Into.the.Void.

There has been an ongoing campaign in order to spread Firefox any have as many users as possible install Firefox 1.0PR. In my trully humble opinion this is tottaly wrong and I can’t understand why people from the Mozilla.org are so anxious about this campaign.
First of all I have to admit that I am a firefox fan for more than 8 months (I can still remember installing and testing it for the first time, somewhere around version 0.6). I am very happy about this project..it serves me well and I do my best to “spread the word” for a long time now. I liked it’s stability, even though it still has severe crashing problems with Acrobat 6, Windows Media files, and several other minor or major problems. I liked they way extensions can be used…and of course the interface.
Having the Netscape example in my mind, which is somehow related in many ways to the mozilla engine..and mozilla developers/managers should know very well what happened when netscape needed to be updated every 10-15 days, it strikes me pretty bad to see the same scenario come out of netscape’s grave and apply to firefox “promotion” campaign. Netscape was by far more superior than the IE at the time…but it kept releasing products with errors and people had to download it from scratch…15Mb every 15 days…There were no patches for netscape like MS did for IE. It’s very different to download 300kb every week than 15Mb every 15days…even though IE’s probs were bigger…who could understand ? Have you ever read what the windows updates “fix” ? Most of them cannot be understood by the computer illeterate users that are the vast majority of the internet.
I can’t get what’s the point in promoting a PreRelease to as many people as you can, when even you as a developer know that this is a PreRelease and it will have problems (as previous versions did). Firefox’s “strong” point is that it doesn’t have that many security problems as IE. What happens though if you promote firefox as a flawless broswer that’s here to replace IE …and then suddenly..as more and more people start messing around with it a big security hole is found? Then people will surely get back to IE because their “dreams” of secure surfing were crippled by the only one left to magically make that dream come true.
MS has chosen not to release another broswer until the new windows…that’s about 1-2 years ahead. What’s the rush for creating a rumour for a “perfect browser” NOW…and spreading it NOW…when you know as developer that it DOES have probs ? (else it would be called Firefox 1.0, no PR after it)
What will you say to all those poor 56K modem users than will have to download another 4.5Mb in 10-15 days ? You become from their beloved one..to the one they hate the most…cause at least MS is “accepting” that their product has flows..and so have the users accepted that fact. And they keep downloading MS’s patches whatever happens (cause it’s on windows automatic updates) , but who would download one patch after another(or one release after another probably because firefox does not provide patches…just like netscape) from an “unknown” company and accept this fact and keep doing it for as long as it takes ? For computer and Internet illiterates…mozilla is an unknown company…it’s certainly not MS…and I don’t think that firefox managers would like only to target the computer literate..cause that would be devastating for their economics.

I am really happy that in 5 days firefox has passed the 1.300.000 downloads but I am really anxious to see what will happen if a major error appears.What will all those users say? In my opinion Firefox 1.0PR stands for 1.0Public Relations, and some people rushed a LOT to get this product on the market…and to raise their budgets. The PR team of firefox looks pretty bad to me…

Looks like the netscape example didn’t teach them anything…

Filed by kargig at 21:11 under General
No Comments | 2,657 views

Yesterday morning I did a chkdsk on my pc at home just to make sure all was ok…just in case. What I saw made me furious! My boot disk had 1 bad sector!!! The disk was just 1 year old…a Western Digital 120GB JB model. What’s going on with Western Digital ? They keep making one crappy disk after the other. More than 4 200Gb JB models I have owned for the past 1-2 years have crashed. Now this 120GB…I was more than cautious with this machine because it’s the machine I use for project development. It’s on a UPS…it has seperate hard disk fans…so what went wrong ? I can’t get it….
Luckilly I had a spare 120GB without any data on it. I booted my slackware and did a dd_rescue from the disk with the bad sector to the other. It took around 10..maybe more hours…but now I am working on the “spare” disk (that I have double checked it for bad sectors) and all look fine.

I am not going to buy another Westerd Digital disk…I am not even sure I want to send the disk back to the company to send me another for refund (warranty is for 3 years…so I can send it back anytime I want). I think I might sell the new one that they will send me to someone while it’s inside the company’s packaging and buy another disk from another brand. But what should I buy ? Maxtor disks go toooo hot when used for a long time (I have hard disk fans…but how secure would you feel ?), Seagate disks are rumored to be very good (as far as stability is concerned) but they are a lot slower than all others. I am willing to hear/view any suggestions as comments…

Waiting for the next problem to appear.

Filed by kargig at 00:46 under General
No Comments | 2,613 views