Interesting moment in EB history.

[roballanson]

I dont really understand the whole computer tech biz BP - whisky and cigars I can explain but this is over my head. However our IT guru here - ex hacker and general genius - tells me that what you did was a step in the right direction for the rest of us and we here , across the pond, salute you for your stand.

 

[tiffles]

i use firefox! i dont understand it. but i use it

 

[Psycho Ward]

Screw all that new stuff, I'm still running CP/M.

 

[58super]

Did you know that in germany firefox is 48% market share?

I checked it out after reading this thread and I can see why.

Explorer has gone away in my house!

 

[tadawson]

Screw all that new stuff, I'm still running CP/M.

And i't undoubtably more stable than Windows!!!

- Tim

 

[tadawson]

Did you know that in germany firefox is 48% market share?

I knew that FireFox was making great inroads, but didn't realize that Germany was that high. Myself, I used NSCS Mosaic (remember that?), then Mozilla, and now Firefox. I have NEVER used a MS product in a personal capacity (and am damn proud of it!) and have never found anything I couldn't do that I wanted to!

So once again, congrats for making the wise choice and not being a lemming!

And thanks for building the nicest basses I have ever seen! I just got my 30th 'Ray in, and all I can say is ***wow***. My two Bongos are a little jealous over this drop dead sexy thing . . . .

- Tim

 

[Calaveras]

regarding firefox; I have been using it for a while now. beats the pants off of IE, especially the tabbed browsing. I have tried to get my friends and family on it. But for a lot of them they have never used anything but IE. The dont even remember netscape (much less mosaic)! The less tech inclined dont realize that the browser is a seperate program. Well at least my sister got herself on a Mac so I dont have to delouse her computer every time I visit. Hey BP would you take Linux distros in partial trade for a 30th anniversery ray? I've got some SuSe 8.1 business around here with all the extra apps.

 

[azzy_wazzy]

I love Firefox I've managed to sneak it onto my team's PCs at work mwah ha ha.

Any chance the guys at EBMM want to design a bass-themed skin for us all to use?

 

[Aussie Mark]

I use the Thunderbird email client that ships with Firefox. Great ad-free email program, and doesn't attract all the trojans and worms that are written for Outlook.

 

[Lazybite]

I have used mozilla but not firefox.... abso loved mozilla..... very user friendly browser...

 

[Chewie]

Aww, how nice. We got mentioned on Digg

http://digg.com/software/OpenDocument_wins_more_fans

 

[phatduckk]

im a computer guy too... ive used everything: windows, solaris, a billion Linux distros and nowadays im all about mac. os x is the best.

As far as browsers go... honestly, I HATE mozilla. I loathe it. cant say enough bad things about it. LoL. True enough, it doesnt have the holes that IE has, has a lot of great plugins (dev tools rock)... but IMHO the "browser" part of it is just bad.

I personally prefer Safari (if using a mac) and on Windows, if im just browsing, I use IE. when debugging CSS and JS on any platform i use moz cuz of the available tools... that's teh only time i use moz.

anywho ... moz is definately catching on. On my website the browser stats are as follows:

Moz: 42.65%
IE: 38.6%
Safari: 17.85%
Netscape: .55%
Konqueror: .01%

windows: 81.4%
mac: 13.8%
linux: 4.74%
other: .12%

 

[Big Poppa]

You know when I made the decision to toss MS I didnt know that it would become an international story. It really was...I was on the front page of USA today business new york times financial times of London and on and on..Scott Nc Nealy (founder and chairman of the board of Sun) claims that I generated over 200 million dollars of negative pub for MS.....It suprises me that several years later people still recognise that we were the first.....

 

[Lazybite]

given the comparitive size of the two companies (EB vs MS)... that is definately something to be proud of.. IF MS ever loses its monoply... you guys will be considered a very important footnote. ie a big part of global history (besides making legendary basses/strings/etc of course).. having such a part in history is something only us meagre mortals can dream of.

 

[Steve Dude Barr]

Interesting browser stats Phatty...I just looked at Pit stats:

Internet Explorer 6.0 65.2 % 1,050,487
Firefox 20.0 % 322,091
Safari 7.01 % 112,942
Internet Explorer 5.5 oder älter 3.32 % 53,498
Netscape 1.71 % 27,607

 

[GWDavis28]

Some politician here in MA is getting a bunch of $$ from someone or they have a relative that either owns the company or works there.

Nah man it's a smart move. It makes it so anyone can open any document and not have to have MS applications running on there machines. I was proud to see Mass make a stand and stick to it's decision. More and more states will follow, because it is the right thing to do.

I've been a long time user of StarOffice and I thought that it was great. I just loaded the newest version of OpenOffice and I was blown away, it's free and it does everything man.

I've been a Mozilla user for a long time, never really like IE too many hooks into Blindows. Firefox is sweet and the tabbed browser cuts down on the window clutter.

BP, I'm with you, PDF is the ballz!!!

Glenn |B)

 

[SteveB]

Although I have no love for MS, I've been running on their OS'es, development platforms, and apps for 8 years with our current setup. We have >99% uptime, and we run our servers 24/7 minus a small maintenance window.

I think the difference is that we run our network with the discipline of a mainframe shop. Prior to 1998 we were running entirely on terminal-based IBM midrange systems, and that environment is traditionally more 'anal' about things than the traditionally 'maverick' PC world. (For example, our servers live in a climate-controlled room, we have conditioned power, backup power, daily backups, daily database maintenance, etc. etc.) Also, the fact that all of our business process apps are written in-house makes life worth living.

I give MS no credit for our smooth sailing though. It's the planning and resourcefulness of our IT staff that have kept us from accumulating horror stories.

I dislike Firefox. I really want to like it, but it's a pig. I'll give it a clean slate with the next version and keep my fingers crossed, though.

With each passing year, though, I am more and more tempted to go open source. I've been writing code since I was 12 (hey Chuck.. I remember some CP/M commands!) and I still have a soft spot for a command line interface.

 

[Spudmurphy]

I use the Thunderbird email client that ships with Firefox. Great ad-free email program, and doesn't attract all the trojans and worms that are written for Outlook.

+1

I just got take a jump and move away from XP!!
Spud

 

[SteveB]

Nerd trivia of the day

Since Chuck mentioned CP/M (for you kids, that was a command-line operating system that predated MS-DOS.. if you don't remember MS-DOS, it's probably past your bedtime anyway. )

Here's a nerdy piece of trivia... the 'pipe' character on your keyboard ("|") that looks like a vertical line (or sometimes a broken vertical line) gets its name from an old CP/M command.

The command was 'pip' which stood for 'peripheral interface program'. The pip command could be used to re-direct the output of one program to various places (screen, printer, another program, etc.) which is the same function that the pipe character performs in MS-DOS.

Example: you can type DIR | MORE at a comand prompt to 'pipe' the output of the DIR command into the MORE command. The end result is that you see the contents of the current directory, but it is presented one screen at a time and you have to press a key to see the next page.

Here endeth the geeky trivia hijack.

 

[Big Poppa]

Steveb

We are now running Solaris along with Sun's Sun Ray thin client hardware. The Solaris is bulletproof and the Sun Rays give off zero heat (important in the desert) use a fraction of the energy and with the Java Card anyone can take their card plug it into anyones workstation and have their desktop instantly.

It has been slow to be adopted but I think it is a great system