I see OpenID mentioned twice without any discussion of what it is, who's using it, or how it addresses these problems.
You can read the gory details from the Wikipedia article, but OpenID is basically an authentication system that lets you authenticate with an existing identity, by proving you "own" a URL associated with that identity.
It solves the "account overload" problem fairly well, you only create an account on a site (or on sites) that you will actually use - everywhere else, you use your identity on a site you actually use as an OpenID. For example, you could use OpenID to comment or get added as a friend to another person's site. This, and the increasing prevalence of RSS and Atom feeds, mean that the technology already exists to have social networks that span multiple sites.
Right now, the biggest OpenID-enabled site is probably LiveJournal, but OpenID is an open standard, can be supported in standalone blogs easily, and is supported in some way by many of the commercial and open source blog engines. I guess the question would be what's stopping MySpace, Facebook, and other sites from coming on board? Loss of control? Fear they will lose users?
A new 'user account control' system tries to protect you from yourself, so you don't accidentally make changes to important system settings without being warned first. However pressing the 'ok' button lets you do whatever you want anyway, and experienced users will just be annoyed. What did I do? I turned it off completely and am not bothered by it anymore. You'll probably do the same, too.
To me, this in and of itself demonstrates that the credibility of the author is lacking.
There's a reason user account control is there, and it's not just to protect the user from themselves, it's also to protect the user from programs making system changes behind their back.
Obviously, limited user accounts are much more secure, but user account control at least gives some chance at stopping spyware and other malware before it does serious harm, but only if the user's leave it turned on.
To even suggest this in what's supposed to be a serious review is advising the reader to throw security out the window. Of course, that's what most user's will do, but still, its not something to almost recommend user's do.
Apparently, I chose a bad example - the roaming functionality did make it into seamonkey, but not into Firefox or Thunderbird. I stand partially corrected.
Last time I checked, Firefox was still open source software. If they're not fixing bugs fast enough for your liking, by all means, download the source and fix them yourself. That's not meant as a smart-ass excuse for not fixing a bug, but the article's author says:
This assumes that the people affected by bugs are actually capable of fixing them, and is an example of one of the worst qualities of open source software - elitism.
Not to mention, the Mozilla development processes are so overburdened with red tape that an outside developer would have a very difficult time contributing effectively - while I understand why the review/supereview process is needed, it serializes development to the point where even when developers want to help, and contribute code for features that are highly desired by end users, by the time anyone gets to look at it, development has progressed to the point where any patches submitted are useless.
For an example of this, look at the various bugs for roaming profile support - its been years since it was removed from the old netscape product, there was a large userbase for that feature, and major outcry to have it back - but we still don't have it, even though numerous patches have been submitted - if it's not a priority for the developers on the inside of the project, it probably doesn't get done even if someone is willing to provide code.
That said, despite the issues, I've still found Firefox to be the best browser available to me - I just hope the project wakes up and listens to the community before its too late.
Slashdot Mirror
I see OpenID mentioned twice without any discussion of what it is, who's using it, or how it addresses these problems. You can read the gory details from the Wikipedia article, but OpenID is basically an authentication system that lets you authenticate with an existing identity, by proving you "own" a URL associated with that identity. It solves the "account overload" problem fairly well, you only create an account on a site (or on sites) that you will actually use - everywhere else, you use your identity on a site you actually use as an OpenID. For example, you could use OpenID to comment or get added as a friend to another person's site. This, and the increasing prevalence of RSS and Atom feeds, mean that the technology already exists to have social networks that span multiple sites. Right now, the biggest OpenID-enabled site is probably LiveJournal, but OpenID is an open standard, can be supported in standalone blogs easily, and is supported in some way by many of the commercial and open source blog engines. I guess the question would be what's stopping MySpace, Facebook, and other sites from coming on board? Loss of control? Fear they will lose users?
Apparently, I chose a bad example - the roaming functionality did make it into seamonkey, but not into Firefox or Thunderbird. I stand partially corrected.