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That's interesting. I've often thought that some bad Acrobat and FireFox interaction is causing problems.

FireFox 0.8 has memory leaks. Load enough instances and tabs, and it will always crash. (This has been verified under Linux and Windows XP.)

When FireFox crashes, it also crashes Windows XP SP1! Windows XP SP1 doesn't show an error message, but the OS becomes unstable, and it is necessary to reboot.

This is shocking to me. The explanation seems to be that the features of Windows XP that most users see run well, but a little below the surface, Windows XP is not a finished operating system. I think a fundamental definition of an operating system is that a real operating system can handle bad behavior of a program without self-destructing. So, after all these years of development, Windows is more a sociological phenomenon than an operating system. It amazes me that Microsoft managers are unable or unwilling to take care of business.

When FireFox crashes under Linux, Linux remains completely stable. (I suppose you could have guessed that.)

I have copies of all the browsers, and in my opinion FireFox is by far the best. Browsers are windows on the world for an increasing number of people, so it is important that the world has an excellent one.

I think FireFox's memory management issues should be fixed before any other work is done. Of course, that is for the FireFox/Mozilla team to decide.

(Posted using FireFox, of course.)

Click here for the slide show.

That's the idea behind Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird, cut down stand alone products using the Mozilla/Gecko technology that do their job well.

It's likely that these will be promoted more in the future as they use up less system resources and are more user friendly.

That's the idea behind Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird, cut down stand alone products using the Mozilla/Gecko technology that do their job well.

It's likely that these will be promoted more in the future as they use up less system resources and are more user friendly.

I guess you've never heard of Firefox (aka Phoenix)?

The Mozilla logo may be so so, but the Mozilla Firefox logo is probably the nicest logo I have ever seen.

Here's a direct link to the slideshow itself.

Type n, right-arrow, down-arrow, or space to advance a slide. Type p, left-arrow, or up-arrow to go back one slide. Type t to go the the first (title) slide.

Instructions taken from here

Here's a direct link to the slideshow itself.

Type n, right-arrow, down-arrow, or space to advance a slide. Type p, left-arrow, or up-arrow to go back one slide. Type t to go the the first (title) slide.

Instructions taken from here

Here are my recommendations for RSS/news readers for Windows (and other platforms):

If you use the Mozilla browser, NewsMonster is a great RSS add-on. It is cross-platform, and the basic version is free and open source. (There is a Pro version with a bunch more features for a fee.) It installs as a second sidebar in the Mozilla browser, and you can read feeds like you read email in most email clients. It also installs with about twenty popular feeds to get you started. It has a few bugs, but it is my favorite one overall.

Another one is AmphetaDesk. It is also free, open source, and cross-platform. It displays all your feeds in a web page in your browser. It runs in the Windows taskbar, checking ever so often for updates. It's not as powerful as other RSS readers--it's not easy to tell which feeds and articles are new/updated, for instance--but it is rock-solid with no bugs that I've ever found.

I just use the RSS Reader Panel for Firefox.

Seems if i try to view an image all i get is some damned pop-up ad

You need to go here first then: mozilla.org

I don't have an answer to the question, but I'd like to suggest that people check out Mozilla Sunbird for their calendaring needs.

I just learned that it does not yet synch with Palm Pilots.

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/

Sunbird nightly builds:
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/calendar/su nbird/nightly/

I don't have an answer to the question, but I'd like to suggest that people check out Mozilla Sunbird for their calendaring needs.

I just learned that it does not yet synch with Palm Pilots.

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/

Sunbird nightly builds:
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/calendar/su nbird/nightly/

Your comment gives the mistaken impression that OSS is somehow destined to always be behind proprietary software, as far as innovation and technical superiority is concerned. Microsoft and SCO love that notion, but unfortunately for them, it's not true. OSS is overtaking proprietary software in many areas, and it's reasonable to expect this trend to continue.

Here are just some of many examples of innovative, open-source software:

hi. welcome to the year 2004, where you can find such wonderful advancements as mozilla or perhaps firefox that have been around for some time. these wonderful free open source programs work on every major platform and contain built in pop up blocking and a google search bar. in fact with a few minutes of searching, you can even add a userContent.css file to your profile to block the vast majority of webpage advertisement images as well. thanks, and stop using IE.

hi. welcome to the year 2004, where you can find such wonderful advancements as mozilla or perhaps firefox that have been around for some time. these wonderful free open source programs work on every major platform and contain built in pop up blocking and a google search bar. in fact with a few minutes of searching, you can even add a userContent.css file to your profile to block the vast majority of webpage advertisement images as well. thanks, and stop using IE.

Doesnt MSIE=MSW XP (at least according to MS).

Maybe MSW XP Reloaded will use the browser reloaded by default. {I wish}

(I like everything else about the Firefox rebranding except the corny slogan.)

So MS just ripped that really crappy idea of using reloaded after a piece of software off the Mozilla Foundation -- like all the feature ideas in MSIE really -- except this time the orginal Mozilla idea is already pathetic so they are not taking a good idea of Mozilla and implementing it all wrong so it doesn't work.

I, on the other hand, like MS better than Verisign.

If I don't want to use IE, I don't have to. I am not forced to use their product or to see their ads if I choose differently.

Having a poor browser does not break any other Internet applications. This does.

Microsoft will be announcing further products in their "Reloaded" range which will include Office Reloaded, Visual Studio Reloaded, Outlook Reloaded and The Browser, Reloaded.

For example, I've been bothered for a while about the long time to launch Mozilla. Trivial things like saving images to disk would result in a "beachball" for several seconds, whereas the Windows version would run incredibly fast.

Then last night I installed FireFox and found that those problems went away. Really fast launching, and no beachballs.

For example, I've been bothered for a while about the long time to launch Mozilla. Trivial things like saving images to disk would result in a "beachball" for several seconds, whereas the Windows version would run incredibly fast.

Then last night I installed FireFox and found that those problems went away. Really fast launching, and no beachballs.

Mozilla has consistently offered users the features, performance and innovation instrumental to the evolution of the Internet," said Curtis Sasaki, Vice President, Engineering, Desktop Solutions, Sun Microsystems. "Sun is committed to the Mozilla technology and is contributing significant engineering resources to move it forward. By the end of July, Sun will ship Mozilla for the Solaris Operating System and make Mozilla the standard browser for Mad Hatter, Sun's Linux-based desktop software stack, due later this year.

Well, it's really called GnuPG, but you're right, it is the standard that basically states: "the sender's signing key validates against the original key you trusted by signing it with your own key." I've started signing all of my emails in Thunderbird using the help of the Enigmail plugin and encrypting any files I attach in my emails with the help of WinPT. I know this post looks like a giant plug for these "products," but since they're all free, open source software which I have no affiliation with, it's simply me trying to get the word out that there IS a manner in which to get your emails to your friends in a trusted, reliable manner, and hopefully convert a few of your friends and family to using the same method in the future. We wouldn't have to worry about address spoofing if email gpg signing was a defacto standard of every email client! Plus it would be a lot safer and difficult to circumvent (ultimately) than Yet Another Format for email.

Holy Jebus, man... get a 21st century browser already...

What pop-up ad? I use FireFox and block many ad servers in my "hosts" file.

Firefox on the other hand is free, but how much effort do they put into telling people about their browser? Zero.

They have a branding/marketing department, and the main website at Mozilla.org is clearly consumer-oriented. The plentiful reviews of the browser are almost always positive. They also provide telephone support. They have setup a european promotion and deployment division to provide enterprise services among others. If they have to purchase space for magazine advertisements to get the news out, when Microsoft doesn't since it's bundled, I think things have clearly gone too far.

Yes, unbundling IE might be a bad idea from a "Joe user" perspective. So a good alternative might be to remove all stuff like WMP, IE, Outlook Express, etc but still allow MS to put these tools on a second CD, just like Apple put extra tools for MacOS X on a separate CD. Then all they need is to insert a CD, get presented with a simple autostart menu where they can install the software they like, and avoid what they don't like.

The thing I want to get away from is that you auto-get IE and other assorted software and can't even remove it.

Firefox on the other hand is free, but how much effort do they put into telling people about their browser? Zero.

They have a branding/marketing department, and the main website at Mozilla.org is clearly consumer-oriented. The plentiful reviews of the browser are almost always positive. They also provide telephone support. They have setup a european promotion and deployment division to provide enterprise services among others. If they have to purchase space for magazine advertisements to get the news out, when Microsoft doesn't since it's bundled, I think things have clearly gone too far.

Yes, unbundling IE might be a bad idea from a "Joe user" perspective. So a good alternative might be to remove all stuff like WMP, IE, Outlook Express, etc but still allow MS to put these tools on a second CD, just like Apple put extra tools for MacOS X on a separate CD. Then all they need is to insert a CD, get presented with a simple autostart menu where they can install the software they like, and avoid what they don't like.

The thing I want to get away from is that you auto-get IE and other assorted software and can't even remove it.

As far as software goes, Office v.X runs better on my PB than Office XP on my universities new 2.4Ghz Dells. I suppose most people wouldn't notice the difference, but I've been using Office since its Win3.1 days and I notice the little things. For music software, I pretty much only use iTunes right now, but Garageband looks sweet and I'm going to be buying a new guitar and some new M-Audio gear soon, so I'll know more in the future.

For Safari, I should point out that I have Jaguar 10.2.8 and Safari 1.0.1, I don't notice any slow downs with SSL sites, but I do notice heavy slowdowns on flash intensive sites, like IGN (who has become worse over the years instead of better). Most of the time for that website, I use Mozilla or OmniWeb 5 Beta 2 and it loads much much faster. I suspect that the Flash in Safari is much faster since the release of Panther. I decided that I would just wait until 10.4 before I upgrade because 10.3 came out a few weeks after I bought my PB and Apple didn't give me a free upgrade (I think I missed the cutoff by a week or so), and 10.2.8 works well enough.

Hope this helps. At this point, I'd say just wait until the new rev. is released. It shouldn't be too much longer. If you have any other questions, feel free to email me.

Amigori

• #1. Get FlashDesktops, you have to pay for it, but it is utterly wonderful. Multiple desktops on windows as fast as Xwindows.
  http://flashdesktops.com/
• #2. Get UxUtils, NATIVE ports of lots of great unix apps.
  http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/
• #3. Get The Bat!, it is a wonderful email client, fast, simple, can be totally driven by keyboard. http://www.ritlabs.com/en/products/thebat/
• #4. Get FireFox, it is a wonderful browser on linux AND windows (I actually prefer the windows version). http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
• #5. Get gVim, vim is great on linux, great on windows too! http://www.vim.org/
• #6. Get OpenOffice, great on both platforms. http://www.openoffice.org/
• #7. Get WinSCP, a wonderful SCP/SFTP client for windows. http://winscp.sourceforge.net/eng/
• #8. Get Putty (and friends), wonderful ssh client and other utils. http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/
• #9. Get everything from sysinternals, a ton of wonderful stuff here, too much to mention, but will let you track every file access, every registry write, every debugging message. Look around, it gives you control of your box like you expect on a *nix. Ton of great command line tools too. http://www.sysinternals.com/
• #10. ClearTweak, a tool to let you customize your ClearType settings (a must for LCDs). http://www.ioisland.com/cleartweak/
• #11. Daemon Tools, lets you mount up to 4 ISO's as drives, and can emulate security protection. http://www.daemon-tools.cc/portal/portal.php
• #12. Memstat XP, lets you monitor memory usage in tray, small and simple. http://memstat.sourceforge.net/
• #13. NetMeter, lets you monitor network usage in the tray, small and simple. http://readerror.gmxhome.de/
• #14. TrayMeter, lets you monitor cpu usage in the tray, small and simple. http://www.thmundt.com/traymeter/
• #15. TweakUI, get control over some things you might want (like hover-to-focus, autologin, other). http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/p owertoys.asp
• #16. WinRoll, lets you roll up windows just like in lots of windows managers on linux. http://www.palma.com.au/winroll/
• #17. XP Log Reader, lets you watch the XP firewall logs. http://www.winxpcentral.com/windowsxp/fwlog.php
• #18. WinRAR, unzip anything you want, supports tar.gz, zip, rar, arc, and much more. http://www.rarlab.com/
• #19. Beyond Compare, best tool for comparing directories or files, great for syncing backups. http://www.scootersoftware.com/
• #20. Nero, the best CD writer for windows. http://www.nero.com/us/index.html
• #21. WinDVD, watch movies! http://www.intervideo.com/jsp/Home.jsp
• #22. WinImage, create images from CDs, very

What's the big deal?

The firewall in XP is positively useless. Many ISPs still include the free or pro versions of ZoneAlarm.
Do you really expect an antivirus product to be any better?
If we're lucky, it'll be on par with other free antivirus solutions like AVG.

Pop-up stoppers are already free for IE, and built-in to Mozilla, and AFAIK also in Opera
Having one built in to IE won't kill any businesses, it will just make it easier on the Google Toolbar coders who won't need to have this feature anymore.

I checked the about screen.

Why does a program called FireFox have a logo that's a (nice looking) FireBird? I was expecting to see the fox from here instead.

Evil. Evil, I say!

This claimer: Having MSIE bundled with Windows poses no problem for me, I see it as they include Notepad instead of Word and Calculator instead of Excel. So why not let them include Internet Explorer instead of a real browser? However, I dislike sites that require it. It's like mailing around text files that need Notepad to read... Rude.

I already suggested the benefits for both Google and mozilla.org for Google to replace their IE Toolbar with an official Google branded Firefox. If they don't want to make their mail service freely available through IMAP or POP3 then they could do what Netscape did in NS 7.x and make their mail servers accessible to their own branded mozilla client. Although it would be nice if Google mail would be based on Thunderbird rather than the suite.

Hotmail is available through Outlook Express, so it'd be nice if Google did something similar without the tie in to MS products.

I already suggested the benefits for both Google and mozilla.org for Google to replace their IE Toolbar with an official Google branded Firefox. If they don't want to make their mail service freely available through IMAP or POP3 then they could do what Netscape did in NS 7.x and make their mail servers accessible to their own branded mozilla client. Although it would be nice if Google mail would be based on Thunderbird rather than the suite.

Hotmail is available through Outlook Express, so it'd be nice if Google did something similar without the tie in to MS products.

I already suggested the benefits for both Google and mozilla.org for Google to replace their IE Toolbar with an official Google branded Firefox. If they don't want to make their mail service freely available through IMAP or POP3 then they could do what Netscape did in NS 7.x and make their mail servers accessible to their own branded mozilla client. Although it would be nice if Google mail would be based on Thunderbird rather than the suite.

Hotmail is available through Outlook Express, so it'd be nice if Google did something similar without the tie in to MS products.

Simple answer: download and install Mozilla Firefox on the workstations, then go into Control Panel->Add/Remove Software->Windows Components, and remove Internet Explorer (I thin you have to have some service pack that was released in the last 12 months for this option to be available). Windows 2000 (the operating system, not the software that comes with it) is reasonably secure when behind a firewall (and what company doesn't have all their workstations behind a firewall?). To keep it secure, ditch the insecure userland applications. There are alternatives out there

One of the goals of Perl 6 is to make non-trivial projects possible. That's good. The way it's being done is bad. Perl was once a lightweight, extremely flexible language. Now it's become a huge ugly monster. People wanted OO, so a nasty hack was bolted on top to allow some semblance of it. Now this nasty hack is being expanded. Sure, the code's different, but the basic form is the same. Kludge upon kludge upon kludge; I'd much rather have a nice, clean, pure language (and not one with loads of irritating whitespace thank you very much).

The same goes for the syntax. All the switching between $, @ and % is really irritating (ask a newbie how to get at the length of the keys array of a hash inside a hash, for example), and the changes proposed for 6 are just making this worse -- it seems that Larry, in his infinite wisdom, wants to prefix every data type with a different hard-to-type character. Perl was only designed for the three data types, and adding more is a mess.

Perl 6 is a complete rewrite, but it keeps all the mess which has accumulated over the previous versions. This is not good. Sure, my const int $var = 27; may look neat (in the same way that, say, Pascal does), but $var isn't entirely constant, or entirely an integer, it's just a hack which makes it sort of behave like one. The whole thing is an exercise in pseudo-computer science masturbation with little real purpose except to please the managers who dislike the one thing that makes Perl special.

On a similar note is regexes. I'm an avid fan of regular expressions simply because a nondeterministic finite automata is far more flexible than linear code. However, Larry must have been smoking that cheap $2 crack when he wrote this. Does he want Perl 6 to be flex or something?

I won't be going on to use 6. It's a nice idea, but it's completely unnecessary. It won't make large projects any easier to manage (the language is still, at heart, an almighty hack -- an impressive one, but still a hack). It won't make OO any cleaner. It won't make development any faster. To put it bluntly, Perl scripts will still look less beautiful than our friend Mr Goat.cx. I'd prefer to use a language which has always been pure synthesis of science and engineering, not some half-baked imposter.

Perl 6 will be nice, but I'm guessing it will be the end of Perl. It can't do what it wants to do whilst still being based upon a nasty mess. There are now other options, which provide all of Perl's power and none of the mess. Sorry, but *BSD^H^H^H^H Perl is dying. Larry is buggering it up the ass without lubricants, just like Shoeboy is doing to Larry's daughter.

Though more likely is the fact that their 'itch' is likely internationalization/localization issues which we [dumb Westerners] don't care about.

There are plenty of i18n/l10n projects out there. Gnome, KDE, Mandrake, OpenOffice and Mozilla all have active projects going. The FSF has the Translation Project. Get out there and localize!

If you answered "Yes" to any of the above questions, then FUAA (Firefox users association of america) might be exactly what you've been looking for! Join FUAA (Firefox users association america) today, and enjoy all the benefits of being a full-time FUAA member. FUAA (Fire fox users association of america) is the fastest-growing FIREFOX community with THOUSANDS of members all over the world. You, too, can be a part of FUAA if you join today!

Why not? It's quick and easy - only 3 simple steps!

• First, you have to visit Mozilla.org and download the latest nightly of firefox.
• Second, you need to succeed in posting a FUAA "first post" on slashdot.org, a popular Internet Explorer users website
• Third, you need to join the official FUAA irc channel #FUAA on EFNet, and apply for membership. Talk to one of the ops or any of the other members in the channel to sign up today!

It does. See here:

http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=44863# c66

Unfortunately, there's no UI for this functionality yet.

Ronny

• Do you use Firefox?
• Do you read Fark?
• Are you a Firefox user that reads fark??

• First, you have to visit Mozilla.org and download the latest nightly of firefox.
• Second, you need to succeed in posting a FUAA "first post" on slashdot.org, a popular Internet Explorer users website
• Third, you need to join the official FUAA irc channel #FUAA on EFNet, and apply for membership. Talk to one of the ops or any of the other members in the channel to sign up today!

• First, you have to visit Mozilla.org and download the latest nightly of firefox.
• Second, you need to succeed in posting a FUAA "first post" on slashdot.org, a popular Internet Explorer users website
• Third, you need to join the official FUAA irc channel #FUAA on EFNet, and apply for membership. Talk to one of the ops or any of the other members in the channel to sign up today!

Where can I download the patch for IE5?

The Patch.

Scott
(Come on, you knew this answer was coming!)

How many issues would be resolved by simply using an alternate browser (mozilla for example)? I know this would not fix all of the problems but I am sure it would help some.

And here I was thinking it was called Mozilla.

Ah, a security-through-obscurity hater. It certainly hasn't worked for MS Outlook or Internet Explorer so I understand your reservations.

Assuming honest intentions as declared, the straight answer is "yes".

Outlook + IE users are in the bullseye of a majority of worm authors and getting out of range altogether is only a step away.

Saner advice would be to suggest that MS modify OfficeUpdate patching to suggest copying the cd to the users HD so that they won't need it agaiin and to integrate it into their auto-downloader -- Outlook users have already decided upon a feature set and suggesting they made the wrong choice is going to be ignored.

The quick, simple answer: Yes

The long-winded answer: Yes... Not only is IE known for a long history of insecurity, mostly due to the wonderful company located in Redmond, Washington. We also know that Microsoft loves integration, specifcally with their software: which brings you ActiveX and VBScript integration into IE. What a wonderful thing. With administrator rights and the correct (I should say incorrect) privacy settings, skript kiddies can pretty much do what they please with your box - This story being a case-in-point. A quick Google came up with this: IE considered harmful. I do not know the full details of the content in that link, nor do I affiliate myself with the author, but he does bring up several good (and valid) points.

Now for alternative browsers (I will focus on Firefox. For starters, it's open source (available at cvs.mozilla.org), which IMHO may not make it more secure by itself, but does it definately doesn't hurt. "Security through obscurity" also isn't an issue because of this. It does not have VBScript/ActiveX integration, so you don't have to worry about Mozilla/Firefox overwriting any file on your PC it was told to do by some script. Furthermore, Mozilla wasn't designed to have functionality to do such things in the first place (AFAIK) which obviously means it's not possible, even with a security flaw.

All of these reasons combined should clearly demonstrate that Mozilla/Firefox is a more secure browser (then IE). I honestly don't believe anyone could think otherwise.

Are packages like Firebird really more secure

Back when there was a Firebird it didn't send or receive mail so, yes, it's incredibly secure.

A better question is ThunderFox, er, Thunderbird more secure?

Are packages like Firebird really more secure

Back when there was a Firebird it didn't send or receive mail so, yes, it's incredibly secure.

A better question is ThunderFox, er, Thunderbird more secure?

Without a Microsoft monoculture, he said, most of the recent progress in information technology could not have happened.
Really? Could someone more familiar with Microsoft and their products kindly give me examples?

• Samba
• FreeDOS
• WINE
• The XBOX Linux Project
• Ximian Evolution
• Open Office
• Mozilla
• etc...