Mozilla Ships Firefox 2.0 ... It's a Dud

Is FireFox 2.0 a HUGE improvement over 1.5.x? Not so much, but it is an improvement.

If FireFox 2 had not been released, I would still be using 1.5.x over IE7. Why? because
a) it does a better job of rendering.
b) It has more USESFUL webdeveloper plugins.

That said, I am all but forcing my browser challenged friends to accept the IE7 upgrade when it gets pushed out to them, but still suggest they use FireFox, or better yet Opera as their primary browser.

Until MSIE gets Live Bookmarks (Which will be at least a year - assuming they do it for the next release, since that's how long the future IE release is going to take, according to the folks at official Microsoft IE blog), i'll probably stick to Firefox :P. Maybe they'll get around to implementing XForms and true XHTML support.

"I thought all manufacturers used OEM parts"

Most do. It's to keep costs down by reducing the warranty. If the user wants a better warranty, they have to pay for it, but it doesn't give them superior parts - it's just to cover the manufacturer's cost to replace the part. Here's a quick test: Take any hard drive and run SpinRite 6 on it (there are other programs but this one is the best). Run a Level 5 test for 10 minutes and leave it on the SMART status screen. If you have over 1000 corrected errors or any of the bar graphs in red, your hard drive is failing or is likely to fail very shortly and is not reliable. The number count will show how many errors the SMART status of the drive is self-correcting. Each time it corrects an error, it slows down the drive. If it stays at all zero's after 10 minutes, your hard drive motor and drive head are in near-perfect operation. Of course, that's generalizing. In order to get real status, it's best to test the whole drive, which will show if the drive doesn't seek to certain parts of the platter, or if there are any other surface errors. Generally speaking though, the 10-minute test is pretty accurate as it shows that the drive arm is not seeking to the correct position or the head is not reading or writing data accurately. As far as 60GB desktop drives, I've found them to be VERY unreliable and have not seen one without errors yet. If any of the bar graphs on the SMART screen are red, it means that one or more of your sectors were bad and the drive used one of the reserve sectors to replace it. Do you notice that hard drives no longer have a defective sector count on the label of the drive like the old ones did (PRE-2GB drives)? That's because they automatically come with some reserve sectors to replace defective ones. *ONE* defective sector is bad though, as it's a general warning sign that there will eventually be others, due to declining surface conditions.

"Let that be a lesson to you all: NEVER accept a Recertified or Refurbished hard drive. In fact, it's best not to buy OEM hard drives in the first place. "

I thought all manufacturers used OEM parts... its either that or retail no?

I've got 5 OEM HDDs, one is almost 6 years old (Go little 60GB go!) now. None have given me a spat of trouble.

Internet Explorer 7 Popup Address Bar Spoofing Weakness (http://secunia.com/advisories/22542/)

I wouldn't call that "surprising solid" ..

But feel free to keep on dreaming of "superior" software from MS..