Security? Hardly.

Another thing that bugs me about the Internet, besides the joy of not being able to read things because they are too small, is the fact that the Internet apparently wants me to pull down my virtual pants and grease up before I can enjoy any content. I am not by nature a paranoid person, but I don't want my computer to turn into a wretched hive of scum and villainy, so I have installed various medicine-ish type things on my computer, the most wonderful of which is my proxy filter. I strongly urge everyone who doesn't like advertisements, pop-ups, annoying javascripts, and all that other Web 2.0 garbage to get one.

Sadly, regardless of how unsafe one wishes to be, there are limits. I don't feel like just letting any old thing run on my computer, but this is, in essence, what most websites demand I do. Any javascript? Check. Any Flash? Check. Any other random crap that I hate? Check. All of these things must be both allowed and condoned in order to make Web 2.0 work. Indeed, I have to turn off most of my security to write in this blog, and sometimes I wonder if it's really worth it.

I'm okay with things that are useful, but when you can't even access content, textual content, without turning on javascript, flash, and God knows what else, I am forced to balance my desire to not let my computer be overrun by faulty/dangerous/annoying programs and my need to see the information. This is not good.

Bells and whistles and gizmos and thingummies... screw them all. If I want usability on the Internet, I don't need it to look like anything other than what it is: the Internet. I resent the fact that Flash provides no means to turn off the Flash player for individual instances of it, which causes any Flash I'd like to run to slow to a crawl. Hasta la vista, any Flash games, because all Flash games come from websites which have Flash advertisements, usually three or four to a page. One word - lag.

Flash (and the rest of the Internet, actually) is apparently designed for a limited subset of the population that makes Flash files, rather than the huge majority that consume them. Where exactly is anything on the Internet consumer-driven? We put up with garbage we wouldn't stand in other products because we don't know any better. Developers make the rules; no Flash developer wants the audience to have any more control than the developer allows, because that would allow users to skip ads, mute annoying noises, pause animations so as not to drain bandwidth... and so on.

But the main point is: Web 2.0 is apparently just an excuse to bell-and-whistle any security arrangements one might want to make into an early grave. It doesn't have to be, if the providers of security would make more of an effort to create products with enough AI to sense the difference between navigational scripts and malicious code. The developers of websites also have a responsibility to use only that subset of features which are necessary, but more than that to provide a way, perhaps less attractive but still usable, for people without the capability to use the site in its normal form to access the information. It's not just security; it's also usability.

Until that happens, I will continue to cobble together solutions and make compromises to use the limited subsection of the Internet I choose. It's not a solution, but it's all I have.