From: Gary Britt 

The incompetence in Washington doesn't stop with republicans in the
Whitehouse and Congress.  It runs much deeper than that.  I don't include
democrats in this comment because its a given they are either incompetent
and screw us or competently screw us.  Either way, we don't get kissed.

Gary

Rich Gauszka wrote:
>   "To access the ACE Secure Data Portal you need a high-speed internet
> connection and Internet Explorer 5.5 or higher. Please note that the ACE
> Portal does not function properly with Mozilla Firefox."
>
> http://weblog.infoworld.com/gripeline/archives/2007/06/us_customs_incl.html?s
ource=NLC-GRIPE&cgd=2007-06-19
>
> There is a lot of concern these days over whether those responsible for
> securing our borders are up to the job. So it's a bit unsettling to learn
> that they seem to think it's a good idea to force overseas businesses to use
> that most insecure of browsers, Internet Explorer, in order to communicate
> online with U.S. Customs.
>
>
>
> "Maybe I'm just naive, but I can't believe a federal government
that spent X
> millions of dollars pursuing Microsoft on antitrust charges wouldn't make
> all their websites usable with browsers other than IE," a Canadian reader
> recently wrote. "The Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) website that
> U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has implemented to enforce that all
> cross border shipments be electronically submitted to CBP beforehand
> requires IE5.5 or later and continually reminds a Firefox user that the site
> is only certified for IE. It's not as though the site doesn't really work
> with Firefox as near as I can tell, but getting these constant reminders
> while trying to enter data pretty much makes it so."
>
>
>
> A FAQ on the ACE website states plainly that:
>
>
>
>   "To access the ACE Secure Data Portal you need a high-speed internet
> connection and Internet Explorer 5.5 or higher. Please note that the ACE
> Portal does not function properly with Mozilla Firefox."
>
>
> Entering the main part of the ACE website (which requires a valid
> registration), a non-IE user is immediately marked for trouble. "That's
> where the fun starts," the reader wrote. "A dialog box pops
up when you try
> to enter that notes what browser you have and warns 'In order to use this
> site you need to install and run Internet Explorer 5.5 or higher' with an
> 'OK' click box to continue. After you click OK the same warning dialog box
> pops up again, and after clicking OK again you get the site, but as soon as
> you click one of the site's buttons to navigate to a different page you get
> the box again, and again after clicking OK. That happens again -- i.e.
> twice -- when trying to access the next page. I could say it happens every
> time you access a new page, but by this time I'm totally fed up and move to
> an old W2000 machine we keep around for times like this."
>
>
>
> Such times occur far more often than the reader, whose company uses
> Thinstation clients running off a Linux server, had expected. "In fact,
> we've pretty much made the decision to go back to Microsoft because there
> are just too many sites and standalone software packages, many specific to
> our industry, that require either IE or an entire MS client to run. Even
> with the full Crossover license we still can't get most of them to work
> properly. One feature on the CBP site that I've also seen on a customer's
> procurement site is the little plus sign that indicates a directory tree but
> that feature isn't displayed at all in Firefox."
>
>
>
> Just as the ACE site forced him to use IE with its constant stream of
> warning messages, the industry at large is wearing him down with a lot of
> minor incompatibilities. "Speaking of security and IE, our facilities
> management department recently bought a security camera system that you can
> access from a browser, but it has to be IE too! And the sales guy didn't
> even have a clue that other browsers existed or why you might want to use
> one of them. And we recently committed to getting an ERP package as a SOA
> implementation because it runs on an IBM iSeries (we didn't want the hassle
> of managing one of those since we have no in house IT dept.), but you MUST
> have MS fat clients to run the IBM Client Access software! Yes, there's a
> Linux version, but the ASP doesn't support it."
>
>
>
> Put in that light, the reader's experience with the Customs' automated
> website should really have us all feeling much less secure. After all,
> organizations that fail to support viable alternatives to Microsoft such as
> Firefox are just making it harder for all of us to use the products we think
> are best performing, least buggy, and most secure.
>
>

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