On the web since, I dunno, August 2003?
So, apparently there is a new luxury SUV on the market. Let me give you some of the quick specs:
You can take a look at it here:
The Monster Truck
That right there is just a testiment to how messed up American is.
(hat tip ars technica)
Whilst browsing my RSS feeds in my local, crappy aggregator, I happened about this link, Why I don’t recommend Firefox, by Adam Kalsey. My initial reaction was, “Why wouldn’t you recommend Firefox?”. With much curiosity, I proceeded to read his article. It initially made me angry, then I somewhat agreed, then I was pretty much back to angry again.
Let me synopsize his article, if I may.
Someone asked him to add a button to his blog promoting Firefox. He doesn’t particularly care for the browser and lists a few reasons. The first being:
Aggressively marketing Firefox before it is a completely stable product is dangerous.
Some other issues he has are interface problems, upgrade problems, and Mozilla.org homepage text. Basically, the crux of his article is that he doesn’t think this is the browser for the lay-web person, it’s for better educated, web developers-types.
I would vehemently disagree. Kalsey err’s in that he considers the aforementioned lay-web user to be educated, at max, with a 5th grade education. To better explain: he comments on how the easily recognizable blue E icon of Internet Explorer automatically equals Internet. His example of this phenomenon: his wife. Who, I might add, is quote, “not stupid,” end quote. To get off on a tangent real quick, if you’re a well known personality in the blogging industry and your wife doesn’t know what a browser is, you must have a wife who is, to say the least, very dis-interested in you. I know I blather on constantly to Becky about design stuff or general Internet stuff all the time. I’ll get back to that more in a minute though. His error? If someone doesn’t know what a browser is, which he uses as on of his examples, what would they be doing on a computer at all? I bet you the majority of computer owners know what it is.
One of the few things I do agree with him on is some of the simple, intuitive problems Firefox has. Those being the lack of a submit button for the address bar. IE has the option to opt out of it, how hard is that? Also, why don’t you just integrate the Google search bar with the address bar. You might counter that you can add other search engines in that bar, well just prefix them like you do with searching the dictionary through the address bar: “google something”. Or something to that effect. This would remedy the problem of people not knowing what a URL is, as Kalsey mentions.
Kalsey then procedes to bag on the Mozilla.org homepage text point by point. Here’s the thing, if people are too uneducated to know what a browser is, or how to get around on the web outside of the yahoo search box, how are they on the Mozilla.org homepage reading about it? Or if they did magically get there, why would the be reading it? They wouldn’t, they’d just be there to download the software and boom, that’s it.
That brings me to another thought, Kalsey mentions lay-peoples’ qualms with installing third-party software in the first place. My experience has been that if you don’t know what a browser is, you don’t install third-party software. You know who does? Your friendly, local geek. And why would you go to them? Because you haven’t the faintest clue and your geek friend does. Thus, you do what they say. They would download and install Firefox for you. Afterwards, they’d say “here, use this instead, it’s better.” And you would!
There are just a few other retorts and questions I have about his article. He says that there are problems with upgrading from one version to the next, though I’ve upgraded every time a new version has come out and I’ve had 0 problems. Maybe that’s me, but I doubt it, it was just simple. One of my biggest questions comes from my first quote in this diatribe: How is it dangerous to be promoting Firefox right now? The only danger I see is for the browser newbie who doesn’t know a thing other than what was provided to forced upon them, that being IE. The only reason people are accustomed to IE is because it’s been bundled with every version of Windows since 95. If you had both of them on the desktop for that same time, I guarantee Firefox would be more popular. All that it would take to rectify this confusion, not danger by any means, is a little time with the product. It’s not like it’s astrophysics here, it’s a web browser, you can figure it out. If anything, IE is dangerous. Assuming you’re pre-Service Pack 2 for WinXP. Look at the crap that was IE before that. The malicious activeX controls, the fact that IE was targeted for nearly all browser viruses and worms, the lack of a pop-up blocker, the list continues. That is danger. Danger is the possibility of having your whole computer compromized or having your credit card number stolen; being confused for 5 minutes is not danger.
I’m going to quickly conclude with a short story about Becky. It goes like this:
I helped becky buy a laptop, which of course came bundled with IE. What’s the first thing I did? I downloaded Firefox and said, “Don’t use IE anymore unless you have to.” That’s all I needed to do. She willfully accepted right there. Now, what happened when I explained to her that she wasn’t getting anymore pop-ups anymore, or I showed her what multi-tabbed browsing was, or when I downloaded the Firefox Calendar extension for her? She instantly became a whole-hearted, Firefox convert. It simple was a better product than IE, in terms of security and function.
I shall end with one question for Adam Kalsay and it is this:
If you wouldn’t recommend Firefox, what browser would you recommend?
I just love the beginning of the college football season, I really do. Prior to coming to college I really wasn’t into it that much, but now, I love it. There really is nothing like getting up at 7am, getting ready, and then have a nice, cold beer. You have a legitimate claim that you are not an alcoholic – you’re just a football fan. At least that’s what I claim.
As per usual, we spend our pre-game time at the Cox Bros. / Coco Bolo’s tailgate. The meal was barbequed turkey legs, which I’ve dubbed Viking Legs due to the Hagar the Horrible-esque way that you eat them, as well as jumbo-sized hot dogs, mmm. There was also the beer, nice, ice-cold, non-judgemental 
beer. Kara’s dad also joined us, which was nice. After the feasting, we watched the supposedly strong K-State Wildcats team not-so-soundly beat the Western Kentucky Hilltoppers. K-State won 27 to 13. The score really doesn’t do the game justice, as Western Kentucky, considering their talent, played a decent game.
On a related note, I joined Barrett’s college pick ’em game. More notes and comments can be found on the board (log-in required). To quickly sum up, though, week one I was 10/10, Barrett was 9/10, Colin was 8/10, and Ben 0/10 due to late entry. Let’s see what next week brings. 🙂
I’ve been meaning to write about my thoughts on the new G5 iMac. My problem is that I have been debating whether or not I like it. I think I’ve come down to Meh, it’s aiight. I don’t really like or dislike it. Personally, if I was going to get a Mac, I’d be getting a 17 inch PowerBook. Megan has one and I’m quite envious. I’ve been a pretty big anti-Mac fan for a while now, but when OSX came out I’ve always wanted to play with it. Now don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t flee my PC world by any means, but I would dabble shall we say. And who’s to say after that? I’ll let you know when I actually get a PowerBook. Mind you this is not in the near future. This business also uses this online reviews management software to help keep track of their customers satisfaction.
Anywho, back to the G5 iMac. Aesthetically speaking, my biggest qualm with it is the front bezel. That thing is about 1/3 of the entire machine. I realize that due to the internalized components it was required but still. Many people have argued for the external power brick idea, I think I would have preferred that. The other aesthetic problem I have is that it’s a little over 2 inches thick. Yeah that’s small and everything, but if you were to hang it on a wall – it’s VESA compatible, so it could be – it’d look just awkward.
Hardware-wise there are a few things that put me off. One of those being the FireWire 800. I realize that there isn’t a whole lot of use for FireWire 800, and it does come with FireWire 400, but still. For the cost – $1,299 – for the low-end, I think it should be in there. Not only that, but Apple is supposed to be known for pushing new technologies and what not. Another missing part is the integrated BlueTooth. You can get it as an add-in for an additional cost, however. My gripe for this is just like the FireWire, for $1,299 – low-end – give me my BlueTooth. If I would have this wall-mounted, I’d want my wireless mouse and keyboard to be run on BlueTooth instead of infrared, much larger range. It has been noted by many people, though, that Apple makes a lot of their money from the small additions to computer orders. I don’t care, gimme. 🙂 Other hardware include are the dinky amount of RAM they ship with it: 256Mb, bitch, please. I’ve got a Gig in my machine here and I almost think that’s not enough. Maybe I have grandiose visions of RAM though, who knows. Lastly, the video card. A NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra, oh wow, I’m cowering in my boots over it’s power. This machine isn’t going to be geared towards a gamer by any means, but still, the video card sucks. Blah to that.
Another lackluster feature is the overall design. It’s just not innovative. The G4 iMac, remember that? The lamp… thing. That was innovative. I was never Holy crap that’s cool! or anything, but you can’t deny that it was innovative. This… brick, is not. Lots of companies have done this design, albeit perhaps not wall-mountable, but still. Hell, we have a bunch of Gateway all-in-one’s at work. It’s a lot cleaner in comparison, more white too, but hey, that’s Apple.
It does rock a G5, that aspect at least makes it kinda neat. All in all, it’s just Meh. Who knows, maybe people will really like it and buy the crap out of them. I doubt it though, they’ll just be Meh.
