

A sobering Internet metric regarding Haiti - DEinspanjer
http://blog.mozilla.com/metrics/2010/01/14/internet-usage-in-haiti/

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ShabbyDoo
What is more sobering is that, even before the quake, it appears that there
were fewer than 10K Firefox users in a country of 9M people! It's not a
surprise to me at all that the country's communications infrastructure was
damaged.

~~~
zefhous
Um... _More_ sobering? I have to disagree.

~~~
ShabbyDoo
The country's previous lack of eletronic knowledge sharing is certainly more
sobering than the lack of Firefox pings. That a 3rd World country's
communications infrastructure could be damaged by an earthquake is hardly
surprising. That 2%+ of any country's population could die in a single natural
disaster.....nevermind the ping rate.

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kqr2
OT: Does anyone know how I can disable firefox's daily ping to mozilla?

Checking about:config, I see browser.send_pings, however, that controls <a
ping>.

<http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.send_pings>

~~~
DEinspanjer
There are a few automatic connections made to Mozilla servers by products
distributed by Mozilla. The are mentioned in the privacy policy:
<http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/legal/privacy/firefox-en.html>

And there is a support article with instructions on disabling them:
[http://support.mozilla.com/en-
US/kb/Firefox+makes+unrequeste...](http://support.mozilla.com/en-
US/kb/Firefox+makes+unrequested+connections#Auto_update_checking)

Note that these "pings" aren't implemented as "phone home" type tracking.
Rather, they are necessary parts of useful features such as automatic update
tracking and extension blocklisting.

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BCM43
So... People do not log on to the internet after an earthquake? Is there
something surprising about this?

~~~
Scriptor
The Internet could be very useful as a way to connect and find relatives and
nearby aid, as well as information in general. If there was a major earthquake
where I live and I still could get online, you could bet that I'd use this to
find out as much as possible about the situation.

The graph is evidence of the complete breakdown of infrastructure in Haiti.

~~~
robryan
Their probably was a very basic internet infrastructure to begin with, based
on the graph you can pretty much conclude that internet pretty much doesn't
exist there right now.

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ErrantX
_it’s based on a once daily “ping” that we see from active users_

Slightly off topic but are they referring to the opt-in "provide anonymous"
usability statistics or something else?

~~~
DEinspanjer
See my above comment regarding where the statistic came from.

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sailormoon
Apparently, no-one in Haiti stays up past 10pm.

~~~
teej
Or the only installations of Firefox are at PC cafes, places likely to be
closed at night.

