Reader rabid: Steve Jobs, the RIAA, and IT bridges to nowhere

I admit it; I’ve been a little behind in my mail. That’s just what happens when Steve Jobs makes yet another miraculous resurrection and Google turns your world upside down. So here’s a quick sampler of what the residents of Cringeville have been telling me lately.

Though it seems to tick off some Microsoft fanboys no end, I continue to get letters from Cringesters who’ve been upgraded against their will (or better judgment) to IE8 and want to turn back the clock. Like this one, from G. B. up in Canada, who writes:

There I was in my ignorance, stumbling along and having a great time using IE7, unaware that I was about to be spoon-fed by Microsoft an urgent upgrade that I simply MUST have in order to survive. “Download IE8 NOW”, or else.  Did (like a fool). What a mistake!  A clutter of new features I don’t want, and won’t ever use, anyway. Annoying pop-ups. Complications with using my Favourites List, etc, etc. This is the worst mistake I’ve ever made (having successfully avoided being sucked in by Vista). I tried to revert to using IE7 but MS tells me I can’t do that. (Can’t download an older version over IE8).  Am I trapped? I’m almost ready to throw the whole thing in the pond.

Microsoft actually provides instructions for how to revert to IE7 here. (I cannot vouch for whether these instructions actually work, so proceed with the usual caution. If your PC ends up looking like a stromboli as a result, please do not send venomous snakes to me in the mail.)

D. L. has this to say about file-swapping mom Jammie Thomas-Rasset and the $1.9 million she now owes the RIAA (“Don’t stop believing in the RIAA’s capacity for evil“):

The precedent this judgement sets is that each person who downloaded those tracks should be fined the same amount…. Theoretically there is a finite number of people who downloaded/shared those songs. Combined they total the complete amount of commercial damage done. But this case makes every single one of them liable as though they perpetrated all the damage alone…. We don’t fine the first speeder we catch for the speeding offences of every single person on the road, we don’t pin the first shoplifter with the blame for every item ever stolen from the store, why is this woman solely responsible for the damages of every song ever downloaded?

Reader R. B. O. didn’t care a whit for what I had to say about Steve Jobs’ apparent return to Apple (“Sour Apple: Steve Jobs and snow jobs“):

Give it a rest. You are the typical example of negativity in the Press. Jobs has obviously had a tough go, so what’s the point? NO class!!

And E. N. is decidedly less impressed than I was about the feds’ new site for tracking government IT spending (“Uncle Sam’s IT dashboard: Your tax dollars at work“):

[I’m] amazed that, with all the balls in the air being juggled at the same time, the current Administration decided to heave an additional one into the fray.  Consider it “transparency through obfuscation”.  In fact, that might even be a good term for a new department, “Department of Obfuscation”, or better known by its acronym, DOO.  What would DOO do? (A possible slogan.)

Give DOO its due; as an IT “investment,” the Dashboard is probably as good as anything Al Gore could have come up with when he invented the Internet.  This is not to say the idea is bad, but what is its purpose?  This may well be the embodiment of the proposed bridge from Ketchikan, only the bridge is over the Potomac.

Suddenly I feel a song coming on. Who DOO that vooDOO that you DOO so well? It’s that old geek magic again. Thanks for sharing.

What tech issues have got you under their spell? Hum a few bars below, or send me your ditties direct: cringe@infoworld.com.