Today I present to you a fairly serious endorsement of something I think you should check out. It's a little on the geeky side, but I promise to you that it contains the right dosage of sass and dirty language that you've come to know and love. Ain't it grand? Go ahead and check out the Stuffs section, then download FireFox!
Certainly been a long time since this section has been updated, it seems. So it's time for a little sumfin sumfin. I don't know if you should expect this endorsement to be particularly exciting, since it's an endorsement for software, but it may be informative to y'all geeks and non-geeks alike. You see, if I'm going to be a geek and readily admit it (can't really deny it anymore), I might as well drag everyone else down with me! Huzzah!
I've been using Mozilla Phoenix/Firebird/FireFox for quite some time, but it hasn't been quite mature enough to unleash for the "unwashed masses." In its newest iteration(v0.8) it was renamed to FireFox (after first being named Phoenix, then being named FireBird) and made faster, more stable, etc. You know, all that marketing stuff that I often have to spew about my own company's software product. Why they renamed it "FireFox" is beyond me. I know the multiple renames were to prevent confusion between other projects in the Open Source community, but why go from Phoenix, which is inherently badass, to Firebird, which is mildly badass but nevertheless invokes thoughts of badly-designed Pontiacs? As if it couldn't get worse, it gets renamed to FireFox, which makes little sense to me at all. It just sounds furry. Why not continue the thread of browser badassedness? I mean, as much as I like moose and all, it really seems to me that FireFox is about as cool and threatening as FireMoose. Then again, the idea of a giant two-ton lumbering flaming moose does instill fear in my loins ...
Naming conventions aside, this is a very slick browser. It's faster than Microsoft Internet Explorer (excepting initial load time), it adheres to more web standards, and it has some pretty badass features. First of all, it's themeable, so if you like pretty colors and icons (in other words, if you bought a Mac because it's pretty), this is for you. It's very extensible, meaning you can download all sorts of very useful and often fun add-ons to add functionality to the base browser. My favorite thus far is the gesture extension, which allows you to browse the web using, for the most part, mouse gestures alone. This way I can go back or forward (and do a host of other things) without ever having to move my lazy-ass hand up to click on the buttons up top. Anything that promotes laziness, in my opinion, is a good thing. That's why I also encourage use of beer, automobiles, and beds. Actually anyone who knows me knows that I don't really encourage automobile use but for moments of extreme or emergency laziness.
I'm promoting this so heavily (if heavily can be used in reference to a website that gets weekly hits in the single digits) because I'm sick of Microsoft owning everything and I really do think that this is a superior product. FireFox encourages the development of free, open-source software, of which I have become quite the proponent of since Ryan finally shamed me into installing SuSE Linux on my computer. The idea that software can be free for use and further development is a great one. It builds a community and makes software stronger. The idea is, the more eyes that see something will strengthen the stability, security, and power of the software. Unfortunately for Janet Jackson that doesn't work for breasts, but hey, she's like 80 billion years old anyway and no one really wants to see her boobs. Well at least I'm glad I wasn't watching at that point. So give FireFox a try, you'll be pleasantly surprised.
Don't get me wrong, I really have nothing wrong with God-types, though that may come out the wrong way in this little piece. What I do have a problem with is people who take things to extremes, whether they be to the extreme right or extreme left. I lean left myself so I'm a little more forgiving of leftists. As far as I've seen, they tend to be less mentally challenged anyway.
So I'm reading this article on CNN today, maybe you've heard about this little scandal of sorts. Apparently some idiot school supervisor wanted to remove the word "Evolution" from all curricula of the school. May I repeat: all curricula. That's a lot of freaking stuff to remove one word from. And for what? Her claim is that she is trying to remove controversy from an issue that draws a lot of fire in the South. Guess what, lady, not to sound like a snooty Yank, but there are a lot of idiots down there. Mind you, that's not saying we up in "The Frigid North" don't have our own share of people who for all practical purposes should be confined to the cattle yards. How many more riots do we have to have in Boston when a sports team wins before somebody realizes that when it comes to sports and winning, Boston has a hive-mind with the IQ of a gnat. Bees, by the way, are the ones who have hives, but as far as I can tell, they're smarter than gnats. So imagine a hive of gnats all acting coherently. The results you get are overturned cars, drunken fratboys, and, if you're lucky, a World-Series-Winning baseball team sometime before pigs fly. But, as per usual, I digress.
The problem I have with the so-called "controversy" surrounding evolution is this: there is no controversy! From what I've gathered, there isn't really any respected representative of the "scientific community" who believes that anything happened but evolution. The only people who really deny the fact (yes, fact) that evolution happened are people with a bible shoved up their asses. I have absolutely no problem with religion, but sorry, we did not all appear in seven freaking days. Maybe God (or whomever) had a hand in the process of steady genetic mutation (otherwise known as evolution) and selection, but I (and most scientists) simply cannot accept the idea that everything just appeared. Even the Big Bang theory, which posits that everything did just appear (though not rabbits and plants and Adam and Eve and whatnot) is often grouped with theories about what was there before said bang of bigness.
So why the hell change your entire school curriculum to reflect the desires of some uber-religious Godheads who won't accept anything short of saying (in the public school which last time I knew was part of the government which last time I knew was separate from the church) "God created everything in six days and took off the seventh to smoke some of that seriously good shit that he created on the third day." Well they probably wouldn't say that being that seriously good shit is the Doob of the Devil, but whatever. Anyway, my point being that people who are pissed at the idea of evolution won't be happy until you change everything in your school to reflect the fact that your school is nothing short of a christian summer camp. Hopefully they won't sing any stupid songs either.
I remember reading a book about evolution called "The Beak of the Finch." The idea is that Charles Darwin visited the Galapagos Islands and saw such clear evidence that different sub-species of Finch had developed different strategies for survival through selection that he was convinced of the idea of natural selection (and subsequently evolution) and the rest is history. My question is this: how the hell can you say God decided to create 47 (or whatever) different species on Finch on one set of islands? Unless he was smoking some of that serious shit, I really doubt that God had the time nor desire to do that. Maybe he was sitting around on whatever day it was (the fifth?) and was thinking "Boy I'm really sick of thinking up new vile and disgusting parasites and virii. It's time for a change...hmm...Finches!" I imagine God had something better to do ... like come up with AIDS which would crop up when someone got randy with a chimp and eventually kick the shit out of half the human race. The other half would be fucked by George W. Bush, who was Lucifer's fantastic idea.
In any case, the idea was cancelled to change the curricula of the school system. Good freakin' idea lady. So many people are relieved she didn't try to push such an assanine idea that I swear I heard a collective sigh coming from somewhere down that way. Then again, I swear I also heard someone say "man this is some good shit" coming from up there. May lightning strike me down if it wasn't good. Well, time for me to pray that if the Secret Service doesn't come after me, neither will AIDS nor anyone from the South. Or drunken fratboys.