Firefox prone to hackers as much as Internet Explorer

[Frosty Jack]

I swear I'm gonna open up a 'Snakebite' Forum, so you can argue with yourself all day long. Cos I'm damn sure no-one else knows what you're dribbling on about. Even assuming you're technically right in what you're saying (!) - why are you saying it? Maybe I'm thick, but all I'm getting from you is

"Don't drive on the motorway! It's dangerous!"

"But I'm in a tank"

"Yes, but look how dangerous a bicycle is"...

"well, yes, but I'm in a tank"

"Still dangerous!"

so what should I be driving then?

[HeinzHines]

The problems that firefox has experienced since its release have however been on a greater scale than what internet explorer first experienced in it's infancy

That is one of the biggest lies i have ever seen.....

[soundian]

Obviously you didnt read the post' date=' you have a bad habit of that.

[/quote']

As the pot said to the kettle.

Logic: If Firefox becomes so popular crackers (not hackers) will target it instead of IE, then IE will become the browser of choice again, making the crackers turn their attention to IE. AGAIN!

EDIT: links to your data would be nice( non-microsoft sponsored links), I don't need to put links to mine, just google.

[Addi]

I'd been wanting to mention that hacker was the wrong word but was worried I'd open a whole new can of worms.

[soundian]

I'd been wanting to mention that hacker was the wrong word but was worried I'd open a whole new can of worms.

Consider that can opened.

[Hugh_Jazz]

There has been a large frequency of patches for firefox already within its first year and is almost on par with the amount of patches released every month for internet explorer which has been around for more than 10 years. What happens in the next few years can mozilla keep up with an exponentially increasing rate of bug fixes.

If it is true that there have been as many patches made for Firefox within one year as for IE over the last 10 years, surely that completely disproves the spurious point you've been trying to make.

This does NOT mean that Firefox is more necessarily more buggy than IE. It just means that Firefox has the capacity (because it's open source) to get things fixed quicker....so more things get fixed.

[Neil]

Snakebite, do everyone and yourself a favour and read this web site throughly:

http://nanobox.chipx86.com/ie_is_dangerous.php

And stop posting your ill-informed and ignorant comments.

[Scott!]

Omfg

The problems that firefox has experienced since its release have however been on a greater scale than what internet explorer first experienced in it's infancy.

...

Internet Explorer may not be any better but not everyone has access to the programming code. Only the really determined hackers once they manage to decompile it.

Dear God, your reasoning is breathtakingly poor. Ok... here I go, point for point.

1. Internet Explorer 1.0 came out in August 1995. Firefox 1.0, which was not the first publically available version of the program, came out on November 9, 2004. You don't need a degree in IT to know that over those 9 years the amount of people, and thus crackers, using the internet has increased exponentially. If everybody had been using Mosaic for ten years and IE was just coming out now, it would be getting loads of serious attacks too, simply because of how many people are using the product.

2. Define "problems". If you mean patches, that's because it's open source and can be patched anytime unlike Microsoft with its horrifying monthly patch day scheme. If anything, loads of patches increases my confidence in a product simply because it shows that somebody somewhere is actually putting in the time and effort to fix problems in the software. I would be willing to bet that the amount of "problems" that you refer to that actually have the potential to cause damage are far smaller in Firefox than in IE.

3. You can't just arbitrarily decompile something to a high level language like C. Using GDB on my Linux box I can easily check out the assembly code constituting any program, and there are programs for Windows that do this too. But nobody actually programs in assembly language because it's mind-blowingly difficult and impossible to port to other platforms. Assembly is just a easier shorthand for the native opcodes that the processor runs, except with mnemonics and things to make it easier for a human programmer. There's a huge difference between seeing the assembly code that makes something run and being able to understand how to exploit that. But let me get this straight: it is impossible, in the sense you mean, to decompile something. Once Microsoft compiles the C code written by its programmers into binary, there is nothing anyone with just the binary can do to derive the source code.

Please, for the sake of everybody reading this post, take a course in IT or something so you actually know your stuff before bothering us with your half-thought out blether. I would never tell a drummer that their kit is crap because I know nothing about drums. Clearly, you know nothing about computing, so stop telling us how bad our programs are when you know nothing about them whatsoever.

[Snakebite]

If it is true that there have been as many patches made for Firefox within one year as for IE over the last 10 years' date=' surely that completely disproves the spurious point you've been trying to make.

This does NOT mean that Firefox is more necessarily more buggy than IE. It just means that Firefox has the capacity (because it's open source) to get things fixed quicker....so more things get fixed.[/quote']

I said the amount of patches released this year only for internet explorer are on par with the number of patches released this year only for firefox. Not the last ten. I just said internet explorer has been around for more than ten years.

[Snakebite]

Snakebite' date=' do everyone and yourself a favour and read this web site throughly:

[url']http://nanobox.chipx86.com/ie_is_dangerous.php

And stop posting your ill-informed and ignorant comments.

Here's a few websites you should read yourself

http://www.zdnetasia.com/insight/software/0,39044822,39200961-2,00.htm

http://kalsey.com/2004/09/why_i_dont_recommend_firefox/

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum21/9243-2-10.htm

http://www.zackvision.com/weblog/archives/entry/001243.html

[God]

snakebite being a silly fool

IE doesn't have the cool as fuck FoxyTunes extention, so why would i want to use it?

[Scott!]

Here's a few websites you should read yourself

http://www.zdnetasia.com/insight/software/0' date='39044822,39200961-2,00.htm[/url']

http://kalsey.com/2004/09/why_i_dont_recommend_firefox/

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum21/9243-2-10.htm

http://www.zackvision.com/weblog/archives/entry/001243.html

Your point is flawed. Firstly, the webmasterworld site is a members only forum and requires payment. Just because somebody said it on the internet doesn't make it true.

This snippet is from kalsey.com:

"This is a critique of the Firefox marketing strategy, nothing more."

What does this website have to do with your point in any way whatsoever? You have not once said anything about the marketing strategy of this program.

From zdnetasia.com:

"Firefox is certainly the best alternative browser I've come across."

and, the smoking gun:

"Lastly, as others have noted, Firefox is probably a safer security bet than IE."

Whoopsie daisy! You've posted, as backup for your misguided argument, a site that unequivocally contradicts your point. Click the link: it's on the page.

Instead of typing in "firefox sucks" or whatever on Google and pasting whatever comes up, you should probably read what the sites say too.You've lost the debate. This thread should be closed.

[soundian]

Here's a few websites you should read yourself

http://www.zdnetasia.com/insight/software/0' date='39044822,39200961-2,00.htm[/url']

http://kalsey.com/2004/09/why_i_dont_recommend_firefox/

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum21/9243-2-10.htm

http://www.zackvision.com/weblog/archives/entry/001243.html

And they prove?

The first one admits security is better with firefox, the second is a critique of mozilla's marketing strategies (no security mentioned).

I can't read the third one, I'd have to subscribe and my doctor says I'm allergic to paying for websites, it brings me out in a cold sweat just thinking about it..

The fourth one doesn't talk about security at all.

I should have said, relevant non-microsoft sponsored links are what we need.

EDIT: Damn, Scott! got there just before me, I'll leave it up though, just cos he deserves to be kicked when he's down.

[Scott!]

And they prove?

The first one admits security is better with firefox' date=' the second is a critique of mozilla's marketing strategies (no security mentioned).

I can't read the third one, I'd have to subscribe and my doctor says I'm allergic to paying for websites, it brings me out in a cold sweat just thinking about it..

The fourth one doesn't talk about security at all.

I should have said, [b']relevant non-microsoft sponsored links are what we need.

EDIT: Damn, Scott! got there just before me, I'll leave it up though, just cos he deserves to be kicked when he's down.

I like your style. Geek solidarity!

[Snakebite]

And they prove?

The first one admits security is better with firefox' date=' the second is a critique of mozilla's marketing strategies (no security mentioned).

I can't read the third one, I'd have to subscribe and my doctor says I'm allergic to paying for websites, it brings me out in a cold sweat just thinking about it..

The fourth one doesn't talk about security at all.

I should have said, [b']relevant non-microsoft sponsored links are what we need.

EDIT: Damn, Scott! got there just before me, I'll leave it up though, just cos he deserves to be kicked when he's down.

No the first one states that Firefox is picky about what websites it will show properly which means only a minority of websites will function properly in firefox. Which isnt good if you try to say it's better than everything else if it cant view the majority of websites without some problem occuring with how it interprets it.

The second one states that the patch updates always seem to break something. which makes it a pain for the standard basic user as they wont normally know how to fix it themselves. Also it indicates that firefox has a habit of crashing badly resulting in loss of bookmarks etc.

The third one see google link below

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.webmasterworld.com%2Fforum21%2F9243-2-10.htm&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

This site states the firefox has a major habit of crashing frequently and that it hogs memory.

The fourth one states similar information as the third website about how it runs slow, hogs memory and crashes at least once a day.

[Addi]

right:

the first one was written on Friday , November 12 2004 12:24 PM - which means its old, the information is no longer relevant.

same with the second link was September 6, 2004, again thats old.

third link...the newest post in that thread (on page 13) is feb 5th 2005. thats still 4 months ago. the page you linked to was november 13th 2004. old. no longer relevant.

first link again: firefox isnt "picky" about what it displays, it just sticks to w3c standards, which microsoft feels it can expand on because it held such a monopoly on the brower market. (your fourth link says this in the first sentence "I do understand that it is a better browser than Internet Explorer and has much better support of the W3C standards. ")

Second link again: this refers to an older version: as an example it complains there is no "Go" button as standard. well there is now.

third link: there are some bugs talked about and things but they cant be very legitimate otherwise they wouldnt be posting them on a forum, first they'd tell the mozilla foundation and collect the $500 reward and free t-shirt you get for rerporting a critical flaw. also since this is a pay site there are less people participating. mostly its going to be WEBMASTERS (hint is in the address) who will be pissed that they are going to have to start doing there jobs and coding pages properly.

fouth link: might have a valid point. it does seem to use a more memory than IE for some people. personally i find that i uses more memory for small amounts of pages (1 page open at a time) but when you start tabbing it quickly surpasses IE.

[Scott!]

The problem with IE is that it will display the most horrifyingly mangled HTML and CSS and make it look decent, whereas Firefox and most other browsers demand a more stringent usage of the W3C standards. The arguments these hacks are making is, essentially, that they don't want to fix their crappy code because they're too lazy. I've coded several pages before, and always checked them through the W3C validator, as everyone should do, and displaying them in Firefox was never a problem. It's not that it's picky, it's just that IE will display anything, mangled or not. I once read a cynical magazine article that suggested that Microsoft had done this so pages would look stupid in Netscape if they weren't perfectly coded. Bottom line: this isn't coders' fault, it's Microsoft's for lulling them into complacency.

[soundian]

No the first one states that Firefox is picky about what websites it will show properly which means only a minority of websites will function properly in firefox. Which isnt good if you try to say it's better than everything else if it cant view the majority of websites without some problem occuring with how it interprets it.

The second one states that the patch updates always seem to break something. which makes it a pain for the standard basic user as they wont normally know how to fix it themselves. Also it indicates that firefox has a habit of crashing badly resulting in loss of bookmarks etc.

The third one see google link below

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.webmasterworld.com%2Fforum21%2F9243-2-10.htm&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

This site states the firefox has a major habit of crashing frequently and that it hogs memory.

The fourth one states similar information as the third website about how it runs slow' date=' hogs memory and crashes at least once a day.[/quote']

You're confusing me, looking at the title of this thread I thought we were talking about security.

[The Milner]

No the first one states that Firefox is picky about what websites it will show properly which means only a minority of websites will function properly in firefox. Which isnt good if you try to say it's better than everything else if it cant view the majority of websites without some problem occuring with how it interprets it.

The second one states that the patch updates always seem to break something. which makes it a pain for the standard basic user as they wont normally know how to fix it themselves. Also it indicates that firefox has a habit of crashing badly resulting in loss of bookmarks etc.

The third one see google link below

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.webmasterworld.com%2Fforum21%2F9243-2-10.htm&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

This site states the firefox has a major habit of crashing frequently and that it hogs memory.

The fourth one states similar information as the third website about how it runs slow' date=' hogs memory and crashes at least once a day.[/quote']

in my year using it firefox has never once crashed. go figure.

[Daniel]

theirs to many nerds in this thread

[Scott!]

I'd rather be nerdy than not know the difference between "theirs" and "there's" and "to" and "too"

[IamScrooge]

Dont use IE because Bill Gates will steal your porn!