The Internet As the Internet Should Be

How should the Web be? Few of us remember the Internet before the Web became virtually synonymous with the Internet. Few remember what Gopher was (imagine a text-only web without hyperlinks); few have used Telnet to access an Internet server; and most of us don't see FTP because it's hidden as part of our browsers.

We've come a long way from an Internet and web that was safe, clean, and good to today's Internet where one must be always vigilant, on his guard, and wary of attackers who seek to take and exploit.

We've gone from a truly noncommercial Internet to an Internet that is almost entirely commercially driven. That's not to say it's bad just that things have changed.

Browsing the Internet is relatively safe, when using the right browser. In Microsoft's drive to add functionality to Internet Explorer, it added ActiveX technology. When this was done, Microsoft had no idea that that same technology would later become a tool to attack and exploit Internet users. Virtually all Firefox users see Firefox's lack of ActiveX as a benefit and not a loss.

We are inundated with spam offering low-cost mortgages, cheap drugs, pornography, and myriad deals all sounding too good to be true. Robert Heinlein said, "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch." And he was right you can't get something for nothing.

Hmmm, Firefox is free. So is Thunderbird. Are we getting something for nothing? Was Heinlein wrong? No, to have Thunderbird, Firefox, and the growing amount of free software, we do pay. We contribute either our time (especially if we are programmers) or money. If you can't give them some time, now's the time to pay the piper: Please donate to the Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla.org.