Firefox, a bad religion and nothing more

The Popular Technology Blog has a great article titled Firefox - A New Religion? that does a wonderful job of debunking a lot of the absurd claims made by supporters of the "Firefox" web browser.

Here are some of my favorite quotes:

You can see clearly here this site is less about recommending a better browser and more about a crusade against Microsoft. But to have your crusade you must have a Religion and of course followers. To recruit followers you need beliefs.

The Security Myth:
"Firefox is 100% Secure", simply not true. Firefox has over 290 Security Vulnerabilities and more vulnerabilities in 2006 than Internet Explorer. Some of these vulnerabilities have remained unpatched since 2004! Irony? It gets worse. Over 90 Extensions have been found to collect data and uniquely identifying users without notifying them. Popular extensions such as Greasemonkey, Firebug and IETab all are vulnerable. Even Spyware gets through. So much for security.

Yahoo Best Answers

I've gotten "Best Answer" on some of the answers I've posted to Yahoo Answers. This is not out of the ordinary for me of course.

Best Answer - Chosen by Voters
During the Middle Ages, scientific and cultural progress were both discouraged as being "evil" and not bringing glory to Christ. As a result science and progress ground to a halt.

The birth and rise of the middle class, and specifically the rise of the Medici, resulted in a large population with sufficient wealth to dedicate to artistic and scientific endeavors. The human creative spirit, contained for over a thousand years, erupted to life causing a bloom of advances, some good some deviant, unlike anything the world had seen before or since.

Best Answer - Chosen by Voters
What codes are you talking about? Are you trying to pirate the software? Why not just download .NET from Microsoft which is FREE???

Was "Buffy" all about mocking a genetic disorder?

The movie sucked, no one contests that, but fans of the TV series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" may be surprised to learn that the "Vamp" look, the face of a Vampire revealing their true nature, was based on a very real, very tragic genetic disorder.

In the Buffy universe, Vampires have two faces. The first is a "normal" human face, one that looks like everyone else. The other face, the one they reveal only when about to make a kill, is intended to be far more disturbing.

The forehead wrinkles like a Klingon from Star Trek. The makeup makes the eyes look farther apart. The nose flattens and broadens, revealing enlarged nostrils.

Here are a couple of samples:




Nice and spooky, isn't it?

Let me show you another set of images, this time a "Before" and "After" picture.



What does that look like to you? If you add just a few wrinkles to the left hand image you get a typical "Vampire" transformation from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Can't you just imagine him opening his mouth to reveal a set of fangs?

The thing is, this isn't an image from a TV Horror sitcom. The image is from the Cranial Facial Center. Here's the text that goes with the image:

Orbital Hypertelorism

The left hand "Before" Image: Fifteen year old male born with incomplete midline facial cleft causing increased distance between eyes.

The Right Hand "After" image: Postoperative result after extracranial reconstruction of hypertelorism

Josh Wheadon based the villains for Buffy the Vampire Slayer" on victims of Orbital Hypertelorism, a tragic disorder that causes disfigurement and prejudice against its victims. I spent several hours looking at images of victims of this birth defect and comparing them to the vampires from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." The similarities are shocking and consistent. Every vampire "look", every Vampire face has a corollary in Orbital Hypertelorism. It's as if the makeup artists had a clinical diagnosis book beside them as they designed the vampire face for each actor and actress.

The physical evidence is undeniable. The motivation is more mysterious. Why was a known genetic disorder used as the template for a monster? Was Wheadon hoping to increase the horror of these faces by creating ones that were, through the course of nature, possible? Did he once see victims of this disease and chose to act out his reaction to them by using them as monsters? Did he have a negative experience with someone who had this disorder and chose to vent that hatred through television?

Perhaps his motivation is even more subtle. He's often spoken of "Buffy" as being set high school because the politics and behavior of high school students made the presence of supernatural monsters almost believable. Perhaps this is just a case of the high school bully making fun of the disabled kids by parodying them in a school play. Think about it. A group of athletic, attractive and popular kids spend their days (and nights) destroying the disfigured and unpopular.

Buffy was, after all, a wealthy, cute, blond cheerleader. What's more stereotypically popular than that?

The next AIDS: Gay Sex spreads a deadly new virus

Staph infections kill millions annually. They run rampant in poorly funded and maintained hospitals and are a very real threat to immune compromised people.

And now, MRSA is drug resistant. This means the most serious infection people can GET in a hospital is almost untreatable.

"Once this reaches the general population, it will be truly unstoppable," said Binh Diep, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco who led the study. "That's why we're trying to spread the message of prevention."

Fortunately, the drug resistant strain is limited to the gay population, where homosexuals are 13 times more likely to be infected than heterosexuals.

Anyone else think this sounds familiar?

A previously undocumented disease, untreatable by today's medical practices, is spreading like wildfire among the nation's gay population. With AIDS, the disease spread to heterosexuals through married men who were cheating on their wives and injected drug use. Will this disease cross over to heterosexuals as easily, or will the precautions taken to reduce the spread of AIDS slow the progress of this disease?

It seems that only the chaste and monogamous are safe. Parents, warn your children of the dangers of sex outside the safety of marriage. Pastors, warn your congregations.

We're on the cusp of another epidemic, another microscopic killer slaughtering the innocent because of the sins of Homosexuals. Let's nip this one in the bud.

Shirley Phelps for president???

This morning I asked several election related questions on Yahoo Answers. One of them was "If Shirley Phelps were the only female candidate, would you support her, "Because it's time for a female president"?"

One answer I got was "I would vote for Phelps or Rice, either one could do the job, their creditability is not marred like Clinton's, dare we forget about Whitewater..........but I think we're not quite ready for a woman President, yet but getting there.............."

That's right, Liberals like greeneyes are so desperate for a female president that they'd vote for the woman leading the Westboro Baptist Church.

I contacted the WBC and asked the following question:

I've been surprised to encounter people online who say they would vote forhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif Shirley Phelps if she was running for president, because they believe the country is ready for a woman president and Hillary Clinton isn't the right choice.

Would Shirley Phelps ever consider running?

I wonder if I'll get a reply?

I wonder how extremist femenists would react of Shirley ran for President. They'd be badly conflicted, part of them would insist they HAD to vote for her to be politically correct but the slaves to the gay agenda would recoil at the thought of her running the country.

Feminists have to side with her, because she's leading a Church, something most Christian denominations don't allow.

I want to see what would happen.

Would you vote for Shirley Phelps if she ran for president?

To everyone voting for Hillary because she's a woman

I've posted a question to Yahoo Answers, and I can't wait to see the replies.

To everyone voting for Hillary because she's a woman?

Why do so many people say they want to vote for Hillary because she's a woman? Isn't using her gender as a reason to vote for her taking the womens' rights movement BACKWARD?

If Shirley Phelps were the only female candidate, would you support her, "Because it's time for a female president"?

If Dr. Condoleezza Rice were the only woman running, would you vote for her?

Why is Hillary's gender so important? Why is it even relevant?

Quickbooks bug frees Indiana town from remaining Macs

I've had long battles with Linux, Open Source and Mac zealots in town. They've long advocated their inferrior software as an alternative to the best selling, most widely used programs in the industry. The Firefox Myth site helped me get Firefox removed from the computers at several local businesses, including the town's major bank. A single computer consultant had been spreading this infection throughout town and he's now unemployed, trying to sell his house so he and his family can move and find a fresh crop of victims.

Macintosh computers had been more difficult to get rid of, but Quickbooks has unexpectedly come to the rescue.

A lot of the Macs in use in town are used for accounting. It was recently revealed that problems with the Macintosh platform caused Quickbooks to delete files from Mac computers. A few businesses dumped them right away, and an editorial published in the local weekly raised serious questions about the ability of Mac computers to preserve data in other applications as well. This caused concern to all the people using Macs for graphic design. A silk screening shop and a few other businesses are now replacing their Mac computers with PCs due to these fears.

Most people were holding their breath, waiting to see if Quickbooks would release a patch that would restore the lost data.

They didn't. They can't patch the bug.

The Church's accountant was one of the people holding out for a magical fix from Quickbooks and the pastor, my brother, was letting her wait for that patch before replacing the computer. Now, the church elders have voted on an emergency budget item to replace the Mac with a PC.

From a digital standpoint things are going well. The main Communist Open Source advocate is moving out of town, and most the California Hippie comptuers are being replaced within the next few weeks.