We reported recently how Mozilla has mutated into Godzilla with its “this page contains unauthenticated content” warning that we now know for sure has been confusing our customers at best and losing them at worst. 

Now, under EEC rules Microsoft has to give a fair competition to all the browsers so Browser Choice has arrived.  What choice?  Is there one of these that actually works?  As far as we find, each browser works for some sites that another won’t work for, one will print an online form whilst another freezes.  There is no knowing what any website really looks like since each browser interprets it differently.  An easy way to have a winning choice would be for there to be a browser that actually works!  I mean, would you buy a car if  it would only drive on 91% of the roads, accept only certain brands of petrol and the windscreen inverted the colour spectrum?  I thought not.  Still, as long as Mozilla Godzilla doesn’t win we don’t mind!

… and a big no hand for Mozilla Corporation for kicking all online businesses where it hurts - thank you.  Just what we need is a new version of Mozilla Firefox that displays a warning message on the golden padlock on perfectly secure checkout pages.  We are not quite sure what planet these Mozilla Firefox programmers are from but we wish they’d have stayed there!  We recommend that everyone gives up on Mozilla Firefox and goes back to Internet Explorer or another browser.  This really is the last straw.  There have always been incompatibility problems with Mozilla Firefox but when you can’t even order anything from B&Q without the golden padlock showing a warning that this page contains unauthenticated content then we are going from the merely annoying to the outright ridiculous!  I expect that like other online retailers we have lost business due to the incompetence of Mozilla Corporation in releasing such a poor upgrade.  New buyers on the Internet only know that the golden padlock means it is safe to enter your card details.  If there is a warning message there that they don’t understand they are likely not to buy.  Mind you, in the end they might find out that it is happening all over the place and suspect that the problem is Mozilla Firefox and not the websites they wanted to buy from.  Of course, it is rather unfortunate for the first few websites that they abort their purchase from …

So as far as we are concerned its bye bye Mozilla and hello old IE … and we’d like to assure customers that if you have seen this warning message using Mozilla Firefox if you use IE instead you won’t get the warning message.  Why do these large corporations think they can start to play at being God?  Or in Mozilla’s case, Godzilla?

Costa are out to win more trade by doing research studies to prove that coffee lovers like their coffee better than their rivals Starbucks, Nero etc.  They claim 7 out of 10 coffee lovers prefer Costa coffee.  I’m not surprised.  I wouldn’t go in Starbucks if you paid me and my other half likes soya milk in her coffee, which Costa do at no extra charge.  But, and this is the real reason I’m writing this, why do all these places go on about great Italian coffee?  We have been going to Italy twice a year for several years now and we have yet to buy a decent cup of coffee anywhere in Italy and certainly nothing that compares with Costa coffee or the coffee we make ourselves at home.  Typically the coffees we’ve had in Italy have been expensive, small, often bitter and between cold and lukewarm.  Where did Italy get this reputation for good coffee?  Did they once deserve it and have gone downhill or what?  Anyone with the answer, please enlighten us.

A few self-employed people I know got their pension statements recently and were shocked at how much the value of their pension fund had fallen in the last year.  Some of them who have been having a rough time in the current economic climate said things like,”I struggle almost every month to make the pension contribution and then all I end up with is less than I started with!”  Well, we all know that what goes up always comes down and hopefully (fingers toes and everything crossed) what goes down will come up.  But will it do it before all the companies are full of ninety year old employees who can’t afford to retire and all the teenagers and twenty-somethings are on the dole?  In the meantime, maybe we’d reduce the level of depression if all pension statements and bank statements were legally required to have a health warning on the envelope that ran something like this:

WARNING!  Do not open this envelope.  Opening this envelope can harm your mental equilibrium and may cause severe reactive depression.  If in doubt, consult your doctor.

But I doubt it would make the financial sector get their act together any quicker somehow …