FireFox 3 Download Day

Tensai · 06-05-2008, 11:27 AM

As I'm sure many of you know, FireFox 3.0 is going to be release any day now.

The developers have decided to promote a "FireFox 3 Download Day" as a way to get more people to download the new ultra-hip browser. The goal of the day is for FireFox 3 to set a record as the software most downloaded in a 24 hour period and get it into the Guiness Book of World Records.

More Information HERE

I fully support this idea, and I have pledged to download the browser on download day. But I also went a step further and wrote a small windows batch file which will allow you to download the browser from their site any number of times. For example, if you type "GetFireFox 1000" it will download the new version of the browser 1000 times, deleting the downloaded file each time it starts a new download.

When I mentioned this script to some friends, the first few thought it was a great idea. Some of them though seemed to think this was cheating. I totally understand why they say that, and in retrospect I agree with them. I'm just wondering, what the general consensus would be among my fellow mp3car'ers...

If people request it, I can put the script I wrote up for download on the official download day.

Place your votes!

jjh221 · 06-05-2008, 11:59 AM

http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord/

Tensai · 06-05-2008, 12:04 PM

Thats a better link, Thanks jjh221.

kibble · 06-05-2008, 12:14 PM

While I totally agree that it's cheating, I'm not exactly against it. However if anyone's able to do it and Mozilla wins the record, couldn't they theoretically find out how many hits they received from a particular IP?

I think that if we want them to win, we should be legit about it.

Why is it that I get the feeling that eventually M$ will release a new browser and try to do the same thing and attempt to break the record? Did you guys read about how M$ is practically paying people to use their "Live Search" thing?

Tidder · 06-05-2008, 08:22 PM

Why cheat to get to the top? Firefox is popular enough, I don't think there will be any problem at all. I would think that their counter is setup by IP, not by individual download, but who knows. A lot of ISPs use one public addy as a gateway, and DHCP private IPs to individual customers behind the gateway, so potentially there will be a lot of missed download counts if they go by IP addy. For instance, one of the local ISPs I resell for here uses a public 206.123.217.something as the gateway, then all their customers get assigned 10.15.something.something.

Anyway, long story short, don't script it.

It would be nice to see how popular it really is without tipping the scales.

Area3 · 06-05-2008, 10:10 PM

Quote:

Can we download more than one copy of Firefox per computer?

No, please play nice and only download one copy of Firefox per computer. We ask that you refrain from creating download bots or any other mechanism that would be cheating. In order for our attempt to be legitimate, each download must be human initiated.

Tensai · 06-06-2008, 11:48 AM

LOL... guess that says it all then, thanks Area3. I already decided I'm not going to use my script at all I won't make my script available to anyone else anyway. I was just curious what everyone's thoughts were on the topic.