Banana Republic

or dictatorships is usually what comes to mind when one hears about election observers. Then again, some might argue that both or either applies by now. Anyway, here's some interesting news on the upcoming elections:

Observers try to prevent repeat of Florida controversy

I suppose they can try . . .

Showing of a bit . . . ;)

Okay, showing of a little, but here's my ranking in the 250 top affiliate referrals as of afternoon of Sept 24th, 2004 - I took a screenshot because I liked the 555 just then.
If I can catch 777, I'll do it again then. ;)

10 days - 2 million

2 million downloads of Firefox in ten days, that is; twice than the original target of 1 million for the same timeframe. Even if it took 6 days to get to the second million instead of the slightly more than 4 days (the 100 hours mentioned on Spread Firefox) it's still an amazing adoption rate.

Good news and definitely a better start of the day than yesterday!

It's been one of those days . . .

I don't really want to talk about it, aside from the one thing that first thing in the morning, just after I log on, one of my friends tells me that the Haloscan Trackback thing I added to the blog as deleted all former comments - great! They could have said something about that - like adding a warning and asking if you want to proceed - in the installation process for blogger. If there is one thing I can't stand it's incompetence.

As for all the rest, I think I'll just file it under "F" is in, "forget it," and have a couple of GTs . . .

Oh, one nice thing I nearly forgot to mention (and that happened yesterday, actually, not today), is that there is a very good chance now that I'll get one of those lovely plushy toy mascots for Firefox from the Mozilla store. Something nice to look forward to! :)

Extensions Appreciated!

Using Extensions in Firefox by Wei-Meng Lee, on the 21st, explaining where to get and how to install them, is a piece I liked a lot: The Firefox browser has a lot going for it, and one of its best traits is its ability to use extensions that add to its features. Wei-Meng Lee, author of Windows XP Unwired, shows you how to find and install them, and clues you in to his favorites.

Preston Gralla wrote about his Favourite Extensions for Firefox the next day, as well.

As a great extensions fan, I much appreciate those efforts to familiarize more people with them. Thanks to the witers!

For once, a comment on the SMH I have an issue with

It's a rare occurence, since the Sydney Morning Herald is among my favourite newsites, but I do have an issue with Ms Devine's assertion in her Beware the Pajama Bloggers comment that it made no differnce that the bloggers who went after Dan Rather over the Bush memos were partisan, even fanatical, republicans: it might be - it is, actually - a very good thing that reporting is getting greater scrutiny now and writers and editors are more closely observed by critical outsiders, but when, as in this case, partisan blogging is used to distract from factually true information - the content of those memos, namely that the slacker in chief was AWOL while he should have been serving in the national guard and and received preferential treatment from the moment he joined it - which can not even be denied by those right wing web hacks, then obviously a basically good practice has been subverted to undesirable abuse.

Though obviously Ms Devine seems incapable of noticing that fact.

I added Haloscan commenting and trackback to this blog, to see if I can figure out a work around with it so it will show updates here also at my Spread Firefox Blog, since at the moment there is no forwarding from there to here, or reading here from there. Though I am not yet really sure how this might work . . .

We'll see.

Cute graphics

There hasn't been any current new on newsfactor.com about Firefox - the last is from Sept 17th, when I looked earlier - but I do like the icons they use to link to their articles about Mozilla and Firefox articles:

For Firefox it's here: Firefox graphic
and for Mozilla, here: Mozilla graphic

Still no votes in Leipzig

Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian presents a very good idea about how US elections would work in an ideal world but has he concludes himself at the end of his essay, there is little chance it will come true:
Still no votes in Leipzig.

It's worthwhile reading.

1.5 million and continuing strongly

That is, 1.5 million of Firefox downloads, and in less than ten days as well. And positive reviews and comments appearing all over the web - such as here: Firefox bites back, an excellent must read! - are a nice thing to watch, too.

There is good news for the windows users among my Japanese friends, as well, as the Mozilla Foundation Japan has released the Japanese version of Firefox 1.0PR

Now I'll need to find a way to contact them, to offer them my Japanese buttons, if they want them.

I almost forgot

Another spot of weirdness: someone - typically unidentified - raving on about the evils - ;) - of Gmail. Strangely, he must have read totally different terms and conditions than I did to come to the conclusions he presents . . .

One wonders if his neighbour's shepheard talks to him . . .

Don't let slashdot see this. ;)

Since those guys have no sense of humour - remember, the Firefox adbar thread? - and probably wouldn't get this at all . . .

XP headaches

I am - intentionally - behind the times by not having MS XP OS installed on my own PCs - I prefer to get paid if I have to do beta testing - so having to use it when a not very websavvy friend asked me to set up her PC for safer surfing and emailing with Firefox and Thunderbird I had my first taste of XP2 . . . which made me seriously consider to do use dos prompt "format c:" - for those unfamiliar with dos, erasing the whole c drive - and reinstall the relatively good windows '98 package: XP2 might be meant to make browsing safer for the average user, but default blocking of any automatic download - such as when I went to the Firefox and Thunderbird sites and an infernal number of warning pop ups don't make anything safer for me, they only increase the number of headaches I get. Why can't the Redmond idiots come up with a more intelligent manner to make sure the user checks if he or she wants to download a file, such as Firefox' three second delay popup window that asks if you want to download or install and prevents with the said delay the easy hitting of the yes button.

Maybe if they ask the guys at the Mozilla foundation nicely, they'll license it to them.

(And before someone points it out, I know that Firefox is an open source project and that therefore licensing fees don't apply, but as stupid as certain people seem to be, they might even pay them. :P).

Conclusion: XP2 = Blah!!!

End of rant.

The word is spreading

about the IE jpg buffer overflow critical vulnerability I already mentioned in an earlier post. Among others, even the good old beep has talked about it:

BBC News - Technology: Image flaw exposes Windows PCs. Satisfactory. The more people hear about it the better.

And even more than satisfactory is another word spreading: the one about Firefox. The original idea was one of a million downloads in ten days; it happened in just a bit over FOUR!!!
Way to go, Foxxie!

And yes, I am aware that I am probably sounding a bit silly, but I haven't been excited over any online - aside from personal endeavours which involve only me and personal friends and are an entirely different issue - for years. "Take back the web," one of the slogans on the Firefox promotional buttons describes it perfectly, people after years of stagnation, and victimization by a staggeringly bad software, refusing to accept the unacceptable. And more power to all who do!

Hm, two new ideas for Firefox buttons, too:

Empower yourself: Get Firefox!
Liberate your PC: Get Firefox!

I'll make them latter in the week . . .