Riding home from another long and satisfying day of web application development, I turned on NPR as I usually do.
Freshair was on, http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=3&islist=true&id=13&d=08-19-2010 , in particular. When Dave Davies said, "Internet Explorer is by far the most used browser in the world", or something to that effect, my heart skipped a beat. I was poised to hear the Senior Technology Editor of the Wall Street Journal, Julia Angwin , surprise Mr. Davies with the fact that chrome and firefox have more than double the usage of IE . Instead, she just smiled and agreed and said something or other. I almost drove right off of the road as this gross misinformation was allowed to hit the innocent ears of the non-tech listeners.
I pretty much tuned out the rest of the interview as it just sounded like a couple of [insert age-discriminating ad hominem attack here] talking about what was true in 2002. Not a single mention of FireFox? Not a single mention of private browsing ? Angwin said that I have to install special software to prevent websites from storing data on my computer, "none of [the browsers] have made it particularly easy.. you can install some additional software.." then she shilled for abine. Well, I guess FireFox didn't have private browsing back in 2002 and Chrome didn't exist so ....
Needless to say, I drove straight home to double check the facts, listen to the show again, and then post here and on other social networking sites.