Awww Max, that picture is just sooo sweet! Finlay's getting big now :P

Not surpised Firefox has overtaken IE... I've been using it for just over a year now and is much better... I love tabbed browsing :)

I'm a wuss when it comes to Linux and use the Ubuntu distro... I found it easy to use, even though I hate brown. Might look at some other distros when I get the chance.

Have a lovely Christmas and a Happy New Year Max,

Danni

And now for the inevitable question... What Linux distro are you using? :P

http://www.maxbarry.com/2005/02/22/news.html

He uses Gentoo Linux (or used... he hasn't said if he's switched).

Yeah, Gentoo, baby!

It's less geeky if you say "baby."

Oh, no, wait. It's more. Dammit.

She's a beautiful girl. :)

Tried Linux, changed vack to Windows within a week. I'm not the smart-ass-"geek" I thought I was...
That must be a good thing, no?

Soooo cute... ;)

Merry Christmas!

Ha! Love the picture! Hehe. More firefox than IE? That's great to hear because I've been a member of your site for a long time and I don't think I've ever used IE when I've been here, so I can claim to be one of those 1 in 10! =D

Have a fun Christmas, while you're sunning it up in Perth, I'm gonna be having a chilly one up here in England. I suppose I should go and get the tree down really.. Xmas in 3days, my birthday in 5..

Oh, and I like the picture name.

fin_vs_miffy

=)

Heh, Firefox user checking in. I hardly ever actually come here, though, I get all of your blog entries through a syndicated feed on LiveJournal (http://www.livejournal.com/users/maxbarryrss). :)

Firefox, eh?

I believe the technical term for people like myself is "laggard".

She is sooo adorable! You're a lucky man!

Anyways, I wanted to let you know that I'm one of your Firefox visitors. If you have any other geeky goals, don't be afraid to let us know.

And go Perth! Whoo!

I've been using Firefox since I've started visiting this blog. I use it at work (on Windows, unfortunately) and at home (on Linux). Speaking of which - your comments about Linux helped me make the decision to switch over (in August 2005). I chose Fedora Core for my main PC, but I've got a secondary PC with Gentoo on it, partly because you recommended it (also another friend of mine is nuts about Gentoo).

*ahem* anyway... stats for my website:

Firefox - 44.6 %
MS Internet Explorer - 28.8 %

Ok, so I'm the only one who ever visits my website, but still!

Hey, Phill, what's your address? I'll link to you on my webjournal :-)

mine's: www.digestives.bravejournal.com

Your daughter is so adorable. And I'm looking at her with Firefox , of course!

It was a massive great evil monster with teeth like this, and it jumped this high!

Oh, and it was also a stuffed toy. Heh.

Glad to say I'm one of those who have used Firefox from the start, it's about time people saw IE for the evil entity it is. Now if only we can get the baby daughter of a slightly mad Australian writer to infiltrate Microsoft headquarters and paralyse them with cuteness, the digital realm will be saved.

Opera was around before firefox, firefox just stole all of their ideas!

I wonder how much controversy THAT will stir up.

Those big stuffed rabbits scare me too Finlay.
But not as much as Bill Gates and those insufferably righteous Penguins.
Firefox on Mac OS X is the sensible way to avoid the monsters.

Evil Entity? It's an _application_. Oh, you mean all those people behind it?

Well, no Liux wisdom here... but why are Finlay and the Evil Bunny dressed alike? Is it some mind-bending child-warrior training?
Or for the amusement of bored adults in the vicinity?

Firefox is the way to go. Yay!

Hey- Congrats on being able to add 'doting' to your list of self-descriptors: she's a doll!

I divide my time evently between Firefox and Internet Explorer. I look at it as a hedge: if everyone switches to open source, hackers will write more malicious code to attack open source stuff.

I used to let Barney attack me and let my oldest daughter 'save me' from the attack. Then one day I faked a Barney tackle and she burst into tears, terrified that her favorite dino was actually killing her Daddy. When in reality, my hostility was all directed to that poster-child for de-funding PBS.

Picto - "Hey, Phill, what's your address? I'll link to you on my webjournal :-)"

It's http://phillsacre.me.uk :-) I'll add a link to yours on my "blogroll" (whatever that means)!

firefox is "teh sex"
(yes teh)
I have not been brave enough to jump to linux. I'm afraid I might end up like Peter N.Bernath and realize im not as uber-geek as i had so imagined.

can anyone recomend a distro that is easy to switch to from windows (like linspire/lindows or do those suck)?

lsd is the new black,
hot carl

I've switched to Opera a few weeks ago, when I found out it went completely free (as in no ads, no nothing).

Up until then, I had been using nothing but Firefox. Heck, I still remember when it was called Mozilla Phoenix, and then they changed it to Firebird, and now Firefox.

Simply put, Opera oozes quality from its every pore. It has the best polished user interaction I've ever encountered. I'm not trying to disparage Firefox in any way, and I still think Firefox is an excellent alternative, but if I had to make my pick of browsers, Opera would come out first by far.

Sure, the switch was a bit tough. None of the shortcuts I was used to worked anymore, but I feel the adaptation effort was well worth it.

And still, you may argue, Opera is closed-source. Them fascists must perish in the blazes of hell! Well, no, not really.

While I admire the general idea of open-source, I think it would be nearly impossible to maintain Opera's high standards of quality if any rookie programmer with no clue about interaction design and/or any other quality control mechanisms were allowed to "contribute" code.

I think the Opera development team has done an awesome job thus far, and I don't want them to change a thing, *especially* not let any outsiders start messing up their code and workflow.

Find the box, Neo. Look outside.

I had a panda the size of that rabbit.

I have used Linux with a great deal of immense zeal since I was just 13 years old. It is pretty good, things have changed a lot now (I am 18 FYI). Since Linux I have found far more secure Operating Systems for servers, such as OpenBSD and Windows 2003 Server.

Linux is still the best platform for hacking, development, and just thinking your cool because your such a macho non-conformist. However OpenBSD unlike Linux or any other UNIX is not afraid to innovate on past mistakes in the typical implementation, even if they do make a million applications impossible to run on it. Actually, that is the really bad thing about Linux trying to head towards POSIX compliance. POSIX ideas are what led to so many limitations in UNIX/Linux against de-facto stack protections, malloc changes and a miriyad of other things. POSIX blows in other words.

I would say Windows 2003 is a pretty good Operating System because it tends to just work, and work really well on most hardware. It is easy to deploy and very secure. Actually, Windows 2003 comes with a security enhanced Internet Explorer 6.0 which gets less spyware and crap than Firefox.

Talking about browsers, Opera is a terrible peice of crap. They make a million proformance shortcuts and cut standards, even worse than Microsoft do these days. Firefox is probably the best and most featured browser because it supports everything, every page, and hell if you want more proformance you can always tweak Firefox yourself!

Open Source development is important, and anyone who thinks it just lets it loads of code by "rookie" programmers have no damn clue as to what they are saying, and probably have never worked on an Open Source project in their entire lives, or at least witnessed the development of one from ground up.

Open Source promotes far more innovation and development, and maintainence. NT 4.0 and beyond might be retired, but you don't get that with say, Linux 2.0/2.2/2.4 which are all no longer in popular demand on the Linux front however still developed and have certain features backported including security patches.

Open Source becomes as powerful as its own developer base, which typically increases with the user base. This promotes a steady logarithmic growth in security protection. The Open Source model however also often promotes a steady rise in security holes found. However this has been proven to be able to change as long as a project respects innovation even if it needs to break things.

So, Max... Are you on Slashdot yet, you big open source geek you? BTW, thanks for autographing my j.gov in milwaukee a few years ago. I still brag about it... autographed first edition... well, first paperback edition anyway...

Finlay looks genuinely terrified in that picture.

I love that Finlay picture, its so funny. And cute!

And I tried to use Firefox ... it was nice, but my computer didn't like it, for some reason. So I'm back with good ol' IE.

Max:

Not sure where to ask this but, dear Max, do you know of Christopher Nolan's new project in the works ("The Exec"), which sounds quite similar to the premise of Jennifer Government?

Get back to me somehow. Email, I suppose. Let me know if you know about this.

The premise is "A drama set in a future society where big business is the governing body, and conducts its affairs like engaging in warfare. "

Here's the link to imdb: (your book is mentioned on the message board, by the way) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0382679/

I pray for the day that I have more FF than IE viewers. I think I'll use it as an excuse to have a party. :o)

I always have more Firefox users. It has something to do with people googling something called ' Underground.com ' for pr0n.
In off-topic, Have you seen/bought Coca-Cola Zero?
It looks, and I'm pretty sure, Tastes just like FUKK. The label is art-deco black and it sort of tastes like Pepsi Max.

No no no no! Where are the Konqueror users? I feel all lonely... maybe a game of Kolf will cheer me up.

My website currently records 46.73% of visitors using MSIE Core, and 43.11% with Mozilla/Gecko Core.

It makes me sad inside.