Korean Job Discussion Forums

[bacasper]

I did notice that I must use IE to do my banking in SK.

Mozilla warns of 'Microsoft monoculture' in South Korea

Lemur web saviour flutters very big eyes

By Kelly Fiveash �
Posted in Applications, 24th February 2010 13:10 GMT

The lemur-obsessed Mozilla crew have this week mostly been pushing their hippy ideals in the hope of reminding people that there's more to life than Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Early this morning the open source outfit and Firefox maker took a second stab at the hearts and minds of conscientious web surfers in a post about South Korea's despotic approach to browsers.

Mozilla is very excited about the European Commission's demands that Microsoft serves up a web browser ballot box via its operating system within the 27-state bloc. But further afield it has been fretting about Redmond's supremacy.

"To those critics of the browser ballot who would rather the free market be left completely to Adam Smith�s invisible hand, I would present to you the example of South Korea," wrote Mozilla's Gen Kanai in a blog post penned today.

"In short, South Korea is a sad example of a Microsoft monoculture where the course of history and the lack of anti-monopoly oversight have created a nation where every computer user is a Windows user and banking or ecommerce or any secure transaction on the Internet with South Korean entities must be done with Internet Explorer on a Windows OS."

Mozilla kicked off its "open to choice" campaign earlier this week, in which its CEO John Lilly outlined that web surfers have the right to pick what browser they want to use, rather than blindly being lumped with Internet Explorer just because Microsoft set it as default on Windows-based PCs.

It should all be about "self-determination", noted Lilly.

continues at link

[Senior]

This is basically a special interest lobbying for special treatment. I don't like the internet situation in Korea anymore than the next guy (proud ff user), but legislating companies must do this or that is not the answer. If Koreans wanted to use a different a browser they could, but they don't. Mozilla has an infinitely better product. That will probably win out in the end.

[RobertGR]

[Moldy Rutabaga]

My co-worker is an IT professor, and he laments how costly and inefficient it is for students here and for developers to continue to have to write code for ActiveX and IE6. It's as if a record company had to produce 8-Track tapes for only one country. This conservatism is not only a choice but is a wasteful choice, even if Mozilla is obviously promoting its own interests.

[jvalmer]

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2010/02/133_60659.html

"In essence, the current law states that all encrypted online communications on computers require the use of electronic signatures based on public-key certificates. And since the fall of Netscape in the early 2000s, Microsoft's Active-X controls on its Internet Explorer (IE) Web browsers remain as the only plug-in tool to download public-key certificates to computers. "


The Korean Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) need to get their heads out of their rears and change their regulations that are in line with the rest of the world. Just a simple UserID and password. None of this requiring resident ID for everything. Korean citizens just have to learn to take criticism, or ignore them, from anonymous internet users.

[Senior]

[RobertGR]

[bucheon bum]

Some key US gov't agencies use ActiveX controls too. Well they are key for federal employees, not so much your average American (i.e. the General Services Administration and the Office of Personnel Management). Maybe that's why I'm stuck using IE 6 at work.

[tiger fancini]

[Underwaterbob]