Kim Komando: Incompetent
Tags: Geek, Kim Komando, Mac, Microsoft, Republicans, Science, Switch, Windows, Windows XP
It’s been my experience that there are two markets that the radio version of the republican spin machine appeals to: Intelligent people who like to throw fuel on the fire that is their hate for republicans, and idiots like you. Although I’m pacified by yelling the rubber off of my steering wheel every time Rush Limbaugh makes up facts that are obviously wrong, or Jim Bohannon pulls a shallow alien conspiracy out of his ass, they tend to pacify the rest of you by making the talk shows even more inept and insulting to my intelligence than the one playing before it.
Scraping the bottom of this shit-hole is a tiresome, narcissistic bitch named Kim Komando. Yes, her name is an indication: she’s to idiot what shit stain is to your girl-friends favorite lingerie.
She hosts the ‘Kim Komando Show’, a technology based talk show aimed at people who think USB is pronounced UBS. This would be fine, but she’s just as clueless as the ones she preaches to. I never thought somebody could pull in her high-dollar income by being such a failure at their profession and self-proclaimed expertise. If liking technology and knowing dick about it makes you Kim Komando money, I should have never learned how to turn on a computer and ranted about how Internet Explorer causes brain-tumors due to the wireless signals it emanates.
Lost yet? Well, If you think Rush Limbaugh is a vibrator attachment, then you probably can’t read, much less possess the phonological awareness to even pronounce the acronyms this bitch gets wrong. Come to think of it, you probably had to re-read that last sentence and you still don’t know what I’m talking about… think hooked-on-phonics, idiot.
Before I get too far in to making a structured case on why this woman, and her entire fan base, should be tied to a church, beaten within an inch of their lives and raped, I want to say one little thing first: I hope she dies in a plane crash afterwards.
Why? Well, She has these ‘Quick Tip’ commercials in between the entertaining talk shows, where she gives gullible fucktards advice on topics that she barely has a rudimentary understanding of. I was riding home from work today when I heard one of these blurbs, and I was taken aback by her ineptitude.
She, and I’m not exaggerating here, got on national radio and told people that Wikipedia.com (never mind that the real URL is wikipedia.org) was inaccurate, anybody could add any content to it and it will not be checked (implying that wikipedia was abandoned by everyone other than the millons of people who read it), and parents shouldn’t let their kids use it. Instead, she figured, parents should opt for a volume of encyclopedias or a CD/DVD based interactive encyclopedia.
Just as accurate, free, and a whole hell of a lot more accessible and easier to use. Thanks for trying to set humanity back 20 years. Next time, instead of talking out of your ass, try doing a google search before you say shit that millions of people who perpetually try and vote themselves to extinction will accept as truth just because it’s on the radio.
As a person who likes free things that kick ass, I was naturally fuming over the idea that some idiot parent is going to tell their kids not to use wikipedia because Kim Komando said it was inaccurate; or worse yet go out and buy a $1000 encyclopedia that’ll be obsolete 6 months before it’s printed.
So, I figured I’d see if this was a fluke or if she’s just an idiot. First things first: This was right on her front page. 5 Common Sense Computer Tips.
Here are five things you can do for a little added security:
1. Leave your computer on
Today, you have security programs to defend against viruses, worms, spyware and other attacks. These programs are always playing catch-up. Hackers are constantly probing for weaknesses, and seemingly every day there’s a new threat.
Security software and your computer’s operating system are regularly updated to stem these threats. If your computer is off at night, you’ll have to update during the day, when you’re working. Or worse, the new threat hits your system before you have a chance to download updates.
Huh?! No, No, No! Bad! What kind of half-conceived advice is that? First off, Updating your security software/OS on Wednesdays at 3AM went out of style when the term ‘Live Update’ entered our vernacular. Practically every piece of security software worth running checks for updates every few minutes, and either downloads them behind the scenes or tells you to download it immediately. Even my grandma and AOL users get updates during the day. Windows, especially, will download and install hotfixes, and then bitch about it every twenty seconds until you restart your computer so you can finish writing your script in peace.
Turning off your computer eliminates the risk of getting hacked. You’re computers not on – it’s hack-proof. Telling people that everyday there’s a new threat, people have to assume that once or twice the anti-virus companies will miss one for a day or two. So, a good way to get hacked is making sure your computer is online as much as possible. She must have failed critical thinking in special ed.
4. Watch the status bar
The status bar is a frequently overlooked tool at the bottom of your browser. You can use it to check links on a Web page. Hold your mouse over a link, and the address of the link appears in the status bar. It may not help if the address is spoofed, but it is still handy.
Checking links via your status bar would be common sense if most people had a clue what they were looking for. Too bad most people haven’t the slightest inclination of what a status bar is, or why it would help you prevent spoofed addresses. Come to think of it, most people don’t even know what a spoofed address is either. What’s next, Kim? Want to explain to these guys about proper coding techniques that’ll prevent buffer underrun exploits? I’m sure you’ll explain it so well that nobody will have a clue what you’re talking about. If anything’s clear, it’s that you’re fucking phenomenal at that.
5. Protect your Windows Clipboard
Malicious Web sites may attempt to copy information from your Windows Clipboard. That is the utility that temporarily stores information from cut and copy operations.
I know, ZDNet even wrote about this – but this begs the question: Who would do this? So what if somebody dumped my clipboard contents to a database? They have my password?! To what? My email account? My bank? Oh no! I better change my password! Too bad my clipboard, doesn’t contain all the information required to do jack shit on the internet! So they have my password, now if they had a bunch of other random shit, they might be able to read my spam! Definitely a common sense security tip, Kim! I’ll be sure to turn that off when I uninstall all of my windows updates, stop using firefox and I don’t have a gun handy.
Hell – notice where she doesn’t mention turning on automatic updates, or using Firefox instead of IE (which, btw, doesn’t have the clipboard flaw) or running a security suite… if I depended on her for my security, The Horry County Police Department would be pulling me up out of a swamp.
Floating around her site a little more, I stumbled on this gem in her ‘Tips of the day’. It’s interesting to note, by the way, that this isn’t a tip of the day section as much as a ‘Ask Kim A Question So She Can Fuck Up Your Computer’ section, but enough with the silly labels – let’s see this waste of space and bandwidth in action! behold:
Lorri called from Detroit because she had a problem with a recent computer upgrade. She finally made the switch from Windows ME to Windows XP.
But there’s one problem: When the computer is booted, she is asked to select between Windows ME and XP. She would like to do away with this and boot directly into XP.
First thing I thought of was deleting the folder. It’s dual boot, the folder shouldn’t be linked to windows XP. Then, run msconfig, click the ‘boot.ini’ tab, and click ‘Check all boot paths’ and let the obvious take control of you.
Her answer: Verbatim.
“Theoretically, there is a way to eliminate Windows ME and have a single-boot system. I don’t recommend this. Even as an experienced computer user, I wouldn’t want to tackle that.
So, Lorri, but your best option is to live with the problem. Alternatively, you can reinstall XP. If you do, select the option to overwrite Windows ME.”
I googled ‘delete windows me from windows xp dual-boot’, and the third link down was a PC Mag Article explaining how to delete the windows folder, and run msconfig, complete with pictures. Thanks Kim, you’re brilliant.
I’m getting tired of surfing this ass ugly disgrace of geekdom, so I’m going to speed things up a bit.
Right off the top of my head, the following shareware programs she lists that aren’t shareware.
Spybot S&D, OpenOffice, Google’s Picasa, Google Toolbar, Avast, AVG, Belarc Advisor, THE MICROSOFT POWERTOYS… there’s probably more, but you get my point. Every item I listed is freeware, and OpenOffice is, well, Open source.
Kim’s cool sites… she has an entry there called ‘Life on Mars’.
remember when the idea of landing on Mars was science fiction. Now, it’s almost a reality.
Landing on Mars is a reality, dumb ass. Ever heard of The Mars Rover? (Note: The Link goes to Wikipedia, and it’s all lies. I made all of it up a few minutes ago just because the look on her face when she realizes that for a geek, she’s a decade behind the times will have me popping like a dozen boners.)
The Diomedes Mission, set to launch in 2017, plans on inhabiting Mars. The idea may sound impossible, but everything has been carefully planned.
The Mission plans on inhabiting Mars. Somebody should explain to her that it’s the Astronauts who plans on inhabiting Mars, and they aim to do so by way of a mission. Her way of saying it makes it sound like she believes that the mission it’s self plans on hopping in to a space ship and colonizing the planet. She even confirms it in the next sentence, ‘you may think it’s impossible for the mission to hop in to the space ship and land on Mars, but the mission has planned it out carefully.’ – Her way’s more interesting, but my way has the virtue of not sounding like retarded bullshit.
Before long you will see how realistic life on Mars can be. Some day, you may become a real Martian.
Does this woman have a problem structuring thoughts so they make sense? First off, what the hell else would you expect living on mars to be, if it’s not realistic? Does shit on Mars look like a badly rendered video game? Are the people on Mars as realistic as Max Headroom and spew off non-sensual new age hippy bullshit and the women are whorish and abundant? Second off, I hate to break it to her – but I could never become a real martian, unless moving to Mars would somehow change the space/time continuum so I wasn’t born on Earth.
I’ve had just about enough of her, look…She shouldn’t be allowed to have a website. Shouldn’t there be some kind of governing body, ruled by people like me, who prevent this kind of thing from happening? Somebody needs to get on the ball and outlaw public stupidity, make it a capital crime, and start with Kim Komando. 
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…she charges for her forums. who does that, hell if I wanted to read a bunch of nonsense lies I could do it on wikipedia for free
I find her shows and newsletter informative and entertaining. Sounds like you have some other issues Doug. If you’re such a goddamn expert, where is your radio show and newsletter. Oh…you don’t have one. Kinda, sorta figured that…loser.
Yeah, I know you do. Idiot. What do you like most about her? The fact that she peddles whichever lackluster consumer electronics Radio Shack’s having a problem pushing out the door, or that she writes like a twelve year old? I always liked the way she looked at the world. The whole ‘facts be damned’ things really got me going. I mean, seriously. Facts be Damned. You see? The bitch really is a revolutionary.
Anyways, I wouldn’t stand on the soap box for too long, friend. Surely, if you listen to Kim Kommando, you wouldn’t know a computer expert if he brought you a box of UBS cables and offered to perform an Anytime Upgrade to get you out from under Home Basic. Then again, that does sound like something Kim would do…
[...] is some more proof. Go to this blog and read more views of people who think she’s incompetent. People may say [...]
Yeah she seems that way. I never heard her before until today.
What’s her political leanings?
You are a total jerk. If you had a brain, maybe you could discuss the merits of a person’s competence without resorting to ad hominem attacks and name calling. What’s the matter? You’ve got the hots for this woman, tried to stock her, but couldn’t figure out how to use a phone book?
What a lamebrain.
Yeah? well you’re a big meanie, you fat-headed ponce. Why don’t you go buy a subscription to her forums and tell her how much you value her crack-pot advice?
Then again, maybe she’ll stumble upon your comments and give you a trial membership for sticking up for her. You know, between all the hand-ringing and buckets of money, she’d probably enjoy having one more dumbass giving her a thumbs-up and telling her how smart and pretty she is.
Why can’t you folks just listen to somebody respectable?
[...] two years ago I wrote a rant about ‘America’s Digital Goddess’, Kim Komando. In my rant, I claimed that she was Incompetent, a disgrace to geekdom and deserving [...]
Doug, I don’t know who the hell you are, but you are soooooooo dang funny. I just hope Kim’s shrimpo husband doesn’t come and try to bite your knee caps. (Barry is vertically challenged)I’m gonna cruise around your site and see if I can find more of your writing, you are great man… cheers!
I’m glad somebody has a brain. No source but I saw somewhere that she told someone to reinstall windows to replace some fonts. Thats where I started looking her up (for laughs). I still haven’t ventured to her website.. I’m afraid.
God, Kim Komando is an idiot. I found your blog after searching google for the phrase “kim komando is an idiot”. I was shocked and somewhat appalled to only see two results. My first exposure to her was today, at usatoday.com (http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/kimkomando/2008-08-07-digital-drugs_N.htm?stoner). Her logic is certain sound clips = digital drugs ~= drugs; drugs are bad; therefor digital drugs are just as bad. She even made me sign up for a usatoday.com account, just so I could comment on her worthless article. But after doing a little searching/reading of her other “works,” I realize my efforts are futile. She is either an intelligent person with great business/marketing sense and that is able to pander her dribble to the masses (in which case she already knows what I’m telling her), or she’s a blithering idiot who managed to find even more blithering idiots to listen to her (in which case she will never realize she’s incompetent at writing about anything, except maybe a cookbook).
It really saddens me to find out she actually has a successful talk show and that ANYBODY who understands the concept of “how to turn a computer on” could actually be supportive of her.
Yeah, she’s a stupid cunt. I remember once some older relative mentioned her newsletter. I looked at it once and thought it was pretty bad. It wasn’t until the recent USA today article, though, that I really paid her any attention again. She’s a terrible journalist — I found out everything she said in her article within about 30 seconds of googling it. Plus, I’m nearly certain she read the wiki article on it — hypocrite. Calling her the Rush Limbaugh (or maybe Anne Coulter) of tech journalism sounds pretty accurate to me.
Anyone who thinks clearly should not have to resort to 3rd-grade name calling to make his point. It greatly detracts from the point and so is counterproductive.
If you go to her Website and try to find the show schedule, it is not there. It has to be E-mailed to you! They want your E-mail address (unlike Doug, who let’s you post without it, of course). Isn’t that ridiculous? Every other station is proud to post their lineup. (Oh, I mean, “The cunt should be raped by diseased Negros and run over by a bus and converted into a speed bump.” Yes, that’s much more effective.)
If her advice is not good, can anyone recommend a good website(s) to go to. I heard part of her show on the radio Saturday first time. I would like to go somewhere dependable. Thanks.
@chuck:
It depends on your comfort level with technology. As far as radio jockeys go, I think Leo Laporte (Tech TV’s Call for help and The Screen Savers) is probably the greatest human being ever. His site is at http://www.leoville.com. He runs TWiT (http://twit.tv/), a site dedicated to Tech Podcasts (a podcast is just like a radio show, except you listen to it on your computer, or your music player). He has like twenty different podcasts, and there are new releases every day.
He covers everything from basic help and how-to (like the Kim Komando show), computer networks, Macs, Windows, and even non-computer related sciences. He also hosts a weekend Talk Radio show about Technology, called the ‘The Tech Guy’, which runs during the weekends on the west coast and on XM. He posts his radio show online every week as a podcast (http://twit.tv/ttg) and it would be a great replacement for The Kim Komando show. You can go right to the page (again: http://twit.tv/ttg) and listen to his last show, every week.
The only thing I know about Kim Kommando is that her instructions about how to check AOL email with Outlook Express worked. Perhaps the reason some don’t like her is because she is carried on the same radio stations that carry Ruch Limbaugh.
Well then, I take back everything I said about her : ‘ D
I want to see her wrinkly old ass naked.
Well put Doug, I have idiots that come into my store following everything this woman says. The last thing the public needs is an uneducated person preaching to a general population that already knows little to nothing on the topic.
Her show is a weekly show which gives them way too much time to edit it for the three hour slot.
Her show is so overproduced and her voice is so overmodulated that it is hard to focus on any of the advice.
hi,
I like blond, do you like blond?
Bottom line. She is getting paid to preach not only bad advice but usually completely wrong or missing key components. She’s obviously been hired for hopefully other talents since tech is definitely not one of them.
Most of the security problems, popups, etc that people deal with can be remedied by using Firefox. You’re not going to get that kind of advice from her. It’s sort of computer advice for people that know nothing about computers, with most of the content created by the advertisers. Late at night while I’m driving and scanning channels, I try to picture what the typical listener looks like.
Wow. I hope I am not driving behind the writer of this when he has a stroke because he doesn’t like what the person on the radio is saying. My advice: CHANGE THE STATION!! Try NPR they dont like Trash Limbaugh either and on Sat. mornings they have a game show called “wait, wait dont tell me”. Its very funny. And you can chill out and prevent that stroke.
Although your information is interesting…It quickly looses a persons interest due to the low life, unprofessional language used to representative yourself…You present yourself as all knowing yet an angry lowlife,insulted by a person making money that is not as smart as you are……Try a little professionalism in your claims and I would find it much more apt to catch my attetion oh computer master…Then you could maybe make even more money than her with better more informative information.
I loathe to think that I would ever have a job where my sole responsibility is to explain basic computing concepts to those who listen to her show. I find these kinds of people stupid, insufferable, small-minded lemmings incapable of doing their own research. Those types of people are utterly inept and can’t even understand the kinds of concepts that a six year old would pick up in moments.
They are the kind of people that go to a blog like this one, called ‘Doug’s Secret Shrine’, a blog with pictures of Star Ships fighting each other as a background image and rants about how i’m too poor to pay over $20 for a School Book. These kinds of people come here. They bitch and complain because the content isn’t presented professionally. Look, if you want professional, listen to Kim Komando. Your computer might explode in some kind of awesome silicon inferno, but at least you’ll be comforted by her professional demeanor. After all, that’s what your looking for, right?
I say its your website, you can say whatever you what, how you want.
I once heard her say that CD-Rs & CD-RWs hold data for only two years or so, and that they should be stored vertically rather than horizontally in order to maximize the amount of time for which they will hold data. I have CDs containing data that I entered in 2000, and all that data is doing just fine, thankyouverymuch!
I forgot to mention in my February 3rd, 2009 3:40pm comment that the CDs in question were often stored horizontally.
I don’t really care about anything Kim Kommando says (I just visit for the pictures), and indeed I didn’t even read your article, but I have been looking for years for some evidence that Rush Limbaugh makes up stuff. I would appreciate it if you or any of your readers would give me some info on where to find this info or clues so that I can look it up myself.
Visit my website or email me at blackindependent
@Stephen Frazier
Best comment ever. I listen to Rush Limbaugh every day. Not that I’m bragging, because if I wasn’t so awesome I’d probably be ashamed to say that. I know he’s said a shit ton of things that weren’t accurate, but it’s usually minuet little details that are really beside the point. What Rush doesn’t lie. He takes the facts, and he presents them in a way that supports his talking points.
I think the problem people have with Rush, why they color him a liar, is not that he’s an incredible liar trying to build a fiction about how great the GOP is. It’s that he’s a rich, pompous son-of-a-bitch who only cares about the top 1%.
That’s who Limbaugh is. He’d probably admit it if you ask him. That’s why he’s such a great personality to listen to. It’s like with the Holocaust. If your against genocide, then you believe the Germans during WW2 committed the worst atrocities in history. If your for Genocide, you don’t see what the big deal is about going door to door hunting people down based on their nationality. Germans can’t well take over the world with gypsies and jews living in Berlin. I know, it’s offensive, but so is everything else you don’t agree with.
It’s all just a matter of perspective. If you want to understand Rush Limbaugh, you must first place yourself in the mindset of a wealthy businessman that rose to the top on the shoulders of everyone in America. Then, you have to take a look around. Note that all the laws of the land finally protect you at the expense of all the people you’ve ever screwed. Then, relax, light a cigar, and go on national radio and claim that you hope Obama fails. It’s not a lie, it’s not shock for ratings, nor is it treason. It’s just news commentary by some asshole rich guy who pisses off liberals.
I think i’m going to go listen to his podcast…
Doug, your English is HORRIBLE. “What Rush doesn’t lie” (sic)? Your comments posted in reply are some of the most glaring mistake-ridden and inarticulate piles of textual piles I have ever had the displeasure of falling into. You badly need to rein in your enthusiasm for spaceships and computers and redirect that squandered energy back into basic communications skills. Everyone reading this page is dumber for having seen this. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your idiot soul.
Doug, You are as full of shit as a Christmas turkey. You your beloveid Bombo, Rombo and the H-monster Bimbo. (The 3 Stooges, (Obama, Rom Emanuel, and Hillary) You Democraps SUCK
Kim Komando is like Joe the Plumber and Ben Stein the Biologist. They celebrate know-nothingism!
I agree with you 100 percent!
I commented to her about one of her recent responses to a caller about wireless routers in which she told him/her that “MIMO” stood for “Maximum In, Maximum Out”.
Yeah, sure, Kim. Whatever you say.
It brought to mind all the other times I was in my car listening to her answer callers and it was so obvious she, or whoever advises her, didn’t have any depth of knowledge on which she was commenting. I’ve listened to her off and on for about 5 years and I would estimate about 10 times she was dead wrong – if not very misleading – about things. Other times, like the “MIMO” screwup was about double that number.
One time, she advised a caller about a free solution to something which resulted in the browser being directed to a for-pay link to her website. I complained about that too, but I never get a reply when I complain.
Personally, I don’t care about her politics. I may even agree with them; but it makes my head hurt when she makes a boneheaded reply to a caller that I just KNOW other knowledgeable people are also shaking their heads about.
Oh well.