07/09/01
Downloading
  
    Whatever happened to having your own file space I mean, why is it no one keeps
thier own archives of files. I suppose it has to do with cost of purchasing 100
Gigabytes plus of space for the 500 Quake 3 skins you have on your site, or maybe 
it has to do with being lazy and not wainting to maintain that server space, to 
keep it free of viruses, to keep out hackers, and whatever other things that 
maintaining server space requires.
  
    Really, people not wanting thier own server space isn't the problem. I'm sure 
there is more to the whole mess than I care to research. The problem is the 
gluttonous beast known as File Planet. It wasn't always bad. It wasn't always 
ever good either. It has gotten worse. You see the first real problem is the 
number of webpages you needlessly have to jump through to get to the actualy file. 
First you start ont he page where you find the file, which generally means you've 
probably allready been through at least one webpage to get there. Next you jump 
through some page on filepanet telling all about the file with the option to 
download said file, this page serves no purpose in reality. Next you have to pick 
which server you want to get the file from, chanses are these are all locate 
overseas in some other contry or somewhere in California (unless you don't live 
in the US, then they are generall probably located either in California or overseas 
in some other contry). Anyway then a pop up window pops up which you will probably 
end up closing by mistake thinking it is some sort of lame ad banner trying to 
offer you cheap interest rates on a home equity loan.
  
    Now on the chance you get to this pop up window there is a 100% chance that 
it will inform you that there is a line. This is a lince for all of file planet, 
not just this one file. You can tell because even the crappiest files have a line 
of equal length. What you don't know that behind the scenes, there is no line. In 
reality there are plenty of open connection and the only reason you have to wait 
in line for 4 minutes is because the good folks at File Planet are hoping you will 
clik on the add banner in this window. You see some big DOT COM company out there 
is hoping to get rich off of ad baners and they ae paying File Planet a lot of money 
to garantee that each and every user will stare at thier ad banner for 4 minutes 
while anxiously anticipating the download of a brand new nude Lara Croft SIMS skin. 
What they don't realize is that chances are the average computer use a) doesn't have 
time to wait and will close the window in disgust vowing never to download from the 
wretched place ever again, or b) people will downsize the window while waiting and 
do other activities like say, complain about shitty file servers on a webpage.
  
    There are some pluses to File Planet I suppose. like the way they actually let 
you right click a file to Save Target As. I mean, who want's to spend an hour 
downloading a 5 megabyte sip file when they can't even save the file. Which brings 
up another point. SCRIPTS THAT PREVENT RIGHT CLICKING ARE THE MOST ANNOYING THINGS 
ON THE INTERNET. If I had to choose between a webpage with loud autoplaying midi 
files who's conent consisted soley of ad banners, animated GIFs, Flash movies, and 
webrings, or a webpage featuring 'anti-right click' coding, I'd choose the former. 
There is nothing more annoying than having to open a file, let it load on it's own, 
then having to dig through my internet cache to get to the copy on my hard drive, 
then copy this file to where I want to store it. You see, there are easy ways around 
this annoying bit of web formatting. I strongly recomend that for every webpage you 
come across with anti-right clicking in place you download every file on that page, 
dig them all out of the cache into one directory, then email the person who 
maintains that webpage a screen shot of the directory containing said file with the 
caption HA HA I GOT AROUND YOUR LAME SECURITY FUCKER!!!! LOL ROFFLES!. As for images 
on these pages, there is always the print screen key then a quick paste into MS Paint.