Bad News, Good News

The bad news is that I blew up a computer. The computer that has protected my main computer from the internet is dead. It is an ex-computer. It is a paperweight. So the continuing bad news is that that means my main computer is now connected to the internet and susceptible to all the nastiness that that presents. I'm not terribly happy about that part.

The good news is that my main computer is so much superior to the old net beast that it is really a joy to use. Adding to that is my new browser. I thought about downloading Firefox a number of times, but complacency is just so hard to get around. Confronted by having to update Internet Explorer with about a zillion updates when I hooked the power box back to the net I figured there was downloading to be done either way, now is my chance. WOW! Even the darkest cloud has a silver lining, in this case discovery of a great piece of free software.

The interface is crisp and quick, gives a larger viewing window (I guess the boys at Microsoft are pretty proud of those toolbars, but come on), and there are apparently multitudes of features that I am still discovering. One that has already gotten me hooked is being able to control whether a link takes me from this site to that site or opens the new site in a new window, but I expect there will be many more as I scout about.

Of course the biggest thing that got my attention is the scarcity benefit, which this post isn't meant to help with. The scarcity benefit is this: since so few people have it, there isn't much incentive for hackers to start finding ways to exploit it. The hackers are spending their efforts finding yet another new way to access your machine through your Internet Explorer. I'm not helping my own cause here, but I figure even if all my readers from all my blogs use that button over there and get Firefox it still isn't gonna put big Bill and the boys off the hacker radar. So grab on!

To find out more about Firefox from a bloggers perspective click here.