"OneStat.com ( www.onestat.com ), the number one provider of real-time web analytics, today reported that Mozilla's browsers have a total global usage share of 11,51 percent. The total usage share of Mozilla increased 2.82 percent since April 2005...
The global usage share of Mozilla's browsers is still growing and it seems that Netscape users and some Internet Explorer users are switching to the Firefox version."
It's clear from the text that the 11.5% figure reported in OneStat's press release is the share of all of Mozilla's browsers. According to at least one source, the use of the Mozilla Application Suite is over 1.5%, so Firefox may not really have over 10% share yet.
The stats show how much each browser is used, not what percentage of users use each browser. For example, Opera is used on 0.77% of visits to websites. Because you can only use one browser on a particular visit to a website, of course the percentages are exclusive.
Read the Wikipedia defintion of Astroturfing. We're not all happening upon a poll and spontaneously deciding to vote for a specific choice. We're being told where to go to vote and what choice to pick. That is obviously "centrally orchestrating the behavior of many diverse and geographically distributed individuals." It doesn't matter whether people who vote for it happen to agree with it or not, what matters is that the push to get people to go there and make a particular vote is centrally orchestrated.
The entire summary is a request for astroturfing, and my comment that this is astroturfing is Offtopic? What on earth are moderators smoking these days?
When you have to struggle to remember what you and your bong bud have just been talking about, it makes sense that you'd have to exercise your brain's memory regions. Smoking pot is like walking with leg weights -- it's harder to do when you have them on, but when they come off you're stronger for the extra effort you exerted.
You might want to try SeaMonkey. It's like Netscape 7.2 without all the commericial stuff added in, plus over a year of security updates and bug fixes.
Netscape 8 works with more sites because it switches to the IE engine when it tries to display a site that's known not to work with Gecko. Many users aren't going to put up with Firefox if it has problems with major sites, such as their bank. Of course, this makes Netscape 8 a security nightmare, because it combines all the vulnerabilities of Gecko and IE. That ought to keep the anti-virus and anti-adware companies happy, though.
To get a rough idea of how bad it will be, download MS Visual C++ Toolkit 2003 (available for free) and recompile your code. From my limited experience with porting Visual C++ 6.0 code to Visual C++ 2003, look for lots of compiler errors. Those may be good to fix, though, since the C++ compiler seems to more closely follow the standards, and you'll be forced to make your code more standards compliant and probably more portable, too.
The problem is that even Lightning will not be a drop-in replacement for Outlook. To use it, departments will have to at least configure their Exchange servers to recognize the IMAP protocol, and even with that change I don't think Outlook and Lightning scheduling will interoperate.
The only way Lightning can replace Outlook is for everyone in the entire department to completely switch from one to the other. Many IT people are going to see that as too risky, or at least too much work for the reward, and not make the switch.
If Lightning could interoperate with all Exchange servers and Outlook, by understanding the MAPI protocol and recognizing the Outlook calendar and scheduling formats, users could change over one-by-one without any IT help, and Lightning would get a lot more users.
Re:He's real?
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· Score: 2, Informative
I suppose they had a habit of making fun of industry executives on the show. Another example is Joe Davola.
Full disclosure is good only when the company sits on the vulnerability so long that it may be better to disclose the vulnerability and "force" them to fix it, rather than take the risk that someone malicious will discover the vulnerability and exploit it.
I've been using Mozilla for five years, and have been active in MozillaZine and Bugzilla during that time. I haven't seen any example of anyone expecting an average user to provide patches. The closest I've seen is when someone makes an inflammatory comment in Bugzilla about how old a bug is and demanding that it must be fixed right away, and a developer gets back by assigning the bug to them. However, clearly they don't actually expect the ranter to provide a patch.
Can you provide an example of someone in the F/OSS communinity acting as if they expect average users to provide patches?
You don't get viruses only from browsing the web. You can get them in e-mail or from mounting floppy disks or USB flash drives. And no browser will protect you from downloading and executing malicious.exe files. Also, you should know that IE is an integral part of Windows, and some programs use parts of the IE engine even though you might not know it.
Are you sure she got viruses just by browsing websites using an updated version of Firefox? That would be a rare event from everything I've heard.
IE users commonly get spyware. Firefox users rarely get spyware. If you personally are able to use IE without getting spyware, that's great. However, using Firefox is far more secure than using IE for the majority of browser users.
Opera 8.10 preview 2 identified as Opera by default, but Opera 8.50 identifies as IE by default. It's speculated that Opera 9.0 will identify as Opera by default.
This is the fundamental issue I have with the F/OSS mindeset--you have the source, so you can fix things yourself, and to hell with everyone else.
No, that's not the F/OSS mindset, just your misunderstanding of it.
Do car manufacturers expect drivers to fix their own cars? In some cases they do, but most people just take their cars into a shop for even the most minor maintenance.
The F/OSS mindset compares open software to normal cars as we have them today, and closed software to a car with its hood locked shut. If you have a problem with closed source software, you're a the mercy of whoever has the key to get into the engine. If they don't want to fix the problem, you have no choice but to live with it.
The F/OSS community certainly does not expect normal users to patch their code. The idea is that you can hire someone to fix the software if necessary. Normally, individual users would not do this, but it would make sense for medium- to large-size companies to do this.
Most stats sources detect Opera properly, even when it identifies as Internet Explorer. If some stats sources show a dramatic increase in Opera usage, and others show a similar increase in IE usage, that would indicate those others don't detect Opera properly. At that point, we can complain loudly to those companies, and maybe they'll fix their Opera detection.
Currently, it seems that GeoCities and S-Tracking don't detect Opera when it identifies as IE, so we can start complaining to them right now.
Whether your browser has 10 vulnerablilities or 1, the end result is this: YOUR MACHINE GET'S OWNED.
You haven't been paying attention, have you? Every browser has security vulnerabilities. The more your browser has, the more severe they are, and the longer they're publicly known before they're patched, the greater the chance that one of those vulnerabilities will be exploited. Those who use IE regularly must feel very lucky indeed.
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OneStat isn't counting downloads. It's counting the number of times Firefox and other browsers are used to access sites.
The stats show how much each browser is used, not what percentage of users use each browser. For example, Opera is used on 0.77% of visits to websites. Because you can only use one browser on a particular visit to a website, of course the percentages are exclusive.
Read the Wikipedia defintion of Astroturfing. We're not all happening upon a poll and spontaneously deciding to vote for a specific choice. We're being told where to go to vote and what choice to pick. That is obviously "centrally orchestrating the behavior of many diverse and geographically distributed individuals." It doesn't matter whether people who vote for it happen to agree with it or not, what matters is that the push to get people to go there and make a particular vote is centrally orchestrated.
The entire summary is a request for astroturfing, and my comment that this is astroturfing is Offtopic? What on earth are moderators smoking these days?
Slashdot. Astroturfing for nerds.
When you have to struggle to remember what you and your bong bud have just been talking about, it makes sense that you'd have to exercise your brain's memory regions. Smoking pot is like walking with leg weights -- it's harder to do when you have them on, but when they come off you're stronger for the extra effort you exerted.
You might want to try SeaMonkey. It's like Netscape 7.2 without all the commericial stuff added in, plus over a year of security updates and bug fixes.
RTFS: "Users will be prompted with the option to set either Netscape or IE as the default browser."
Netscape 8 works with more sites because it switches to the IE engine when it tries to display a site that's known not to work with Gecko. Many users aren't going to put up with Firefox if it has problems with major sites, such as their bank. Of course, this makes Netscape 8 a security nightmare, because it combines all the vulnerabilities of Gecko and IE. That ought to keep the anti-virus and anti-adware companies happy, though.
To get a rough idea of how bad it will be, download MS Visual C++ Toolkit 2003 (available for free) and recompile your code. From my limited experience with porting Visual C++ 6.0 code to Visual C++ 2003, look for lots of compiler errors. Those may be good to fix, though, since the C++ compiler seems to more closely follow the standards, and you'll be forced to make your code more standards compliant and probably more portable, too.
The only way Lightning can replace Outlook is for everyone in the entire department to completely switch from one to the other. Many IT people are going to see that as too risky, or at least too much work for the reward, and not make the switch.
If Lightning could interoperate with all Exchange servers and Outlook, by understanding the MAPI protocol and recognizing the Outlook calendar and scheduling formats, users could change over one-by-one without any IT help, and Lightning would get a lot more users.
I suppose they had a habit of making fun of industry executives on the show. Another example is Joe Davola.
Full disclosure is good only when the company sits on the vulnerability so long that it may be better to disclose the vulnerability and "force" them to fix it, rather than take the risk that someone malicious will discover the vulnerability and exploit it.
Can you provide an example of someone in the F/OSS communinity acting as if they expect average users to provide patches?
Are you sure she got viruses just by browsing websites using an updated version of Firefox? That would be a rare event from everything I've heard.
IE users commonly get spyware. Firefox users rarely get spyware. If you personally are able to use IE without getting spyware, that's great. However, using Firefox is far more secure than using IE for the majority of browser users.
Opera 8.10 preview 2 identified as Opera by default, but Opera 8.50 identifies as IE by default. It's speculated that Opera 9.0 will identify as Opera by default.
Opera costs nothing to download and use (it's free as in free beer). However, you may not see the source code (it's not free as in free speech).
Do car manufacturers expect drivers to fix their own cars? In some cases they do, but most people just take their cars into a shop for even the most minor maintenance.
The F/OSS mindset compares open software to normal cars as we have them today, and closed software to a car with its hood locked shut. If you have a problem with closed source software, you're a the mercy of whoever has the key to get into the engine. If they don't want to fix the problem, you have no choice but to live with it.
The F/OSS community certainly does not expect normal users to patch their code. The idea is that you can hire someone to fix the software if necessary. Normally, individual users would not do this, but it would make sense for medium- to large-size companies to do this.
Currently, it seems that GeoCities and S-Tracking don't detect Opera when it identifies as IE, so we can start complaining to them right now.
Wait! You forgot that IE also has more severe vulnerabilities, and they go unpatched for a longer time. The bottom line is that just about any mainstream alternative browser is way more secure than IE.