We had an interesting geographic trivia session at the Mozilla Foundation offices this evening and it got me thinking about how almost all of the answers to all of the questions that I ever have can be found online.
Well, Google has "Answers" and now you have "Asa"! I'm starting a new project here at the old notblog called "Ask Asa" where you all post questions and I'll do my best to give a useful answer. This isn't intended to be a "stump Asa" feature, more like a "Hm. I bet Asa could help me with that" thing.
So, if there's any interest, once a week I'll post a "Ask Asa" column where you all can ask questions. I'll pick one question to answer and post my answer for the next week's column.
Let's get this ball rolling. Do you have questions about Mozilla, or Mars or anything else that you think I might be able to answer? If so, post 'em here and I'll try to answer the one I find most interesting.
Posted by asa at February 18, 2004 07:51 PMWho writes the Book of Mozilla verses, and can you give any background?
Posted by: yacoubean on February 18, 2004 08:55 PMSo, where did Mars' atmosphere go? ;-)
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on February 18, 2004 09:02 PMI know that your time is limited and you have lots of interests (Mars, Mozilla... do all cool things begin with an M? :), but answering a bunch of questions at a time each week would make it more interesting. Something like http://www.askpud.com/.
Will there ever be Mozilla Users on Mars? :)
Posted by: Bibbl on February 18, 2004 10:36 PMHow many squirrels are there in Mountain View, and are there any of the black variety? [this question was an outgrowth of caillon's dinner party]
Posted by: marcia on February 18, 2004 10:37 PMWhat are the Mozilla Foundation offices like?
Posted by: Korou on February 18, 2004 11:47 PMI've been wondering how many of the rocks on the surface of mars are actually small meteorites or fragments, and could the rovers distinguish between original martian rock and off-planet material? (I'm thinking, thin atmosphere, less meteorites burn up completely, closer to asteroid belt... more meteorites on surface of mars than on earth?)
Go figure that out for me, Asa :)
Posted by: Av on February 19, 2004 12:28 AMWhat is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow? :-)
Posted by: alfons on February 19, 2004 02:27 AMIs there a chance that the two sides in the MNG dispute will talk to each other and work something out, or has the situation gone too far?
Posted by: Lor on February 19, 2004 03:38 AMI'd like to second Av's question re: Mars rocks originating off-planet. It'd be funny if one of the rovers turned up a fossil in a rock that didn't originate on Mars- or Earth for that matter.
Posted by: Joel McKinnon on February 19, 2004 08:42 AMThis one puzzled my physics teacher: If a potato was thrown out of a spacecraft's airlock, what would happen first - would it freeze or explode?
Posted by: Greg K Nicholson on February 19, 2004 09:29 AM> would it freeze or explode?
Um, neither? It wouldn't freeze instantly since it's in a vacuum, and there's no liquid to boil it wouldn't explode either. No?
Posted by: Lor on February 19, 2004 11:20 AMAre there any plans to hire more poeple for the
Mozilla Foundation?
How about posting some pictures of the office? Its nice to relate name to faces.
Are there any new Firefox campaings planned for the next, lets say 2-3 months?
I read that Firefox 1.0 will be the last version taken from the trunk, does this mean that Firefox will kind of be in the same situation as Netscape, where only some selected bugs are added?
Posted by: José Jeria on February 19, 2004 12:10 PMWhy is it that on practically every bloody digital alarm clock the snooze time is 9 minutes?
Why not exactly 5 minutes, or 10 or 15 even...
Why, oh why 9 minutes?
Posted by: KDPJE on February 19, 2004 02:11 PM| Why, oh why 9 minutes?
That's easy.
See http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0903/glad_u_asked092403.asp
Quote:
By setting the snooze time to 9 minutes, modern digital alarm clocks only needs to watch the last digit of the time.
Posted by: alfons on February 19, 2004 02:39 PMHow do Firefox 0.8 downloads compare to Mozilla 1.6 downloads so far? Also, where's that graph showing the number of downloads of each Mozilla release that I keep hearing about?
Posted by: Jesse Ruderman on February 19, 2004 02:56 PMWhere did the Beagle go? Seems no news about it for long...
Posted by: van on February 19, 2004 04:37 PMSee what I mean? Most of these questions are good and could use an answer from you :)
Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird are a great combination and having the same clients on a variety of platforms make it very nice. But when, I wonder, will the Linux users be able to have the same integration of browser and email client as on Windows? Now one has to edit this or that preferences file on Linux, write a shell script, etc. Same story clicking on mailto: links last time I checked. It would be nice to see some true integration on the Linux side that would allow Firefox and Thunderbird to easily share resources or at least launch from either other.
I have been unable to google an answer to this question (composed of two parts). I'm looking for a number greater than zero, and not some answer like "it depends", "instantaneously", "real quick", blah, blah, blah.
Question; Part one: without protective suits, what is the life expectancy for an adult human on mars? 7 seconds? 2 hours? 75nsec? 2 minutes?
Part two: what element of mars would kill quickest? low pressure?, CO2?, cold temp?, something else?
There are some good questions here, both about Mars and Mozilla - I hope you'll be give some quick answers to a few of the short ones, 'cause one a week isn't going to keep up!
A Mozilla question - I was thinking of posting it on a newsgroup, but now you've posted this...
You apparently have a new person called Gabrielle. Kerz said she was a new QA person. So, who is she? what's her role? and are there plans for QA that QA volunteer types should know about?
Posted by: michaell on February 20, 2004 06:33 AMImmediately after the release of Mozilla Firefox 0.8, mozilla.org, mozdev.org, texturizer.net, and mozillazine.org all slowed to a complete crawl. What sort of resources are needed to prevent this when Firefox 0.9 is released (e.g., money, servers, hardware, etc.), and roughly how much would these resources cost?
In my opinion this is one of the biggest problems looming on the horizon for the Mozilla Foundation, because if Firefox keeps growing like it has, we're only seeing the tip of the iceberg. Who knows how many users we missed when Firefox 0.8 came out because they simply got tired of either 1) waiting for the download to complete, or 2) waiting for the initial Save As dialog to appear? (I had #2 happen to me on initial release. I probably waited a couple minutes and then finally gave up, figuring I'd come back in a few days.)
Posted by: Jeff Walden on February 20, 2004 07:46 AM"Um, neither? It wouldn't freeze instantly since it's in a vacuum, and there's no liquid to boil it wouldn't explode either. No?"
It would freeze because the potato gives off radiation (actually quite a bit) due to its positive temperature. On earth, the potato gets just as much radiation back so it stays the same temp but out in space, there's almost none, so it would lose energy.
ps. how about setting up a torrent for the next release cycle?
Posted by: Joe Dunsmore on February 20, 2004 08:22 AMI think one answer to the bandwidth problem is to redirect all downloads through the mirrors in the days following a release, this seems an eminently more sensible solution then piling more bandwidth on mozilla.org.
Posted by: Gids on February 20, 2004 02:58 PMGids - downloads are directed through mirrors already, although only the "primary" mirrors that are aliased to ftp.mozilla.org. They've already beefed that up by adding extra mirrors provided by AOL. A bigger issue is with mozdev and mozillazine and the other related sites.
Asa - thanks for your email (I'd email back but mozilla.org's server doesn't like me...)
Posted by: michaell on February 20, 2004 04:30 PMI've got 2 for you Asa:
We were promised by various people that we would see pictures of the Moz Foundation offices. These promises were never fufilled. Why?
Also wouldn't mind knowing why South America is south of north America?
Source: http://robert.accettura.com/gallery/museumofstupidity/space
;-)
Asa the all knowing. Please enlighten me.
Posted by: Robert Accettura on February 21, 2004 10:33 AM> What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow? :-)
http://www.style.org/unladenswallow/