Subject: [mmox] Target audience

From: Dan Olivares <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 23:36:08 -0500

"I stand by my statement about opensouce being non-user-friendly, and
ultimately about closed societies of coders who aren't accountable to
the general public and sometimes operate outside of restraints of
liberal democracy in ways that are often destructive (promoting hacker
culture and crime).", And, that's your opinion.   My point in the last
e-mail was asking for clarification on your statement.  You didn't
really clarify it, instead, you chose to make another statement.

So, lets break it down, point by point.

"I don't at all feel compelled to have to provide some lengthy
exegesis on why this is true about every single one of the types of
software you indicate although I could write pages"

Good, because this is really off topic.

I don't feel compelled to have to provide some lengthy exegesis on how
hacker culture and crime have nothing to do with open source
development..   since it's an obvious red herring.

According to w3schools.com, FireFox currently has 45.5% of the browser
market share.    It's obviously meeting the expectations of /some/
users. (Ref: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp )

Additionally, the bug that you reported is just one of several hundred
bugs found relating to 'save password'.  Some of them ask to redesign
the save password dialog, some of them say, "Save password prompt is
gone; no passwords could be saved in preferences ", which contradicts
what you suggested is happening.

On the firefox bugtracker, I didn't see the specific bug you
mentioned, however, I did see lots of bugs (Ref:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?query_format=specific&order=relevance+desc&bug_status=__open__&product=Firefox&content=save+password
)

On the Internet Explorer 8 bugtracker (microsoft doesn't have a public
bugtracker for non-beta versions) , I also see a lot of bugs ( Ref:
https://connect.microsoft.com/IE/feedback/SearchResults.aspx?FeedbackOverviewType=6
)

There's pages and blog posts that contain gripes about firefox: (ex:
http://boonyew.com/interaction/2008/12/01/usability-gripes-with-firefoxs-download-feature/
)

There's pages and blog posts that contain gripes about Internet
Explorer: ( ex: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2156566,00.asp )

As far as 'security' goes...   Steve Gibson ( hosts the Security Now
Podcast and computer security researcher ref:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Gibson_(computer_programmer) ) uses
FireFox with the NoScript and clickhijack addon because he feels it's
more secure then Internet Explorer. (he expresses this on the Security
Now podcast.  Also, there are other people discussing it on:
http://forum.ie7pro.com/viewtopic.php?id=99 ).  Often, Steve is
criticized for 'security over usability'.

We each choose our own poison when it comes to browsers as well as
software in general.  Some of us prefer IE, some of us prefer FireFox,
some of us prefer Safari.
It really is a big deal, however, that January's browser statistics
say FX(firefox)'s market share is 45.5% and if you add up the three
versions of IE represented on that table, and you get 44.8%.   Just
because more people have chosen to use firefox in the month of
January, doesn't necessarily mean that open source software is better.
 It just means that more people have chosen to use firefox in January.
(for the record, this e-mail was written in the gmail web interface
with Internet Explorer)

Sincerely

Daniel Olivares

On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 10:03 PM, [email-masked]
<[email-masked]> wrote:
> From: Dan Olivares <[email-masked]>
> Subject: Re: [mmox] mmox Digest, Vol 1, Issue 163
>
> I stand by my statement about opensouce being non-user-friendly, and ultimately about closed societies of coders who aren't accountable to the general public and sometimes operate outside of restraints of liberal democracy in ways that are often destructive (promoting hacker culture and crime).
>
> I don't at all feel compelled to have to provide some lengthy exegesis on why this is true about every single one of the types of software you indicate although I could write pages. A really good example is Firefox, which harasses you constantly asking you if you want to save your password forever or for this session or never, based on the misguided concept that people just love the idea of all those options constantly shoved at them with only an opt-out, that they just are dying to have the option to always save their log-ons -- although of course, that creates security problems especially on multi-user computers which are *most* computers. It's the sort of hilarious "solution" that came about because of people complaining in both directions and opensourcery then providing all these choices and add-ons.
>
> To get rid of it, all you have to do (which you can't "just know" until you finally find it) is go to tools/options/security/uncheck remember password (but it keeps falling out and needs redoing after each update). If you google this issue, you will see many frustrated people, and many geeks offering hilarious and contorted ways to get rid of it. But...if you have checked off a box saying "remember passwords" why can't it just do that, and not keep offering you choices each time? It's an example of the wonky non-usefulness of geekitude that the average person simply finds stupid and annoying but can't escape.Firefox constantly hangs and stalls, it constantly crashes and has to remember itself. Yet we're all frog-marched into using it or told we're not cool and starving little babies or something if we use IE.
>
>
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