Replies

True that !

I think this story may be a case of fear mongering by an organization that has placed the Principal’s above the Principle’s

For example, there was a FF user that is fiercely loyal and would not abandon FF because it protected her; in spite that the recent upgrade occurring a few months ago created all kinds of errors and her business operations were in jeopardy.

She 100% refused to utilize a different browser even though the current train wreck was not protecting her anyways?  And she was being providing with a great deal of technical instructions that ultimately proved unhelpful.  Because I felt her pain and suffering i got her back to a functional state with the previous version of FF.

So did i do a favor to her by helping her to continue using a FF browser, regardless of the version?  Was I not helping the Mozilla Org by helping to retain the above FF consumer and many others regardless of the FF browser version?

In any case, like the FF consumers I was assisting, I too felt betrayed as well.

You see, not only was i helping to retain FF consumers for Mozilla but I was also allocating my valuable time as well, and it was at no charge.  So why does Mozilla rely on volunteers to providing consumer assistance at no charge, quality control and quality assurance, when Mozilla should be paying people to do this for them?   Incidentally, I was donating $$ to the Mozilla Foundation as well.

While for me its not about the money but I wont be throwing any more of it away at those that I feel are placing Principals above the Principles.

Perhaps, my payment comes from helping people, like helping the FF consumers.  And my rewards have been personal thank you’s from them.  Sure, some would say that Thank You’s dont pay the light bills.  But they do, albeit indirectly.

For example, there was a FF consumer whereas a recent upgrade was installed without his knowledge and permission and turned into a train wreck that was jeopardizing his company operations. He lost many years of user data stored on the browser.  For me, it seemed like someone was on a sinking ship and his treasure chest was also going down with the ship.  (incidentally, I am a nuclear submarine veteran)

Again, I did fail to see how a business (or any business) could place all of their proverbial eggs into a one basket.  But never the less, the gentleman relied heavily on FF and all the years of his user data in it. He also discovered that he could not rely on the FF people to assist him during this time of crises. He was being sent on wild goose chases with instructions that have been proven “not to work”.   The so-called assistance were nothing more than time consuming, wild goose chases and distractions. When nothing else could be offered, he and his business was essentially abandoned  to the wind?

In any case, after I brought him back up to speed and once again become functional and productive again, he sent me one of the best emails I had ever received. He had Thank God for me having rescued him. (Over the decades I have received many personal thank you’s from very important people, including one from a Rear Admiral during my time in the USN. But the one I recently received cited GOD.)

In any case, the above are just some of my personal experience’s.

Life for me is about the Principle and does not always have to be about Principal.

It’s not always about the 0’s and the 1’s.  It’s also  about what lays in between them.

~dbben

 

1 user thanked author for this post.

johnf

“Wannabe”  is interesting description and i dont disagree.

I think it would also be fair to say that all branded browers that are using chrome as the foundation for their browsers all want to be like google. 

There is a saying, “you cant see the forest through the trees”

When a company, any company, promotes / markets a product, the consumer has expectations.  If those expectations are not realized, then there is a problem with the product and likely also with its manufacturer.

So people can split hairs all they like.  But security and privacy are syn·on·y·mous to the consumer.

Any claims that a certain browser is protecting one’s privacy but the app itself is not secure, then the claims are are nothing more than smoke and mirrors, ie marketing mumbo-jumbo.

What we need to see is what is behind the smoke. We need to see  is the real image and not the one conveyed in the mirror.

For now, this is not about Google or Microsoft.  They are 100% profit motivated.  They do not claim to be otherwise.  And for this, we consumers can 100% trust them to do what they do – regardless if we like it or not.

Instead this is about trust and integrity by an organization that  uses a set of principles to market its purpose to civilian donors and the world.

This is about a none-profit that also receives federal funding, and not just from private donors.

This is about a none-profit that allowed the creation of a for-profit entity that generates revenue via other for-profit business’s.  So we can rest assured that Google is not the only one on the list that provides revenue.

In simple terms, this is about two hands.

One of the hands is about the principles.  And for the other hand, it is about the principals.   Principal vs Principle.  Money vs Morality.  Its that simple.

While at this time, we are not entitled to see the financial books of the for-profit side of Mozilla, I do believe in what I have read about  one of the expenses:

Apparently, there is a yearly expense that equates to 3 million dollars.   I 100% believe this  expense is not justified. Subsequently, there are likely other expenditures that would raise our eyebrows because this is America and not the Vatican.

Bottom line is, When it comes to protecting the consumer, this isnt  limited to a product, ie tree.  Instead it is about the forest.

Thanks Ascaris for your lengthy reply.  You made some great points that further add to the questions that are lacking answers at this time.

I will bow out of this discussion and hope to see more ground breaking articles on this subject that seem to be long overdue.

~dbben 

 

Indeed!  I have been observing how they have been behaving as well.  And i think its time for a financial and morality audit of the Mozilla None Profit and the Mozilla For-Profit entities.

Bottom line is that Mozilla promotes it’s product as a superior app for protecting our privacy. But clearly, it was disproven by the author of this article.

Rhetorically speaking / asking:  Why was our privacy not protected from the other apps installed on the machine by Mozilla?  Why did Mozilla turn a blind eye at the back door in its browser?  And how exactly is Mozilla using our personal information to further their undisclosed agenda and the marketing of their browser ?   And where is the revenue coming from (and used) for the operations of the Mozilla For-Profit entity?

It would not be unreasonable to believe that the founding principles of Mozilla do not produce revenue.  Therefore, the principles are not invoked.  And its open-source browser is little by little being privatized.

Based on my first hand experience with Mozilla people on their Chats and Forum sites, the current agenda(s) of Mozilla is/are in conflict with the founding principles of Mozilla.

We cannot always blame opportunists for stealing cars when the driver leaves the car running and doors unlocked while getting coffee at the local quickee mart.

So accusing Edge of this and that, per se, when it comes to aggregating information from FireFox is not the issue.

The issue at hand is FireFox for having allowed the door to be opened to begin with and this permitted other browsers to violate our privacy.

In this case cited by this article, our logins and passwords were covertly aggregated from FireFox.  But are we not led to believe that the  sole purpose of FireFox’s existence is to protect our privacy?  If its not, then why not use the other browsers?  Based on a number of posts by unhappy FireFox consumers that have experienced the new versions of FireFox as proverbial train-wrecks and demand to rollback to a functional version of FireFox or they will switch browsers; they are told in so-many words “You can take it or leave it for the other browsers”

I suppose the subsequent question is, what else had been / is being ascertained by other methodologies while using FireFox?   I would bet there is a lot more than what we think.

Imo, this is one example where Mozilla is talking the talk, but not doing the walk.

1 user thanked author for this post.

doriel

It’s irritating.  I have a stack of laptops in my closet with worthless Windows o.s.’s.   I also have have a basket with worthless cell phones too.  I suspect that everyone in america will be forced to upgrade, one way or another. 

ps: my closet also has a couple of vcr’s too !

Since…

I’m still looking for a way to stop the automatic videos that play when we go to read an article (or worse yet, find out there is no article just a video). We never watch the videos and generally just backout when we see there is a video. They appear to just keep downloading even if you pause them after the commercial.

What i do is to disable the flashplayer plug ins via the add-ins tool page of the browser. in firefox or palemoon, just go to file menu, click tools>add-ins. then scroll down to flashplayer and disable it or them.

If you want to be doubly insured that flashplayer does not run w/o your permission, you can uninstall the whole darn program via the adobe’s uninstaller.

if you look under the browser hood/configuration settnigs for firefox or palemoon via about:config and search for “motive”, a line will show up that references npmotive plugin.

if its value is set to 1, then the plugin is enable. if it is set to 0, then the plugin is disabled.

as far as removing it, you might try searching npmotive and the at&t program called Motive.

after searching my computer i found npmotive under a folder created by AT&T,

C:Program Files (x86)Common FilesMotive

while i would not have a problem trying to remove the plugin from the browser, i would be hesitant on removing the motive program itself since it could be tied to my internet service that is provided by att.

there are a number of reasons why your systems are using more bandwidth than expected. one reason are windows updates. others can be spywares. others can be antivirals (and other programs) that are configured to do daily checks for updates and then automatically download them. and then there is a possibility that your systems are connected to the cloud, like google drive, and files are being saved to your local google drive folder which are then uploaded to the cloud. and yet there is still more behind the scenes activities that can be found via your task manager control panel.

so i would not bother with installing more software which in itself could be more spyware.

instead i would begin by uninstalling software that you don’t need and reconfiguring software that is already running by turning off their automatic checks for updates and downloads. also, if you accounts on the cloud, i would temporarily change the password online “but not change the passwords” for them on your local system. then if an error pops up on your desktop because something or another can’t log in, then this will be a clue revealed to you.

otherwise, if none of the above pans out as being erroneous user settings or malware, then i would switch to an internet service that gives you more bandwidth or unlimited bandwidth. measuring bandwidth for your machines that are connected to the wooorld wiiiide web, is a waste of valuable time on earth.

What is sadly disappointing is that customer’s like ourselves pay for a product only to find ourselves being cheated, little by little.

Every time i see “Vista Extra’s”, i get teed off because it is a reminder of uselessness and garbage / clutter. If i recall, whatever “extras” anyone got, was a one time deal at the very beginning. But now its nothing more than a nagging reminder.

What is also sad is that “Gadgets” may prove to be a detrimental feature. But if it is, then what will Microsoft give us in return for removing the marketed feature? I mean they sold Vista in part by this feature and if they now want to take it away for safety purposes, then Microsoft should……..

I allowed the above to trail off because everyone has an opinion of what Microsoft should or should not do.

I recall all the hype behind Vista. However, Vista ( a bloated behemoth ) ultimately proved to be a pain for everyone, ie customers and hardware manufacturer. It was an uncompleted experiment and I wont make the same mistake with W8.

My Win7 64 bit DVD is a Dell upgrade option from Vista to Win 7 home premium.

After selecting “Upgrade”, he tells me “Your current version of Windows is more recent than the version you are trying to upgrade to [sic]. Windows cannot complete the upgrade”.

Tom

The message / warning is accurate.

In order to do a “repair installation” the os & sp version of the cd / dvd must be the same as the os & sp version on the system.

Their are two alternatives to get around the above issue.

1) Either un-install the sp update via add/remove programs or programs/features control panel “or”

2) Create a new cd /dvd by merging the files from the current (older) cd/dvd with the current sp update file. The file should be downloadable from Microsoft. In any case, you will be creating a new bootable cd/dvd that is the same version as the system. This method is called “slipstreaming”.

There is much information on the internet about “repair installaions”.

I think the real news that would interest people is how to repair the microsoft operating system (any version) without a cd or dvd? In otherwords, many computers and laptops and netbooks have pre-installed o.s.’s and no disks to boot up with.

Firstly, although windows has “help and support”, there isn’t a method incorporated with a “how to” manual.

In otherwords, when customers want to repartition their disks, there aren’t any instructions on “how to” do it.

However, third party programs like Acronis Disk Director provide a slew of help and guidance to partition the disk. In this aspect, I give Microsoft a “D”, while i would give a third party provider a “A+”

Secondly, why would anyone want to buy MSOffice, when OpenOffice is “free”.

There are more instances where Microsoft has failed and in investing in third party software/programs is a wiser decision.

Ultimately, Microsoft doesn’t care how you use their o.s. / money maker. Windows is only a medium for managing personal data and running third party programs that are exceptionally engineered.