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Netscape 8 to Emphasize Security
wikinerd writes "Netscape is building Netscape 8 which will include several anti-phishing enhancements and will emphasize security. Netscape obtains blacklists of scam and spam sites which will be denied access to ActiveX and cookies. RSS capabilities will also be included in Netscape 8, which will be released on 17 February."
Try just not putting it in at all...
When did THAT happen?
I thought that was one of the reasons to use Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox.... cuz they DIDN'T support ActiveX... ??
Watch the Teaser Trailer for "The Lightning Thief" Her
until fairly recently, most PHBs have never heard of 'firefox' or 'mozilla'. Even now, those who have do not have a clue that all three are related.
The do know the name 'netscape', however; and it's a safe, corporate-friendly name (unlike mozilla or firefox).
users designed to resist phishing schemes and ENLAR6E Y0||R PE|\||5 spam.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
I.E.: Speakeasy
e fox/
Just give users an extension:
http://www.speakeasy.net/software/fir
That way, they can keep up to date with Firefox.
Now Netscape, as usual will lag in updates... which means security holes may remain, etc.
If they did an extension, users could likely update with no problems.
The decision to use blacklists with ActiveX is an unfortunate one. In an environment as fluid as the internet scam industry, there will be vastly more new sites set up than human-controlled blacklisting can stop, especially if web servers are set up on botnets of unsuspecting home XP users. Let's just hope the default rendering engine will be Gecko.
Having said that, there are a few javascript phishing techniques that work perfectly well in Firefox with Gecko...
One good turn - gets all the covers.
There's nothing funny about it really. All browsers' end goal is market share. Firefox may be arguably more secure than IE, but its focus on providing something IE lacks is just a step in its end goal of more market share. They happen to, at least for now, not be financially motivated, but market share is still what they want.
1) I agree with what has been said a few times: using blacklists sounds nice, but really doesn't work well. Spammers and Scammers can create new sites faster then we can blacklist old ones.
2) I still think FireFox is the way to go. Much more attention to security and features. Easier to use and less bloat.
3) This is more of a question: Does anyone have any statistics of what browsers and versions of browsers are most being used? I mean, I'd love to see that broken down by country and by versions.
Well... with a marketing campaign of "Focusing on Security", every security hole/bug found in it will be just that much more embarassing for them. It was that way with IE for a while with their security releases but it's happened to much that we've all become desensitized to it.
It seems to me that it would be much, much more secure to allow the user to whitelist sites they wanted to use ActiveX on. For example, Windows Update, and my stupid online paystub page.
I only have a handful of pages that I *need* ActiveX on, and the rest can go pound sand.
Solves the problems of Netscape having to maintain the lists, too.
Keep your friends close.
Keep your enemies in a little jar on your desk.
You do know that your talking complete rubbish don't you?
The majority of the Mozilla code was written by Netscape employees.
Now I know what you mean. You mean that all the old Netscape Communicator code was rewritten. Well, firstly, that's wrong (things like NSPR and NSS are still kicking around) and secondly, most of the code was rewritten by Netscape employees.
While Netscape may not have written any Mozilla code since July 2003 (the fact that there is no Netscape browser division kind of puts a damper on that), it doesn't mean that they didn't make huge contributions in the first five years of the Mozilla project.
Go to bonsai.mozilla.org and search for checkins by people with netscape.com email addresses if you don't believe me. Or use lxr.mozilla.org to search for files that have Netscape employees as listed contributors.
Better question, why use Netscape at all?
Netscape was cool like 10 years ago, and that was only because there simply wasn't anything else. To be honest, in looking back, all of their browsers sucked. But the company has been bought and bastardized and not even used by AOL. The only thing I know about Netscape nowadays is that they their name has been now sold by AOL to some cheesy dial up company that is competing with Netzero for $9.99 a month internet access at blazing speeds at 56 whatever or less. That was a stroke of genius by AOL to sell the Netscape name for a competing product.
Netscape is dead. Only its name remains, and that hardly means anything.
Microsoft publishes "ActiveX for Netscape", which is a normal dll plugin. It works (but is undesirable) in Firefox under Windows.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
D3D Games from websites: "Why the fuck would you want to?"
Virus scans from websites: "Why not just have them download and run the fucking executable?"
ActiveX: A virus of a solution still looking for a problem.
How do you make a Direct3D game load from a web site without loading through an ActiveX control?
You don't. You use something that's actually cross-platform and isn't Windows-specific. Not all internet users run Windows (I sure don't). It's the internet, not the Wintelnet.
What about client-side apps that access the file system, such as an ActiveX virus scanner?
They shouldn't. That's not the place for such things. Convenient? Sure. Worth the price? Hell no. There are far better ways to scan for viruses than to give websites full access to every file on your computer.
An analogy would be saying that unless you leave your doors unlocked at all times, how is the cable guy going to fix your TV? Or the telephone guy fix the static on your lines? Or the furnace guy fix the boiler? Sure, we get robbed ever week... but we've GOT to leave our house unlocked for these other things.
And some of us run operating systems that don't get viruses anyhow.
D3D Games from websites: "Why the fuck would you want to?"
To advertise to children. The Kids Next Door game is based on a TV series, which is supported by TV advertising.
Virus scans from websites: "Why not just have them download and run the fucking executable?"
A downloadable version of the online virus scanner would compete with the retail version.
"Since no one uses Netscape anyway ..."
Not even remotely true.
"I continue to be surprised that AOL has anyone at all working on a browser that they refuse to use or promote."
I can't argue that AOL's strategy with Netscape has been maddeningly inconsistant; it would indeed be nice if they would use the Gecko engine as the standard in their own product.
"Who knows, but Netscape is a non-player, and so a non-issue in any way."
Netscape is now the standard browser throughout my workplace, and is the browser that I and colleagues recommend when businesses inquire about alternatives to Internet Explorer.
Here's where I prove how psychic I am by predicting your question; "Why don't you just tell them to use Firefox?".
There are a number of reasons, some that won't make sense to you in the strictest technical sense, but are are business realities nonetheless. For one, when a business finds out that Firefox comes from a "non-profit volunteer cooperative", they automatically freeze up, and say "no thanks". Like it or not, businesses are label whores; they like products from "real businesses". Tell them the gecko-engined Mozilla browser is released by a team of volunteers, and they flinch. Tell them the gecko-engined Netscape browser is released by AOL, and they trust it. Never mind it's practically the same browser. Doesn't matter. Commercially released software is safer and superior in the minds of the business public. They don't care what's underneath. They care who's putting it out there.
I consider Debian vastly superior to Red Hat in almost everything, and yet Red Hat, which is horrendously expensive and bloated, continues to be the business standard when it comes to Linux in the workplace. Because when you buy it, it's coming from a company with business-supplied support and warranties. You can tell them Debian is better, and then tell them it's free-as-in-beer. The next question is "who gives a warranty on it and provides support?". When you tell your boss "no one" and "public user forums", you're likely to be thrown from his office.
As much scorn as Netscape gets here in comparison to Mozilla and Firefox, if a business wants a "commercial alternative", where do you point them? Opera? In my expierience, Netscape 7.X works pretty well, which wasn't always the case with pre-1.0 Firefox versions.
I realize I could be a Firefox cheerleader, but I'd just be butting my head against the wall. The main goal is just to get users off of IE, and if Netscape is the easiest and most acceptable way to the boss to do it, so be it.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel