June 2008

George Carlin, 1937-2008

Today one of the greatest comedians ever has passed away, at 71 years old. Carlin has always stood out by addressing taboo societal quirks and presenting them in a new light with objectivity and stunning wit, even in his later years. I’ve never seen any comedian come close to addressing practical issues as sternly and genuinely as Carlin did – he has truly been pushing the envelope for 50 years and remained a furious rebel of societal contradictions and religious hipocrasy into his 70’s. In observance of the wisdom he offered so sharply, I won’t write rest in peace, but only that his rational insight changed the life of millions.

In memory of George Carlin I’ve downloaded every HBO special he’s broadcast during his career – 12, starting in 1977.

Spread Firefox

Yesterday marks the release of the third version of Firefox, the free and open source internet browser which competes directly with Microsofts Internet Explorer. Compete is in this case a generous term and it actually obliterates Internet Explorer in every category: features, speed, security, and stability which is why you should check it out immediately if you aren’t using it already. It’s available for both PC and Apple and you can go to their download page by clicking on the logo below.

Yesterday Mozilla, developer of Firefox, broke the world record for most software downloads in one day by hitting just over 8 million in 24 hours – impressive to say the least that they could generate such a buzz and then deliver 8+ million downloads in 24 hours without their servers exploding.