Re: OT: Mozilla/Firefox (was:Re: Windoze ends year with a major cert ...)

In article <seKdnZwmQP1shiXeRVn-jQ@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Bill Todd <billtodd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>
> ...
>
>> "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot
>> change, the courage to change the things I can, and the
>> wisdom to know the difference. " - Reinhold Niebuhr
>
> The final phrase being the crux of the matter in this case. Especially
> with a Web-based issue like this one, it's surprising how many people
> still feel that individuals can't come together and actually affect
> events

How many Linux users are there worldwide? Heck, they even have a
marketing branch (which is more than VMS has, but that's another
story). Who is winning the desktop? Linux or Windows?

> (the perception of an unstoppable Itanic juggernaut of a few
> years ago comes to mind: that perception didn't just fade away on its
> own, nor was the fade pushed by corporate interests - even IBM was on
> board at the time, and Sun was only temporizing rather than in its
> current full-attack mode).

Bad example. Itanic was a mistake from the beginning. As a matter
of fact, it even helps prove my point. With everyone jumping on the
bandwagon and all the really important companies backing it (except
Sun, but then, no one would argue that they are important any more)
it still failed to dominate the market.

>
> Web browsing is a situation where 1) a large percentage of individuals
> have a free choice in what to use,

No, they don't. What they use (outside of their house) is dictated by
corporate policy on the part of both the browser and the content side.
If your coprorate IT department refuses to allow the installation of
"rogue" programs (which they should) you use what they provide, in
most cases IE because it comes with Windows and has BG's blessing.
If the sites you have to access (we're not talking about google, ebay
or yahoo) only work with IE, then you have to use IE. Most people will
not want to have to jump back and forth between different browsers
depending on which site they visit. And we won;t even go into the
potential problems one can create by installing one of these other
browsers. I used to be a big supporter of Opera. Until it broke
MS updates :-( leaving me with a vulnerable machine that couldn't
be fixed without a reinstall because no matter what I did I could not
make IE my default browser again in order for MS updates to work again.

> 2) very viable alternatives to IE
> exist (Firefox just being the most prominent right now:
> Mozilla-ne-Netscape has been around forever, and Opera - now free and
> without ads for personal use - for quite a while), and

Which doesn't change the fact that if the sites you have to visit only
work with IE you have to use IE.

> 3) what people
> use is actually visible via the stats which are accumulated and
> published (though which may understate the use of products like Opera
> which can masquerade convincingly as IE when the need arises). If ever
> there were an environment where a better mousetrap could flourish
> without massive corporate sponsorship, this is it (and that indeed seems
> to be occurring).

And what I see is a move in the other direction. The larger corporation's
webpages are becomming more and more IE specific. Go figure.

>
> IE isn't likely to disappear, of course. But its days as a de facto
> standard may well already be fading or gone, with what we're currently
> seeing just reflecting the fact that updating *existing* sites to meet
> the real standards isn't that high a priority (given that other browsers
> don't seem to be having that much difficulty dealing with them anyway).

It has never been BG's desire to abide by standards. I see no reason why
that would change as long as he is on top. And I see no likelihood of his
being toppled anytime soon. Heck, Time magazine wants to canonize him.

bill

--
Bill Gunshannon | de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n. Three wolves
bill@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx | and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton |
Scranton, Pennsylvania | #include <std.disclaimer.h>
.

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