Get Firefox 3 (if you can!)

As mentioned in "On Computers" Monday, the Mozilla organization's new Web browser, is worth downloading and experimenting with, especially since it's free. The Mozilla folks although thought they'd try to set a new world's record for number of copies of software downloaded in a single day: the counting began at 10 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time on Tuesday.

But those who log onto the Firefox or Mozilla Web sites may get a rude surprise: Instead of finding the software download, they'll get the digital equivalent of a busy signal: a white screen page showing "Http/1.1 Service Unavailable" as the answer.

UPDATE: It turns out that the main Mozilla servers were down much of the day, according to a report on the C-Net News.com Web site. Demand was great and Mozilla's computer network was overwhelmed. As of about 6:30 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, the download sites are back up and you should be able to join the party by clicking here, for example. I grabbed one; apparently, you can now do the same.

-- Mark Kellner, The Washington Times