If the sensitive systems are not connected to the internet (and they shouldn't be), and if standard security procedures are followed (and they should be), then the risk is really quite minimal. Not zero, of course -- but probably less (and centainly no greater) than before computerization.

In theory, but in practice it does seem to mean exactly that. I wouldn't say that it's unique to conservatives, but to authoritarians. Authoritarians are more likely to be conservatives than liberals, though.

Yeah, but this does nothing about the all-too-common practice cops have of charging someone with resisting arrest because they don't have anything else to charge them with, rather than because they actually resisted arrest.

Assuming that the consumers want the new features. It depends on the user, but there are lots for whom new features are problematic. They can introduce costs and uncertainty in the short term, and so have to be planned for. This takes time. If new feature come too frequently, it becomes too expensive or unwieldy to use the software.

That's not how rapid release works. FF hasn't completely implemented it yet, but ultimately you will not even know that an update is coming or be asked if you want it. It will just happen in the background. It'll probably remain possible to turn off updating completely, but eventually that will lead to a different problems as more and more plugins and server software assume that your browser is always updated.

Indeed! However once FF is fully rapid-release, the only reasonable way of not updating is to not use FF.

Well, gee, thanks for your incredibly helpful advice. I'm not quite sure why you seem to think that I believe that vendors should cater exclusively to me, though. Unless you think that only positive opinions are allowed to be expressed and anything else consists of unreasonable demands.

In which case my opinion is that you're wrong.

At home, this is what I use. At work, I must use Windows. There, I've actually done something I would have considered impossible before FF started going down its Bad Path: I've gone back to IE for my main browser (I still have to use other browsers in the course of my work, though, including FF, Chrome, etc.)

Continuity, essentially. I want all my various comments to be associated with each other.

Well, Google's official suggestion of how to avoid their cross-service information sharing is to have multiple accounts (one for search, one for gmail, etc.). So it sound like they're fine with it.

You know what's even better? Not requiring creating an account at all.

I would never create an account at a site unless I had a very compelling reason to do so. Certainly not sight-unseen. It doesn't matter if "creating an account" consists of linking to a social network account or doing it the old-fashioned way.

Your end isn't the problem. It's the social site's end that's the problem. If I want to use your site even despite requiring an account somewhere, why in the world would I want to bring a third party into it and allow them to know every time I log into your site? That's just between you and me.

Not everybody. This infinitely increases the barrier of entry for people like me, who do not have FB or Twitter and is unwilling to use my google ID for anything at all outside of making my phone work.

In this case, there's no loss. The Gawker family of sites are abysmal anyway.

For me, no, the new features are not compelling (and I wish many of them would cease to exist).

This is one of my main issues with the rapid-release stuff, that it's impossible to get bug fixes without getting unwanted new features.

No, but on the other hand, advancements come with a cost. Depending on the user's needs, it can be that the cost isn't worth it to them. In the case of FF, the cost is nowhere near worth it for me. I cannot even imagine a new browser feature that would be so compelling that I'm willing to sacrifice compatibility for it, although that's probably due to my own lack of imagination.

As I commented above, for me this isn't about blame. This is about the usefulness of the tool, and FF is becoming less useful (for me) over time. Whether this is the fault of FF or not is irrelevant. If FF can't do what I need, for any reason, then it can't do what I need.

I choose compatibility. Vulnerability can be addressed in other ways.

Yes. I hate this rapid-release fad. The downsides far outweigh the upsides for me.

Because FF is the only one that has developed the compatibility problem.

From my point of view, it's not a question of "blame". It's a question of "does this tool meet my needs"? And for FF, the answer is increasingly "no" due in no small part to these kinds of issues. Is that the fault of FF? It doesn't matter. If FF doesn't work, it doesn't work, regardless of the reasons.

Google is not a 100% virtuous company by a longshot, but it's not evil overall. Google is honest with you about what it gathers and what it does with it. Google does not pull sneaky strong-arm tactics to try to trick you into giving it money.

But let's face it, any company that gets to be a certain size has dirty hands. That doesn't mean all hands are equally dirty. Apple & Microsoft have a long history of bad behavior, predating Google.