Time is the most valuable asset that you have. Nothing else holds a candle. I come to this conclusion after dealing with more Firefox issues this morning. My sons are all playing in the living room and outside, so I decided to work on the web site for a while. I learned that Firefox doesn't support VBScript. I don't use VBScript much except for one function, a check date function, which is great in VBScript because Microsoft has produced a superlative date validation function, IsDate(). This function will read "Jan 1, 2006" "January 1" "1-1-06" all as valid date formats. And they are. Firefox's enforces Javascript verification, which is much weaker for its strict reliance on the use of regular expressions, which can only validate a single date format. Why did Firefox do this? Because of Microsoft's arrogance in releasing a browser and operating system that didn't take security seriously. Microsoft's is an optimistic world where hackers and terrorists don't exist. Hackers exploit VBScript's openness and powerful function library to hijack PC's. Firefox simply decided to ignore VBScript in releasing their browser. That's a lotta balls to stiffarm Microsoft. I kind of respect them for that. Pretty gutsy. But security had become such an issue that when people found a web site that relied on VBScript for part of its functionality, Firefox only had to respond that "The web site uses VBScript, which is a security risk to you," and the customer would knowingly nod in agreement and actually thank Firefox for not allowing the web site to do its thing. And the company who owned the web site would have to invest in a rewrite in Javascript. And all of this came about because some mobster or teenage punk decided that he would write a malicious piece of code. The code might have wiped data from a computer; it might have stolen bank accounts numbers; it might have fired endless popups at the user. But I can boil all of these down to a simple and priceless commodity: time. My computer's data files are the summation of my effort in creating them. Typically, if they're wiped, I have to recreate them, if I can. My bank accounts, if stolen, require that I take the time to close the accounts and create new ones and trace any money confiscated from me to get it back. My money is, after all, the payment for my invested time in a service/product that someone else deemed worthy of money. And getting rid of the popups takes time, of course. Ultimately, they're stealing my time without my consent. True freedom is my choice in how to spend my time, be that in speaking or writing or conducting my affairs in the way that I deem important to me. Anytime that someone pulls my time from me, without my consent or choice in engaging them, and decides how I must spend my time, I am not free. Terrorists also steal my time, but on a far larger scale. If they're successful, it's a permanent erasure of my life. Every day is ripped from me. It's all about time. That's truly all that we have. How do we spend each wild and precious moment? So in search of a good validation library for Javascript, I can pony up $75 for version 9.7.2 of something and save myself time. Or I can continue to scour the web for something free. But is that worth my time? Any business needs to have t-i-m-e as its base selling point for existence. A business must free up time for the consumer. Or provide quality of time for the consumer. But it's all about time. | 
