One of the oft-touted benefits of Open Source software is the fast pace of development, in particular when there are problems. While this definitely improves with the popularity of the software, and so if you are using rare or niche software it may not be quite the same, it is great to see it in action in front of our eyes.

Since the release and rise and rise of Firefox 1.0, there have been a number of security vulnerabilities found. Before anyone moans about this, it is worth pointing out that this will happen with _all_ software, whether closed or open source. What is great is that you can see the real speed with which the community responds to these problems. In the case of some previous ones, we’ve seen fixes come out almost at the same time as the proof of concept, before anything comes ‘in the wild’. While the latest vulnerabilities have not been fixed in the ‘official’ version (1.0.3), there is already a release candidate for 1.0.4, which I suspect will become official within the next 24-36 hours.

On a related note, I would like to extend a formal welcome to the Open Source community to all Firefox users for whom it is their first foray into this new and exciting arena, and to advise of one rule that, I reckon, is often overlooked. It’s alright to moan. It may not be very ‘British’, but one of the vital things in an OSS project is users feedback with problems and feature requests. If something is broken, then report it, and it will be fixed. This does not come naturally to software users, IMHO, because we have become so used to having to ‘workaround’ software issues (”Just reboot”), or the feeling that once we’ve paid for the software the company aren’t really interested in what we think.

Bring on the bugs.

mrBen

Hah - fooled you. You were thinking ‘in a galaxy far, far away’ and that I was going to talk about Episode III, didn’t you?

This year I reached the almighty age of 28, which means that it is now 20 years since a computer first entered my household. So I thought it was time for a bit of nostalgia.

My first interaction with computers probably came a bit earlier, as I had a friend who had a ZX Spectrum, and we played on that. (We’ve all had rich friends, haven’t we? He had a Spectrum, _and_ a video recorder with a copy of Star Wars, and his parents had 2 cars! Daniel Richardson, wherever you are now, you are that friend ) However, the first computer that was actually owned by my family was the Amstrad CPC 464 that my father bought at some point in 1985 (if memory serves me correctly). This was my first introduction to programming, albeit in BASIC, a passion which has continued through the years.

The next milestone in the story would be in about 1988 when I bought my first own computer, a TRS-80 MC-10 (not to be confused with the normal TRS80), which, as far as I know, is still kicking about somewhere. I bought it second hand from a friend, and it may only have had 4K of memory and been decidedly dated for 1989, but it was the first computer I truly owned, and I loved it. I also managed to acquire a number of 2nd-hand books with programs for said machine, and had great fun programming it. My parents also bought me a tape deck to plug into it to save programs on - what more could a young geek want

In around 1992 I finally bought the computer that I had always wanted - a ZX Spectrum +2. A massive 128K of memory! It was for sale in a local computer shop, along with a thermal printer and a wafadrive (a looping, random access tape device). The printer was sold before I got to it, but the Spectrum was mine. (And still is, boxed and all, at my parents house).

The Spectrum was, IMHO, one of the best computers ever made. I bought tonnes of stuff for that machine - software and hardware. I still have about a years worth of Your Sinclair back issues, including the last ever issue printed. I bought a Multiface (ultimate hacking tool), a centronics printer interface (should’ve bought the multiface with an integrated printer port - big mistake), and even got OCP Art Studio, complete with mouse and mouse interface.

Programming on the Spectrum was excellent - the +2 had a really good BASIC editor, that did syntax checking as you wrote, something that I wish I had these days. I wrote tonnes of stuff on that machine, not least ‘WIPE’, my Windows, Icons, Pointers Emulator, an attempt to write a mouse-based interface, and ‘The Beard’, a shoot-em-up game set inside my father’s beard…..

In 1991 my computer education started with my GCSE - in those days BBC computers were the computer of choice, although the Archimedes was making its way into my school too. East Devon College was my first real introduction to the PC, though, and my A-Level concentrated on Turbo Pascal, with a dabbling into dBase, and areas like that too. We also covered 6502 assembly (from the BBC Master).

The first PC I owned was bought 2nd-hand from Alan, my minister, in 1998, and spent most of it’s time being upgraded (it went from being a 486-33 with 8MB RAM, to a 486 DX4 66, overclocked to 100Mhz with 24MB RAM and a CD-ROM drive and soundcard in about 2 months) until the day I fried the motherboard trying to ascertain which of my RAM chips was faulty, and causing GCC to fail to compile anything in one of my first ventures into Linux in 1999. The replacement motherboard and CPU (a Cyrix 300 chip) still power my Smoothwall firewall at home, and I’m still using the original keyboard!

My more recent machines have already been chronicled here and here, and a look back at my internet history is here.

mrBen