If you support the AFL's only purple team then you might think that it was about time your fortunes changed. However, some other clubs have been without Premiership success for much longer. Here's a chart of years since each club last won a Premiership (or, in the Docker's case, since they entered the competition):
The Graphical AFL Ladder is back for 2008. This is my (not so secret) weapon in the office tipping competition. I wonder how I'd go if I based my tips each week purely on percentage or ladder position.
Tibet, land of lamas, has been in the news recently. Geographically-challenged people may be surprised to know that if it were a country it would be about the tenth largest in the world. It makes up over a quarter of China's surface area.
I was going to display a lovely map from Google or Yahoo indicating Tibet's size and location, but the entire region appears to have gone missing. If anyone finds it, please notify someone tall.
Bonus titbit: According to the Dialecticon tidbit is preferred over titbit by 98% of Americans and 92% of Australians.
Here's a problem you might think could be solved by a little redistribution of food. However, it's slightly complicated by the fact it's generally the poor people in a population who are either overweight or unable to obtain enough food.
Inspired by an advertisement in the New Scientist for Australian Ethical Investment, and using the data from Fortune's Global 500 for 2007:
Wouldn't it be nice if you could buy a normal looking car that was completely powered by solar cells covering its surface. If you follow the World Solar Challenge, in which self-sufficient solar cars speed across Australia, then you might think that it won't be long before this technology reaches the mainstream. However, there's still a huge gap between the energy that can be harnessed from the sun and the internal combustion engine.
In the chart, the solar value is for a car covered in 6 square metres of the most advanced solar cells on the planet (almost reaching the efficiency of those on the International Space Station). The Toyota Yaris is the lowest-powered small car that I'd still find fun to race off from traffic lights.
Bear in mind that most of the time these cars don't need full power. So, could I retrofit a Yaris with batteries and solar cells for my daily 15 minute commute?
To make things easy, I'll plug the car into the mains overnight to recharge, but only enough to get to work. I then leave it out in the sun for 8 hours, filling the batteries with 2 * 8 = 16 kWh. To get home with conservative driving techniques I need about 40 kW for 15 minutes, ie. 40 * 0.25 = 10 kWh. Woohoo! I make it home, with power left for the following day. Let's hope that it won't take too many years for the unrealistic assumptions in these calculations to be rectified with technology.
It's amazing how quickly home ownership has gone from an unattainable dream to a common occurrence. This is one of the wealth of interesting factoids that I found in A Century of Change:Trends in UK statistics since 1900, a report from the UK parliament.
Front-loading washing machines were developed as a more efficient alternative to the top-loading variety. They use less water and electricity, and are more compact and gentler on clothes. However, although popular in Europe for many years, they have yet to catch on in America.
Updated 7-Jan-2007: Added Australian figures, where front-loaders have been increasing market share rapidly from just 12% in 2000.
What better way to test Google's new chart API than with the exciting recent Australian election. Here are the first preferences by party, for the House of Representatives.
I have also charted the first preferences votes over the past four elections (the Liberal / National coalition were in power from 1996 until 2007).
Looking again at the chart API, if you check the properties of these charts then you can see the url parameters used to create them. This means that if you like a chart that someone else has created, you can copy and modify it at your leisure. That is, you don't just have the image of the chart to play with, but everything used to create that chart too.
As you'd expect from Google, the API documentation is complete and straightforward, and liberally sprinkled with examples. Even so, I'm sure it won't be long before some industrious developer builds a user-friendly web front-end, so that even the most timid of users could easily create a handy chart.
In some areas the car industry has not progressed much at all in the last century...
I dare not even consider the SUV.
As noted in ON LINE Opinion there's quite a disparity in the ratio of males to females imprisoned throughout the world.
You can look at the data yourself from The Seventh United Nations Survey on Crime Trends and the Operations of Criminal Justice Systems (1998 - 2000). I grabbed the MS Excel pivot tables and manipulated the data using OpenOffice datapilot to get my figures.
On Thursday the UN adopted the Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which outlines their rights and outlaws discrimination against them. Although the declaration was overwhelmingly supported, it was opposed by some notable countries, namely Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States.
There's a good summary of the declaration, and the reasons that various countries voted against it, in the Wikipedia. The Australian position should be rectified soon, as the opposition have vowed to ratify it if they win government, which pollsters believe will happen this year. Canada's position has also been criticised by their opposition.
I just watched an interesting Frontline documentary called When Kids Get Life (viewable online), about children who are treated as adults after they commit a crime, and are sentenced to life in prison without chance of parole. It's also discussed in The American Prospect. Below is the headline statistic:
If you've been annoyed by the recent introduction of advertisements which break into SBS programming, then you might be further annoyed by how little money SBS earns from them:
The eminently non-annoying advertising between programs (which provides a handy buffer ensuring that the start of programs is not easily missed) brings in an additional $29 million.
The current government has been notoriously stingy in their arts funding. If they increased their funding of SBS in line with inflation then in-program advertising could be removed, and viewers would universally rejoice.
Who knew that reigning over Great Britain was so dangerous?
Although Microsoft aren't admitting the actual figures, retailers and educated guessers suggest that 30% of Xbox 360 consoles are dying. This compares with the Playstation 3's official failure rate of less than 1%.
Does this deter prospective purchasers of the Xbox 360, especially now that Microsoft have belatedly offered a 3 year warranty? At the very least, it might make some people delay buying till they're sure Microsoft have got the problems sorted out.
Which country is the most obsessed with Harry Potter? The book sales indicated by Nielsen Media Research show that Britain and Australia own the most Harry Potter books per person:
Will the final book of the series propel sales to one per person in Britain. It's not far off...
Smoking is hazardous to your health. As the Quit organisation notes:
If cigarette smokers commence smoking as teenagers and do not quit, then eventually about half of them will be killed by tobacco, in middle or old age. This excess burden of death falls particularly heavily upon the 45-64 year old age group. Smokers between these ages are three times more likely to die prematurely than lifelong non-smokers of the same age, and in the 65-84 age group, smokers are around twice as likely to die compared to lifelong non-smokers.
In addition, a study reported in the British Medical Journal found that:
Men who never smoke have a 78% chance of reaching 73; those who start smoking by the age of 20 and never stop have a 42% chance.
The Australian mentioned that the United States has been criticised for not accepting more Iraqi refugees displaced by the war in Iraq:
Note, however, that these figures are pretty insignificant compared to the millions of Iraqi refugees now living in Syria, Jordan and other Middle Eastern countries.
There was a suggestion recently in The Australian that the government has been buying votes for the upcoming election by allocating road funding mainly to electorates not held by the opposition Labor party.
Of 89 road grants worth $250 million revealed in the Senate yesterday, 78 are in government or independent electorates. Only 11 are in Labor seats - most of them marginal. ... A total of 22 Liberal electorates were given $119.32 million for 44 projects, six Nationals electorates received $57.24 million for 23 projects and seven Labor seats were awarded $28 million for 11 projects.Three independent electorates - Calare, Kennedy and New England - all keenly sought by the Government, received $16.61 million for five projects.
The article doesn't actually do the sums to see if Labor actually received less than expected funding based on the proportion of seats held by them in Parliament, so I present that here:
Yep, that looks like a pork barrel.
In Europe they're moving towards banning battery egg production within the next five years, and consumers in many European countries have already switched to free-range eggs. In contrast, this animal welfare issue has not yet become important to Australians, as the following chart shows:
It seems odd that Germany has so few large companies given its huge economy. According to Wikipedia it has the third-largest economy in the world, and is the top exporter. And yet, Forbes lists very few of its companies in the World's 2000 Largest Public Companies, especially compared to similarly populated European countries:
An interesting Newsweek poll on US attitudes to religion appeared yesterday. I had to estimate the numbers for the Australian comparison in the chart below, but the religions of most Australian politicians is unknown and unimportant to the vast majority of voters. I do not know the religions of the five Premiers of Western Australia who have been in charge whilst I've been living here.
According to Google, Australia has the highest per capita:
Who am I to question the wisdom of Google?
From The Guardian comes a nice comparison of the average carbon footprint of a suburbanite from the USA with a city-dweller from Hong Kong:
How well has the current Australian government, in office since 1996, been managing responsible energy sourcing? They certainly made the right noises in 1997, with their Renewed Focus on Renewable Energy:
Environment Minister Robert Hill said that renewable energy is the global key to long-term greenhouse emission reductions."At last reckoning, energy generation accounted for over 220 million tonnes or just under half of Australia's greenhouse gas emissions. For that reason the energy sector remains the major focus of our response activity.
"Today's announcement by the Prime Minister includes a target for retailers and major wholesale purchasers of electricity to source an additional 2 per cent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2010. These sources include photovoltaics, biomass, solar hot water, wind or other emerging technologies.
"On current projections, renewable energy was expected to decline as a share of Australian energy supply. This package will not just halt that slide but will lead to a growth in the share of renewables. By encouraging the growth of renewable technologies now, Australia will be in a position to progressively increase the share of renewable energy beyond 2010."
Unfortunately, the evidence points to a downward trend in renewable energy use, as a percentage of total energy generation, and in solar generation as a percentage of world production.
(Source: The Weekend Australian Magazine, March 3-4 2007)
Despite being seven years old and constantly overshadowed in the media by its newer, shinier competitors, the Playstation 2 has such a large user base that it reigns supreme in game sales. Here are the statistics from The Age on final quarter 2006 game sales in Australia.
According to Malcolm Gladwell in his book "Blink", there is a much greater percentage of tall men amongst CEOs of US Fortune 500 companies than in the general US population. I think he's excluding the effects of really thick soles.
The Washington Post took a look at how long web browser vendors took to fix security flaws in 2006, with the result being another good reason to switch from Internet Explorer to Mozilla Firefox.
Either Western Australia is getting hotter, or people are becoming less tolerant of high temperatures, as the last decade has seen a massive increase in the percentage of households with air-conditioning:
| aeroplane |  50 |
| bus (national) | 98 |
| Toyota Prius | 144 |
| train | 182 |
| walking | 235 |
| cycling | 653 |
Now, can we have more bike paths, please?
The Wikipedia has further details about the World's tallest structures and the Kola Superdeep Borehole.
Urban consumers in Australia are well aware of their water usage, because of the water restrictions currently in force in most cities. However, their water consumption is minor compared to agriculture: (from an Australian Bureau of Statistics report "Australia's Environment: Issues and Trends 2006")
Most of the water used for agricultural production was for irrigation of crops and pastures, with the rest used for other agricultural purposes such as stock drinking water and piggery cleaning.Household water use includes water for drinking, cooking, cleaning and outdoors (in gardens and swimming pools).
From an Australian Bureau of Statistics report on Australia's Environment: Issues and Trends 2006 is this statistic on European municipal waste management in 2003:
In these days of environmental concern about energy consumption you might think that games consoles would be becoming more efficient. In fact, the increasing efficiency is completely overshadowed by the increasing demands placed on the console. This example, of the first and third generation Sony Playstations, shows the result of over 10 years technological advancement.
A new report from Handicap Interational shows that cluster bombs are incredibly accurate — at targeting civilians:
Countries such as Britain, the US, China and Russia oppose the banning of cluster bombs.
The West Australian notes that forcing children to walk to school each day would contribute to their fitness.
Apparently, Western Australia has a lot of fat kids:
Nutritional toxicologist Peter Dingle said some data showed as high as 25-30 per cent of WA children aged five to 12 were obese, compared with 20-28 per cent nationally and 30-35 per cent in the US.
From The Guardian's review of Daniel Gilbert's book Stumbling on Happiness: Why the Future Won't Feel the Way You Think It Will comes this interesting statistic about how cancer patients view themselves.
The UN voted on a number of important draft resolutions last week.
First up was a vote on "Towards an arms trade treaty: establishing common international standards for the import, export and transfer of conventional arms". The Guardian notes that it has the support of a dozen Nobel peace prize laureates, and The Telegraph comments on the result of the vote.
Next, small arms:
A draft resolution on renewed determination towards the total elimination of nuclear weapons:
This is the US explanation:
[Christina Rocca (USA)] said that she had voted against the draft, however, because of its support for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which the United States opposed. The same considerations applied to the draft on the treaty itself (L.48). She did support that draft’s operative paragraph 5, which condemned the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s nuclear test and asked it not to conduct further ones.
Now the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, which bans all nuclear explosions in all environments, for military or civilian purposes:
A draft resolution on a nuclear-weapon-free southern hemisphere and adjacent areas:
Explaining his vote on the nuclear-weapon-free southern hemisphere, L.20, and speaking on behalf of France, as well as the United States, JOHN DUNCAN ( United Kingdom) said that, as in past years, his delegations had voted against the resolution. Its preamble referred to the freedom of the high seas, while including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the high seas. He believed that was contradictory, as the area would not apply to the high seas.
I won't be rushing out to buy the PS3 when it is released in mid November, but price isn't my main issue. In Australia at least, the Basic PS3 isn't much more expensive than the PS2 was on launch:
Equally of concern to me is its excessive girth. They done a good job of disguising its size with futuristic lines, but that won't help it fit into a narrow space any better.
I was prepared to wait for the svelte Nintendo DS Lite, and I'm prepared to wait for a slimmer (and cheaper) PS3.
All through my youth I rode my bicycle daily. Then, when helmets became compulsory in Western Australia on 1st January 1992, I stopped.
I was reminded of the good old days of people being responsible for the welfare of their own skulls by an odd pro-helmet article in the The West Australian.
Figures obtained by The West Australian reveal the number of cyclists ending up dead or in hospital after not wearing a helmet has escalated in the past two years. [...] Two of the four cyclists killed on the State's roads in 2005 were not wearing helmets and in 2004 one of the three cyclists who died was not wearing a helmet.
Quite apart from the fact that their statistics do not support their pro-helmet stance is the startlingly small number of cycling fatalities. It turns out that 96% of cycling deaths occur on roads, so the Australian Government's Fatal Road Crash Database is a relevant source of information on the subject.
Given that the state has a population of 2 million, this means that cycling is approximately as dangerous as getting out of bed.
The West Australian is not alone. Pointless statistics are the order of the day in both pro and anti mandatory cycle helmet sites, where overwhelming their readers with numbers is seen as better than good reasoning. Instead of wading through their data I recommend the rant at Meditations on the Helmet Wars, which generally coincides with my views.
However, the best the internet has to offer is the ever-reliable Wikipedia. Below I've plucked out my favourite points from their article about the humble bike helmet, but the whole article is worth reading as the best summary I could find of the current situation.
The major source of serious injury to cyclists is impact with motor vehicles. Current helmet standards are inadequate to protect against such collisions, the energies involved are routinely in excess of the rated capacity of the best motorsport helmets.
Evidence for the efficacy of helmets in preventing serious injury is contradictory and inconclusive. In general, analyses of the relative merits of different bike safety interventions put helmets low down, because no helmet will reduce the probability of crashing (and there is some evidence that helmets may increase this likelihood). Proactive measures including bike maintenance and riding skills are far more important. Although the link is not causal it is observed that the countries with the best cycle safety records (Denmark and the Netherlands) have among the lowest levels of helmet use. Their bicycle safety record is generally attributed to public awareness and understanding of cyclists, education, and to some extent separation from motor traffic.
The most widely-quoted case-control study, by Thompson, Rivara, and Thompson, reported an 85% reduction in the risk of head injury by using a helmet [...] Another analysis of the source data form this study showed a 70% reduction in lower limb injuries from helmet use.
Many believe that a helmet can save a cyclist's life, an idea which is repeatedly asserted in debate. There is no sound evidential basis for this claim and there are no known cases where mass helmet use has actually reduced the number of cyclists' deaths or serious head injuries. Association with increased risk of death has been reported.
The major documented effect of helmet laws is to reduce cycle use. [...] Cycle helmet use correlates inversely with the level of cycling in a given country.
Finally, the SMH has an easy-reading anti-helmet summary which gives some hope to those of us who wish once again to feel the wind in our hair.
The Financial Times talk about one of the reasons for the strength of the Taliban - the salary of their fighters.
"The Taliban are supported by Pakistan and they get money from the drugs trade, so they get more pay than our soldiers," said Colonel Myuddin Ghouri of the national army's 205 Corp.
Not unexpectedly, the Arms Trade Resource Center is a great source of data such as this chart showing where arms from the United States are sold:
More recently, Amnesty International reported on the failure of a UN conference to agree on global controls of the sale of small arms due to a small number of vociferous opponents. Reuters has more details about the "total meltdown".
Are people more scared of radiation emitted from a microwave oven than from a mobile phone? Given that most people have their heads pressed against their ovens for less time than against their phones, wouldn't common sense suggest that phones should have a lower allowable emitted radiation limit? Hmm...
I can experientially attest to the friendliness of dolphins, but rely on Brain Facts and Figures for the following chart:
When Firefox 0.9 was released in 2004 I had a quick look at the size of the downloads of Firefox and its ancestors. Two years on it's time to revisit the subject, and check whether the much dreaded bloat has arrived.
This chart comprises Phoenix, Firebird and Firefox, and where both an exe and a zip were offered the smaller of the two is used.
| 0.1 | 8.3 |
| 0.2 | 7.4 |
| 0.3 | 7.0 |
| 0.4 | 7.1 |
| 0.5 | 6.1 |
| 0.6 | 6.7 |
| 0.7 | 6.0 |
| 0.8 | 6.2 |
| 0.9 | 4.7 |
| 1.0 | 4.8 |
| 1.0.8 | 4.7 |
| 1.5 | 5.1 |
| 1.5.0.4 | 5.0 |
| 2.0 | 5.6 |
In summary, there's no sign of the middle-aged beer belly yet.
Updated 25 Oct 2006: Added Firefox 2
The amount of Australian content on Australian television has been significantly eroded over the years. Most recently it has been affected by the introduction of the Australia-USA Free Trade Agreement and the (perpetually nascent) digital television. The former was bitterly opposed by the Australian film and television industry, which feared that they'd be sidelined by cheaper American imports.
The Sydney Morning Herald touches on the importance of Australian television to the building and maintenance of a national character.
The possible demise of free television because of its failure to modernise behind a wall of protection might be greeted with a regretful shrug of the shoulders, in much the same way as we regard the demise of textile manufacturing, except that while there's no obvious difference between a Chinese shirt and an Australian one, there is a big difference between American TV shows and Australian ones.The advertising money that's channelled through the networks' programming departments into local drama helps form the national character, in which case Australia is becoming a cipher, a non-entity. According to Harold Mitchell, just 9 per cent of fiction programs on Australian TV in the past 12 months were locally produced. This compares with 86 per cent in the UK, 56 per cent in Germany, 47 per cent in Italy, 31 per cent in France and 21 per cent in Sweden.
To take an example in a slightly different area, I watch a lot of French films. That's not because French films are inherently good, but because they produce so many that some are bound to be the type that I like. In contrast, Australia currently creates so little television drama that it's not unexpected that there is nothing that I like.
The Evatt Foundation shows the great disparity in size with the USA, Australia's main source of entertainment.
Over the past 5 years Australia has produced on average 34 feature films per year worth about US$100 million, while in the same period the US has produced an average of 656 feature films per year worth about US$10.8 billion.Australia has 28 commercial free-to-air television stations affiliated with 3 networks; 2 national public broadcasters; and 5 subscription TV operators offering up to 56 channels. In the US there are more than 1,500 TV stations, most of which are affiliated with 5 major networks, and 9,000 cable TV systems.
Finally, the Screen Producers Assocation of Australia has an article about the reduction in funding and drama output of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Of 17 OECD countries surveyed about levels of public broadcasting funding, Australia came in at 16th, behind countries including Belgium, Ireland and New Zealand.
I've previously noted the lack of funding for the ABC. That's just one component in the globalisation of entertainment which could lead to the situation of people going for overseas holidays and seeing the same old stuff on television everywhere they go.
I liked this interesting titbit from the New Statesman's article on the US response to global warming, Can America go green?:
There's something morbidly fascinating about death statistics, especially when they extend into unexpected areas such as computer gaming. Such data is concisely presented in a table at DanceSafe, a site for recreational drug users to gauge the risks of their substances. A more complete explanation of the statistics is at Drugtext. It shows how distinct dangerous events such as parachuting can be compared to potentially hazardous ongoing lifestyle or health issues such as diabetes.
The disparity in prices for railway tickets in different countries within Europe can be quite startling.
One of the excuses for recent increases in rail travel ticket prices in the UK is the cost of fuel:
Rail and bus fares are on the increase, in part because of fuel costs. In June, First Great Western blamed its second ticket hike this year on rising oil prices. A spokesman said that as the company ran high-speed long distance trains, rather than local services, "we are more greatly affected than other operators by increases in fuel prices".
However, the cost of fuel in Latvia is only 30% less than in the UK, which doesn't explain why train travel is 15 times cheaper there.
Greenpeace has compiled data on the amount of subsidies that European governments are giving to the nuclear, fossil fuel and renewable energy sectors.
They note the suggestion from the World Energy Council:
diverting just one year of Europe's fossil fuel and nuclear subsidy - around $US15 billion - could revolutionise the entire international solar renewable energy industry, making it cost-competitive with traditional sources of energy
The late Pope John Paul II canonised well over half of the 784 saints formally recognized by the Catholic Church. Perhaps modern technology allowed him to work quickly though a backlog of centuries, or maybe there have been more miracles in recent times. In any case, he was certainly kept busy.
A fortnight ago the UN created an Amnesty International approved Human Rights Council.
There was quite widespread support for its creation, but also some notable objectors.
A running gag at the United Nations is that whenever the United States takes a defiant stand against an overwhelming majority of the 191 member states, there are only three countries that predictably vote with Washington most of the time -- whether it is right or dead wrong.As expected, this incongruous voting pattern was repeated Wednesday when the three loyal U.S. allies -- Israel and the two tiny Pacific Island nations of Palau and the Marshall Islands -- were the only member states to stand in unison with the United States when it rejected a resolution calling for the creation of a new Human Rights Council.
This can be analysed in a number of ways:
The exclusive NewsMax annual feature " United Nations Report Card" reveals that when it comes to supporting the U.S. on key issues, almost every nation in the world body gets a failing grade.NewsMax examined 12 key General Assembly votes taken on issues of critical importance to the U.S., and found that only four countries -- Israel and the Pacific Ocean nations of Palau, Micronesia and Marshall Islands sided with the U.S. on most of the issues.
The rest of the U.N. members voted against the U.S. position the vast majority of the time, and dozens of countries voted along with America ZERO PERCENT of the time.
Due to recent oil discoveries, the west central African country of Equatorial Guinea has gone from very poor to very rich in only a few years. I wonder how such a great disparity in wealth with its neighbours, as shown below using figures from the CIA World Factbook, manifests itself in daily life.
Whilst PM John Howard may have problems saying sorry to the Aboriginal people for past injustices, there is no excuse for the continuing under-funding of their medical care. Though many live "inconveniently" far from cities, Australia is a very wealthy country that can and should do more to bring the standard of Aboriginal health care up to that of the general population.
It has been over a year since an ominous report warned of "climatic tipping points'', such as the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets melting and the Gulf Stream shutting down, if action on stopping global warming was not taken soon. Meeting the Climate Challenge called on the G-8 leading industrial nations to cut carbon emissions, double their research spending on green technology and work with India and China to build on the Kyoto Protocol.
LiveScience mentions:
According to the report, urgent action is needed to stop the global average temperature rising by 2 degrees Celsius above the level in 1750 -- the approximate start of the Industrial Revolution when mankind first started significantly polluting the atmosphere with carbon dioxide.
No accurate temperature readings were available for 1750, the report said, but since 1860, global average temperature had risen by 0.8 percent to 15 degrees Celsius.
The two degrees rise could be avoided by keeping the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere below 400 parts per million (ppm). Current concentrations of 379 ppm "are likely to rise above 400 ppm in coming decades and could rise far higher under a business-as-usual scenario,'' the report warned.
| 1750 | 275 |
| 2005 | 380 |
| Tipping point | 400 |
The tipping point value mentioned is only an guess estimate. Perhaps it'll turn out to be 381ppm, or 450ppm. Whatever it is, if we don't stop pumping out greenhouse gases at the current rate, we'll definitely reach it. It's just a matter of time.
As a followup to my previous post about which companies manufactured the different brands of cars I now present a short table of the market capitalisation of some of the major players.
| Daimler Chrysler | 57B |
| Ford | 16B |
| General Motors | 13B |
| Honda | 52B |
| Toyota | 166B |
I used Google stock information to get this information - just type the company symbol, eg. TM for Toyota, GM for General Motors, into Google to get a brief summary of that company's financial data.
There are various ways of comparing companies. Market capitalisation is the cost of buying a company in its entirety, and I chose it for this chart as it's easy to understand and the figures are readily available. The slightly rubbery aspect to it is that it takes into account future expectations for a company.
One of the most popular blogs on the internet, Boing Boing, is now seeing noticably more visits from Mozilla Firefox than from Internet Explorer.
W3Schools shows the long term browser trends amongst the more technically literate people who visit their site. It indicates that Firefox use is still increasing sharply.
There is really no reason for these people to suffer any longer. Firefox is quick to download, easy to install, and then updates itself with no fuss whenever it needs to. I believe it is the duty of all technically knowledgable people to assist their friends and family to browse the web in safety and comfort. It's free, and well worth at least a test run.
If you only care about security, but not the extra features offered by Firefox, then the switch from IE is pretty straightforward. On installation Firefox will offer to bring across your bookmarks, and then you can browse the internet just as you did before. Gradually, you may notice some pleasant new features that bring incremental improvements to your browsing experience.
Tabbed browsing is something that doesn't sound too interesting until you actually use it, and wonder how you ever did without. I find that it speeds up my browsing by allowing me to open new pages whilst remaining on my current page. For example, if I'm on a page of movies reviews, I can click with the middle mouse button (usually the mouse wheel) on links to have them open in another tab. I can then switch to the other tabs at my leisure, and close them when I'm done.
Another aspect of Firefox is its support of extensions, which are user-coded enhancements to the browser. I have added four extensions to my browser: