Blog Year in Review: November 2007

In November, Mozilla had a record 5 Firefox/Thunderbird releases:

Firefox 3.0 Beta 1 is the “most thoroughly tested beta [they’ve] ever shipped”, but it is not for the faint-of-heart. Those who were brave enough to try out the first beta quickly learned about the poor extension compatibility. Many extensions, especially those pertaining to bookmarks, will probably not function to their full potential if at all . Still a lot more work for the developers before the finished Firefox 3 product can be released.

Firefox 2.0.0.9 fixed regressions from the 2.0.0.8 release the prior month

Firefox 2.0.0.10 a planned security update which was to fix a couple HIGH (Vulnerability can be used to gather sensitive data from sites in other windows or inject data or code into those sites, requiring no more than normal browsing actions.) impact security issues. However…

Firefox 2.0.0.11 released 4-days after the 2.0.0.10 release which broke the <canvas> HTML element interface (.drawImage) this bug affects several web sites and extensions (FoxSaver, Fotofox) that rely on it to deliver the intended experience to their users.

Thunderbird 2.0.0.9 was a regular security update release which did not seem to cause any new (major) issues

The Guru happens to like the Get A Mac ad campaigns as do most of our readers. In November the blog featured five Get A Mac ads and most of these I have seen on TV:

Choose a Vista – with six varieties/versions of Vista to choose from PC comes up with an innovated way to Choose a Vista. However his self-designed process does have one minor flaw.

Podium – a political/campaign themed Vista ad.

PR Lady – PC really needs to learn when to shut up as his PR Lady can only do so much for him

Boxer – Not one of the better ads, almost seems like they threw this one together at the last minute.

Don’t Give Up On Vista – this hilarious ad appeared on site such as CNet and Engadget.

“I have to share the credit, I may have invented it, but I think Bill made if famous!” – David Bradely, inventor of CTRL-ALT-DEL

The History of CONTROL+ALT+DELETE, featured David Bradely, inventor of CTRL-ALT-DEL talking about why he created it during a panel celebrating the 20th anniversary of the IBM PC which included Bill Gates.. As I was preparing these Blog Year In Review posts I ran into a post I did this time last year and made some predictions about the conditions which I would end up getting Vista.

“You can safely ignore this error message. This error message does not indicate a problem with the adapter. The adapter will continue to work correctly.” – Microsoft Knowledge Base article resolution for driver error on the Microsoft 6to4 Adapter

Then there was that day when Vista suddenly couldn’t find (may been caused by the Alzheimer’s Virus) the driver for video card and the Microsoft 6to4 Adapter oddity. Computer viruses are a big problem and it seems new ones are being developed all the time. The Guru came across a list of some new and odd viruses. Finally, as a public-service to our readers it is important to keep your computer maintained which is why it so critical you take a couple minutes each week to Calibrate Your Mouse.