Bad PR

In a Cnet News.com article about Mozilla's Bug Bounty Program, a Microsoft representative actually said, "We don't pay people to fix bugs." Whoops. That does explain a few things about Windows and Internet Explorer, though. He went on to say, "But there are other ways we try to fix security as much as possible." As much as possible? You try? Windows XP costs up to several hundred dollars and is used by most of the world. Just fix the damn bugs and stop making excuses. If Linspire and Mark Shuttleworth can fund Mozilla's bug hunt, I'll assume Microsoft can afford to fix their own security and stability issues.

I Hate My Modem

I am so tired of my modem crapping out on me and having to reboot to get back online. My favorite part is when Windows asks me to send an error report about it. Every time. Yes, let's connect to the internet to send a report about how my modem has stopped working. That's fucking brilliant.

Anyway, read this article at InformationWeek. They have the numbers to back up what we all knew already: people who know what they're doing use Firefox.

A few days ago, PC news site Ars Technica reported that Firefox had become the No. 1 browser among its readers with 40% market share. Internet Explorer, which stood at 38% last September, has dropped to 30% today.

In addition, between 20% and 40% of visitors to most of the popular blogs are using a Mozilla-based browser, including 36% of the people viewing something called Boing Boing. I have no idea what Boing Boing is, I just know that I'm not clicking on any link to anything called "Boing Boing."

T-Bird Developer and Will Ferrell

Asa has posted another Q&A with a Mozilla developer; this time it's Scott MacGregor, the lead programmer for Thunderbird, the best email client since VAX Mail. It isn't especially compelling, but read it anyway. Bitches.

Meanwhile, I've been watching Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy over and over. At one point, PowerDVD flaked out on me and stopped working. I thought it was trying to tell me to watch another fucking movie, but it turns out I just had to turn off hardware acceleration. That's OK, though. I've gone through all the extra features and heard the director's commentary (if you wanna call it that). I'm ready to move on to obsessing about another movie, like Team America: World Police, if it would ever be released on fucking DVD. I refuse to keep track of this online, but I assume the delay has to do with Parker and Stone having to rush to produce new South Park's. Tonight's new episode was about the Sony PSP and Terri Schiavo, so SP is clearly what they've been concentrating on lately. Oh well. We can wait.

Oh, and my neighbors' PC had a separate partition for system restores, and running one didn't fix it. On boot, there's an error in post that says the "Atapi IDE CD-ROM device driver" is missing. I have no idea what that driver's filename is, or where the hell I can find it, or how I can load it without a CD-ROM drive. So I guess that box is screwed, because I can't format the HD and reinstall Win98 SE: it's a Compaq. When you live in Frayser, it's important that your neighbors like you, but I just don't see how I can get this to work.

Pixar and More Camino

I've seen The Incredibles four times now, and it just doesn't get old. I'm definitely enjoying it more from my computer than from the 32-inch TV; this movie was mastered for high-res from the source material, and you can only take advantage of it with a computer monitor or a high-def TV. As for other DVD's, all I really want right now is Shaun of the Dead, which I haven't found used yet, and Team America: World Police. We're all still waiting for that release.

Josh Aas (Boom Swagger Boom) has an interesting post on the speed advantage of Camino over Firefox. So I guess there is a reason to use Camino if you have a Mac.

I've got my neighbors' old Compaq sitting next to me right now. I've been trying to install their new CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive for them, but this POS won't take it. Haven't figured out why yet, but I'll get there. I'm starting to suspect that the motherboard's IDE controller is fucked. It's a used PC, circa 2000, and has never had a Windows reinstall, but it's a Compaq and it probably will only take a system restore, not a clean Win98 SE installation, so I'm hesitant to format it. I guess I'd be more into this if they were paying me.

Camino, Zips, and Cake

A beautiful new site has been launched dedicated to spreading Camino, the Mozilla Foundation's Gecko-based Mac-only web browser. Think of it as a more Apple-centric edition of the cross-platform Firefox.

MoFo's Chase Phillips has provided an explanation for why new final releases of Firefox and Thunderbird are no longer being posted as zip files as well as self-installers. It's mildly technical, but it breaks down like this: using the executables is easier and causes fewer headaches when upgrading, so stop using the zips.

I was digging through a pile of old CDs the other day and came across the soundtrack from The Matrix, which I didn't even know I had. So I've finally found a new CD for my car stereo. I've been playing Cake's latest album, Pressure Chief, every time I got in my truck since I bought it the day it was released.

Update: Screw The Matrix, I also found my copy of "The Elephant Riders" by Clutch. Now that's drivin' around music.

Thunderbird Security Update

Thunderbird 1.0.2 was released yesterday. It's a "background" update from 1.0, with the Gecko security fixes and stability upgrades in Firefox 1.0.1 and Mozilla Suite 1.7.6, which also went public yesterday. If you're not using Thunderbird as your primary email app, you should be. If you already are, here's the easiest way to upgrade in Windows:

1. Download Thunderbird 1.0.2
2. Uninstall Thunderbird 1.0 (using Add/Remove Programs) and do not remove the program folder, usually c:/Program Files/Mozilla Thunderbird/
3. Run the 1.0.2 installer

That's it. Your accounts, messages, folders, settings, themes, and extensions will be automatically maintained.

In frontline news from the browser wars, News.com as a lengthy and detailed article on why Firefox is making such a dent in Internet Explorer's market share, and whether the Mozilla Foundation can keep this up.

Previous open-source products had a high geek factor: You had to be a geek to run them. Firefox is the first time consumers really chose an open source product.

In other words, Firefox is in the perfect situation for an underdog: It's a great application, and it's competing against a bloated, out-dated, and dangerously vulnerable browser in Internet Explorer.

Firefox Wallpaper

I finally posted an original Firefox wallpaper on deviantART today. You can find it alongside my four (so far) Memphis Grizzlies wallpapers under my profile. I made it from scratch for my own use, but I liked it so much I adapted it for 1280x1024 and posted it. Look for more Firefox and Mozilla wallpapers soon.

Installed the latest Opera beta (Opera 8 beta 3), and aside from the usual adjustment phase, I like it. The interface is significantly different from a Gecko or Internet Explorer-based browser, and can be confusing for a few minutes. But soon enough it's humming along nicely. But again, unless you're willing to spend $39 to register and get rid of the ad banners, just go with Firefox or Avant Browser.

I borrowed my neighbors' rental of Collateral, and I love it. Just a fantastic, riveting movie. Very reminiscent of the first time I saw Heat, Michael Mann's most comparable film, in that I immediately thought, "I have to watch this again." At first it was the novelty of Tom Cruise as the bad guy, but you forget about that very quickly because his performance is just so convincing. Definitely my recommended rental of the year, edging out Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Of course, I haven't gotten my hands on The Incredibles yet...

The Death of Seamonkey

As I posted on my Memphis Grizzlies fanblog, I've started posting Griz wallpapers at deviantART. What I'm going for in these wallpapers is simplicity and usability, and I've ended up with some .xcf templates that I can easily adapt for Mozilla wallpapers, so look for those soon. Everything I've posted can be found at shiftedblue.deviantart.com.

The Mozilla Foundation has finally made it official: Seamonkey, the codebase for the Mozilla Application Suite, will no longer be developed. As it turns out, the 1.8 alpha and beta releases of Mozilla Suite were essentially testbeds for the Gecko branch underlying Firefox 1.0.1 and Thunderbird 1.0.1.

There's already a movement to keep Seamonkey alive, as I predicted in a previous post. I think this is good for Mozilla in the end, and is certainly the whole point of open-source software. But really, focusing on Firefox and Thunderbird is the right thing to do. As a combo, they just out-class the Mozilla Suite in every category.

Interstates and Insecurities

I drove down to Olive Branch today for something about a shower or my cousin, or, my grandparents were there... I don't really know, I wasn't paying attention. I just know all the women on my mom's side of the family went somewhere, while I and my cousin and uncle and granddad sat at the house to watch golf and NCAA basketball. But somehow I'm going to have to go to Greenville, MS, for my cousin's wedding in August. I don't even know where Greenville is, or if it's a real place, I just know I have to buy a fucking suit or something, and I hope to God I'm not going to be involved in the whole wedding process. I was an usher at a Catholic wedding once, and it was hell.

Mike Connor raises some disturbing red flags on future Firefox development in a blog post yesterday. Seems he's not at all confident in the current state of Mozilla Foundation's Firefox hacker check-ins, and thinks 1.5 could be pushed back to next year. This is the first serious whiff of internal dissent we've had from MoFo (though Mike is not on MoFo's payroll). We don't know if this a real sign of future issues. I expect either Mitchell Baker or Blake Ross to respond shortly.

As an outside observer, Mike has been a significant contributor to the success of Firefox, and I hope his self-imposed boycott of Firefox hacker check-ins is short-lived. If there's one thing Mozilla doesn't need now that Microsoft has realized the threat they pose, it's affiliated programmers or hackers jumping ship for political reasons.

Firefox for Dummies

How Stuff Works has posted a sort of beginners' introduction to Firefox and browsers in general, called, aptly, How Firefox Works. Definitely a recommended link for anyone you may be attempting to convince to switch to Firefox (or any other Gecko-based browser) full-time.

Firefox co-creator Blake Ross is -- let's just say "irritated" -- by the latest Netscape Browser release. He has some very pointed and fair criticisms directed primarily towards whoever AOL has contracted to do their software development for them and for the marketing boardroom-types who seem to have been major influences in how the 8.0 beta turned out.

I'm trying to get this post typed out as quickly as possible, before my internet connection suddenly craps out and I have to reboot to get back online. I've narrowed it down to either my modem itself (and old USR pre-v2-standards 56K), or the Win2K/XP drivers for it. It's most likely the drivers, as I seem to lose connectivity when loading a page that pulls from multiple servers simultanously, like a Google image search or an RSS aggregation source. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find XP-specific drivers for this modem, and I'm hesitant to start arbitrarily installing alternative "maybe it'll work, but probably not" candidates. Oh well. Who needs to search the web anyway?

Netscape Browser 8.0 Beta

I'm using the new Netscape Browser beta that was released this morning. While it's vastly improved over the release candidate circulated last November, it's still essentially a mucked-up Firefox 1.0. This isn't all that bad, since this makes for the best Netscape release ever (even in beta form), but it's a very convoluted and complex browser, and in no way is this recommended for computer newbies of any kind. It's difficult to configure and awkwardly designed.

First, there's the toolbars. It took me a moment to realized that the Stop and Reload button had been combined. I suppose this makes sense, but what's the point, really? There's an integrated search bar to the left of the location bar, but it's set to Netscape's search engine, and cannot be changed. Ignoring the browser's Passcard functionality, which combines form filling with a password manager and which I have no interest in using, we come to what Netscape calls the Multibar.

There are five default trays that can be toggled in the browser-width multibar via tiny numbered tabs under the navigation controls: 1. a weather drop-down menu, a webmail tab (set to Netscape webmail, of course), a business ticker, a "Shopping" link, and a link for beta feedback; 2. Three separate news tickers; 3. a "Local" tray with more weather, a maps pull-down, and a Yellow Pages link; 4. your imported bookmarks; and 5. "Blank." Got all that? Seem needlessly complicated? It is.

This is further confused by the Customize Toolbar dialog, which, like Firefox's, allows drag-and-drop, but now has four tabs to categorize the scores of buttons and several drop-down menus for individual toolbar settings (remember, there are six now). The Options window is even worse. There are seven catagories with a total of fourteen pages of obscure, badly documented checkboxes, blanks, and pull-downs. Keep in mind that Netscape Browser has maybe two or three major features over Firefox (not counting common Firefox extensions), yet there are three times as many things to worry about in the options and preferences windows. People, I've been doing this for ten years, and at first I was a bit bewildered by this thing.

But the good news is that very little actually needs to be changed from default. It imported my Firefox 1.0.1 bookmarks, cookies, home page, history, etc., and I simply set the multibar to my bookmarks and left it there. The default theme is tad too far on the teal side, but it's clean and certainly unique. The 8.0 beta has also retained Firefox's Live Bookmarks, one of the premier features of the browser, and the primary reason I stick with Firefox day-to-day over Mozilla, Opera, K-Meleon, etc.

On the beta issues side, there seems to be an issue with the rendering engine that keeps certain pages (like the Google front page) from being drawn until the entire page has been cached, if at all, a problem exacerbated by the combination of the Stop and Reload buttons. 8.0 beta also does not incorporate the Gecko branch updates in Firefox 1.0.1, which includes some major security fixes. So this browser is not yet ready for full-time use, but it looks promising, at least as promising as the new Opera 6 beta 2.

Still, unless you really need various news, stock, and weather tickers and don't want to fool with installing Firefox extensions (which, I have to point out, is easier to do than configuring the tickers already integrated into Netscape), Netscape Browser remains obsolete in the face of Firefox 1.0.1. It's a nice try, but re-branded browsers are just rarely worth the effort. I'll stick with it for a while, and I'll let you know if I change my mind.

Random Browsing

A few updates unrelated to anything in particular...

In pictures: How the world is changing at BBC News, courtesy of Cake. The scary thing about these comparative images is how little time has passed between them. The world from your high school geography textbooks is going away.

The Superficial has unexpectedly posted the best Academy Awards observations you're going to find online. In the process, they mentioned this archive of Charlie Kaufman scripts, which includes Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, my favorite film of last year.

And in me-news, in an attempt to make some sort of use of my second, otherwise unused 30GB hard drive, I've been ripping just about every song from just about every CD I own. The result has been a very eclectic random Winamp playlist. When you jump from "Piggy" by Nine Inch Nails to "Feathers" by 12 Rounds to "I Be the Prophet" by Tricky to Tchaikovsky's Symphony No.4, movement 3, you know you're having fun.

1.0.1 Nightlies... and Bikinis

Keep your eyes on the nightly Firefox builds and mozillaZine, as the final, bugfixed preference window update should be posted shortly. Ben Goodger (Inside Firefox) has been working on the new prefwindow for quite a while now, but it wasn't quite ready for the 1.0.1 release.

In "God, that makes me feel old" news, there's a Slashdot blurb about the tenth anniversaries of Yahoo!, Apache, eBay, Amazon, and Netscape. I started using the internet at the insistence of my friends (including Garrett) in late 1995, so while I didn't get in on the ground floor, I was there at the emergence of the Web as an entity unto itself. At that point, Netscape 1 was still the dominant browser, and Mosaic and LYNX were still useful. I can remember frequently checking how my own website looked in LYNX and doing a ton of chatting via a VAX app called Talk.

I saw the February issue of Wired Magazine tonight, the one with Blake Ross on the cover and the feature article on Firefox, but I didn't buy it. I picked it up, flipped through it for a couple minutes, and realized that there wasn't anything remotely interesting in there, other than the Firefox article, which I've already read online. And it was five bucks. So I reached up to put it back into its slot in the magazine rack, and as I did so, I noticed the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue not a foot away. It was six bucks. I bought that instead. And I didn't even open it.

Full Impluse, Mr. Sulu

I've been spending way too much time lately playing with Celestia, the open-source, multi-OS, interactive planetarium app. Essentially, it allows you to glide easily across our galaxy, tracking any and every moving chunk of matter within literally 800 light years (and beyond) from any angle. It's just way fucking cool. I already have some very nifty screenshots of the inner solar system as seen from several hundred meters above the surface of the asteroid Iocaste. Download it here or get it as a part of The Open CD.

As you know, Firefox version 1.0.1 has landed. Highly recommended that anyone you know using Firefox 1.0 should upgrade ASAP. There's nothing flashy about 1.0.1, just loads of security updates and bugfixes. I uninstalled 1.0 before installing the new version (a measley 4.7MB download) and all my themes, extensions, bookmarks, cookies, and even toolbar configurations were automatically and flawlessly maintained.

Slashdot put up a post about the first image ever posted on the web, and guess what? It's chicks! Hot, geeky, rock band chicks singing about "colliders, quarks, microwaves, antiprotons, and the Internet." Nothing screams "sexy" quite like Mosaic Browser and girls in weird, ill-fitting prom dresses.

Odd Stuff is Goin' Down

Weird news from just about every corner of the web this week. First there was this article at The Inquirer claiming that sources inside Microsoft say the official name of MS's new OS, code-named Longhorn, will be "Microsoft Windows e-XPedition." It's just so stupid it can't possibly be made up.

Then there was the report that scientists at Cardiff Univ. have discovered a dark matter galaxy. If you're thinking, "Oh, I remember that from Star Trek," you're probably right.

Finally, there's the guy who actually read a EULA (I've tried, but it seemed impossible) and won himself a thousand goddamn dollars. The outfit who awarded the money, PC Pitstop, did so to make a point, which seems a little pretentious, but they've written an extremely enlightening article on just how dangerous EULAs can be. Definitely recommended for any computer newbies you'd like to scare the shit out of.

Microsoft Almost Gets It Right

Because Windows XP's auto-update downloader is a pain in the ass if you use a dial-up ISP, and because I don't even want to think about how long it would take me to download Service Pack 2, I ordered a free SP2 CD from Microsoft. I was told to wait the standard 6 to 8 weeks for arrival, but it got here in four days. So far, this has all been very nice and easy.

So I installed SP2 in about an hour, spent a little longer configuring the firewall and running a scan/defrag of my primary drive. But there's a problem. I can't stay online for more than five minutes without arbitrarily losing all downstream data. No error, no disconnect. Just no data. And the dialer stops responding and I have to reboot to get back online for five more minutes of quality internet time. Oh boy, this is fun.

So I uninstalled and reinstalled my ISP's autodialer software, started using a different (significantly slower) local access number, and disabled the fucking firewall entirely, and it seems to be working again. I'm hoping it was the firewall and not the number.

Oh, and after installing SP2, my computer abruptly reset itself in the middle of a game of Half-Life. First time I've had a sudden crash since switching to WinXP Pro. Interesting timing...

Seamonkeys and Robot Chickens

In a recent post, Asa brought up the limited lifetime of Seamonkey and a fairly hysterical forum blitz followed. Basically, the Mozilla Foundation has been planning on phasing out development of Seamonkey, the basis of the Mozilla Application Suite, and a lot of people seem to think this means the end of Mozilla Suite forever. Mike Connor has eloquently summed up the situation on his blog. I don't really see the need for future Seamonkey development myself. If you combine Firefox and Thunderbird, and throw in an IRC client and an HTML editor of questionable usefulness, you've got the Mozilla Suite. Or, put another way, it's Netscape Communicator with 2005 compliance standards and a number of bug fixes. Do we really need that? In any case, it's open-source software, so even if the Mozilla Foundation stops development on Seamonkey, the project can (and probably will) live on for years.

And speaking of Thunderbird, I found the minimize to systray extension I'd been looking for at The Extensions Mirror. It's sort of an unofficial database for Firefox, Thunderbird, and Mozilla Suite extensions. Why these extensions aren't posted to Mozilla Update, where they would go through extensive testing and bug-checking, I have no idea.

I saw the premier of Robot Chicken on [adult swim] tonight, and it was funnier and stupider than I'd hoped. I have no idea why stop-motion animation action figures falling down is funny, but somehow, it's really fucking funny.

I discovered that my beautiful (if used) Philips 107P monitor supports 1360x1024, so that's what I'm running now. It also supports 1600x1200, but I'm nearsighted enough.

More Old New Hardware

So I went to Rite-Aid this morning to by paper towels and light bulbs and dog food (of course) and that sort of shit, and I picked up a rather crappy five-button "4D Internet Wheel Scroll Mouse," made by something called Sakar International under the brand "iConcepts." The two thumb buttons are positioned so far forward that they're almost useless. The hastily-written software came on a floppy disk and the mouse isn't even optical. So why did I buy it? Because it was three dollars, that's why. Cheaper than the light bulbs. I really don't know why, but I have three or four ball-mice now and not one optical mouse. I think it was worth buying this one just to not have to clean out one of the others again.

The NBA All-Star Game is on right now, and I'm not even watching it. Look, I'm a huge NBA fan, but the Skills Challenge last night was horrible. All-Star weekend just keeps getting worse every year, as it gets more and more commercialized, and as the league tightens its grip upon the whole thing to push its more marketable teams and brands. Let's just get back to basketball already.

Oh, and one more thing. PimpZilla, bitches.

Pimped

Is PimpZilla the best Firefox theme ever? Yes. Yes it is. Go download it right now.

Took a look at both the Opera 8 beta and that Netscape Browser prerelease that came out a while back. To be honest I can't tell much difference between the Opera beta and Opera 7.54u2, the most recent full release. It's nice and fast and all, but without adblocking I just have no use for it. When I want to fire up a browser for a minute without loading all my Firefox LiveBookmarks, I use K-Meleon 0.9.

The Netscape prerelease is clearly an alpha, whatever they may have called it. I ran into two bugs almost immediately: it stopped responding to keyboard input entirely, and if you close the browser window while a download is in progress, you have to create a new profile (or stop the download) to get it to open up again. Early bugs aside, the interface is just odd looking. It's very green and very busy. By default, there are two scrolling news tickers and a stock ticker on the "personal toolbar." It also opens two huge, obnoxious Netscape-hosted home pages. But that can be changed. It's based on Firefox 1.0, so the rendering engine is literally as good as it gets, but really, what's the point of Netscape Browser? If I'm not mistaken, Firefox 1.0 is also based on Firefox 1.0.

Gates on Firefox

From Asa at mozillaZine, via Slashdot, comes a meandering interview with Bill Gates at ABC News. Said Billy:

The browser space that we are in we have about 90 percent. Sure Firefox has come along and the press love the idea of that. Our commitment is to keep our browser that competes with Firefox to be the best browser — best in security, best in features. In fact, we just announced that we'll have a new version of the browser so we're innovating very rapidly there and it's our commitment to have the best.

Cute. Clearly the directive to announce an IE7 beta the day that Firefox 1.0 hit 25 million downloads did indeed come from high in the Microsoft food chain. Peter Jennings asked, somewhat indirectly, whether IE7 was being rushed because of what The Mozilla Foundation is doing to IE6's market share, but Gates, as usual, ducked the question.

I may have found the reason for the somewhat unsettling performance increase I got switching from Win98SE to XP Pro. According to the AMD Duron product brief, they were invlolved in the development of XP, and made sure it was optimized for Duron (and Athlon) architecture. On the other hand, I also found the marketing schlock for the AMD K6-III 3D, and it says pretty much the same thing. I know from using that processor in an old Compaq that it's breathtakingly underwhelming, even at 500MHz. In certain situations, my old Pentium 133 could out-perform it. The Duron, on the other hand, has been fast and flawless.