I completely agree Asa. I was very dissapointed when i read that post on Scobles blog- he lost a lot of my respect.

Asa -

Could you pass on to the powers that be the GREAT wonderfulness there would be if the FeedHouse page on mozillazine.org had an RSS feed I could toss into an aggregator? Then I woudl only have to subscribe to that to see all the thoughts of everybody workin' on mozilla ;)

- Hunter

Robert is 100 times more honest in his statements than a mozilla zealot, that's why he recommended firefox, but that doesn't mean that supporting all the lies out there coming from various zealots.

Homeland Security first of all recommends few changes on the user's computer, the last recommendation is using a different browser, so you are doing a disservice to us there.

If Mozilla is not secure, why switch to Mozilla? I am still waiting for someone from mozilla who will not trade his honesty for the benefit of gaining more market share in the browser market. For once tell us some truth, not FUD.

I think the point is that it is *more* secure not that it is completely secure.

God, the same argument could be made for changing to high security in the IE internet zone. Yeah you might still get bitten by an exploit that disregards this, so why not just stay in the internet zone?? Fallacious..

The last 2 widely published IE vulnerabilities won over a couple of people I know. Especially that last one, grabbing bank passwords *before* SSL kicks in. Very scary, especially since some people were already at the point that they used IE *only* for banking stuff.

Just be careful to state to your friends that Firefox is safer than IE, but even Firefox doesn't guarantee 100% safety. If you state that Firefox will cure all for ever and ever you'll lose at least some converts as soon as there is even /one/ published firefox vulnerability.

Read again, Daniel, please:

Daniel says:"...than a mozilla zealot, that's why he recommended firefox, but that doesn't mean that supporting all the lies out there coming from various zealots...."

Asa said:"No Web browser is 100% safe."

Arthur, yes but saying that Scoble is doing a disservice is a big lie and FUD. I don't think playing dirty helps mozilla, I think it hurts it on the long run. I personally use Firefox, I don't see why someone needs to tell lies to convince people to use Firefox. Just tell the truth, don't try to scare people. After using Firefox people will naturally use it. I am not religious on these issues, but I find it quite natural to recommend firefox to my friends. The FUD from mozilla destroys the credibility, people look like they are bunch of online vandals or something like that, I have friends that believe that I am a crazy zealot when I recommend firefox, even though I recommend Firefox because it increases the productivity. So instead of bashing Microsoft employees here and there, they should be more positive and honest. Everybody says Linux is better, but we know that it sucks in everyway, Firefox is better than IE's latest version, but people don't see a difference between people who tell them to use some unknown, unreliable operating system and a browser which they don't know. Mozilla will lose again, I don't think mozilla advocates understand how to make mozilla the number one browser out there. Most of them are religious fanatics, agressive, dishonest and bashers. Somebody has to fix this image, but I think people love to get attention by bashing Microsoft.

Well, i don't know that it has a lot of relation to this blog post Daniel.

But what you say does have some significance for sure, treating people like ignorant fools and trying to force things on them never helped. I think i may have strayed pretty close to that myself on occasion.

But you know there are zealots on all sides.

As for linux it is great in many ways, is reliable, it's not so user friendly/easy to use if you don't have a good deal of knowledge regarding it though. Couldn't you be more reasonable and less reactionary regarding it?

Daniel: the essence of Asa's item is not about 'zealots' or 'Ms vs. OS' or 'Firefox vs Explorer, no, it's about questioning the motives and the arguments. Once again:

-- "Robert does his readers a disservice by hiding behind the (paraphrasing) "people don't like change and why change when the alternative isn't perfect" arguments."

Look for example at Scoble's latest comment where he says the following:
-- " Even sings rap songs about it. Contains potentially offensive language. *Not to me*, mind you, but some of my readers might not like hearing a profanity or two."

Or ways a long ago Scoble said this:
I keep pointing out that if we fixed the CSS and PNG issues, you still wouldn't be able to use those for years. Why? Cause consumers (and companies) really don't care about those issues and won't download a new version just cause you fixed one or two issues.

I think the best description of this behaviour is 'Belittling'.

http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/index.html

Spywareblaster is very good at locking down IE's insecurites though perhaps not all.

It's not a cleaner like spybot/adaware more aprevention tool.

Damn i meant to post the above in the "microsoft's fix fails to close hole?" Article where it had a bit more relevance, not this one.

Apologies.

On the car analogy with the bumper, SUVs are rated as trucks and have much less hardy bumpers than cars. So many people head out feeling safer, even though their SUV has a bumper held to a lower standard than passenger cars.

Looks like it was Asa who made a disservice to us here, because as of today it is found that Firefox and Mozilla has a serious security problem. Scoble turned out to be correct after all.