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Re: [News] Linux Shows Double-digit Growth, Google Poised to Join This Party

AHappyCamper wrote:

> Many Linux and BSD OS users report their system to be a Microsoft one.

All mine do. I have 2 FreeBSD and 4 Linux boxes on my home network, and
every one of them that has a web browser installed says it's an XP
machine running IE6. 

Two reasons for that...

1. Compatibility. Some web authors are too lazy to develop standards
compliant content and so brain dead they parse USER_AGENT strings to
discriminate against standards compliant browsers.

2. Curiosity. I like to see what sort of gaping holes nefarious site
administrators are poking at these days. No better way to do that than
pretending to have as many holes as possible. ;)

> Also, to quote, it is more an indicator of "web user base".

It's hardly an indication of anything really. Diddling your USER_AGENT
is one of the oldest and most wide spread tricks in the book. Non-IE
users do it for various reasons, and the poor sots who are forced to
run IE do it because they think it makes them safer.

> What was it that was intended to be measured, again?

HTTP_USER_AGENT strings. It's sort of like putting on rose colored
glasses and counting stuff that looks oddly pink. ;)


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