Lies, damned lies, statistics

OSNews posts Firefox vs. IE security: Is Two Greater Than Five?. “A recent blog post on ZDNet contends that Firefox is not as secure as promised by counting exploits. Joseph Huang contends that severity and the number of unpatched vulnerabilites matters, not just the number of exploits discovered.”

Lies, damned lies and statistics, indeed! Here’s Joseph’s portrayal:

IE FireFox
Extremely Critical 10 Zero
Highly Critical 20 3
Moderately Critical 14 4
Less / Not Critical 25 15

Farewall, MacWorld Boston, we hardly knew ye

OSNews notes IDG Pulls Plug on Macworld Boston. “Two years after the East Coast version of the Macworld Expo made a controversial move to Boston, IDG World Expo is pulling the plug on the event. IDG announced plans in October 2002 to move the show from New York to Boston, with Apple Computer immediately announcing that it would not join IDG in the move. With Apple gone, attendance dropped substantially, prompting a move this year to the smaller Hynes Convention Center.”

As I posted back in July, charging $15 to tour the Expo floor and let vendors try out their pitch on you is not going to boost attendance, either. Apple’s decision to not support IDG cut of its oxygen, but this doesn’t help, either. Less attendees means vendors won’t be inclined to pay the exorbitant costs of exhibiting. Less exhibitors means attendees pay more, driving them away. Death Spiral.

Note that CMP’s Software Development conference in Boston is doing something similar: “Unlimited access to two days (Sept 27-28, 2005) of the SD Best Practices Expo. Plus attend all Keynotes, Tech Sessions, the Expo floor party and selected special events (as noted online and in program guide)… Register online by Sept 22, 2005, 4:00pm for your complimentary Expo Pass. A fee of $50 will be charged after this date.” Fifty bucks! That will drive casual visitors away! Get those registrations in soon!

BusinessWeek goes undercover to interview Mini-Microsoft

Over at Scripting News. Dave Winer points out that “BusinessWeek profiles anonymous blogger Mini-Microsoft.” M-M is the most valuable employee Microsoft has, someone unfraid to point out that the system is broken. Microsoft ought to pay more attention to him/her if they aren’t already. It could just be a plot by Microsoft Research, of course.