Browser wars

Trustworthy Computing is an oxymoron

from JoeUser Forums
I read the 'Tech and You' column in Business Week the other night, and the columnist (IIRC, also a columnist for the Wall Street Journal) advised readers to install and use either Mozilla Firefox or Opera...anything you like as long as it is not IE, unless required for a specific application. The columnist pointed out the numerous security holes in IE: patched, yet to be patched, and yet to be discovered. He surmises that IE won't be fully patched for the moment until WXP SP2, but that omits an awful lot of users out there in Userlandia.

There are many, many people who haven't and won't upgrade from W98, W2K or even WNT to WXP. Some of these are home users, a lot of these are schools or not-for-profits, and there are many businesses who can't make the business case for Billg's Xtra Profits operating system and the accompanying hardware that may be needed in their organizations. (I've been there; I know...)

I've paid for Opera since v3.2, and it remains one of my favorite browsers, although it chokes on a fair number of pages, as do numerous flavors of Mozilla/Netscape. I use IE for JU, since JU requires IE for most of its' features. You can't post more than one article/day unless you use IE. There appear to be other functions tied to IE, but that's the only one I can definitely prove to be true.

I admit to my share of Borgitude, possessing MCSA:Messaging (English translation "one exam short of MCSE W2K"), but IMHO, a browser does not, never has, and never will constitute "part of an operating system". It should not be necessary to bring up a specific browser's window within WinFoo to display help screens, perform administrative tasks, run any kinds of consoles, etc. If a browser is required, any browser should function exactly the same as another. All code that is used to display help screens, perform administrative tasks, run consoles, etc. should use IETF/W3C standards, and not manipulated to require any particular browser. The code should run exactly the same in Mozilla, Netscape, or Opera as it does in IE. However, I stand a chance of becoming President of the United States sooner than this happening.

Let the flame wars begin...
3,420 views 2 replies
Reply #1 from JoeUser Forums Top
nothing to flame about on my end. its an issue that has been shuttled off to a dark corner of the stage instead of being adequately resolved. standards noncompliance--as least as far as site creation and implementation--may still be an irritant but is no longer a major hassle thanks to workarounds discovered or developed by those who formerly had no choice but tailor several versions of each page they put online. even as microsoft perjured itself by asserting ie to be nothing less but an essential integral windows component, the good people who developed win98lite were providing a free 50kb inf file capable of doing exactly that. when netscape settled its longrunning suit with ie (i still find it amusing that one of the elements was ms' promise to provide aol--netscape's new owner--access to its proprietary code, enabling them to make a more ie compliant aol browser) the the world had moved on.

havng lost that battle while winning the war, ms clearly felt no pressing need to build a better ie. gates and his crew obviously felt it was more important to put all their efforts into making the newer versions of windows (2k, xp and win2003 and, by extension ie6) so much secure (security in this case=difficult to appropriate from them) they seem to have barely considered preventing it from being taken away from their client-user market by targeting 'unanticipated' new and improved rpc/dcom vulnerabilities.

just one more reason to, as you noted, stay 4 or 5 years behind ms' cutting edge. ill be able to resist upgrading from 98se for a little while longer--at least until there are a few more essential (to me anyway) applications or upgrades that simply wont install on any system on which xp, 2k or win2003 cant be found.

even tho win98 isnt vulnerable to those blaster, sasser, etc things, my firewall faithfully records 30-80 portscans per day..all attempting to probe the same 10 or 12 ports. im convinced most of those originate from unattended systems. im guessing im not the only one experiencing that.

id like to hope that will eventually prompt ms to do the unthinkable and build a decent browser that isnt full of holes thanks to gates' seeming inability to resist the temptation to 'improve' perfectly good cross-platform technology like java and xml. but then id like to hope ill soon be named sultan of brunei.
Reply #2 from JoeUser Forums Top
Well said, kingbee. I highly doubt that will happen. To paraphrase Lily Tomlin playing her telephone operator character, "We're Microsoft, sir; we don't care. We don't have to."

Although a member of the Borg, I don't tend to implement their products faithfully. My mail lives on a *nix IMAP server somewhere, and I can access it anywhere through standard protocols. I use an AV software that is good but obscure (the script kiddies have thus far overlooked it when writing programs to kill same whilst infecting systems). I must, unfortunately, 'keep up with the Borgses' and learn the new stuff, so I can take the exams and maintain the certs, and this is the house that Jack built. I have noted an interesting trend. Not too many are taking the W2K3 series of classes and exams yet...MS Training and Cert site has been offering promotional deals for free exam vouchers if you fail your first attempt, discounts on classes, etc. Looks like Billg's revenue stream is not flowing as swiftly as planned, ne?
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