[ale] Incompetent corporate web sites (was: Ubuntu Linux ROCKS!)

[aaron]

On 2009, Oct, 04, , at 3:47 PM, Asher Vilensky wrote:
> Very cool story.  And I want to turn our Gateway laptop
> (Vista) into Ubuntu every day.  My only reservation is
> that there are still too many [wimp] websites that are
> built for IE only (my bank, insurance company,
> health-care provider, etc) - exactly those you need the
> most.  In order to make electronic deposits at my bank
> I have to switch from my Macbook to an XP VM (with a
> big screen, since the graphic is rigid).  Yikes.
>
> So, Linux gurus, is there a solution (or a workaround)
> for such sites?
>
> -- Asher

I'm sure other's have already chimed in with the standard
"set your browser to advertise that it is IE" or "run
IE under Wine" suggestions while I've been writing this
reply, but these do nothing to address the core of the
problem and only serve to perpetuate the technical and
fiscal incompetence of the corporate services involved.

The only effective solution here is to simply NOT do
business with companies that are so technically
incompetent that they refuse to support the open,
public, international standards for internet services,
with the point of making it VERY clear WHY you aren't
doing business with them, and WHY you will actively
discourage everyone you know from doing business
with them.

Having a bank restrict connections to their internet
account access services by requiring customers to use
an expensive, insecure Mafia$oft brand browser is the
equivalent of telling the public that they will only
accept deposits of legal tender that has been personally
handled and autographed by Steve Balmer. It is a
patently absurd policy.

The cases of seeing these restrictions from insurance
providers is even more galling, especially in health
insurance.

- In the case of auto and home owners insurance, these
are very often required by law, and thus all financial
and information exchange systems for these publicly
licensed and regulated companies should be available
as unrestricted, open and public services.

- For the [rapidly decreasing numbers of] privileged
Americans who even have access to a massively overpriced
corporate rationed health insurance policy, it is almost
always provided at the discretion of the employer
without any real or open choice available to the
individual.  Since these profiteering insurance
providers and their denial of claims death panels
stand as a blockade between you and your doctors and
health care providers, it is literally a matter of
life and death that all information and financial
exchange systems involved should be available as
unrestricted, open and public services.

Lastly, any company who would restrict access to
their public internet services to the use of expensive,
proprietary IE web browsers is not only technically
incompetent, they are fiscally incompetent as well.
According to W3C statistics, they are excluding and/or
being a major annoyance to the clear majority of their
potential public customer base:

<http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp>

Clearly, any company whose web services don't conform
to industry standards for open public accessibility is
technically and fiscally incompetent. When those
companies are providing essential or legally required
public services, they are being ethically incompetent
as well.  In all cases, these are companies that no
one should be doing business with.

I hope you'll share the names of the offenders on your
"force me to use IE" list so we can all avoid doing
business with them and can actively publicize their
incompetence to others.

peace
aaron