New versions of Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird were released this week. I’m using the updated Firefox (we’re now at version 0.9) myself and it’s much lighter and speedier; and I’ve heard plenty of good things about Thunderbird 0.7 too, which is good because I plan to roll this out at work in the next few months.
Which brings me to these version numbers. Some people unfamiliar with the free- and open-source software cultures might be confused by version numbers less than 1.0 – this is not unreasonable, when most people’s exposure is to commercial software companies, in particular Microsoft.
Basically, you should steer well clear of version 1.0 of a Microsoft product – it will be buggy, most of the features they promised to include haven’t been implemented yet etc. Version 2.0 will have some of the version 1.0 bugs fixed, but will have introduced loads more and still isn’t really all that good. Maybe by version 3.0 it will be more like what the designers originally planned.
With free and open-source software, however, the developers are rather more honest about things. If most of the features aren’t implemented and it’s buggy, it is called 0.1 – this doesn’t mean it won’t work, but perhaps you shouldn’t rely on it for anything too important. However, something that takes many years of development before finally reaching version 1.0 is likely to be a very special piece of software. Mozilla Firefox is expected to reach version 1.0 within the next month or two. And the bugfix release will be called 1.1, not 2.0. Usually, version 2.0 is the first major re-write of the code or perhaps the introduction of a something new or important.
Interestingly, when the first successful web browser, Netscape, was being developed, it took quite a while to get through 0.9, 1.0, 1.1 and eventually to 2.0. When 3.0 was released, Microsoft – who had suddenly realised that The Web Might Actually Be A Rather Big Thing – released Internet Explorer. Version 3.0. That’s right, it was their first release and they called it version 3.0, so that it sounded “as good as” Netscape.
And the subject mentioned a new toy – we’ve now got a Panasonic DMR-E100 combined DVD-recorder and hard disk recorder. Shiny 🙂
DMR-E100
when these things come with built in FreeView tuner I’ll look at them…untill then i would have thought it’s a pain as you can’t watch 1 freeview channel and record another…..
PermalinkSo what you need is something with dual tuners? I’m sure there’s already something out there which does this, actually – HDD recorder, but not also DVD-recorder. With a Sky box, you can’t watch one Sky channel while recording another (unless you buy a Sky Plus HDD recorder which has twin tuners), but with our setup you can watch a terrestrial channel while recording Sky, or vice versa. Or, you can watch something stored on the HDD while still recording to the HDD …
PermalinkDon’t care about the analogue tuner, just dual digital would be nice. Thomsom and Pace do HDD recorders with Freeview built in, but I’d like the DVD/recorder player in their as well.
BTW the Pace system is only aq 20GB model so I *only* get 10hours recording…
Don’t want SKY – already got GOD TV for my satellite stuff – costs me nothing per month (well OK I donate some money 🙂
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