Ubuntu is getting a lot of good press - and it's a terrific, easy-to-use Linux distro. With some extra software included in the default install - it could just take over the world.
Let's face it - no one really "likes" Vista. I don't care who says they love it - they really don't. It's the gas guzzler of operating systems - it takes the equivalent of a Hummer in terms of hardware to run the damn thing correctly.
The Mac OS is really great. It's pretty, it plays nice with others, and is pretty fun to use. The problem (as demonstrated by Apple's suit against Psystar) - is that you have to drink from the Ferrari-inspired Apple well and fork over huge bucks for their hardware (whether you want to or not).
Then there's Linux. Fast. Stable. Free. Runs on damn near any hardware. The problem is - it's only used by wonks.
It's like getting one of those old Radio Shack do-it-yourself radio kits. You get a printed circuit board, some transistors, resistors, and other parts - and then you need to solder the stuff together and pray you read the directions right - or nothing works.
Granted - the novelty and pride of ownership of building an AM radio the size of a bread box from scratch is cool - but not when you can buy one the size of a USB stick for $10 - AND get a FREE FM tuner as well.
That's basically the state of all the Linux distributions. Red Hat started to go down the "for everyone" route - and then decided it's better (and easier) to sell "Enterprise" stuff to a bunch of wonks looking for job security rather than real people who just want to check email and surf the web.
The various distros of Linux - while good - are missing the one thing that makes it useful: applications humans use.
Guys - just bundle OpenOffice, Firefox (with bookmarks on where to find other Linux stuff), Acrobat Reader, Thunderbird with the Google Calendar extension, a media player, games, a notepad equivalent, anti-virus, screensavers, and most of all - some drivers (or a good clearning house site of where to find them) for peripherals.
Hey Ubuntu - you have Dell on your side - why is it you think people who buy Dells still don't get Ubuntu on their machine by default? I mean, after all, the price is right. Right?
Right - but it doesn't do any good to get something for free (or low cost) but have it be completely useless. When you get a new box (or install a new OS) - you expect to at LEAST be able to fire up email and surf the web.
And while you're waiting for your favorite browser plug-ins to install - you want to play some games. And maybe play around with some spreadsheet stuff, read boring PowerPoint-esque presentations and the like.
Give people the power to become productive right out of the box. Help them get used to the retarded-sounding application names that no one has heard of. Make an online forum for new users to get help from other new users, etc.
I think as time goes on - and people are looking for alternatives to Windows (just wait until Windows 7!) - Linux will be able to be the great equalizer - if only people could use it.
Showing posts with label Firefox. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Firefox. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Thursday, July 10, 2008
It's Only A Phone, People!
Well, the iPhone 2.0 goes on sale tomorrow in the US - and if the response is anything as big as it was in London and Hong Kong - tomorrow is going to be a banner day for iPhone and AT&T.
Or not.
My prediction is that everything is going to go horribly wrong - and that servers will crash (like they did for the big Firefox download) - and that people will go home with a nice looking brick that they won't be able to activate for a day or two.
But hey - I'm always Mr. Glass-Half-Full. It might work wonderfully well with happy iPhone people holding hands and singing "It's a Small World After All" as they gleefully walk out of the stores with fully functioning and activated phones.
Regardless of whether they're activated or not - there will be certain places where the Mac faithful will stand in line, and there will be the usual reviews and "unboxing" videos from people with nothing better to do made expressly for other people with nothing better to do.
The larger picture here is that Apple has managed to create such a huge demand for a here-to-fore commodity device - a cell phone - that people everywhere are talking about it, writing about it, standing in line for it, and have been waiting with bated breath just for the opportunity to spend money to buy one!
Brilliant!
The iPhone isn't the best-equipped, or most feature-rich, or have the best camera, or have built-in turn-by-turn GPS, or even have copy/paste! But it does have a few things that other companies, try though they may, are not even close to:
I have to hand it to Apple - they seem to have a winner on their hands - a 2.0 sequel that about 100% better than the first revision - and they created it, marketed it, hyped it and delivered it about 370 days after the launch of the first one.
That's remarkable for a company the size of Apple. My hat's off to you guys.
We'll see how the implementation goes tomorrow...
Or not.
My prediction is that everything is going to go horribly wrong - and that servers will crash (like they did for the big Firefox download) - and that people will go home with a nice looking brick that they won't be able to activate for a day or two.
But hey - I'm always Mr. Glass-Half-Full. It might work wonderfully well with happy iPhone people holding hands and singing "It's a Small World After All" as they gleefully walk out of the stores with fully functioning and activated phones.
Regardless of whether they're activated or not - there will be certain places where the Mac faithful will stand in line, and there will be the usual reviews and "unboxing" videos from people with nothing better to do made expressly for other people with nothing better to do.
The larger picture here is that Apple has managed to create such a huge demand for a here-to-fore commodity device - a cell phone - that people everywhere are talking about it, writing about it, standing in line for it, and have been waiting with bated breath just for the opportunity to spend money to buy one!
Brilliant!
The iPhone isn't the best-equipped, or most feature-rich, or have the best camera, or have built-in turn-by-turn GPS, or even have copy/paste! But it does have a few things that other companies, try though they may, are not even close to:
- First move advantage
- Excellent industrial design
- Excellent GUI design
- Stuff that's included just works
- Revenue model for sustained growth beyond just a kickback on airtime
I have to hand it to Apple - they seem to have a winner on their hands - a 2.0 sequel that about 100% better than the first revision - and they created it, marketed it, hyped it and delivered it about 370 days after the launch of the first one.
That's remarkable for a company the size of Apple. My hat's off to you guys.
We'll see how the implementation goes tomorrow...
Monday, July 07, 2008
Firefox and the F Word
I've been using Firefox since version 1.0 - and, in general, I like it a lot over by old default browser - Internet Exploder. Version 2.x was cooll - although a bit heavy on the memory usage and it could be a bit sluggish at times. All-in-all - pretty good.
Then I "upgraded" to Firefox 3. At first blush, the rendering is fine, the speed is a bit better than 2.x, the UI has some improvements that are nice - but the BEST feature is the new automated crash-and-burn feature.
This terrific new addition is really fun and was probably added to shake up the web surfer's day and remind them that they should take daily (or twice-daily) breaks and interact with other humans.
At least Firefox saves your session information. If not for this truly great feature - I would have chucked my laptop through the wall by now. Firefox just seems to crash now - for no apparent reason. Click a tab once - OK. Click a tab twice - bye bye. Open a file once - OK. Open a different file - OK. Open a new link in a tab - BOOM.
I admit I'm a tab-aholic and have 10-20 tabs open at a time - but, hey, I did in Firefox 2.x as well. My browsing habbits haven't changed - the only thing that has is my browser.
So, I had a BRILLIANT idea - I'll just start using Safari. So that's what I've been doing over the past week.
Or at least tried to do.
Once you get over the sort of Mac-like goofy UI renderings of buttons and the glow around the active entry field and the terrible fonts for the menus and the horrible too-dark "metal" header - it's actually not a bad browser.
One thing I will say for sure - it's the absolute FASTEST browser I've ever used. The speed is almost embarassing. Sites pop up really fast - and even with zero browsing history and zero cached graphics - this thing cooks. It does take a little longer to load a new (never visited site) - but once it loads - it seems to have cached everything in the site.
So I thought to myself - YEAH! OK, a new browser, I can do this. I started to move a few bookmarks over - and entered some passwords to some of my many username-required sites - and that's when I started missing some of the features that I take for granted in Firefox.
Like: password protection for auto-entering user information on sites.
The next one was the deal breaker: I shut down my laptop (with the browser running) - and just expected that the next time I launched - it would just restore itself. I had maybe 10 tabs open. Nope.
I mean, it's not the end of the world or anything - but I've gotten so used to be able to just restore my last session (I often keep tabs open for days until I read the story, finish my research on a topic, etc) - that not being able to do that became a real pain.
Plus, the rendering and the fonts used - while readable and well-rendered - were just not... ummm... "normal." Sites viewed in IE, Firefox, and Opera looked, well... a little Mac-ed up. It's nothing that I'm sure I couldn't get used to in time - but old habits die hard.
And so do cookies. And passwords. And browsing history.
When all was said-and-done - I really wanted to use Safari as my primary browser - but I just couldn't.
Now I'm back to Firefox 3 - and I have convinced myself that those "daily reminders" (or more) are actually a benefit. They remind me to get up and take a pee...
Then I "upgraded" to Firefox 3. At first blush, the rendering is fine, the speed is a bit better than 2.x, the UI has some improvements that are nice - but the BEST feature is the new automated crash-and-burn feature.
This terrific new addition is really fun and was probably added to shake up the web surfer's day and remind them that they should take daily (or twice-daily) breaks and interact with other humans.
At least Firefox saves your session information. If not for this truly great feature - I would have chucked my laptop through the wall by now. Firefox just seems to crash now - for no apparent reason. Click a tab once - OK. Click a tab twice - bye bye. Open a file once - OK. Open a different file - OK. Open a new link in a tab - BOOM.
I admit I'm a tab-aholic and have 10-20 tabs open at a time - but, hey, I did in Firefox 2.x as well. My browsing habbits haven't changed - the only thing that has is my browser.
So, I had a BRILLIANT idea - I'll just start using Safari. So that's what I've been doing over the past week.
Or at least tried to do.
Once you get over the sort of Mac-like goofy UI renderings of buttons and the glow around the active entry field and the terrible fonts for the menus and the horrible too-dark "metal" header - it's actually not a bad browser.
One thing I will say for sure - it's the absolute FASTEST browser I've ever used. The speed is almost embarassing. Sites pop up really fast - and even with zero browsing history and zero cached graphics - this thing cooks. It does take a little longer to load a new (never visited site) - but once it loads - it seems to have cached everything in the site.
So I thought to myself - YEAH! OK, a new browser, I can do this. I started to move a few bookmarks over - and entered some passwords to some of my many username-required sites - and that's when I started missing some of the features that I take for granted in Firefox.
Like: password protection for auto-entering user information on sites.
The next one was the deal breaker: I shut down my laptop (with the browser running) - and just expected that the next time I launched - it would just restore itself. I had maybe 10 tabs open. Nope.
I mean, it's not the end of the world or anything - but I've gotten so used to be able to just restore my last session (I often keep tabs open for days until I read the story, finish my research on a topic, etc) - that not being able to do that became a real pain.
Plus, the rendering and the fonts used - while readable and well-rendered - were just not... ummm... "normal." Sites viewed in IE, Firefox, and Opera looked, well... a little Mac-ed up. It's nothing that I'm sure I couldn't get used to in time - but old habits die hard.
And so do cookies. And passwords. And browsing history.
When all was said-and-done - I really wanted to use Safari as my primary browser - but I just couldn't.
Now I'm back to Firefox 3 - and I have convinced myself that those "daily reminders" (or more) are actually a benefit. They remind me to get up and take a pee...
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Foxy First Impressions
OK, so I was one of the 8.5 million people who downloaded Firefox 3.0 (and one of eight people that actually got an uncorrupted archive that would install).
First impression: Better than 2.0, that's for sure.
It's memory usage is finally back to the realm of reasonable from being way, way, too much of a pig. I have 9 tabs open and it's (only!) consuming 140MB of RAM. In 2.0, just opening the thing would take that much RAM.
They've slightly changed the UI at the top of the screen but I don't find it all that huge of a change. There are others who have raged an all out jihad over their opinion that the new graphics at the top are tantamount to heresy and that nothing should change. But then again, there are always those people who love to live in the past (they probably still wear bell bottom jeans and live at home as well).
The one thing I do miss is the fact that when you go to a SSL site - only the little expanded favicon (to the left of the URL address) is colored - rather than the whole address area. I liked the old way better - it was much easier to see when you were on a HTTPS site and when you weren't.
I do like the expanded favicon, though. Rather than it being just an icon next to the address (the position is the same but it's now a clickable button that turns colors) - it will show warnings when you're on a suspected phishing or malware site.
You can click it at any time to get more information about the site your on (changes in context) - but you still have to know that you can click it. You can also rollover it and it will show a tooltip with the basic information as well.
I've heard people bitching about that as well - "You have to KNOW to click it..." one guy complained. Huh. It's that tough? Once you know to click it (or rollover it) - you know forever. It's a training issue - so suck it up and get over it.
I also noticed that the browsing experience tends to be a bit faster in general - although in my two days of browsing, I haven't been "floored" by the performance - it just "feels" faster than 2.x.
Of course - when you have such a new version, download by so many in such a short time - there's some miscreant out there somewhere that will find some kind of security hole in it.
And they did. Today. Less than 48 hours after launch. It seems that an "unnamed researcher" found the thing and sold it - SOLD IT - to the highest bidder. According to a note from TippingPoint’s Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) , a company that buys exclusive rights to software vulnerability data, the Firefox 3.0 bug also affects earlier versions of Firefox 2.0x.
So if you're a Firefox fan - and you're not the type of user that clicks in every single spam link - definately upgrade, soon if not immediately. If you ARE that type of person - use a different browser (you know, the "foolproof" one) or shut off your computer in sheer terror and don't open it again until the patch news makes it into the tech paragraph in your local paper.
I use both Firefox and IE (and Safari and Opera) all the time, and I expect things will get even better with Version 3 - including making it more secure.
So far - it's off to a good start - and hey, at the very worst, at least you get tons of memory back!
First impression: Better than 2.0, that's for sure.
It's memory usage is finally back to the realm of reasonable from being way, way, too much of a pig. I have 9 tabs open and it's (only!) consuming 140MB of RAM. In 2.0, just opening the thing would take that much RAM.
They've slightly changed the UI at the top of the screen but I don't find it all that huge of a change. There are others who have raged an all out jihad over their opinion that the new graphics at the top are tantamount to heresy and that nothing should change. But then again, there are always those people who love to live in the past (they probably still wear bell bottom jeans and live at home as well).
The one thing I do miss is the fact that when you go to a SSL site - only the little expanded favicon (to the left of the URL address) is colored - rather than the whole address area. I liked the old way better - it was much easier to see when you were on a HTTPS site and when you weren't.
I do like the expanded favicon, though. Rather than it being just an icon next to the address (the position is the same but it's now a clickable button that turns colors) - it will show warnings when you're on a suspected phishing or malware site.
You can click it at any time to get more information about the site your on (changes in context) - but you still have to know that you can click it. You can also rollover it and it will show a tooltip with the basic information as well.
I've heard people bitching about that as well - "You have to KNOW to click it..." one guy complained. Huh. It's that tough? Once you know to click it (or rollover it) - you know forever. It's a training issue - so suck it up and get over it.
I also noticed that the browsing experience tends to be a bit faster in general - although in my two days of browsing, I haven't been "floored" by the performance - it just "feels" faster than 2.x.
Of course - when you have such a new version, download by so many in such a short time - there's some miscreant out there somewhere that will find some kind of security hole in it.
And they did. Today. Less than 48 hours after launch. It seems that an "unnamed researcher" found the thing and sold it - SOLD IT - to the highest bidder. According to a note from TippingPoint’s Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) , a company that buys exclusive rights to software vulnerability data, the Firefox 3.0 bug also affects earlier versions of Firefox 2.0x.
All the gory Technical details are being kept under wraps (thankfully!) until Mozilla’s security team ships a patch.
According to ZDI’s alert, it should be considered a high-severity risk:
"Successful exploitation of this vulnerability could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code, permitting the attacker to completely take over the vulnerable process, potentially allowing the machine running the process to be completely controlled by the attacker. TippingPoint researchers continue to see these types of “user-interaction required ” browser-based vulnerabilities - such as clicking on a link in email or inadvertently visiting a malicious web page."
So if you're a Firefox fan - and you're not the type of user that clicks in every single spam link - definately upgrade, soon if not immediately. If you ARE that type of person - use a different browser (you know, the "foolproof" one) or shut off your computer in sheer terror and don't open it again until the patch news makes it into the tech paragraph in your local paper.
I use both Firefox and IE (and Safari and Opera) all the time, and I expect things will get even better with Version 3 - including making it more secure.
So far - it's off to a good start - and hey, at the very worst, at least you get tons of memory back!
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
So Much For A World Record...
Well, Firefox 3.0 officially launched today - and they wanted to get into the Guinness Book of World Records by having the most downloads in a single day.
Too bad you can't download it.
Apparently, everyone took that challenge literally - and the servers are all down. Yep, all of them. Mozilla.com, the SpreadFireFox, GetFireFox - all went to their knees.
Now I guess they know how the Woodstock organizers felt. It's one thing to ramp up to a big new release by seeding the world with release candidates, and get everyone talking about how great and fast the new version is. It's a whole 'nother enchilada when you're encouraging everyone in the world to download a huge file on the same day.
One would have thought that if one challenged people to go for a world record - that it would have called up their ISP and Alkamai and had mirrors and extra bandwidth to spare.
Alas, 'twas not the case here (at least not yet). It will be interest to see as the day progresses - what will happen - but for now - it's "No soup for you" - unless you downloaded RC3 (which is identical to the final version).
If you're one of the souls that hasn't been keeping up - here's an overview of what the hullabaloo is about:
So, if and when the servers come back up - I'll be anxious to give it a whirl...
Too bad you can't download it.
Apparently, everyone took that challenge literally - and the servers are all down. Yep, all of them. Mozilla.com, the SpreadFireFox, GetFireFox - all went to their knees.
Now I guess they know how the Woodstock organizers felt. It's one thing to ramp up to a big new release by seeding the world with release candidates, and get everyone talking about how great and fast the new version is. It's a whole 'nother enchilada when you're encouraging everyone in the world to download a huge file on the same day.
One would have thought that if one challenged people to go for a world record - that it would have called up their ISP and Alkamai and had mirrors and extra bandwidth to spare.
Alas, 'twas not the case here (at least not yet). It will be interest to see as the day progresses - what will happen - but for now - it's "No soup for you" - unless you downloaded RC3 (which is identical to the final version).
If you're one of the souls that hasn't been keeping up - here's an overview of what the hullabaloo is about:
- There’s an easier to use password manager
- Download manager which supports resumable downloads
- Better find system
- Totally re-designed address bar
- Ability to integrate with antivirus software and parental controls
- According to SunSpider - it's the fastest browser out there
- Greatly reduced memory footprint
So, if and when the servers come back up - I'll be anxious to give it a whirl...
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