WORLD REVIEW
Buzzzzz! That was the sound heard round the world after the most important event in the history of computing - the new Firefox browser got the buzz because it is 723 times faster than the old Firefox browser and has 15,423,683 improvements; although the humble Mozilla team insisted it was only nine times faster and had a mere 15,000 improvements, here at the World Review we counted precisely instead of estimating; if that's not enough, Firefox dropped that old piffle of an address bar and replaced it with an Awesome Bar that actually allows you to type in the name of web sites or searches; "It keeps track of all the stuff you've done in the past," explained engineer Damon Sicore, who added it could also, er, be easily erased; the browser share of the despicable Microsoft bullies fell to a mere 74 per cent over the past year, and Firefox's rose a full four per cent in the same period.
Mozilla.org proved conclusively that the only way to succeed big-time on the Web is to fail; the peddlers of "the quick red fox" jumped over the lazy Web to call for a worldwide effort to make Firefox the most-downloaded program ever in a 24 hour period, and sure enough, the Mozilla servers ground to a halt for several hours as lemmings around the world responded; the Guinness people will try to verify there were actually 8.7 million downloads, for a world record in a new category. Just 300 minutes after the release of Firefox 3.0, five hours into the Guinness World Record download attempt, a friendly hacker found the first critical vulnerability in the sainted browser; the hole had not been fixed at press time but it probably will be, somewhere down the line, and then you can download yet another update.
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| The latest version of the Firefox browser, which is aiming for a Guinness world download record. |
In other browser developments, "If you've got Safari, you're in trouble," explained Eric Schultze of Shavlik Technologies; he means only if you have the Apple Inc Safari for Windows, because a massive hacker-hold in that browser lets even script-kiddie amateurs straight into your computer to run any process they choose; a fix will be issued. Maybe.
Fortune magazine published Microsoft Without Gates, the first 7,000 words (Gates looks back; The end of an era; Gates' golden rules; Jesus envious of Gates - okay, the last one is just kidding), two videos and 15 boyhood photos out of jillions to come about the warm, generous, concerned world citizen - now that he is leaving the world's only court-designated abusive monopoly for semi-retirement; Sir William is one of the greatest minds every known and the greatest businessman even if he didn't get Yahoo!; most people have to die to get the treatment Mr Gates is getting.
At the end of their Euro 2008 quarter-final match, the score was Turkey Hackers 1, Croatia Geeks 0; the Turks put their flag up on the Croat government web site, with an enigmatic but tasteful message reading, "Thanks to all the members of the terrorist group of Turkey and Saudi Arabia."
State-controlled newspaper Shanghai Securities News reported that the Chinese government was planning a major anti-monopoly suit against Microsoft, similar to the European suit and probably for similar amounts of gelt. The State Intellectual Property Office of China denied it was planning to launch an anti-trust suit against Microsoft, branding the report "totally untrue."
You can be sure that it's Westinghouse Digital Electronics pushing for the most important standard in consumer history, the universal power adapter, because everyone knows how much energy is wasted carrying half a dozen plugs and adapters on a trip abroad; as Westinghouse CTO Darwin Chang said, it's a dirty job helping the environment by making sure one plug fits all, but darn it, "somebody has to be first."
Rats, ship; the Yahoo! auto-resignation machine started up (you can visit Yahoorezinr.com), but in real life executives lined up to grab their golden parachute and jump off the Good Ship Yahoo! in a rash of post-Microsoft blues; day-to-day chiefs leaving included two executive vice-presidents, two senior vice-presidents, the search-and-monetisation vice-president; CEO Jerry Yang and president Sue Decker were last seen going up the stairs to the platform directly over the volcano where human sacrifices often are made to appease really, really angry board members and shareholders.
US blogger Gopalan Nair made two decisions, at least one of which wasn't the tightest bolt on the nut; the first was to live in Singapore; the second was to write on his blog that a Singapore judge has prostituted herself with her decisions in a libel case pitting the sainted Lee Kuan Yew and son of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong against opposition windmill-tilter Chee Soon Juan; he is charged with insulting Justice Belinda Ang Saw Ean by saying she was following the Lees' orders, which could cost him charges of 123,000 baht in return for one year of free room and board in a government greybar hotel. The World Information Access report compiled by the University of Washington said that China, Egypt and Iran just don't like bloggers at all; more than half the 64 bloggers arrested in the past five years have come in one of these countries; arrests really started to pick up last year, the report said.
If you are an information technology professional, researchers Cyber-Ark said unless one of your closest two co-workers are snooping into confidential records of anyone they can - then you are; one in three IT people abuse their administrative password, said the study.
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