Alternative browsers Firefox and Safari continued to slowly erode Internet Explorer's market share in January, with Firefox now holding just under 17 percent of the browser usage and Safari nearing six percent, according to the latest data from Market Share by NetApplications. Of course, this still means that Microsoft's market leader is used by three out of every four internet users, and at the current rate of decline, about three percentage points a year, it would be 2016 before it lost its majority status.

Naturally, by 2016 we'll all have brain implants to directly surf the entire contents of the GoogleNet, so it's silly to consider a world where Internet Explorer isn't the dominant browser for the short term.

After hitting a peak of 0.65% in November, Opera (the myNetworkTV of browsers) dropped to a 0.62% share in January.

Other interesting data from January showed Windows XP holding 75.07% of the operating system market, followed by Windows Vista at 11.96% (over a year since its introduction), MacOS at 7.57%, Windows 2000 at 2.71% (and you thought the XP holdouts were hardcore), and Linux variants at just 0.67%.

As always, I recommend Firefox with the NoScript add-on for a safer browsing experience, but regardless of your browser choice, make sure it's completely up to date with all patches, including updating any plug-ins or add-ons such as Java, Flash or Silverlight.

Microsoft released its monthly Windows patches today, and one of them is considered of critical importance. There is a flaw in the TCP/IP processing in Windows 2000, XP (with Service Pack 2), Server 2003 and Vista that could result in a user's computer being taken over. The other patch involves Windows' Local Security Authority Subsystem Service (LSASS), and could also result in an attacker being able to control an unpatched computer; this threat is rated as important.