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Mozilla The Internet

Mozilla Usage Doubles in 9 Months 773

Posted by michael from the konqueror-gets-no-respect dept.
TheBadger writes "Thanks to the success of Firefox, Mozilla now appears to have 14.9% of the browser share, double that of 9 months ago. Let this be a lesson in complacency."
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Mozilla Usage Doubles in 9 Months More

Mozilla Usage Doubles in 9 Months

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  • Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 04, 2004 @07:45PM (#10159520)
    This is a completely non-story. W3Schools is a (good) site aimed at web developers, ones that actually understand and use HTML/CSS/etc rather than whatever Frontpage makes. Yes, it's good that more developers are using Firefox/Mozilla, but it is not indicative of average users. Google's Zeitgeist was a good measure of the average user, but they've dropped the browser stats. My non-techy websites get about 7% Firefox, and about another 3% of Mozilla/Netscape 6/7 users. Is Firefox/Mozilla usage increasing? Yes, but it is not at 15%.

    • Re:Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics (Score:5, Insightful)

      by JoshMooney ( 668142 ) <joshuamooney@gmail.com> on Saturday September 04, 2004 @07:50PM (#10159553) Homepage
      Unfortunatly, your non-techy websites don't represnet the entire web. Perhaps if you gave us a link, we could judge better. From my point of view, many "average" users are switching to Firefox. My mother and father (no, I don't live with them) have recently switched to Firefox on my suggestion and have thanked me for that suggestion. So, from my usage viewpoint, Forefox usage increased 100%. Its all relative.

      • Re:Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 04, 2004 @07:54PM (#10159579)
        You missed the point completely. I can give you the stats for my site, w3schools can give you the stats for their site, but none of them really mean anything. Only a major site like Google that attracts users of all types can really tell us anything.

      • Re:Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Curtman ( 556920 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @08:08PM (#10159656)
        Some workplaces (like mine) have instituted a no Exploder policy. If you're caught using it here, you get a reprimand, second offense is a day off with no pay, third you lose network privilages. Our admin seems to be a much happier guy lately.

      • Re:Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics (Score:5, Interesting)

        by bsharitt ( 580506 ) <bridget@sharitt . c om> on Saturday September 04, 2004 @08:37PM (#10159804) Journal
        I keep fixing people's computers because they have become so infested with spyware that they are unusable. In all those cases I install firefox and tell them to use that, and about 4 out of 5 keep firefox, so from my perspective usage has increased too.

        • Re:Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics (Score:5, Insightful)

          by utlemming ( 654269 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @12:32AM (#10160855) Homepage
          I think that this is a tech trend that Microsoft is not paying attention to. With all the spyware/viruses that are out in the wild, I have installed, recommneded and even forced (if you don't use Firefox, I will not fix your computer again) people to switch to Firefox. In my college apartment, all of us are now using Firefox. And the funny thing is that they are all non-Geeks (music majors mostly) and they are recommending it to their friends too. Microsoft seems to have forgotten the economics of the browser wars. Just because they won over Netscape by using the operating system as a way to distribute, doesn't mean that they will nessasarily maintain. And the thing that is going to be difficult for them is to convince everyone that is using Mozilla to switch back. The lesson that MS needs to learn if they want to maintain the dominance is to produce a secure product that gives people what they want. Heck, when some of MS's own execs use Firefox then you know that something is up.

    • Re:Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics (Score:5, Interesting)

      by rseuhs ( 322520 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @08:05PM (#10159640)
      On a completely non-technical site I manage (f1-facts.com), Gecko has increased from 3.482% in February to 9.274% last month (August), that's pretty impressing.

      Actually 9.274 or 10% (like in your case) isn't very far off from 15%.

    • No surprise (Score:5, Informative)

      by violet16 ( 700870 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @08:06PM (#10159645)
      I run two web sites, one of which gets 3 million hits per day, neither of which are tech-oriented, and have seen very similar results to W3schools. In January, 7% Firefox/Mozilla and 85% IE. In August, 15% Firefox/Mozilla and 74% IE.

    • Here are some real stats from a large entertainment company website for the month of August.

      1. Microsoft 9,888,438 84.0%
      2. AOL 1,235,916 10.5%
      3. Mozilla (Gecko) 263,605 2.2%
      4. Netscape 224,704 1.9%
      5. Safari 63,597 0.5%
      6. Opera 59,646 0.5%
      7. Other 32,933 0.3%

      No. 1 includes all Microsoft Browsers. IE4 - 6 The AOL users are also using microsoft browsers so that 94.5% of users using IE.

      Now I wish this wasn't the case but it's true.

    • Re:Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics (Score:5, Informative)

      by zapadoo ( 807744 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @09:34PM (#10160095)

      Here's the stats for a financial services website, which while doesn't attract traffic such as the likes of Schwab, is visited enough to be a good sampling:

      .........JAN 04 AUG 04
      MS IE.....91.5 % 66.4 %
      Netscape...5.6 % 12.3 %
      Unknown....1.4 % 3.2 %
      Opera......1.2 % 0.5 %
      FireFox....0.0 % 12.8 %
      Mozilla......... 2.4 %

      Anomolies are present due to better browser detection implemented mid 2004. This particular site put out a couple of articles (out of many hundreds of other articles on its core topic, financial services) which suggested a browser switch to clients.

      Apparently several paragraphs of advocacy make a difference.

  • In a perfect world... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Izago909 ( 637084 ) * <.moc.liamg. .ta. .dogsiuat.> on Saturday September 04, 2004 @07:45PM (#10159521)
    The anti-trust suits against Microsoft would have resulted in at least one of two things. The first would be removing IE so the person has to manually install it from the CD or download it after install. Second, force all of Microsoft's web development tools to be 100% standards compliant. Instead, the Bush administration gives them a get out of jail free pass and California accepts coupons for MS products which is the anti-solution for software monoculture in schools.

    How much longer will people vote for politicians who let corporations shit all over consumers in the name of profit?
    • Second, force all of Microsoft's web development tools to be 100% standards compliant.

      Do you mean 'web development tools' or 'browsers'? I think the majority of people would instead benefit from the latter. In either case, I would argue that there is no 100% standards compliant browser or web development system, so forcing MS in either scenario would be a touch extreme.
      • Make their devlopment tools be as compliant as posible. It's actually better for browsers to not be completely bound by standards. Browsers don't have to be as long as they can render compliant code properly. It would actually be better for the average person. That way any page written by the laziest, poorest educated author can still be seen.

        I just find it amazing that tools like frontpage output HTML looking code that isn't true HTML. Non-IE browsers will choke and render the page so poorly that it's un
      • My 'web development tool', a text editor, is 100% standard compliant.

  • Is This True? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by The Lost Supertone ( 754279 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @07:47PM (#10159527) Journal
    Seriously? Hmm... they don't seem to have any category for Konquer/Safari users... or am I missing something? Either way nice to see Moz gaining ground... but... is this really true?

    • Re:Is This True? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 04, 2004 @08:10PM (#10159670)
      Given that Konq's default browser id is:

      Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Konqueror/3.3; Linux) (KHTML, like Gecko)

      it's probably just being included in the Mozilla stats.

      I wish the browser id tag had never been put in. Devs would have no choice but to write to the standard.

  • IE6 went down and IE5 went up? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 04, 2004 @07:47PM (#10159531)
    It looks like the percentage of users using IE6 went down while the percetnage for IE5 went up. I can't quite figure out what to make of this.

  • Biased source sorry (Score:5, Informative)

    by BigAl_nz ( 39616 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @07:48PM (#10159538)
    Just one thing, w3schools.com is a site for people who write websites, so they'd naturally have a much higher percentage of non-IE browsers than the more general browsing population.

    Personally, I keep an eye on thecounter.com [thecounter.com] to see how Mozilla's market share is doing. It's certainly more realistic than the linked article statistics page. Pity Google removed browser stats from the zeitgeist [google.com] page.

    • Bias Defined. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by twitter ( 104583 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @11:54PM (#10160706) Homepage Journal
      BigAl, not from South Park, writes:

      Just one thing, w3schools.com is a site for people who write websites, so they'd naturally have a much higher percentage of non-IE browsers than the more general browsing population.

      Sure, people with the most basic web knowledge know to avoid IE. If you filter out people with a clue you are left with 99.999% winblows users. I'm happy the cluefull are migrating in increasing numbers. It shows that whatever real and perceived barriers there are to using non M$ software are going away.

      Do you suggest we get all our stats from the clueless and deluded? Perhaps we should just get the facts from Bill Gates.

      Oh yeah, this is what they claim about their study:

      The statistics above are extracted from W3Schools' log-files, but we are also monitoring other sources around the Internet to assure the quality of these figures.

    • Re:Biased source sorry (Score:4, Insightful)

      by shish ( 588640 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @09:47AM (#10162010) Homepage
      w3schools is a site for people *learning* to make websites. Back when I were a n00b I used IE and I visited w3schools. Now that I know what I'm doing I use firefox and reference my locally stored copies of all the w3c standards. Thus it could be argued that w3schools would have a /lower/ percentage of non-ie browsers.

      For what it's worth, my web server is used to show my avatar on the megatokyo forums, and that accounts for ~95% of my site hits. According to those stats Gecko has 50%, IE has 40% and others have 10%. Again, the stats you get really depend where you look for them...

  • The interesting thing is.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by UncleBiggims ( 526644 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @07:50PM (#10159546)
    The interesting this is that the browser with the biggest drop in usage from January to August is IE5. I wonder if this means that users of IE5 decided to switch rather than upgrade this year.

  • Read your own chart, duh. (Score:5, Informative)

    by xigxag ( 167441 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @07:53PM (#10159571)
    Um, your own chart shows that IE6 usage has barely budged in the past year and holds firm around 70%, near its high. Yes, Mozilla's increased, but at the expense of old IE5 installations only.

    So, in this case, complacency is working fine.

    • Note the flux. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by SharpFang ( 651121 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @03:10AM (#10161233) Homepage Journal
      "Yes, Mozilla's increased, but at the expense of old IE5 installations only."

      So you assume the IE6 number didn't change, but people upgrade from IE5 straight to Mozilla?
      Sorry, but this poll doesn't include "transition stats". What I imagine is that about the same number of people run Windows Update and have IE6 installed as a result (or get XP instead of 98SE) as those who change from IE6 to Mozilla. That should be the reason why the IE6 stats don't change much - it gains from one side just as much as it loses from the other, but it gains and loses a lot simultaneously.

  • mmmh, not so fast (Score:3, Interesting)

    by xlyz ( 695304 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @07:53PM (#10159573) Journal

    "Web Browsers Used to Access Google" graphic in google montlhy Zeitgeist [google.com] shows an improvement as well, but not as big as mentioned

    ehi! why in july report [google.com] the graphic is not there any more???

  • I'm sure it varies widely from site to sit, but... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @07:55PM (#10159585)
    When I've checked my personal site's stats (small gardening site, roughly 400-500 page views per day) over the past couple months: I've been seeing roughly 70% Internet Explorer, 5% unknown, and the rest are mostly Mozilla/Netscape variants. Safari makes up just a couple percentage points.

    About a year ago hits from IE were at about 90%.

  • Here's stats from another source (Score:5, Informative)

    by myrdred ( 597891 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @07:56PM (#10159589)
    Here's some statistics from a different source (which actually presents stats from 5 sources), where Gecko (mozilla) ranges from 4% to 27% - it's clear that the stats greatly vary from site to site:

    http://www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/stat.htm [upsdell.com]

  • MS not complacent...just looking for revenue (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mabhatter654 ( 561290 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @07:56PM (#10159595)
    MS isn't complacent with IE...they've just conqured the desktop computer space and want to make money with development elsewhere. Like...MSN! the MSN browser [which only works with MSN's service..go figure!] has all sorts of firefox/Mozilla like features...plus some other ones that are MSN only...like passport/hotmail integration... IE is the "entry level" product, it's a loss leader so you'll buy another service to "fix" the built in functionality's shortcommings... And that's what Windows XP is all about! giving customers enough to get started, but then requiring serious users to buy-up for "professional" features...


    and THAT is why MS is "so great" for the software industry! [at least THEIR reasoning]

  • the other 85% (Score:5, Funny)

    by bcrowell ( 177657 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @07:57PM (#10159603) Homepage
    They say 77% are using IE, but I did a poll in the parking lot of my local supermarket, and got the following results:

    • 15% firefox
    • 2% "Opera, goddammit, you got a problem with that?"
    • 20% Internet Explorer
    • 37% "I dunno, what's a browser?"
    • 15% "I click on the blue thing."
    • 6% "I don't use a browser, I use AOL."
    • 5% "I like Google."

  • Security being mentioned on the news perhaps? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Billly Gates ( 198444 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @07:58PM (#10159605) Journal
    Firefox is fairly new to most non nerd consumers. I never even tried it until about 5 months ago.

    The news over last summer with banking information being stolen convinced my old man to ask my about alternative browsers. I burned him a cd with firefox since the New York times mentioned it.

    My gf uses firefox on her old pc because she is worried about security after the scare this summer and due to the fact its an older machine and firefox is snappy on old hardware.

    People prefer IE but if something like online trading and banking flaws get involved all of the sudden switching may not be such a bad idea.

  • Something to note (Score:5, Insightful)

    by iamdrscience ( 541136 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @08:00PM (#10159614) Homepage
    In those statistics (and really any browser statistics like them) Opera's numbers are unfairly represented because Opera allows you to change what header it sends out allowing you to spoof other browsers such as IE or netscape. I, like many other Opera users, generally have my user-agent set to IE. This is useful in the case of sites that (stupidly) limit your ability to access a page based on what browser you're using. For example, when I go to staples.com in Opera with my user-agent header set to Opera, it tells me I don't have cookies enabled (yeah, WTF?) but if I change my user-agent to IE, I can browse the whole site perfectly.

  • I'm more interested in those OS stats. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by khasim ( 1285 ) <brandioch.conner@gmail.com> on Saturday September 04, 2004 @08:01PM (#10159619)
    Particularly since it shows Linux at 3% and Mac at 2.5%.

    And it shows a fairly steady (if slow) increase.

  • Those stats certainly dont reflect my collections (Score:3, Interesting)

    by aqui10 ( 725199 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @08:02PM (#10159624) Homepage
    I dont know how real that info is, i mean it may just be that the sites im checking stats on are just a little off, but IE doesnt look like 78% on my sites , more like 95++ and that to, easily. Perhaps the list of sites that they are taking into consideration are just the geeky sites where people actually do have a clue as to other browsers. Im convinced the only reason MSN gets the number of hits that it does is really just because of the fact that so many users dont know how to change their home page ! Can anyone else provide feed back on their site stats ? I use FireFox for my browsing, love the tabs and the download manager, but it sure is memory hungry, i wish it would load up along with Windows and be quicker on the start, perhaps they should do what Winamp does, which is, start a winamp loader by default.

  • Firefox in odd places (Score:3, Interesting)

    by supmylO ( 773375 ) <bjarosz&gmail,com> on Saturday September 04, 2004 @08:09PM (#10159666)
    I just moved to a new highschool for my senior year and signed up for a java class. I was pleased when I found out that the computers in the lab have Firefox (and OpenOffice) on them. I guess word is spreading, even though most CS type teachers are probably nerds too...

  • Browser stats for seifried.org (Score:5, Informative)

    by seifried ( 12921 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @08:11PM (#10159673) Homepage
    I'm looking at btowser stats for seifried.org, averaging 70,000 visits a month in the security area and I'm not seeing even a hint of firefox in the top 15 browsers for any month, "MSIE 6.0; Windows X" and googlebot are the clear winners. You think people interested in computer security and UNIX would have a tendancy to use FireFox or Mozilla but IE is still kicking their butts.

  • slashdot vs. non-slashdot hits on my site (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ortholattice ( 175065 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @08:11PM (#10159674)
    My semi-technical site (sorry, I won't tell you what it is - the is my only semi-anonymous haven) got mention in a slashdot comment on Sep. 2 (no, it wasn't me spamming!), causing many (around 1100 extra) hits. Here are the Sep. results so far, with 72.5% of Sep. hits from coming from slashdot:

    36.97%=Mozilla/5.0 ; 33.65%=MSIE 6.0 ; 6.45%=Pompos/1.3 http://dir.com/pompos.html ; 6.40%=msnbot/0.11 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm) ; 2.71%=Opera 7.5 ; 2.46%=Yahoo! Slurp ; 2.41%=Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.google.com/bot.html) ; 1.93%=psbot/0.1 (+http://www.picsearch.com/bot.html) ; 1.49%=MSIE 5.5 ; 0.87%=Konqueror/3.2 ; 0.80%=Mozilla/3.01 (compatible;) ; 0.56%=Konqueror/3.3 ; 0.50%=MSIE 5.0 ; 0.43%=Konqueror/3.1 ; 0.41%=Opera 7.2

    Here are the more normal Aug. results with about 0% hits coming from slashdot:

    46.89%=MSIE 6.0 ; 16.82%=Mozilla/5.0 ; 7.92%=msnbot/0.11 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm) ; 6.50%=Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.google.com/bot.html) ; 3.55%=Ask Jeeves/Teoma)" ; 3.14%=MSIE 5.0 ; 2.67%=Pompos/1.3 http://dir.com/pompos.html ; 1.86%=MSIE 5.5 ; 1.82%=psbot/0.1 (+http://www.picsearch.com/bot.html) ; 1.27%=HTTrack 3.0 ; 1.05%=Yahoo! Slurp ; 0.93%=Mozilla/3.01 (compatible;) ; 0.88%=Opera 7.5

  • Unfair! (Score:5, Funny)

    by DCMonkey ( 615 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @08:12PM (#10159681)
    Unfair! Many IE users are forced to spoof their user-agent strings to represent themselves as Mozilla/FireFox users to make themselves looks hip and socially conscious.

    Or not.

  • Don't go by W3Schools Stats (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dracos ( 107777 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @08:18PM (#10159715)

    Most people who visit w3schools.com are not the average user, they are developers: early adopters. It would take at least another 9 months for global Mozilla usage to reach half these levels.

    I prefer to go by the stats published by OneStat.com [onestat.com] in their Pressbox [onestat.com].

    However, I do think the rest of the year will bring a significant change in browser usage [fylo.net].

  • Schools and companies (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sometwo ( 53041 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @08:23PM (#10159749)
    Schools and companies are the places where there are a huge number of computers. Those are the places where Mozilla can make inroads for quick jumps in market share. My school finally dropped Netscape 4 and is offering a custom Mozilla browser with its logo to every student. How long before others follow?

  • On that note... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Cylix ( 55374 ) * on Saturday September 04, 2004 @08:33PM (#10159784) Homepage Journal
    Not to Firefox troll, but I think everyone should make an effort to switch at least one person over to firefox. Then, see if they can switch at least one person.

    I was happy using Mozilla, but since I switched to Firefox... I've been thrilled.

    It flies, it has some nice plugins (I recommend FTPsync and Browser Agent switching for those annoying sites) and my experience has been nothing but great.

    Just because I occassionally switch my user agent string doesn't mean I don't complain. I recently submitted a complaint to yahooligans (A yahoo kids oreiented site).

  • The stats linked to are useless (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Guspaz ( 556486 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @08:35PM (#10159798)
    As has been said in many previous posts, those stats JUST represent ONE site, and a tech-oriented one at that, making the results hugely biased.

    For a comparison as to how useless those statistics are, I checked out the stats for the most popular site tracked by NedStatBasic. It's startpagina.nl with about 2.8 million pageviews per day.

    Here are the browser stats:

    IE 5/6: 96.7%
    Mozilla: 2.7%
    Other: 0.6%

    You can see the stats here:

    http://www.nedstatbasic.net/s?tab=1&link=5&id=71 03 09

  • Temporary Speedbump (Score:4, Insightful)

    by salesgeek ( 263995 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @08:38PM (#10159809) Homepage
    No one will really notice until Mozilla browsers have 20%+ of the market. Then MS will announce that the next version of IE will:

    * do all the stuff mozilla does
    * works with dot net better
    * never gets dull, and can slice a tomato perfectly after trimming 4" off your car's muffler
    * is a free download
    * but wait... there's more (tm) ms will throw in MR. Paperclip browsing buddie at no cost to you.

  • I switched BACK from Firefox to IE (Score:4, Insightful)

    by callipygian-showsyst ( 631222 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @08:39PM (#10159811) Homepage
    I switched to Mozilla Firefox a couple of months ago only to switch back. Why? It was too buggy!

    The most interesting thing is that slashdot is one of the sites it has the most trouble with. Take a look at the screenshot [robert.to] on this page! Most of the time it will render /. like that until I hit reload and that will fix it.

    I've seen this behavior on Mac, Windows, and Linux. And there's a bug posted on it in the Firefox bug database. What perplexes me is why the /. folks with the necessary skills haven't fixed this problem yet!

    • Re:I switched BACK from Firefox to IE (Score:5, Funny)

      by AvantLegion ( 595806 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @09:11PM (#10159965) Journal
      Hmm, having my personal info transparently swiped, and offer a nice highway for spyware to the world...

      .... or ....

      ... hit Reload every now and then.

      Yeah, I see what you mean - clicking Reload is such a hassle!

    • Yes! That is damn annoying! I get it all the time. On the other hand I see daily the consequences of users using IE and IE based browsers at work...

    • Re:I switched BACK from Firefox to IE (Score:5, Informative)

      by The Analog Kid ( 565327 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @10:01PM (#10160237)
      It's been fixed in the trunk builds, so by 1.0 or whatever they are calling it (in the about section it says 0.10), it should be correct.

    • What that bug is (Score:5, Informative)

      by 0x0d0a ( 568518 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @11:29PM (#10160598) Journal
      It is not a bug in Slashcode. It is a bug in the Gecko (the rendering portion of Mozilla) code related to incremental reflow. It has been fixed in Gecko, but the latest version of Gecko has not been rolled into Firefox.

      (Courtesy of another Slashdotter in the know.)

      I'm not sure what the schedule is on rolling in the fix.

  • An alternate view... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ChilyWily ( 162187 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @08:47PM (#10159849) Homepage
    On the same lines, I wish /. would post their stats... (Cmdr Taco?)

    It would be interesting to see how /.'s stats compare.

  • U.S Patent Office and IE (Score:4, Informative)

    by Ping-Wu ( 604476 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @09:36PM (#10160102)
    We know that U.S Patent Office is notorious of issuing patents (particularly software patents) that are clearly unpatentable. But very few are aware that U.S. Patent Office is violating our constitutional right by promulgating and enforcing a Microsoft-IE-only policy.

    This little-noticed law really makes me mad and feel like crying--why a government agency can be so stupid.

    Basically, when you file a patent application, if the Patent Office thinks that your invention is not patentable because it is not novel or nonobvious, it will send you copies of prior art patents so you can rebut their rejection.

    Now the Patent Office has changed its policy and will not send you those hard copies. Instead, it requires you to download those prior art reference on-line.

    Under ordinary circumstances, this would not pose any problem, except that we are dealing with one of the most stupid government agencies in the history of mankind. The United States Patent Office, without much notice, now requires that, in order to download those references, you must register with the Patent Office, then the Patent Office will install a program ON YOUR MACHINE WHICH MUST BE RUNNING MICROSOFT INTERNET EXPLORER UNDER MICROSOFT WINDOWS to allow you to communicate with the Patent Office before you can download those prior art patents that our government must furnish you as a matter of our constitution right and as part of the filing fees paid to the Patent Office.

    Thus, basically it has boiled down to this stupid law: if you want to receive a patent, you are now REQUIRED BY LAW to have a machine with Microsoft Windows running Internet Explorer in your office.

    In other words, in order to exercise your constitutional rights, you must have a machine that runs Microsoft Windows and you must set Microsoft Internet Explorer as your default browser.

    What kind of stupid government agency is this? I know many banks used to have the same requirement (i.e., using Microsoft IE running in Microsoft Windows), but they have got rid of this stupid policy because they have to compete in order to survive.

    The United States Patent and Trademark can implement and insist such a stupid policy because it doesn't have to compete. But what about those 4000+ patent attorneys? How come all of them are so quiet? Are all of them idiots?

    Even our HomeLand Security Department has changed its Microsoft-only policy. It appears that our Patent and Trademark Office is the only government agency in the whole world that requires its users to use Microsoft Windows. Unlike Homeland Security Department, the U.S. Patent Office has to account to no one!

    Microsoft survives and propers exactly because our government agencies are unafraid to abuse their power and unashamed of being idiots.

    • Re:U.S Patent Office and IE (Score:5, Informative)

      by k98sven ( 324383 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @12:47AM (#10160890) Journal
      How did this blatant, loud, nonsense get modded up? Since this is Slashdot, any rant against the USPTO must be true?

      But very few are aware that U.S. Patent Office is violating our constitutional right by promulgating and enforcing a Microsoft-IE-only policy.

      I certainly am unaware of that. Which constitutional right? Can you point to me where in the US Constitution it says that you have a right to recive patent documents on-line in whatever format you wish?

      [bla, bla, indignation..] The United States Patent Office, without much notice, now requires that, in order to download those references, you must register with the Patent Office, then the Patent Office will install a program ON YOUR MACHINE WHICH MUST BE RUNNING MICROSOFT INTERNET EXPLORER UNDER MICROSOFT WINDOWS to allow you to communicate with the Patent Office before you can download those prior art patents that our government must furnish you as a matter of our constitution right and as part of the filing fees paid to the Patent Office.

      This is all bullshit. Please point me to where the USPTO requires you to run IE. And even if IE was required telephone, mail or fax [uspto.gov] ordering is clearly available.

      Thus, basically it has boiled down to this stupid law: if you want to receive a patent, you are now REQUIRED BY LAW to have a machine with Microsoft Windows running Internet Explorer in your office.

      Pure bullshit. What law? Which US Federal Code? The policy of a government office isn't a law. Not that I can find any such policy either.

      In other words, in order to exercise your constitutional rights, you must have a machine that runs Microsoft Windows and you must set Microsoft Internet Explorer as your default browser.

      Again no hint as to which constitutional rights you are talking about. Or what policy.

      The United States Patent and Trademark can implement and insist such a stupid policy because it doesn't have to compete. But what about those 4000+ patent attorneys? How come all of them are so quiet? Are all of them idiots?

      Or, just perhaps, this policy doesn't EXIST?

  • My 10 Year Old Son (Score:4, Interesting)

    by enforcer999 ( 733591 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @10:04PM (#10160247) Journal
    called me tonight to inform me that his father does not have firefox. My son was upset and downloaded Firefox for his browser. Apparently, my ex-husband has been having problems with my son's games while with dad. We are divorced. My son informed me that his father had a lot of problems with his computer but he was going to fix it. He downloaded Ad-Aware, Spybot Search and Destroy, Mozilla Firefox and he would explain these to his dad. Uhh....he is 10. I think we are making progress. :)

  • Our own stats. (Score:5, Informative)

    by adelayde ( 185757 ) on Saturday September 04, 2004 @11:24PM (#10160583) Homepage

    Although I think this is great, the statistics from some servers that I manage and run show different and it depends greatly on the type of site. For example this link to a stats report for a site that was Slashdotted [psand.net] shows Firefox users as 26.8% of visitors and Mozilla 16.7%, a grand total of 43.5% against IE, which got 40.7%. All I can say here is well done Slashdotters for using a decent, and probably the best browser - it's excellent.

    Looking at another site, not slashdotted, of general interest for all sorts of users, the stats reveal 9.1% Firefox and 5.4% Mozilla, which comes to 14.5% - a figure very close to that posted in the article. Good.

    However, it's very different when moving to a commercial site selling a commerical product. For example, on site reveals just 1.6% Mozilla & Firefox users against 96.6% IE users and another, selling Jazz and Latino records, has 4% Mozilla against 87.9% IE.
    I reckon that it depends greatly upon who your audience is as to what statistics you extrapolate.

  • Neutral sites are at about 3% Gecko... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rklrkl ( 554527 ) on Sunday September 05, 2004 @05:17AM (#10161451) Homepage
    I run a lottery site at lottery.merseyworld.com [merseyworld.com] that doesn't do anything platform-specific and isn't just for techy people. I have put a link to Mozilla/Firefox at the bottom of every page (that only appears if you're not using a Gecko-based browser, BTW) as my modest effort to evangelise.

    Sure enough, the Gecko-using browsers have crept up in recent months, but nothing earth-shattering - what started off as around 2.1% 6 months ago is now 3.2%. Perhaps more interesting is to note that home users are taking up Gecko browsers in a big way (now seeing almost 5% Gecko at the weekends), but on workdays, that slips to back down to under 3%.

    Conclusion: Gecko browser usage is increasing on the average site, but only by about 0.2% a month (will take 3 years to reach 10%, which sounds about right).

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