Some Government Apps Still Require Netscape and Internet Explorer 6.0: Throwback Thursday

Sometimes you want to do things to strengthen your business, like copyright and register your works, if you’re an artist. My friend, illustrator Veronica Marche Miller, went to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s website to register her art for protection and a dandy little prompt she got took her (and me) back to 2000.

*blinks slowly.* Wayment. Wait a good minute. To use their system, you have to be on Internet Explorer 6.0 or Netscape. I just… don’t… understand.

They want people to log on using Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0, the black licorice of browsers. It’s the one that worked so terrible yet it took people so long to let go of it. Where we afraid of better? Because EVERYTHING is better than IE. Well, except for Netscape. Which we have to talk about.

NETSCAPE. Fugging NETSCAPE!!! Where does one even FIND Netscape to install and use in 2015? That browser is so obsolete that some people reading this post weren’t even in kindergarten when it died a well-earned death and went to the internet heaven in the clouds. It’s so outdated that it’s not even in jokes about browsers anymore.

Netscape. They want people to have Netscape to do this application. So I assume that they must only get 2 successfully completed apps a year because the only people who still have that browser probably still use AOL dialup service.

And look below that. If you wanna be REAL fancy, you can use Firefox 2.0 for the application. Y’all. Firefox is on 34.0 right now. I’m not kidding. I went to my “About Firefox” and the version is 34.5.

This is why we can’t have nice things like efficiency. Our governing bodies are using technology from 1995 and expecting to prosper doing it. The government doesn’t wanna rock the boat of their Windows 98 Operating system computers. How do these offices run? I can only imagine some of the conversations that happen.

Top Tech Guy in Govt Office: “Hey. I really think we should update our system.”
Old Dude who he reports to: “NO NO NO. All the computers might turn off and never wake up again. This system is fine.”
Top Tech Guy: “But…”
Old dude: “You heard me. IT IS JUST FINE.”

Secretary who’s been there since 1995: “Crap. my computer won’t turn on.”
Everyone: “OMG DID YOU TRY TO UPDATE SOMETHING?? DID YOU RUN 2 PROGRAMS AT THE SAME TIME?”
Secretary: “No. I did move my mouse really fast.”
Tech guy: “Oh. You know you can’t do that. Shit. now I’ll need to shut down the whole system for 5 minutes so it can cool off.”

Top Managers: “We’re not happy. We’re getting reports that we’re 2 years behind on applications. What gives?”
Patent Officer: “Our computers shut down anytime we try to open the jpg file that people attach to their trademark applications if more than 3 computers have jpgs open too.”
Top guys: “Oh.”

Jesus take the wheel and take over their IT offices for a night and do a miraculous update of their system. #OverhaulItOmnipotentOne #UpgradeItUntouchableKing #ElevateItElShaddai

I bet they want people to also send in apps on floppy disks. O_O