Slashdot Mirror
Firefox Users Surf Safer
SenseOfHumor writes "According to two University of Washington Professors, Firefox users have a safer browsing experience than users of IE. These researchers sent their crawlers to 45,000 websites and studied the impact on Firefox and IE." From the article: "Levy and Gribble, along with graduate students Alexander Moshchuk and Tanya Bragin, set up IE in two configurations -- one where it behaved as if the user had given permission for all downloads, the other as if the user refused all download permission -- to track the number of successful spyware installations. During Levy's and Gribble's most recent crawl of October 2005, 1.6 percent of the domains infected the first IE configuration, the one mimicking a nave user blithely clicking 'Yes;' about a third as many domains (0.6 percent) did drive-by downloads by planting spyware even when the user rejected the installations."
Owning a computer now is a bit like having a pet rabbit. It never just is. You have to feed it the right stuff or it gets sick. If you leave the hutch door open it might run away then you have to search the street for the bloody thing.
People could choose to have computers which just do their job from year to year but they seem to want to believe that the thing is alive, just like the pet. They want it to have issues and risks, to get "infected" and require "cleaning".
They won't be happy with something which just browses the web and shows them pictures. It won't be as entertaining and involving that way.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I just had this image of guys in suits yelling at each other about the merits of Firefox and IE; saying things like "Firefox is a liberal plot to undermine American values!", etc...