, period. 

Gradually, computers began to eat up more and more of peoples'
time. Directions, north, south, east, and west blurred sufficiently
as to prevent everyone from knowing their true identity. The
browsers would pride themselves in the skilled use of this browser
program or that, much as their forefathers had done with their
tribal drums. One would boast the ability to search aimlessly for
many things at once (multitasking). Others claimed the ability to
find 32 things at once, and some even 64 where previously only 8
things could be found at any given time. 

The more things that were found in groups of 64 or 32 or 16 or 8,
the greater the need became to do something with these located
objects. Many creative and novel schemes were proposed for the
efficient and logical use, sale, trade, theft, or storage of
objects. After a while it became evident that the business of
processing  stuff was consuming more and more of the browser's
time. Then somebody invented a program for browsers who didn't want
to put stuff away. Initially the development was regarded as
complete heresy. nevertheless, the concept caught on. Soon there
were browsers who would store things well, and browsers that would
not store at all. 

 
And that is where my problem begins.

One of my computers runs Internet Explorer in 2 versions, and
Netscape in 3 versions. My other computer runs one version of each.
One can talk to a bank, while the others can't. One does business
under LINUX. One does business with Windows 95, if indeed anything
can do business with Windows 95. 
Not one works the same as another, and I have difficulty
remembering what works with what. Most of the time, I simply can't
help this feeling that my computer and everyone who ever wrote
software for it is out to get me. 

Now the reader is quite at liberty to ask why, if this is my take
on the situation, do I not simply dispose of all browsers except
for the one that can talk to a bank. After all, one must always
retain the ability to talk to a bank. A bank never listens, but
frequently must be apologized to.

The answer to that is really quite simple, and definately part of
the paranoia. Every piece of software I purchase comes with a
browser, use of which is absolutely mandatory. Intuit's Quicken,
for example, insists that I become an ally of Bill Gates and use
Internet Explorer on penalty of terrible consequences. Last night,
a website whose URL somebody sent me in an e-mail (Lord doesn't it
get complicated!) actually stopped operations under my connected
Internet Explorer and asked me where my Netscape was.

What IS a body to do?

Anybody got a tribal drum for sale?



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