It’s that time again - rant o’clock. This one is a two-pronged rant. Firstly, Firefox seems to have upgraded itself the last 2-3 times I started up my PC. This in itself is an annoyance, but I can just about tolerate the frequency (and inconvenience) of Firefox upgrades. What prompted me to write this post is the statement on the Mozilla web page with which I was greeted when I started Firefox. The statement seems to be their main reasoning for upgrading Firefox and it is:

“For security reasons, we recommend downloading the latest and greatest version.”

For security reasons? That’s the bit that got my attention. They use this statement every time there is a Firefox upgrade available. Forgive me if I’m reading it wrong, but this statement says to me that the current version of Firefox is not secure. Given how frequently Firefox upgrades become available, does this statement from Mozilla not suggest that every version of Firefox becomes insecure soon after its release? In which case, are they not suggesting that you should use a different browser altogether, for security reasons?

For the second part of my rant, I would like to ask you a question. Just what on earth is the background image all about on the aforementioned Mozilla web page?! The part of the image to which I am specifically referring is below:

From where I’m sitting, it seems to be a group of translucent birds flying out of a pipe. Anyone got any ideas what it means? My guess would be that the pipe is a metaphor for Internet Explorer and the birds are a metaphor for Firefox users, flying free from Internet Explorer as they download the latest version of Firefox. But do those translucent birds realise how insecure the world outside that pipe is?!