Dangerous Dave's Dlog

The majority of my argument will come down to one thing: Unwanted Programs. Viruses, worms, malware, adware and spyware (and no Mr spell checker, I did not mean to write "Viruses, worms, enamelware, camaraderie and Spacewar").

When you get 95% of users using one operating system, and 90% of users using one browser such as in the 90s, you get on big virus explosion. If you find one security hole in one browser, suddenly the world is at your feet. These days, viruses are everywhere, and everyone thinks they are doing enough to prevent their computer getting a virus, yet over 80% of spam is sent by "botnets", hundreds or thousands of computers that are being used to send the spam without the owners knowledge.

Viruses generally spread themselves. If we could stop viruses from spreading by themselves, we could dramatically reduce the risk of contracting a virus. Fortunately, viruses have one Achilles heel: they almost always require a certain operating system. Windows viruses can't attack a Mac, and vice versa. This is for reasons ranging from the inability to run a Windows program on a Mac, to the fact each security vulnerability is usually operating system specific. A huge percentage of viruses are designed to run on Windows, huge as in 99%, maybe more, and the sole reason is that it is the only operating system that has enough users that a virus spreading itself can guarantee it can find another Windows computer to spread itself to.

Mac and Linux users often don't bother with antivirus software, because the chances of them becoming infected are slim at best. I personally have ClamX, an OS X implementation of Clam AV, but I have only ever run it twice, and it's mostly just because I'm intrigued whether it would find a virus. It never has. The reason for this is not because the operating system is more secure, as many zealots would have you believe, it's primarily due to their low market share.

Imagine if Linux, Mac and Windows each had 33% market share. The chances of a self spreading virus finding another suitable host is suddenly significantly reduced. Now enter Solaris, Chrome OS, and the many netbook-designed OSs out there. The viruses aren't even given a chance, it almost makes you feel sorry for them. Almost.

Now even if we greatly reduced their spread, how about we prevent ourselves getting the virus in the first place. How do viruses reach our computer? Primarily from the web, through exploits in the browser. Each browser is different, so at the moment most use Internet Explorer exploits to get onto your computer, since 70% of people use it. What if we could reduce this number, something web developers have been wanting to do for years, but we can't just throw them all onto FireFox. FireFox is already regarded as "the new IE", and not in a good way. We need more spread, and that's something we can do now. The more browsers in mainstream use, the better protected everyone will be. Firefox currently has about 25%. Good for it, but lets keep it there. In fact, if IE dropped to 20%, Firefox dropped to 20%, Opera rose to 20% and Safari and Chrome got 20% each, we would be a long way towards reducing viruses from a real threat to a group of crazy guerrillas who hide in the bushes and throw rocks through our windows occasionally.

Now I know what you are thinking, you don't want to go to the game store and have to choose between 5 or 6 different version for your OS. Well despite the fact you already do this (PC, Mac, XBox OS, PS3 OS, Wii OS, etc) I have the solution for that too, or more specifically, Google does. What is one non-proprietary platform that can run on any operating system? The Web. The majority of everything you do on your computer could potentially be done on the web, much of it is already possible to do on the web. Google Docs allows you to use an Office suite on the web, Adobe has it's own suite of programs too. Anything has the potential to be done on the web. In the next 10 years, computer power will likely reach the point that anything can be done via interpreted languages such as Java, Flash and most of all, Javascript.

If all browsers followed web standards (hint hint) and all web developers adhered to web standards (Try any big website, they sometimes come close, but usually fail: facebook, nearly 300 errors for the Microsoft home page ( no surprises there), a couple for Apple, 60ish for Twitter. I think you get the point).

If they adhered to webstandards, you could use any standards compliant browser you wanted. On the other hand, if enough browsers gain a little market share, these site will be forced to become standards compliant.

So off you go, go get yourself a lesser known browser. Something with less than 5% preferably (as that's every browser except Firefox and Internet Explorer). And make sure it's up to date, so it supports the most recent web standards and has the highest security.

Such as these:
Opera
Safari
Chrome

Or any of these.

-Dave