I thought I knew it all ;) , but one tip was new to me.
Use the '~' operator to search for synonyms; the example given is to use '~elderly' to search for 'elderly', 'senior', 'older', 'aged', etc. This can be combined with the better-known '-' operator: '~term -term' will find synonyms of the term whilst excluding the specific search term itself.

Last time it was items configured through 'about:config'; this time it's items configured through 'userChrome.css'. The focus of the article is to streamline and remove extraneous items from the header bars for maximum viewing area. That's of limited importance to me at present, but I did remove one annoyance: the 'magnifying glass' button beside the search box.
Firefox 2 also displays the name of the chosen search engine in the box unless one enters a specific search term. Does anyone know how to remove it? I'd prefer it to remain blank until used.

Speaking of the search box: in the earlier entry about how I upgraded Firefox 1.5 to Fx2 and refined the result, I mentioned changing the default Google search box URL, 'www.google.com/firefox' to 'www.google.com/'. This is probably a bad idea. I thought I was removing unnecessary branding, but that doesn't seem to be the case, and it's been suggested Mozilla receives financial support if people use the dedicated '/firefox' URL.

[Update 13/06/07: If directly editing files is a little daunting, try the more user-friendly interface of a Firefox plugin, 'Configuration Mania'.]

I suppose I should have timed it, but installation and configuration were really straightforward; ten minutes at most, and that counts time spent reading menus in case anything had changed.

• Installed the basic package over Fx1.5, using the 'Custom' option to decline the DOM Inspector & Feedback Agent. Incidentally, ensure Fx is fully closed (check Task Manager to verify 'firefox.exe' really isn't running), as there's a risk of losing Bookmarks in the 'handover'.
• It automatically verified compatibility with extensions & themes and checked for updates but, as usual, an additional 'forced' check for updates found more. Unfortunately, some important ones were missing.
• Checked the 'Options' submenu. My selections had been carried-over from Fx1.5, so I only made one additional amendment: turned off automatic spellchecking.
• Following Lifehacker's instructions, I used 'about:config' to:
  • Decrease the minimum tab width, to minimise scrolling. Fifty pixels (half the default) is enough for me.
  • Restore the Fx1.5 style of tab closing: one 'close' button at the right of the entire tab bar rather than one button per tab.
  • Prevent prefetching of unselected pages.
  • Remove the 'Go' button from the address bar.
• Configured the built-in search facility:
  • Removed engines I don't use, via the dropdown menu.
  • Reconfigured the ones I kept, by manually editing the .xml files in /Program Files/Mozilla Firefox/searchplugins/.
    Specifically, I renamed 'Amazon.co.uk' and 'eBay.co.uk' to 'Amazon' & 'eBay' (I'm in the UK, so I know they're .co.uk sites) and changed the Google URL from 'www.google.com/firefox' to 'www.google.com/'. [No. Don't.]

[More tweaks.]

[Update 16:36: The 'Undo Closed Tabs Button' extension satisfactorily replaces 'Undo Close Tab' – the option is added to the context menu when in the tabs bar. 'Clone Window' is almost replicated by 'NewTabURL', though with significant problems, so I'm only using it as a stopgap.]

[Update 16:51: Yay! 'Orbit Yellow 2006' replaces 'Someorbityellow_nb'.

That was a little more fiddly than I initially thought, but I think I've almost replicated all the functionality of Fx1.5, with the bonuses of FX2's security updates and additional features. I'd still recommend waiting a while, though, as the stand-in extensions I found aren't quite as good as the ones I had originally, which hopefully will be updated to Fx2 compatibility soon.]

[Update 17:16: Nope, 'NewTabURL' is more trouble than it's worth. Avoid.]

[Update 27/10/06: My mistake: I'd been using 'Clone Window 0.2.5' which was incompatible with FX2's 'Find Updates' utility. By downloading a fresh copy of version 0.2.8, it's updated perfectly.
That may be worth trying for any other apparently incompatible extensions/themes: check the numbers of the most recent versions available from Mozilla or the plugin authors' websites. If they're newer than you have, download them afresh.]

[One more update 13/06/07: If 'about: config' is a little daunting, try the more user-friendly interface of a Firefox plugin, 'Configuration Mania'.]

The link above is to the British English (i.e. English) version, but be aware that due to licencing issues (says Neil) the British English dictionary for the new spellchecker has to be downloaded separately.

Or perhaps not. One of the things I like least about Microsoft Office software is spellchecking as one types. Though I haven't tried the Firefox version yet, I anticipate disabling it. Not something I would have chosen as a core, 'out-of-the-box' feature of the updated browser; an optional third-party extension would have been more than enough.

It kind of goes against my principles to knowingly exclude minority browsers, but I'm afraid I can't rewrite entire pages for less than 1% of a site's visitors, especially considering it's temporary: the bug is fixed in Safari 3, allegedly. Upgrade whenever you get an opportunity!

To a PC....

Worth reading, it broadly restates (or at least overlaps) the endless 'prog'-or-progressive debate, mainly in the context of Marillion.

On the initial topic (e-mail groups vs. online fora), I definitely favour the latter, for one main reason: threads. For me, that's the 'killer app' of fora, with which e-mail lists can't compete. I drastically prefer to read the topics I choose, rather than an undifferentiated stream of all traffic.
I liked the pt-darkmatter Porcupine Tree Group at Yahoo!, but found that I gravitated to the PT Forum instead when that became available. The 'signal-to-noise' ratio is probably no different, and I suspect pt-darkmatter has slightly better-informed participants, but at the PT Forum I don't need to read anything off-topic (e.g. last night's US TV programmes), nor on-topic subjects that don't interest me (e.g. musicians' technical discussions).

[Via Tim.]

This site experienced an odd traffic spike on Tuesday morning (in the UK; 22:00 Mon – 01:00 Tues in N.America), with ~17% of all visitors – that's a few hundred people – arriving via searches for the phrase 'crop circles in the carpet', an elegant lyric from 'Hide And Seek'. I thought it was just eastern Canada initially (most hits were via Google.ca, where I seem to have the no.1 spot for the search term), but it's just that the western US visitors (e.g. from Salt Lake City or Houston) had gone to bed by the time I glanced at the log.

Curious. It's a lot like the time hundreds of visitors were asking about the Trough of Bowland, presumably for a quiz, but this time the spike has had a persistent tail – the contribution to total traffic hasn't dropped below 2% for ~36 hours.
To give a little perspective, that's about the same traffic volume as a page specifically about the late-2006 Jethro Tull tour, on an ostensibly specialist Tull website (well, part-website) during the late-2006 Jethro Tull tour.

*: Just checked: no, she's on tour in the UK. Maybe 'Hide And Seek' was used in a N.American TV soundtrack again.

For example, if I see the following as an entry page:
file:///S:/Projects/Town Centre M60 Gateway/Projects/George Perrin/Talks/Matt/Gas holder, St George's Quay, Lancaster, UK, 2 June, 2004.htm
it rather suggests someone at 193.112.136.# (i.e. Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council) may be 'borrowing' my copyrighted content without asking.

I hope that's not a public talk being prepared, as that'd be unauthorised republishing....
Remember, web-published content has the same protection as printed matter – it's not automatically in the public-domain, and it's not okay to just take it.

If you do insist on registration, and I do happen to return months or years later, I'm likely to need to use your password retrieval facility – I'm not going to make the vaguest effort to remember login details I didn't want in the first place.
This facility must respond immediately. It is simply unacceptable to say you'll send me an e-mail within one working day. Database technology eliminated that delay a long time ago – if the password is not in my mailbox within 5 minutes, you have lost my custom. Period.

Well, without illustrating the usability and aesthetics of a large, blunt instrument, anyway....

I wouldn't have ascribed numbers, but now it's been mentioned, I suppose I have been aware of the trend, which inspires a thought: what does this mean for Web 2.0?
Beyond the hype, is it likely to remain the preserve of the 'engaged elite'? The media breathlessly report that n million people have signed-up to Flickr, etc., but if 89% are only there to passively view the output of the 1%, raw membership statistics clearly don't equate to interaction and content generation.

I'm not an especial fan of user-led, interactive web development anyway, and prefer the prior model of provider-led publication by individuals to readers. However, this entry isn't meant to subtextually gloat that Web 2.0 is 'doomed to fail' – I'm genuinely curious how the aspirations of an active minority will extend to a passive majority.
I wouldn't be surprised if, ultimately, very little changes and few people experience more than 'Web 1.5': standard Web 1.0 publishing with a degree of feedback, rather than routine interactivity.

Any thoughts? Can you be bothered to express them?

I've been active on the web for over a decade, and have seen a huge number of such virus warning e-mails and forum postings. None – not even one – have been genuine. If you receive a warning, whether forwarded by a stranger or your closest friend, visit the website of a well-known manufacturer of anti-virus software and check the details of the alleged threat.
Think about it: how likely is it that your anonymous friend-of-a-friend has discovered something that's totally eluded every anti-virus professional on the planet? Really?

If (when) you discover it's a hoax, delete the e-mail: take it out of circulation. Never circulate another e-mail telling people it's a hoax – that's just as bad! Simply let it die.

If, by some miracle, you find the warning is about a genuine threat, delete the e-mail. Do not pass on the warning. Yes, really. If the anti-virus companies know about it, their updated software will handle it, so there's absolutely no point in telling people.
If people have outdated or missing anti-virus protection, well, they're on their own. If they can't handle the routine basics, they're unlikely to respond to the exceptional.

Bottom line: if you receive an anti-virus warning, even from someone you trust absolutely, delete it.

I'm registered with the Mailing Preference Service and the phone equivalent, I don't read leaflets pushed though my door, I favour a cinema that doesn't show adverts, I tend to video TV programmes then fast-forward through ad breaks, and I refuse to do business with companies which contact me uninvited.

And when browsing the web, I use Adblock.
It's wonderful. It blocks all advertising content, whether banners, pop-ups or text, and if a new ad evades the barrier, it can simply be added to the blacklist.

Slightly confusingly, AdBlock.org¹ is a site campaigning against blanket blocking of all adverts.

Besides, users of adblocking software like me are extremely unlikely to click on an an advert even if we see it, so a site owner relying² on 'per click' income is going to get nothing from such visitors anyway. Hence, the visitors might as well block the ads from loading at all – it'll make no difference to the site owner, and vastly improves the browsing experience.

To be fair, on deeper investigation it seems that Adblock.org mainly opposes utilities which indiscriminately block all adverts without the knowledge or express intent of users with limited tech-literacy. It does acknowledge the right of more rabid users like me to knowingly block all adverts. It's the 'knowingly' part which is worthy of investigation.

¹: Note that the link to Adblock.org is a fair citation for the quoted content, not an endorsement or advert.

²: Not that I believe site owners justifiably 'rely' on ad-revenue. If it's a commercial site, hosting is paid for by company income. If it's a private site, it's a matter of personal choice to expend money on a hobby. If one was a recreational skier, would one expect other people on the slopes to pay for one's skis and lift pass?

Conversely, when including an attachment, attach it first, before writing the covering note. Otherwise, it's too easy to send only the covering note.

[Via Lifehacker.]

Wikipedia: wonderful idea, appalling execution. And before anyone says "if you don't like it, change it yourself", I did try, but my amendments, supported by verifiable citations, were immediately edited out by those with personal, or in at least one case, commercial, interests. Kind of discouraging. If certain people choose to appoint themselves 'lead editors' on specific topics, and delete anything challenging their personal perceptions of those topics (however well-intentioned), I really can't be bothered to challenge them; I offered my assistance once, and was rejected. Their loss. If that experience is repeated across the entire site, I have limited confidence in the information published.

*: Go on; update too. If you're on Fx 1.5, subsequent updates are of only the files to be amended, rather than a fresh download of the entire package. It only takes a moment.

[Update 11/5/06: Coincidentally, here's Neil Gaiman's view of Wikipedia.]

Now I know what to look for, there's certainly been an anomalous increase in visits from IP addresses based in Alexandra, Va., attributable to the US Dept. of State....

For a moment I thought something drastic had happened – that the site had been removed from the index, perhaps for illegitimate SEO tactics, but it's simpler than that. Apart from the three words 'AnathemA Official Website' in the <title> tag, the home page contains no text or html links. At all. It's a frameset containing Flash files; the navigation menu is in Flash, as is the introductory text. There's absolutely nothing for a search engine spider to index or follow.

'Make It Right (FFS)'. Is a song on the 'Judgement' album.

*: It's probably there somewhere, but I gave up after the 150th result....

It's literally that: go to any URL beginning "http://cl1p.net/" (invent your own), paste in the content* to be transferred, and upload it. Then visit the same URL from anywhere else in the world and copy the content.

To clarify a point which eluded me for a moment, one doesn't need to go to the c1ip.net home page, log-in and use a specific user interface: go straight to the URL you invent and the interface is already there. There's no account sign-up, and no hoops to jump through. Use a different URL each time, if you want. Subdirectories are possible e.g. 'http://cl1p.net/test/test', so one could be systematic.

This has possibilities for collaborative working (it that's your thing), but if you don't want the risk of people accidentally wandering into a publicly-accessible page (and theoretically modifying the content), the chosen URL can be password-protected.

*: Attachments of up to 2Mb are fine too, but are automatically deleted after one download.

[Via Lifehacker.]

This would probably be an appropriate opportunity for me to mention one of my favourite Firefox extensions, Adblock. This filters web pages as they load, removing all adverts. Yes, all of them. Imagine browsing without banner ads, AdSense text blocks, etc. That's how I see the web all the time. The advertising content is simply ignored, so 99% of pages look as if they were never meant to include ads – there are no ugly and equally distracting gaps or broken images. Firefox itself eliminates pop-up ads, of course.

Adblock works by matching content to a blacklist. To save the effort of training your own, download the latest Filterset.G, a collectively-derived pre-populated blacklist.

I presume the advertisers and host site owners still benefit from serving the ads, which is fine with me, so long as I don't have to see the ads! The providers won't get any clickthrough revenue, though. Tough.

Since I last looked, Adblock seems to have been adopted by Mozilla (as opposed to being developed by an independent individual), which might be considered an indication that it could become incorporated into the core product eventually.

• N.America: ARIN
• Europe: RIPE
• Asia/Pacific: APNIC

In Control Panel, select 'System', the 'Advanced' tab and the 'Error Reporting' button. This route might be slightly different in XP Home, but only slightly. Select the 'Disable Error Reporting' radio button.

Simple as that.

The article invites suggestions for a term to replace 'cyberspace', but I'd argue that the very nature of the conceptual change means there's no longer a need for any specific name for 'virtual space'. I agree with Neil Gershenfeld, Director of MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms (now that's a bad name!), who proposes calling the computer-orientated environment simply 'the world'.

Then again....

At BoingBoing, Cory Doctorow describes cyberspace as the "place of the mind", a concept with which I can identify.
If I'm participating in an online discussion, or reading a blog entry written, published and hosted on the other side of the world, or indeed whilst writing this, my consciousness doesn't really have a meaningful geographical location. Maybe the concept of 'out there' does still apply.
If so, it predates the internet – If I speak to my father in Norway, via a standard 'land line' phone, just as I have done since the 1970s, where is my mind? My full concentration is on the conversation, so it doesn't matter that my head is in the UK.

Hmm. I suspect one could think too hard about such metaphysics – and then where would one be?

I haven't downloaded IE7 myself (and won't whilst it's in beta), but I don't see a single thing advertised in the demo that isn't already covered by Firefox and the main extensions. It mystifies me why Microsoft's attempts to catch up with the functionality of real browsers would be sufficient motivation for people to consider switching. Being 'as good as' real browsers simply isn't good enough; it'd have to be better.
I suppose I'll need to install it eventually, for testing purposes, but I doubt I'll use it any more than IE6 i.e. less than monthly.

Not that I think a Mac designer would have done a better job of the IE7 GUI.

Actually, I've become used to the slightly unwieldy 'Move To Deleted Items' option on the drop-down menu, so it's not that important to me, but still, it'd be good to streamline usage.

[Update 27/03/06: It became available to UK users this morning.]

If anyone's unaware of Bugmenot, it's a means of evading 'compulsory' web registration. Want to read an article in, say, the New York Times, but without providing your contact details for marketing purposes? With Bugmenot installed, simply right-click on the login/password field and a fake ID will be drawn from a global database.

Remember, the domain's inactive at the time of writing, so the link in the foregoing paragraph will be dead (well, sleeping heavily). Give it a few days and try again.

Admittedly, there were three sp*m flood attacks, but I still think ISS (Uni. 'tech support') need to improve their spam filters.

Another annoying thing is that the filters merely identify suspected sp*m, but still deliver it to mailboxes. That's of limited value....

I can see how CC might be seductive to some: "Freedom! Community! Sharing! Love!". However, on a legal level, it means very, very little, and anyway, I don't remotely share those ideals.

Long-term readers of this blog will be aware that my priorities are the rights of the provider, not of the recipient. For example, I object to Google AutoLink and greasemonkey scripts which attempt to modify my content. If I'd intended additional links, I'd have put them in myself: my rights as author extend to what I choose not to say.

In as much as I'm aware of an audience at all, I publish text and graphics/photos for readers and viewers i.e. their (your) role, so far as I'm concerned, is mostly passive, and the relationship is primarily one-way.
Nothing personal, folks, and in my wish to be unambiguous, I suspect the previous sentence might come across as aggressive and overstating my true views. I hope visits to the Ministry are enjoyable, and welcome comments; I merely withhold permission for visitors to redecorate or wander off with the teaspoons!

So; to be absolutely clear:
all material, textual and graphical, published at the Ministry is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. Nothing is placed in the public domain, and I do not offer Creative Commons rights.

As anyone who can see beyond CC-evangelist propaganda will understand, that's far from a blanket ban on usage (fair use, remember?), merely being a clarification that this is my property, and remains such unless I specifically say otherwise, on a case-by-case basis (and I'm actually quite approachable).

There'll be an overlap, with both sites being updated in parallel for the rest of the month, but from December, the original address will only be an archive.

I only visit occasionally, and catch up about a month at a time, but the web comic is well worth reading; a bit 'American' in places (not a criticism, more an acknowledgement that some references mean little to a UK reader).

That page isn't part of the blog, and I don't have a guestbook; the messages (2-3 per day at present, but these things tend to multiply) aren't published anywhere, they merely go to an e-mail account, and there's no way I'm going to follow dubious links from strangers.

Either some troll is ****ing around just to annoy me, which won't work – I never feed trolls, irrespective of provocation – or some sp*mbot is getting confused.
I suspect it's the latter, as the 'subject' header of each e-mail is identically malformed, as if an automated script is garbling the output in a way a manual submission wouldn't. At least it enables me to set a filter in Thunderbird, and all mail with that header is directed straight to Trash.

I'm pretty sure it is a robot mistakenly 'thinking' it's found a blog comments form, as each hit is preceded by an internal search of the blog for the URL of October's archive – no human would be doing that 2-3 times per day. That clue is drastically easier to trace. Now I have a phone number for the spammer's ISP in Kiev, Ukraine. Pity I don't speak the language....

It looks useful for accessing the web when away from home (that includes foreign visitors to the UK) or if one's usual provider experiences an outage, but they also promote it as 'anonymous' web access.

Bookmark it now, though not somewhere like del.icio.us, as you'd need to be online already to get to the bookmark....

I've still been receiving notification e-mails from the Groups I moderate, requiring me to authorise member activities; I just haven't been able to act on them. This evening, I lost patience, and signed up to Yahoo! afresh, using the same contact details as before, just with a new username and password. I thought I'd have to join my own Groups as a new member, and ask my fellow Moderators to upgrade me back to admin positions with the new ID.

However, that wasn't necessary. As soon as I'd registered and validated my e-mail addresses, Yahoo! informed me that there were existing memberships associated with those addresses, and let me readopt them as if nothing had happened, without my even having to inform the other Moderators that I was back. Great!

Maybe.

I'm no trouble-maker or sp*mmer, but I could have been. What if my Yahoo! membership had been cancelled for a genuine reason? Is it a good thing that I'd be able to adopt a different screen name and log right back in, totally unrecognisable to the other members and Moderators until the next time I struck?

[Update 3/11/05: A full week after my summary expulsion, I've received some explanation.

Several years ago, I had a 'holding' site at Geocities for a month or so, just to make some files available temporarily. When I abandoned it (on 15 May, 2001 – that's the date of last editing access), I cut it down to one page, merely a redirect to the Ministry itself. I didn't realise, and maybe it wasn't at the time, but that's against Geocities (i.e. Yahoo!) rules.
This morning Yahoo! told me that, and reinstated my account, giving me until Monday to make the site compliant. I deleted it outright: sorted.

Why couldn't that have been done a week ago? A warning and ultimatum would make drastically more sense than 'shoot first, accuse later'.]

Fair enough, but the first point that concerns me is that if this other company pushes the issue, existing '@gmail.com' addresses might have to be withdrawn; Google hope that won't happen but can't guarantee it. They recommend everyone re-register the '@googlemail.com' varients of their existing account names, just in case.
The second point which concerns me is that the varient of my existing account name, and the four most obvious permutations of it, have already been registered by other people....

Should I expect a cybersquatting problem?

[Update 18:00: I may have misunderstood; see comments. If correct, it means those with existing UK-based '@gmail.com' accounts won't need to re-register, and the reason I can't register the '@googlemail.com' varient of my current address is that it's already reserved for me!]

No, ignore that utter rubbish; this is the part I want to comment upon:

Personally, I have no problem with a private-sector US company holding the contract to provide admin facilities to the internet, so long as the US Government has no regulatory role – none whatsoever. It's utterly fundamental that no one nation 'owns' the internet, and particularly not the Bush government. That's not a party-political thing, and certainly not an anti-American thing; I'd feel the same way if, say, New Zealand was attempting to annex the internet, but the idea that this specific presidential administration might attempt to regulate the world's internet according to its own perverted morality is simply repugnant.

The 'deep web' refers to:

Very William Gibson....

'Fraid it's a bit late for me, as I'm happy with Firefox, and not looking to switch, but I'm happy to remove the company from my personal blacklist, and I might look at their browser one day.

Incidentally, that means the title of this entry will break in some browsers. That's a deliberate joke, okay?

[Via Lifehacker.]

Bollocks.

The example that triggered this thought was that someone visited the Ministry earlier today via a Google search for "discussion of Marillion's Angelina".
Fine, but one has to remember that the search engine doesn't read the meaning of the enquiry, nor that of the target page; it'll search for the word 'discussion', rather than text discussing the song.

Consequently, the search found the 'Memes' archive page, which includes the word 'discussion' in one entry, and no more than the song's title in another, but missed an entry entirely about the 'Angelina' single, which doesn't happen to feature the word 'discussion'.

One tiny criticism, which I don't think is avoidable, is that one does have to trace the route, selecting points connected by straight lines – one can't just select the start and end points, and expect it to follow the roads. Hence, it is a pedometer, suitable for short, detailed trips rather than for plotting intercity journeys (though that's possible, if very time-consuming). It's also far more suitable for the purpose than Multimap or Google Maps itself, which calculate distances along automatically-selected routes optimised for cars.

I discovered this issue via The Register, at which a correspondent makes the point that:

I haven't implemented it yet, as it's an unexpectedly sunny afternoon and I fancy a bike ride, but I might add it later, and in the mean time, want to spread the word.

It isn't an absolute block, of course, as there are always workarounds, but at least one can stop the less tech-literate using Greasemonkey and make it annoyingly inconvenient for those who can work around it.

Yesterday afternoon, an 'updates available' alert popped up in Firefox, and I updated two extensions. Very annoyingly, I'm not certain which. From the next restart, there were problems. Fx would crash, then if I closed it using Task Manager, it'd restart basically okay apart from an inability to open new windows or necessary popups.

This morning, nothing. The browser would open, but no page would be displayed and the menus were inaccessible.

I've uninstalled Firefox and deleted the entire /Program Files/Mozilla Firefox/ directory, and taken the opportunity to reinstall using Fx 1.0.3 (I was on 1.0.2), but still nothing.

The big problem is that this is at work - I don't know WinXP Pro nearly well enough to know what else to try, tech support don't support Firefox, and I have work to do, so can't spend time experimenting. I've had to just break out the emergency copy of IE. Ugh.

Any suggestions?

Please note the warning: I don't recommend updating third-party Fx extensions just for the sake of updating. I'm fairly sure that's what killed my installation, as I'd changed nothing else.

Update 11:13: False alarm! Stop panicking, everyone! I may have revived it!

In case anyone else experiences a similar problem, try launching Firefox in Safe Mode (without themes or extensions). At the Windows Start Menu, 'Run':
"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -safe-mode
If that works, it rather indicates an extension/theme is the problem. Disable any suspects then close and restart Fx normally. Rather rashly, I've deleted all eight of my extensions (not counting Mycroft, though that seems to have gone anyway – as Neil commented, Mycroft is stored in the program folder, not with extensions, so went when I deleted that directory), and Firefox seems to be back – I'm using it to write and send this update, anyway.

[Update 11/6/05: I finally relented, and updated several extensions to my home installation of Fx 1.0.4 last night, and experienced the same problem. Uninstalling extensions one by one, I identified User Agent Switcher as the apparent culprit. Without it, everything works as normal.]

Okay; that's facetious. The real point, which I do find genuinely interesting, is that entirely 'non-existent' property is beginning to acquire real-world value, and real-world society is having to adapt to the virtual. I'm not simply referring to intangible property – text, images, music and data stored in purely digital formats have been with us for a while, but interaction with them is in the real world. Material only relevant to the online world, with which one can only interact in-game... that's the sci-fi part.

I put 'fictional' and 'non-existent' in quotes in foregoing paragraphs because in some ill-defined sense such items aren't quite fictional any more and, in certain practical terms, exist.

That covers legal, paid-for downloads and the sharing of unofficial recordings, but recent searches seem to have been for downloads of tracks from, and indeed the whole of, that imminent album, 'Deadwing', so I'd better clarify my view of illegal downloading of commercial recordings, paraphrasing my side of a recent discussion at the PT Forum.

It's theft, and I don't condone it whatsoever.

It's been a while since I was last willing to buy an album 'blind', without hearing online samples as a guide to whether I'd like it, but I don't regard that as sufficient justification to illegally download a leaked/ripped copy of the entire album.
I restrict myself to the samples (extracts from songs, at low-res, not retail-quality full tracks) the artists choose to provide online. Beyond that, I feel one should take the risk by buying an album, then decide whether to keep it. Sometimes one mightn't like it after all. Tough. Return it to the shop, sell it on eBay (without keeping a copy!) or give it to a friend.

Having said that, I'd be naïve to deny that people are going to download, leading to five possibilities:

1. Someone illegally downloads and likes the album a lot, and buys a legitimate copy.
2. Someone illegally downloads and likes the album a lot, and just keeps the download.
3. Someone illegally downloads and rather likes the album, enough to keep the download but not to pay for it.
4. Someone illegally downloads and doesn't particularly like the album, but keeps the download anyway.
5. Someone illegally downloads and dislikes the album, and deletes the download.

It's been argued that:

I can dismiss two other arguments outright: