It’s Called Firefox
Indians, as a general rule, are noobs*. This isn’t wholly their fault, of course. Living in a under-developed country with poor penetration of technology and Internet is the main reason.
However, some of the things they do are simply inexplicable. An example of this is referring to all portable music players as iPods as we discussed earlier in some blog. One of the most annoying things they do is refer to the Firefox browser as ‘Mozilla’.
“Dei, Mozilla installed a?”
“I have Mozilla da.”
“Mozilla is good da. Marc told me.”
Many of my classmates are guilty of this. How did they reason that Mozilla was the name of the browser instead of Firefox? By their logic they should refer to the only word processor they know as Microsoft, which would also be the name of their operating system.
The only explanation is that they came across an unfamiliar word/name and assumed it was the name of the browser. Since they don’t know what forums are, or look at any kind of technology-related websites or know any pro^ friends there is no source of information to set them straight.
*A person with a very poor understanding of the Internet and/or computers.
^ A person who is knowledgeable in things a noob is not.
Rachel always posts paragraphs of disclaimers after a post that might invite heated comments. I’ll say this:
Are you offended by this post? Haha, sucks to be you.
Are you not offended? I’ll try to do better next post.
Bart says:
Aren’t they trying to refer to the predecessor of Firefox? It was long time ago, but I think it was called just “Mozilla” browser.
Posted on May 5th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Gowtham says:
First when you called me Pro i was a bit delighted! But then i saw that you have called George as noob, and realized it as a Kalaai
Posted on May 5th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
Marc Z says:
Bart, there is no way they would have even heard about that early browser. Come on, they heard about Firefox itself only a few months ago. In their world, browser = IE.
Gowtham, you have a long long way to go before you can be called a pro.
Posted on May 5th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
Adithya says:
Haha George the n00b.
Posted on May 5th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
George says:
The noob says:
Mozilla is an acceptable way of referring to the Mozilla suite of applications.
Posted on May 5th, 2008 at 10:33 pm
Marc Z says:
Except that they were referring to Firefox and they wouldn’t know if Mozilla made any other products.
Posted on May 6th, 2008 at 12:37 am
Adithya says:
George by your arguments we can call MS word, excel etc as Microsoft or any game by Blizzard as just Blizzard.
Posted on May 6th, 2008 at 5:27 am
George says:
To understand what the noob says, one must know what the noob knows. Mozilla suite, originally known as Mozilla.
Posted on May 6th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
sharad says:
Firefox is the browser of ppl who complain about their internet experience and slow download speeds on AOL. Every person that I’ve ever talked to about Firefox says it is like the best thing since sliced pizza but this is a LIE. Firefox is for the unbeliever and foolish hearted. The Bible says that in the end of days that people will be covered by a dark cloud of deception. I have uncovered the deception and am here to declare the truth, that Firefox sucks hardcore. The truth will set you free.
If you love Internet Explorer as much as I do, show your spirit!.
Microsoft makes the standards and anything that does not live up to those standards is not worthy to live at all. Firefox is a self-righteous piece of shit targeted toward the easily manipulated populations of the world - the poorest of poor!
thats y i am goin to get an MCSD!
Posted on May 6th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
sharad says:
i think Firefox is the browser of ppl who complain about their internet experience and slow download speeds on AOL. Every person that I’ve ever talked to about Firefox says it is like the best thing since sliced pizza but this is a LIE. Firefox is for the unbeliever and foolish hearted. The Bible says that in the end of days that people will be covered by a dark cloud of deception. I have uncovered the deception and am here to declare the truth, that Firefox sucks hardcore. The truth will set you free!
Posted on May 6th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
sharad says:
Microsoft makes the standards and anything that does not live up to those standards is not worthy to live at all.
Posted on May 6th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
sharad says:
this is my humble opinion!
Posted on May 6th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Adithya says:
@ Sharad
What?
@ George
People don’t use the Mozilla suite of applications. Not the ones Marc is talking about.
Posted on May 6th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
George says:
Sharad: Considering you said that other things must live up to Microsoft’s standards, I’m glad you’re humble. It’s only fitting.
Adithya: Of course, but I didn’t say that, did I?
Posted on May 6th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
sharad says:
well….i see that one on other than me is pro-microsoft!
Posted on May 6th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
sharad says:
What I don’t want is lies and falsehoods.
Firefox is a lie and a falsehood.
people claim that IE renders html incorrectly, ha!
Posted on May 6th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
sharad says:
the truth is that firefox has blinded your eyes and you can’t judge accurately how html should really be rendered.
finally, IE is a standard in itself…….firefox is not.microsoft is a billion dollar enterprise for a reason!
Posted on May 6th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Marc Z says:
Adithya, George is right. It just doesn’t apply here.
sharad, if you comment is not displayed immediately wait for me to release it from the spam queue instead of repeating yourself over and over again and sending even more comments to the spam queue.
Also, I assume you are joking. It’s hard to tell.
Posted on May 6th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
George says:
Ha ha, the noob likes Sharad. He’s funny. The Bible ha ha ha. Fool! The Bible is a bunch of lies, the real Truth lies in The Book of Mozilla.
Posted on May 6th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
Marc Z says:
The link doesn’t work in IE by the way. If you are using IE you are a complete loser and don’t deserve to see it anyway so it’s alright.
Posted on May 6th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
sharad says:
i dun have mozilla….i am very much happy with IE…no offence to any1…
marc ur right it is hard to tell if i joking lolz….btw how was ur sem dude!?
Posted on May 6th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
Marc Z says:
If you like IE without even trying Firefox (the entire point of the post is that it was called Firefox and not Mozilla and yet you still call it Mozilla) then you are and will always be a noob. It offends me that people can be this ignorant and love Microsoft so much without reason.
Posted on May 6th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
sharad says:
MARC no comments!
Posted on May 6th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
George says:
I don’t get it though, sharad. Have you tried using another browser recently? Opera or Firefox? By any objective metric, anything is better than IE. What exactly do you find good about it that you can’t find elsewhere?
I’m genuinely curious, because I really don’t understand.
Posted on May 6th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
Arun M says:
I can agree Indians are not so experienced da. But I’m pretty sure we will be as good as anybody else given the same exposure.
Posted on May 6th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
George says:
It’s not the exposure dude, it’s the aperture size that’s killing us.
Posted on May 6th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
sharad says:
well have u tried IE 7 …try it …!
Posted on May 6th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
sharad says:
george IE 7 is the answer to all ur questions!
Posted on May 6th, 2008 at 10:48 pm
Marc Z says:
Arun M, possibly.
sharad, we have tried IE 7 and it sucks even more. All the buttons are in weird places and the menus are non standard. Useless.
Posted on May 6th, 2008 at 10:54 pm
George says:
IE 7 comes preinstalled with Vista, Sharad. I don’t like it because it doesn’t render as fast as Opera or Firefox and it certainly is awful at accurately handling CSS.
Posted on May 6th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
Arun M says:
IE7???? Its still as bad. I’ve started web development, and know what a pain IE is for the developer.
Hell! Javascript functions do what they are not told to do, and miss out on what they should do!
Posted on May 7th, 2008 at 8:54 am
sharad says:
well….okay but still do u guys agree that IE 7 is better than firefox3? ATLEAST!
Posted on May 7th, 2008 at 10:34 am
George says:
Sharad, that’s ridiculous. How?! IE7 supports a fraction of the CSS specifications that Firefox supports. Of course, Webkit (Safari, Konqueror, soon Epiphany) is a better rendering engine than Gecko (Firefox), and Presto (Opera) is as good. But IE is at the bottom of the heap. There are better rendering engines than Firefox’s (IE’s Trident isn’t one of those better ones) , but its extensibility and customisability are what make it great.
Posted on May 7th, 2008 at 11:24 am
Marc Z says:
What utter bullshit! sharad if you don’t know what you are talking about then don’t.
No one agrees than IE7 is good in any way, let alone better than the most popular and respected browser in the world. Don’t be retarded.
I’ve never seen this much misinformed fanboyism even on Digg. Disgusting.
Posted on May 7th, 2008 at 11:32 am
sharad says:
NO COMMENTS!
Posted on May 7th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
Sundar says:
Calling all music players ipods is a common mistake. It isn’t localized to India. It was the same case back then when walkmans became famous. Every portable cassette player was called a walkman.
Such a situation is what any company would strive for. What better advertisement for a product than for everyone speaking the name at the drop of the pin?
Sony tried to get back into those times, when it tried to get everyone to call all portable cd players discman. It achieved reasonable success when every game console started getting called playstation, but thats dropping off fast too. (I dont know what sony portable music players are called. Just Sony? Or are they called walkman too?)
My point is, I dont think calling all music players ipods is something noobs in India too. There are enough similar (if not dumber) noobs around the world who make the same mistakes. Marc, being the internet junkie that he is, must do a lot of surfing of professional sites, and talk to a lot of people who know their stuff, and so he has the idea that this trend is restricted to India alone. It really is a global phenomenon.
The world is full of noobs who have no idea about a lot of things.
And I’ll also join in and say IE sucks. I dont know about CSS and all the fancy stuff you guys talk about, but it crashed more often than firefox, and that is good enough for me.
Posted on May 7th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
Sundar says:
where is my comment?
Posted on May 7th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
Vinod says:
@ Sharad
I think you never used firefox. Its WAY BETTER than IE series
I can’t believe that you think IE is better than firefox. IE is slowing down my system like HELL!!!!
Thank God I use firefox or else my poor system would never have managed to open even a single page to display if I used IE
Posted on May 7th, 2008 at 10:12 pm
sharad says:
vinod enough…. i am goin madd! fine…leave it alredy!
Posted on May 8th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Marc Z says:
Sundar, are you sure people in other countries refer to portable music players as iPods? I doubt this will happen in developed countries where iPods are popular and people know what they look like from marketing images.
sharad, think or do some research before talking crap then.
Posted on May 8th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
George says:
Marc, what Sundar says is true, loads of people do that. Search engine is google. Music player is iPod.
Posted on May 8th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
Vinod says:
Sundar is right here
Posted on May 8th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
Marc Z says:
Goddamn noobs everywhere then! However, India still has more. Visit any international forum and you can see more Indians being asses than people from any other country.
Posted on May 8th, 2008 at 10:37 pm