Bloat

I don't know about you , but it seems to me that a lot of software is written with the prime aim in mind of bringing you device to a halt. Anything that is to do with media , seems to want to grab all the system resources , fill your whole screen , try and sell you anything , while making it as difficult as possible to leave the applicattion.

Many years ago I used musicmatc which had a low footprint , was fast at ripping and burning and was perfect for managing my music. Then Yahoo bought it out and trashed it with malware making it unusable and forcing you to use their iTunes-a-like software , which didnt work either. I was then forced to use Winamp , which is the best of a bad bunch , a resource hungry annoying piece of software.

However even that pales in the face of the latest rubbish that iTunes have given to us. Just in case you didnt realise it was grabbing all your system resources , it fills your screen and thows all sorts of things at you that it thinks you may want. Then all the other bloatware it forces on you Bojour, Quicktime , iPod Helper (I don't have or want a f**king iPod as well as about 20 other programs that you have to unpick from your system. Oh and went you update you have a 43 page terms and conditions document , that no one can read or understand.

It seems to me that everyone thinks that Terms and Conditions need to emulate War and Peace. They dont , the need to be clkear and concise and should fit on a sheet of A4 in at least a 14pt font , with lots of white space so you can easily understand what you are taking on. I recently picked up a brochure from a mobile phone company and the Terms and Conditions took about 5 pages at the end of the catalogue in closely typed difficault to read font. I bet anyone over thirty would not be able to read it and anyone under thirty wouldnytt bother anyway.

Anyway I want a simple suite of small footprint software that does the job , not takes over your machine.

Rant over

Apple and Yahoo Encourage Stealing!!

A couple of months back my Yahoo Answers account was stopped because I'd transgressed their rules. They were unspecific , but said linking to my website forum was the problem. The part of the forum was the part which detailed the legal , loss leader MP3s that you can download for nothing , ie truly and legally free. I had also complained about the number of posters who advised using peer to peer services to download copyrighted music without paying for it , ie stealing . Yahoo still give space to these people while I have been permanently banned.

I was also thinking about the rise of the iPod and iPhone as the music player of choice for lots of people . It used to be that you would tape , or get an MP3 of an album and if you liked it , you would then purchase the said album. However now , because the album is on your music player of choice , there is no pressure to pay for the music. So that means that the artists lose out , while loads of kids grow up believing you dont have to pay for stuff. I don't know what the answer is , and the music industry is very resilient , but it is a very worrying trend.