Other browsers under NT4

Not too long ago, I talked about some of the issues one runs into when one tries to put a more modern web browser onto a Windows NT4 machine. Recently I began to wonder if similar issues would be encountered with other, non IE browsers.

FireFox, being quite popular (while not quite my cup of tea) was an obvious first choice, my destination for such an upgrade? GetFireFox.com of course! Unfortunately... the server does not successfully redirect the client to the proper page, instead displaying a server test page.



A quick Google search for FireFox gives us the page that GetFireFox.com usually redirects to.



Unfortunately, once again, the server cannot handle the request from IE2.



Not being deterred, I again tried to go through the main Mozilla page and browse through it's projects...



which again runs into a common error:



At this point... I gave up as the traditional means of upgrading to FireFox failed from IE2. The only options it looks like would be either DLing a FireFox installer on another machine, or finding an installer on a more compatible web server.

My second attempt at upgrading, was to get Opera working, www.opera.com seeming to be a good first step. Amazingly, Opera's main page looked pretty nice under IE2, far better that most other pages I had seen.



With the download link nice and obvious, I proceeded to an ugly, but functional download screen.



With a quick decision on what to do with the incoming file, the download proceeded, oh how I do not miss downloading this way.



And a quick installation later, Opera was up and running without a problem (except for the obvious ads, but then I am a cheap bastard).



Although I never tried, I would expect that with Opera running one would be able to get their browser of choice up and running via the traditional means by now having a modern web browser running.

While not overly important, all of this does raise the question of how low the bar should be set when it comes to upgrading older systems? There still remains large numbers of NT4 machines, many of which are probably not running the latest web browser (not that most of these NT4 machines need a web browser).

Well Known

Some say... I have an ego. True? I dunno, it's not something I am going to talk about today, instead, something that happened the other day that boosted my ego greatly.

My company is doing some interviewing for software interns for the summer and we have had a number of people come in for interviews as well as some of our people going out to schools to do so.

Yesterday, one of my managers asked, "Brendan, why is it every person I interview from DSU knows you?"

Apparently, last year while interviewing at DSU (where I got my undergrad) he interviewed about a dozen people and asked each if they knew me, sure enough, all said they did. This year the same has been occurring, of the 3 interviews he has conducted so far, all interviewees knew me. So he began to wonder why this was still the case even though I havent been at DSU in more than a year, he would have thought that I would become less known over time.

I dont think he bought my answer of because "I'm just that kind of cool and happening guy." It might have something to do with standing 6 foot 4 and being an overall big guy... I tend to be hard to miss, not that its stopped me from being hit by a couple of cars.

My first Linux experience

Long ago I found a copy of Slackware and thought it would be fun to give a try. Having heard the problems a friend had (something about unknowingly having it install over his Windows partition), I ended up installing it to a second hard drive and kept my Windows drive in the next room... just in case.

The installation went smooth enough (despite requiring several attempts to get things right), and when done I was greeted with a prompt, not knowing what to do I began to type.

dir

Hum, nothing.

help

Still no.

login

Nope

logon

Grrr.

This went on for about 15 min (including several reboots), me playing guessing games, not having any clue as to how to get past this prompt.. What prompt you ask? The login prompt of course, and not being familiar with Linux or Unix systems at the time, I didn't know what 'root' was or how to login as it.

Pathetic I know.

I ended up having to do a low level format of the HD in order to get Linux off of it (regular formats just weren't working (mostly due to partitions not being normally readable anymore)).

I will grant you that this experience, caused by my own ignorance ended up being the first thing to sour me on Linux for a time and helped to keep me away from it for a few years until a friend was showed me how cool (his word) Coral Linux was, but that is another story.