MozillaZine Celebrates 5th Anniversary

An anonymous reader writes "MozillaZine, the Mozilla news and advocacy site, is five years old today. They've got a fifth anniversary section, containing a message from their founder, a chronology (which makes a pretty good Mozilla timeline generally), some trivia (who's bright idea was Music to Code By?!) and an acknowledgements page. I think it's amazing that a free site like this has provided such a great service to the open-source community for half a decade. Cheers!"

Comments

Hmmm.

[MoeMoe]

Wonder what I should bring as a present to the party.... Lets see, 5th anniversary... Thats paper or wood gifts right?

Re:Hmmm.

[MrLint]

ya know its a bit ironic to give paper and woods gifts in a virtual world:)

Re:Hmmm.

[Joe Tie.]

Not to mention that it's to a fire breathing dragon.

Re:Hmmm.

[bsharitt]

I was going to send an e-card, but the site said I needed IE 4 or higher.

Re:Hmmm.

[jvj24601]

Okay, well, uh, candlesticks always make a nice gift ... maybe a place setting, or maybe a silverware pattern is good.

Re:Hmmm.

[IvyMike]

Beavis, I get wood from the internet all the time.

Re:Hmmm.

[Anonymous Coward]

heheheheheh, yeah, heah!

Re:Hmmm.

[Anonymous Coward]

Metal-Sludge also turned five today.

Party Hat!

[trolman]

There was a Reported shortage of Godzilla heads at Spencers this week. Now I understand!

Picoseconds?

[rolocroz]

from the how-many-picoseconds-is-that dept.

5 years = 1.5778463 x 10^20 picoseconds. I love Google's calculator.

Re:Picoseconds?

[*xpenguin*]

For the uninformed:
http://www.google.com/search?&q=5%20years%20in%20p icoseconds

Re:Picoseconds?

[marko123]

I tried to find out 1000 litres (yes they do both spellings) in VWs, but they don't have them as a unit of volume measurement yet.

Re:Picoseconds?

[HaloZero]

Is that with the doors open, or closed?

I hope for their sake..

[CooCooCaChoo]

They're not singing that awful song, "Every walking the dinosaur" ;-)

5 years, small number of donations and it has become the corner stone of the Mozilla advocacy and users groups. 2 years, $40billion in the bank and Microsoft is still trying to creat that "community atmosphere". Maybe we should bottle some "community atmosphere" from Mozilla and sell it to Microsoft ;-)

Re:I hope for their sake..

[kgbspy]

5 years, and still no 'Barney' affiliations?

Shame, Mozilla, shame!

Re:I hope for their sake..

[The Almighty Dave]

Maybe we should wish in one hand and shit in the other, then see which one fills up faster.

Microsoft is a corporation. they are not trying to create "community atmosphere", they are trying to sell a product. If projecting the illusion of "community atmosphere" will help them market that product, then they will try to create that illusion. They care about profits, nothing more, nothing less.

Re:I hope for their sake..

[Anony Moose Cow Turd]

$40billion in the bank and Microsoft is still trying to creat that "community atmosphere".

I honestly don't think they give a s**t about 'community atmosphere' now that they've discovered that you can't buy it, take it over or squeeze it out of the market.

Re:I hope for their sake..

[SunPin]

Every few months, I've given Mozilla a try just to keep the faith. This summer, 1.5 Beta found a permanent spot on my drive as the undisputed default browser/mail application. I just happened to avoid the sobig disaster because of it.

Firebird looks slick but it's not ready for primetime quite yet. I like Thunderbird as well and I look forward to seeing it fully developed.

The Mozilla Organization is a terrific example of open source producing something much better and even more innovative than commercial competitors.

Internet Explorer cannot hold a candle to Mozilla 1.4/1.5. As people that were sitting on the fence decide to get involved (like myself), IE will have no reason to return even in 2008. It's completely over for IE.

Mozilla is a victory for open source software. It's not a "me too" project that seeks to replicate IE to spite M$. More projects can/will learn from the Mozilla example. Microsoft is running out of time to open its software. Eventually, the OSS options will be better and widely known to the public.

Re:I hope for their sake..

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, you'll just have to break down and upgrade that 386.

Psst. 1.5GigHz AMD chips are now under $30

Re:I hope for their sake..

[whereiswaldo]

Internet Explorer cannot hold a candle to Mozilla 1.4/1.5.

I totally agree. But you know, Microsoft could have added Mozilla's features into IE with no significant technical problems. Why they haven't added advanced features into IE, in part, is because of their corporate agenda. This goes especially for ad blocking. Microsoft is the ad agency's friend. Mozilla is the user's friend. Microsoft pretend's to be the user's friend, but the veneer is wearing off.

Re:I hope for their sake..

[Anonymous Coward]

> I just happened to avoid the sobig disaster because of it.

Really? Mozilla seemed to have no problems letting me doubleclick on PIF files.

BTW, you are pretty poor karma whore, by slashdot standards. Work harder.

Re:I hope for their sake..

[SunPin]

I'm not sure that Microsoft was ever the user's friend. They are the next *AA anti-consumer bozos on the rise. They really haven't done what they want to do and what they are capable of doing with their desktop monopoly.

Re:I hope for their sake..

[Anonymous Coward]

How much more full of shit can you be? Lying with statistics again.

IE is widely written-for because it dominates over 90% of the desktop market. The *SOLE* reason for this is because it is bundled with and tightly integrated into the OS which holds an illegaly maintained monopoly (proven in court) on said desktop market.

So.. developers who want to make a buck will write for what's prevalent (even though protocols are "embraced and extended", or in other words "violated").

And if you don't think Microsoft produces bloated fuckware, I've got two letters for you: "X" and "P".

Eat a dick, you Redmond shitball.

Re:I hope for their sake..

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, whatever dude. I surf all day long in Mozilla and never hit a site that doesn't work. So much for that argument.

Meahwhile, surf over to any mildly "techie" site and see what they think of Mozilla. Verdict: a big blah. No traction.

Netscape and Mozilla have gotten a ton of hype over the last 2 years and, whadda ya know? Nobody showed up. Sorry man, the only hope Mozilla's got is a mass migration to Linux on the desktop. Unitl then, no users on the ground, nobody cares.

Re:I hope for their sake..

[Anonymous Coward]

They seem to have gotten more then a few positive reviews since they list some prominently on their website.
I'm sure those aren't the only ones.

Amongst coworkers in my (windows only) division, roughly 50% are mozilla users.

Re:I hope for their sake..

[Anonymous Coward]

The Mozilla Organization is a terrific example of open source producing something much better and even more innovative than commercial competitors.
Wait a second -- who the heck do you think has funded Mozilla development? AOL/TW is not a commercial endeavor? What a load of hooey to say Mozilla is a jewel of the volunteer movement.

Firebird

[kgbspy]

It took them five years to do it, but they've come up with the best web browser known to man: with daylight second, and Opera third.

Here's hoping that the next five years sees the same committed focus to Firebird as has been poured into Mozilla.

Re:Firebird

[DrMrLordX]

I gotta give credit where it's due. Firebird was about the only modern browser I could install on the stupid win95a box(p54c-100 mhz, 16 megs of RAM, yech) I patched up for my parents so they could use hotmail at home. IE6 wouldn't install, period, and the IE5 autodownloader/installer wouldn't function . . . I didn't even bother trying Opera.

Sadly, Firebird was still slow as all hell on that machine. Sure beats using Netscape 3 though.

Re:Firebird

[smallpaul]

Okay, I'll bite. What the hell is daylight?

Re:Firebird

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad that MS pulled the IE 5.5 download from their site (even though it's still technically "supported") -- it certainly uses much less memory than Firebird.

Anyway, I don't think Win95 is a primary target for Mozilla.org either, so enjoy it while it lasts.

Re:Firebird

[kgbspy]

Y'know... when you've been up until 4am debugging somebody else's badly written code, you finally get to sleep, and the garbage truck / noisy neighbour / dog next door wakes you up a few hours later. You get up, open the curtains, and this strange, transluscent, yellow stuff filters into your room.

That's daylight.

Re:Firebird

[selderrr]

eh ? Where you been living ? Daylight is a movie, dude. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise !

Re:Firebird

[Anonymous Coward]

For slow systems like this, you should try K-Meleon, a native windows browser using the Gecko rendering engine. It's way faster, less resource hungry on low-end systems and is available under the GPL.

Re:Firebird

[DrMrLordX]

Hmm, I'll give that a shot. Thanks!

Google knows

[Amsterdam Vallon]

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF -8&q=5+years+in+picoseconds&btnG=Google+Search

Nooooo!

[trolman]

We are talking about a party for Godzilla types here: No Flamable Gifts!

Hmmm

[ewithrow]

From the timeline:

MozillaZine asks its readers to pay the site's hosting fees. Much to our surprise, you do.

Not a lot of confidence in their reader base.. ;)

Re:Hmmm

[kgbspy]

Do you blame them?

Mozillazine deserves kudos...

[Fnkmaster]

I know a lot of Slashbots seem to think that all geekdom is required to mindlessly support Mozilla, and that it has always been that way. But I remember a time in days of yore when Mozilla was the project everybody loved to hate. It was _the_ example of Open Source gone awry - here's how not to open up your product, here's how not to manage an open source project, etc. And back then Mozillazine was a quiet place - but Chris kept it running, and a small gang of the faithful hung out, waiting with baited breath for the next Milestone, hoping against hope that it would be faster, better and... oh, never mind, it couldn't get cheaper.

Anyway, the point is, these days the majority of us - geekdom, that is - use Mozilla or a Mozilla-derived browser (Galeon and Phoenix/Firebird). Mozillazine deserves a lot of credit for keeping the fan base alive during the long, dark period of time when it wasn't really clear that Mozilla was ever going to succeed. Thanks, Mozillazine, for giving me hope and keeping me and a lot of other hopeful users fed with info and inspired to stay involved and keep the project going.

Re:Mozillazine deserves kudos...

[afidel]

I don't know I've always thought Mozilla was going to be my browser of choice. I started using it seriously with M9 and since M15 it has been my main browser. Since .9 it has been my only regulary used browser. I keep Crazy Browser around only for sites that use plugins that I hate to have installed normally (like flash) but where I might actually want to view the content (like Strongbad). Basically I could get by without ever using any other browser and would be very happy for it.

Re:Mozillazine deserves kudos...

[alex_ant]

At its primary goal, Mozilla never really did succeed. Opening the Navigator suite's source code was Netscape's last flailing hope against IE's obvious future domination of the desktop, and it didn't work. Netscape had a majority market share then, and has around what, 5% now? Mozilla is a good cross-platform browser and all, so I guess you could say it's successful in that way, but if the Mozilla Project ever wanted to be successful against MS, they should have narrowed their scope and focused on a kickass Windows/Mac Netscape 5.0 rather than reinventing the wheel (in the case of XUL), inventing new wheels (in the case of Bugzilla), and making sure their browser ran on every obscure platform under the sun. (Who the cares whether or not Mozilla runs on HP-UX besides like 23 people on the entire earth?)

Mozilla: Geekish success, real worldish failure

Re:Mozillazine deserves kudos...

[Anonymous Coward]

Worse than you even indicate. Netscape had about a 45-50% marketshare when mozilla.org started. Since then about 95% of those Netscape users have migrated to IE. Ouch.

Last I heard, Mozilla hadn't even surpassed Netscape 4 in terms of the userbase.

Re:Mozillazine deserves kudos...

[dimator]

Most geeks also understand the importance of the Mozilla project... but what I'm deeply worried about is the fact that the Mozilla project doesn't make anyone any money. Sure, you can point to Netscape, but does the number of people using Netscape put enough ad revenue (or any other revenue) into the hands of AOL?

Does AOL really intend on being Mozilla's major financer for much longer, especially since they recently solidified a deal keeping the IE renderer a core part of their client software, all but making Mozilla irrelevant? Sure, Mozilla could and would survive without AOL's dime, everything is open now. But if you take away the Netscape engineers working on the project, how many people would really pick up the slack? We think milestones are few-and-far-between now, imagine if there's a handful of developers, all across the world, not getting paid to work on it.

I hope my fears are unfounded, but in today's business world's uncertainty, I don't find it hard to imagine AOL pulling the plug completely on the project, and renting out the mostly-empty offices in Mountain View to the highest payer. Sad.

Re:Mozillazine deserves kudos...

[swdunlop]

Mozilla wasn't about money for AOL/Netscape/Time Warner; at least, not directly. It appears to have been a major piece of leverage in AOL's ongoing battles with Microsoft for placement on the Windows desktop. AOL's argument in these negotiations probably ran along the lines of: "Give us what we want, or we'll take Gecko, and drop IE's component, from our app."

When Gecko was started, Microsoft's greatest fear was that web browsers were going to commodify operating systems; is it any wonder that one of Mozilla's most hyped features was XUL, a cross-platform widget toolkit? (And yes, hype is the applicable term, here.. I've finished a rather sizeable Javascript/XUL frontend to our e-business database. Some permanency in the API's, and some coherent documentation would be a wonderful thing..)

Re:Mozillazine deserves kudos...

[Anonymous Coward]

What really slowed mozilla down was not XUL, nor support for outlandish platforms, but gecko. The decision to go to gecko meant that they had to rewrite most of the browser suite. And since the goal was always making a product that was equivalent to communicator, not navigator, it took them a long time to rewrite everything. XUL and bugzilla were tools designed to speed up development, not slow it down.

Ofcourse, they didn't really have a choice but to go to gecko, since the existing rendering engine was so deeply broken it could not be fixed. If they had released something based on the old code, it would most likely have sucked bigtime, and driven people away from netscape, just as not releasing did.

You could say they should have made just a browser, and not the entire suite/development framework, but what would have been the point to that? A single browser is never going to take marketshare away from IE, because IE is good enough. You have to do things that IE can't. The XUL/javascript based development framework is one of those things, the mail/news component another.

The mozilla project has made the best browser (firebird) and best browser suite (mozilla) in existance. That their marketshare is so tiny is more a tribute to the poor way AOL handled netscape releases and netscape/mozilla marketing than to the quality of the product.

Thankfully, now that mozilla has been freed of AOL's limitations, maybe we can see some real growth marketsharewise.

Re:Mozillazine deserves kudos...

[Anonymous Coward]

You really should keep up on the news. AOL killed off netscape, as in fired everyone working there and stopped all development on it. They've spun off mozilla.org with a parting gift of 2 million dollars. Mozilla.org is entirely independant now, and a non-profit to boot.

When AOL did this there were already more outside developers working on mozilla than netscape people. And a considerable chunk of netscape people have been picked up by outside companies (like ibm) to continue working on mozilla.

Re:Mozillazine deserves kudos...

[sphealey]

I know a lot of Slashbots seem to think that all geekdom is required to mindlessly support Mozilla, and that it has always been that way. But I remember a time in days of yore when Mozilla was the project everybody loved to hate. It was _the_ example of Open Source gone awry - here's how not to open up your product, here's how not to manage an open source project, etc.

Which as far as I can see was (and still is) a correct assessment. Although I used Mozilla daily myself, it doesn't even appear on the stats for our consumer-goods oriented site. Mozilla just doesn't exist as far as 99.95% of the Internet-using world is concerned. I have to rank that as "failure".

sPh

Re:Mozillazine deserves kudos...

[Fnkmaster]

It shows up as nearly 10% of hits on my site, if you include Netscape 6/7, Phoenix, and the various species of Netscape and Gecko based browsers. My mother uses it (or rather she used Navigator 7, a Mozilla based browser, until I showed her that Mozilla is the same thing with more features). To me that's not microscopic. Obviously, the average Joe or Jane still uses IE, but there are a lot of average Joes and Janes that have moved away from IE because of its lack of popup blocking. The not-showing-up-on-stats thing sounds very suspicious to me - I agree that a consumer goods site would probably have a rather lower Mozilla hit rate than my site, but that sounds too low to be accurate to me.

Re:Mozillazine deserves kudos...

[thegrommit]

Does AOL really intend on being Mozilla's major financer for much longer

Perhaps you missed this announcement? There was also a slashdot story. I won't rehash the arguments made in that thread for Mozillas post-AOL survival, but a few other corporations continue to make hefty contributions in both manpower and cash to Mozilla.

Re:Mozillazine deserves kudos...

[scrytch]

> Does AOL really intend on being Mozilla's major financer for much longer, especially since they recently solidified a deal keeping the IE renderer a core part of their client software, all but making Mozilla irrelevant?

AOL for MacOSX runs on Gecko. Ironic, since that's probably Mozilla's worst platform. Bet your ass they're keeping their options open as far as supporting linux goes, e.g. if they decide to distribute some sort of AOL appliance.

I see AOL as moving gradually toward becoming a vanilla ISP ala Earthlink, actually, but you never know.

Simple, you cannot sell or purchase

[PotatoHead]

people that actually give a shit. Everybody knows Microsoft is here to make their cash pile larger at any cost.

The Mozilla folks are here to make sure we have a good browser that runs on what we choose to run it on.

Too Bad Plugins do not work under Kernel 2.6.0x

[BlackListedCard]

Has anyone gotten any of the plugins for Mozilla to work at all with Linux kernel 2.6.0x? I have posted bugs and such, with no response. Flash and java plugins don't work. It would seem that I'm the only one.

Re:Too Bad Plugins do not work under Kernel 2.6.0x

[Anonymous Coward]

I would imagine re-compiling the plugin and browser would fix this.

Re:Too Bad Plugins do not work under Kernel 2.6.0x

[ishmalius]

The Java plugin built with gcc3 is possibly the one you will need. I have not had any problems with Flash.

Re:Too Bad Plugins do not work under Kernel 2.6.0x

[BlackListedCard]

I tried the gcc3 version of the plugin. When I browse to a site with a java applet. Mozilla just disappears off the desktop. hehehe. Flash installs just fine. Untils I close Mozilla, then reopen it. The plug-in installation disappears from the Installed plug-ins web page in Mozilla. No flash then.

Nightly Mozilla builds with AA Support compiled in

[BlackListedCard]

Does anyone know where to get the nightly builds with AA fonts support compiled in? For Redhat 9. It would take 50 years for my system to compile from source.

loving firebird

[planckscale]

This browser *in use now* is my newest best friend (I know, sad huh). Simple, elegant, tabs, history, caches, privacy, and it's download manager are all that I need. Also, it just performs faster, blocks popups, it's free and just seems to have more for my money. I'd like to see better plug-in support; java, shockwave, Wild tangent and some other plugins aren't exactly mindless installs in some cases. Also I would like to see Firebird run in memory in the background like Mozilla does, and a download "acceleration" with mulitple FTP sites would be a bonus. Otherwise, it's my favorite DEFAULT browser :-)

Re:loving firebird

[simon_aus]

I understand what you mean about love, not in a natural way at all.

A few weeks ago I was building some SAP middleware stuff at a hosting site (full MS) and showed our OS/DB guy firebird 0.6 - he won't touch anything else and this stuff is only supported on IE 5 and up.

Then I showed the hosting company MD the difference in connecting to our external web mail on MS Exchange. I had been whining about its crap access speed for months. Two (2) seconds to load rather than 120++, nobody really believes it unless they see it. No hidden MS traffic going on there.

Then add some cool extensions like; quicknote, slashzilla, JavaScript Console, Live HTTP Headers, google bar, MacroEditor. Daylight really is second, by several years. Skin it to look like KDE, whatever.

Then try typing "about:config" in the address bar. Well, I'm starting to rant :)

About running in memory (quicklaunch), I'm quite happy to wait 2-3 seconds for it to load - it's worth the wait many times over.

Re:loving firebird

[Kytakh]

I agree! It is such a damn nice browser to use. I am still perplexed as to why some of my techie work mates still opt to use IE when they know such a supreme browser like this exists!

Re:loving firebird

[Kytakh]

+ Crashes too often (but it's beta, so whatever)
+ Displays css font sizes "correctly", which in IE universe is incorrect.
+ Slower on low-end hardware. (Low end being a 1 GHz P3!)
+ Plugin installation is a pain -- even though Mozilla has cloned ActiveX, Adobe/Macromedia/etc don't support it.
+ No compelling advantage if you aren't interested in tabs. Why go to the trouble

1. Mine rarely crashes, if ever... on both windows and linux. You may not be reading the installation instructions carefully
   
2. I prefer the correct method rather than the M$ method, standards are best enforced by a body rather than corporation wouldnt you say? Developing for IE is getting more and more like developing for Netscape 4.x, I expect this to continue without any substantial upgrades to IE until the next version of windows is released
   
3. I was using phoenix/firebird on a p3 550 for a while and it ran smoothly (again your install may be the problem)
   
4. Plugin installation is getting better, it is still a beta release as u said and i would expect this to improve further
   
5. There are many features, tabs included that i find extremelly useful and they are very little trouble
   

Re:loving firebird

[ls -lR]

Then try typing "about:config" in the address bar. Well, I'm starting to rant :)

Since when is Moz's lack of a proper configuration method a feature? 'About:config' is great compared to having nothing, but I would much rather have a nice check-box in a preferences page compared to having to know that I need to open 'about:config', add a new key called 'general.smoothScroll' of type 'boolean' and set it to 'true'. Come on, how is that a bragging right?

Re:loving firebird

[Compact Dick]

I am still perplexed as to why some of my techie work mates still opt to use IE when they know such a supreme browser like this exists!

Quite perplexing indeed. I have a friend who is quite paranoid about privacy leaks and abhors pop-ups. However, he will not try an alternative to IE. Ever.

One day, after a lot of beer and persuasion, I installed Firebird on his machine.

Two weeks later, it vanished. The stated reason? MozFB takes longer to load, and some sites don't render properly.

Quite perplexing, yes.

Re:loving firebird

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, there is a preferences dialog. About:config is meant for those settings which really shouldn't have a preference (because it's too geeky, like smoothscroll), but that geeks want to change anyway.

The stuff you can change through about:config mostly corresponds to the stuff you have to change through regedit with IE. Where's the difference?

Re:loving firebird

[Anonymous Coward]

I run firebird 0.6.1 on a pII/233. It's not fast, but not slow either. It never, ever, crashes (unlike 0.6, which crashed about twice a day for me). Plugin installation hasn't bothered me, but then I run linux and us linux users are more used to stuff actually requiring independant thought before you get it to work. And as for why go through the trouble? Let's see... No security problems (unlike swiss cheese IE), faster page rendering, no popups (in an intelligent manner, unlike most IE popup blockers, which have an all or nothing policy), more intuitive and prettier UI, better extensions, better stability (on my systems at least), better standards support (and by extension prettier page rendering on a lot of sites), easier to design web pages in (thanks to the various developer extensions), and oh yeah, it runs in linux.

I run firebird side by side with IE on a w2k system too. And guess what, I only run IE for windows update.

And besides, anyone who says they don't want tabs hasn't actually used them for any mentionable period of time. Tabs rule. I am no longer able to use a tabless browser for longer than 5 minutes.

Re:loving firebird

[ls -lR]

First, smooth scroll is not a geeky thing, it's a feature that a lot of people are interested in and it should be in a proper perferences panel. (To continue your example, IE has a tickbox for this in its settings.)

My point was that having a terribly hard to use and unfriendly method for setting preferences is not a bragging feature. It's like buying a new car and exclaiming, "I love this luxury sedan! Look, all I have to do is open the hood, search for the black/yellow and red/black wires, and twist them together and my windshield wipers turn on! Isn't that awesome?!"

Re:loving firebird

[pmsyyz]

There is a checkbox for smooth scrolling under Options -> Advanced -> Browsing

Re:loving firebird

[jefflinwood]

It seems like configuration is always a problem of finding the right balance between presenting too many options to the user, and not presenting enough. Mozilla's approach is to make an easy to use Preferences control panel available, and by including about:config for use by power users.

For more fun option management, check out Preferential

Re:loving firebird

[ls -lR]

It may be in firebird but there's no such option in Mozilla (1.5b). You still have to do it with about:config.

What better way to celebrate an aniversary...

[rsilvergun]

then with a slashdotting?

5 years....awesome!

[Robowally]

I've been using Mozilla for about 5 years......and happy with it for most of that time. I have used it exclusively for about the last 4 years. I still have no use for 'local folders' in the email client....what are they for? Now looking forward to Firebird and Thunderbird!

Re:5 years....awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably useful if you keep your mail on the server or something, but want local copies.

Re:5 years....awesome!

[afidel]

Local folders are for clients using IMAP with a limited amount of storage space who wish to retain archives without running a local IMAP server. You can also use them to collate email from multiple accounts (say you have various aliases and want to combine all PO's into a single location).

Re:5 years....awesome!

[Robowally]

I guess it would be nice to be able to turn the 'local folders' thing off somehow.

funny

[SweetAndSourJesus]

I don't see a * by your username...

Re:Nightly Mozilla builds with AA Support compiled

[ishmalius]

ftp to:
ftp.mozilla.org/pub/nightly/latest-trunk

it is:
MozillaFirebird-i686-linux-gtk2+xft.tar.gz

And for their tenth anniversary..

[Anonvmous Coward]

... an honorary promotion to version 2.0. ;) /*hoping the mods are in good humor today.*/

Firebird and Thunderbird

[doormat]

I honestly think that these two apps can replace IE/OE on most people's home computers within 6 months. I try to evangelized Firebird with my friends and coworkers and it worked up until the new google toolbar for IE started blocking popups.. I still love it though. Love live the *bird.

Also handy for the stoners

[marko123]

"half an ounce in grams"
"1/4 ounce in grams"

Re:Also handy for the stoners

[mrselfdestrukt]

Dude? Like , I don't get it man...
Oh, handy! Like in converting from stones or something...

Firebird icon

[Anonymous Coward]

The MozillaFirebird icon looks like FryeGuy from Super Mario Bros. 2 IMO.

Damn you!

[MikeCapone]

I was expecting boobies and I get something really sick.

Where's the sad smiley on this keyboard?

Re:Damn you!

[Penguinshit]

Dude.. anything on the "ogrish" site is bound to be disgusting. That site competes with "rotten.com" for "Most Vomit-Inspiring" photos.

Then again, both are popular with the "autopsy photo poker" set.

Re:Damn you!

[MikeCapone]

I'll try to remember that.

It's not very surprising that people who are disgusted by that kind of stuff don't know about these websites, though...

Mozilla is Dangerous

[Anonymous Coward]

I've thought long and hard about the Internet phoenominon known as "Mozilla," or more frequently, "Open-Source Fascist Dinosaur - a name aptly deserved, taking into consideration the political philosophies of its filthy hippie developers and its inability to load even the simplest page before the sun goes supernova. During this thinking-period, which I like to call "the long thought," I have thunk up many thoughts, and I feel that these think-thoughts need to be shared.

Mozilla scares me. I often use Mozilla to browse through pornography late at night, and I often have a difficult time maintaining an erection. The thought of manipulating a Reptile-based browser to view naked females has left me caught in a situation where I can only climax if I envision The Lizard performing disgusting sexual acts upon these nude men... women on my screen.

Nightmares often occur after I pass out in my ergonomically-correct office chair - which I stole from Office Depot late at night - exhausted from the sexual fervor of masturbating my inch-long penis. These nightmares center around an unescapable arena, in which Roman females are cast upon the bloody sand, and left victim to a large creature known only as "The Lizard." Its code-bloated reptile penis repeatedly punctures their fragile sex organs until they split in half, and are then eaten.

I blame Mozilla for my unemployment, lack of a love life, and the constant backfiring from the 351 V8 in my primer-colored 1973 Ford Crown Victoria LTD. I also blame Mozilla for the lack of acceleration in my vehicle, much comparable to the overall lack of acceleration in the browser itself. I believe that Mozilla is in dire need of a rebuilt carburetor and a new set of shorty headers.

Unless massive improvements are made to the Mozilla code base and user interface, I can forsee the continual erosion of my personal life and the lives of all other Mozilla users.

Please, help.

Re:Mozilla is Dangerous

[Compact Dick]

So tell me about your mother

My mother? Let me tell you about my mother...

Re:Mozilla is Dangerous

[Anonymous Coward]

hmm... Aradd has quite a few such pix.

Music to Code By

[YOU LIKEWISE FAIL IT]

(who's bright idea was Music to Code By?!)

Just as a curio, the linked page features as the second selection Wesley Willis - who sadly passed away just a little while ago on the 21st of August, aged 40. I also used to listen to Wesleys strange stream of conciousness punk rants while coding. I'll miss you, Wes.

-- YLFI

Re:Music to Code By

[kev0153]

Rock over London, Rock on Chicago Burger King - Home of the Whopper Goodbye Wesley Willis

Re:Music to Code By

[Seth Finklestein]

The title of the section is horrifically incorrect. It should be "Music By Which to Code." Everyone knows that you can't end a sentence or a title with a preposition.

Re:Music to Code By

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought it was something like:

Never use a preposition to end a sentence with.

Re:Music to Code By

[Anonymous Coward]

That is a rule up with which I will not put.

Community atmosphere...

[CooCooCaChoo]

is part of their grand plan. A while back Microsoft told an audience of MVP's that they would like to create the same sort of community development atmosphere as found in opensource projects. Later on they talked about expanding it to end users.

The fact remains, Microsoft cannot create that atmosphere because leadership has to come from the top. If the top acts in the "dog eat dog" manor, then what will their ISV's and end users do?

Ultimately, the ball is in Microsofts court. In terms of helping their bottom line, it is a great way of making themselves look good. If the plan did work then the feel good factor about Microsoft would increase, especially in the "decision making" area of businesses who can be easily blinded by PR stunts.

Re:Community atmosphere...

[smittyoneeach]

Microsoft cannot create that atmosphere because leadership has to come from the top.

I totally disagree. The "duh" level definition of a leader is: someone with followers.
Thus, even a jackass is a leader, if others become so and fall in behind.
Microsoft has a lot of community going for it, in the form of MSDN.
However, the fact that the profit motive sorts highest on the priority list, and the polarizing effect that has on the IT community at large, isn't going to help its growth a bit.
Stuff like Mozilla, and the rest of the Open Source community, resemble the academic world in that they are a public dialogue. No one can pick your pocket on usenet without your participation.
As with Munich and China, the rest of the world is going to realize that they simply don't owe a vig to Redmond.
MS might eventually be forced to sell interoperable products at a reasonable price. Go figure.
Thanks, Mozilla.

In light of Mozialla's excellent baysian filtering

[Channard]

... perhaps a gift of penis enlargment pills and generic viagra wrapped up Nigeriam spam printouts might be appropriate.

Re:In light of Mozialla's excellent baysian filter

[Channard]

That wasn't a spelling mistake, by the way.. I was in fact referring to Mozialla, the splinter browser developed from Mozilla. Honest.

Seriously, kudos to Mozilla for having a spam filter that is better than any of the non confirmation spam-tools I've seen.

Re:Nightly Mozilla builds with AA Support compiled

[R55]

Pick the latest xft enabled Mozilla packages from this apt repository:
http://people.ecsc.co.uk/~matt/downlo ads/apt/redha t-9-i386/RPMS.extras/
There you can also get the rpms of epiphany and galeon that're compatible with it.

Lacks one thing

[Anonymous Coward]

The download manager lacks one thing though.
If power fails at 90% of a 700mb slackware cd, I have to start over. I dislike that.
Hmm, come to think of it, as I preview this, it didnt render the preview page well.
Actually, Firebird doesnt render slashdot very well.
I know I am gonna get moded down, but fix your html, rob !
Dan

Re:Nightly Mozilla builds with AA Support compiled

[Ice_Balrog]

There are also many unofficial builds optimised for different architectures. Some them include AA fonts. Go to the MozillaZine builds forum, and you will see peoplw discussing them.

So ...?

[NonAnonymousDumAss]

Obviously Mozz is HIGHER than ANY version o I Exploiter !!!.