Firefox less stable than IE?

Has firefox become less stable than IE? I have been using firefox for more than 6 months and it has totally improved my web browsing experience, but lately it has been crashing 2 to 3 times a week. I am running v1.06 with the following extensions (adblock, ieView, pdfDownload, sessionSaver, and flashBlock).

Checking the mozilla developers page, I found a bug for "adblock + flashblock". This would probably explain most of the strange behavior. This also highlights one of the difficulties with firefox, the ability to add extensions also adds bugs and security problems (Greasemonkey). However, I couldn't do without adblock and flashblock which block most of the annoying ads. So for now, my best solution is to use SessionSaver which saves all of the open tabs and I don't lose the pages when the browser crashes.

Filed under: firefox, mozilla bugs

PS: Firefox locked up when I was writing this post, while visting the link about Greasemonkey (although I haven't able to reproduce this crash). Unfortunately 1.06 is looking less stable than 1.05.

High School Hackers Charged With Felonies

School District IT administrators in Kutztown, PA have gone to the police to deal with 13 high-school kids who repeatedly hacked into the school IT system. The problem is these kids weren't trying to unleash a virus or change their grades; they were just trying to circumvent the school's lame security system. Their malicious acts? downloading iChat and making IT administrators look stupid.

When did "kids not following the computer-lab rules" become a crime. 10 years ago the computer teacher would yell you at or maybe in the worst case you could get detention or suspension. High school kids have always been using computers to do what they were told not to, ever since the first Apple computer was installed in a classroom.

Filed Under: edtech

Running linux on your ipod

There is linux for the iPod, Nintendo DS and PSP. Also check out the picture of Doom running on an iPod.

Filed under: Linux, iPod

Indiana schools go Linux

Schools in Indiana are trying out Linspire, a commercial version of Linux that includes a Windows-like GUI. Eventually, every kid in the state could end up using Linux in the school. Schools in Korea and Norway also doing linux trials.

Filed under: Linux, OSS

Fun facts about the 10th planet

Scientist at Caltech claim to discover the 10th planet. Apparently there is still some debate over whether it should count as a planet or as a really cold rock orbiting around the sun. The rest of the planets in the solar system are named after Greek/Roman gods ie. Jupiter and Mercury. However, the scientists have proposed to name the planet 'Xena' after the Xena Warrior Princess. Here are some other tidbits about the 10th planet

• The planet is 3 times as far away from the Sun as Pluto and a year on planet 'Xena' lasts 204,000 days.
  
• The Scientists were planning to keep 'Xena' secret for a little longer until Hackers found out and threatened to leak it to the press.

Filed under: Xena, Astronomy