From: dk at pwarchitects.com (dk)
Subject: New Internet Explorer Beta

William Lefkovics wrote:
--[snip of Gartner babble]--

Will,
	You know (as a comparison) one could argue that much of what gartner 
says is a good "backup source" for the masses to listen to when one 
lacks the experience to form their own opinion. Of course I'm joking a 
bit here; but personal experimentation reveals more than corporate 
quotation for sure, no?

> I'm absolutely delighted that the decision to tie IE releases to Windows has
> been reversed.

As I'm sure we all are... But do not confuse this with a good faith 
corporate gesture, or a dedication to improve the quality of their 
development for the community. This was purely a business decision with 
the consumers "quality-of-use" only weighed in $$'s.

> And Firefox is no panacea.  

Very true, but it was not the goal of the project to be one. It is 
self-evident that no piece of software has ever been, nor ever will be 
completely bug-free. Aside from serving the needs on the individual user 
better, the Mozilla Foundation seems to have help effect a policy change 
in our planet's wealthiest & most ambivalent corporation; no small task.

Besides, I'd rather help a local farmer pick the bugs off his crops than 
blindly eat the bugs of Monsanto's.

 > It is just another browser with a different set
> of issues.  A good backup browser, really.  

Bah, I've used many other browsers on many OS's since ~94. IE has never 
been a first choice for many people. It did not facilitate the creation 
of the WWW & the web's purpose shall outlive it & others no doubt. IE's 
problems have always been exacerbated because of it's designed context & 
end purpose; making it easy for site developers & windows developers to 
deliver content with as little thought or time as possible. Depriving 
them from learning valuable lessons on responsibility and consequence.
Naturally this ease of use applies to the malware authors as well. Hence 
this constant use of IE as an exploitation vector, regardless of market 
share held.
I believe the latter is demonstrated well enough through the spam 
phenomena we all suffer. Though the perpetrator clearly knows only a 
small share will ever even see the spam, they continue in mass-volume to 
reach those few until true diminishing returns are hit.

One thing that can help you distinguish a similar program from another 
is the developers timely response to bug reports, vulnerabilities, and 
the vested interest in the use/creation of the software to begin with.
Not to mention the availability to easily read & modify the source code. 
Little is hidden from you with some breed of apps; you can be in full 
control if you so desire. In this, IE and Firefox diverge greatly.

In the end, things can thrive with diversity. I welcome a future where 
many browsers, servers, programs, os's (etc) are used by the internet 
populace... If merely for an aesthetic reason, mono-culture is rice cake 
drab.
:)

-- 
dk

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