maxbarry.com
Thu 22
Dec
2005

Light My Fire

Max Finlay menaced by giant rabbitIt’s happened! I knew it was coming—the data made that clear—but still, it’s thrilling. Yes, for the first time, more people are visiting my site with Firefox than Internet Explorer.

Two years ago almost nine out of ten visitors were riding Internet Explorer. One year ago it was down to 64%, with Firefox roaring up the charts. Now Firefox sits on top with 46%, smacking Internet Explorer down to second with 42%.

Okay, it’s a little sad, but I really do find this exciting. I’ve grown into a total geek fanboy since I converted to Linux: once I saw a couple of GNOME developers blogging about Jennifer Government and got all giggly. Tell you what, if open source software coders did tours, I’d be in the front row trying to persuade them to sign a bunch of CDs.

In other news, it’s almost Christmas and I live in Australia, so you know what that means: it’s time for me to go somewhere sunny and do nothing for a couple of weeks. I’m going to Perth to show off my baby girl to Jen’s relatives, so until January, I wish you all the best. (After that, I may be more vindictive.)

And in closing, I have included the photo of Finlay being menaced by a giant rabbit because it amuses me.

Comments

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Machine Man subscriber Danni (#357)

Location: England
Quote: "Eagerly awaiting the European Tour."
Posted: 6690 days ago

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

Christian (#1936)

Posted: 6690 days ago

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

Machine Man subscriber Danni (#357)

Location: England
Quote: "Eagerly awaiting the European Tour."
Posted: 6690 days ago

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

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

Machine Man subscriber Max

Location: Melbourne, Australia
Quote: "I'm my number one fan!"
Posted: 6690 days ago

Yeah, Gentoo, baby!

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

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

spinne (#427)

Quote: "I'm not here to cock around."
Posted: 6690 days ago

She's a beautiful girl. :)

Peter N.Bernath (#1041)

Location: Stockholm - Sweden
Quote: "Errr... Is that a tree growing out of your head? - Fallout 2"
Posted: 6690 days ago

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!

Picto (#64)

Location: United Kingdom
Quote: "Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark or the man afraid of the light? - Maurice Freehill"
Posted: 6690 days ago

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..

Picto (#64)

Location: United Kingdom
Quote: "Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark or the man afraid of the light? - Maurice Freehill"
Posted: 6690 days ago

Oh, and I like the picture name.

fin_vs_miffy

=)

Chris (#816)

Location: Quebec, Canada
Posted: 6690 days ago

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 www.livejournal.com/users/maxbarryrss. :)

Tony Quin (#1310)

Location: Plymouth -urgh
Quote: "Yoga is NAILS"
Posted: 6690 days ago

Firefox, eh?

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

Erin (#1481)

Location: Seattle
Quote: "Living is easy with eyes closed"
Posted: 6690 days ago

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!

Phill Sacre (#1822)

Location: London, UK
Quote: "Computers are like air conditioners. Both stop working, if you open windows."
Posted: 6690 days ago

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!

Picto (#64)

Location: United Kingdom
Quote: "Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark or the man afraid of the light? - Maurice Freehill"
Posted: 6690 days ago

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

mine's: www.digestives.bravejournal.com

the-tine (#472)

Location: Pennsylvania, USA
Quote: "Coming soon to a planet near you."
Posted: 6690 days ago

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

Hobbie (#1359)

Location: Cornwall, England
Quote: "There was a little man in his hair!"
Posted: 6689 days ago

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.

Michael (#1790)

Location: New Jersey, USA
Quote: "Roses are red; Violets are blue; in Soviet Russia, poem writes YOU!"
Posted: 6689 days ago

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

I wonder how much controversy THAT will stir up.

Machine Man subscriber David (#1456)

Location: Sydney, Australia
Quote: "Why are the pretty ones always insane?"
Posted: 6689 days ago

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.

Machine Man subscriber Mapuche (#1184)

Location: Darwin, Australia
Quote: "Inconceivable!"
Posted: 6689 days ago

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

Grace (#1225)

Location: Melbourne aka The Cliffs of Insanity
Quote: "I refuse to have a battle of wits with someone who is unarmed."
Posted: 6689 days ago

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?

Michael (#1299)

Location: Northern California
Quote: "Chugachugachoochoo"
Posted: 6689 days ago

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!

Rod McBride (#688)

Location: Gardner, KS
Quote: "www.MidwestRockLobster.blogspot.com"
Posted: 6689 days ago

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.

Phill Sacre (#1822)

Location: London, UK
Quote: "Computers are like air conditioners. Both stop working, if you open windows."
Posted: 6689 days ago

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)!

Hot Carl (#1946)

Location: Knoxville, TN
Posted: 6689 days ago

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

John Doe (#797)

Location: Live from Omicron Persei 8
Quote: "You're just jealous because the little voices only talk to me."
Posted: 6689 days ago

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.

Colette (#324)

Location: Houston, Texas, USA
Quote: ""The good Earth — we could have saved it, but we were too damn cheap and lazy" -- Kurt Vonnegut"
Posted: 6689 days ago

I had a panda the size of that rabbit.

John Tate (#238)

Location: East Melbourne
Posted: 6688 days ago

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.

Ike Diggety (#1952)

Location: Florida
Quote: """
Posted: 6687 days ago

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...

Allison Maxted (#327)

Location: Caledonia, Ontario, Canada
Quote: "Why do the mice keep voting for the cats?"
Posted: 6686 days ago

Finlay looks genuinely terrified in that picture.

Sophie (#891)

Location: Devon
Posted: 6682 days ago

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.

Johannes (#1982)

Location: Ohio
Posted: 6677 days ago

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/

Kitta (#716)

Location: Perth, Western Australia
Quote: "Don't feed or spank the monkey"
Posted: 6675 days ago

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)

Mincetro (#584)

Quote: "This isn't skiing"
Posted: 6674 days ago

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.

Xedium (#1159)

Location: Cornland
Quote: ""If you can't fix it, it ain't broke!""
Posted: 6670 days ago

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

Yubi Shines (#1664)

Location: Canada
Quote: "HOPE RIDES ALONE!"
Posted: 6338 days ago

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

It makes me sad inside.

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