216332 - (majorblackout) Mozilla doesn't work during massive multistate/country power outages.

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(SeaMonkey :: General, defect)

Description

[Grey Hodge (jX)]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.5a) Gecko/20030718
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.5a) Gecko/20030718

On August 14, 2003, a little after 4pm EST, most of Michigan, Ohio,
Pennsylvania, NewYork, Vermont, Connectcut, and Ontario (that's in Canada, BTW,
not sure if we handle Canadian bugs) lost electricity. I tried to load Mozilla
to go to Internet news sites to gather information about the situation, and
Mozilla refused to execute. This is a serious problem, as it makes use of
Mozilla during total blackouts impossible.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Blow out electricity for 50 million people in 6 states (Canada optional).
2. Launch Mozilla.
3. Stare at blank screen.
Actual Results:  
Pffft (exact sound computer made at me).

Expected Results:  
Load and surf teh intarweb

This seems to affect all platforms.

Comment 1

[Felix Miata]

Actually, this is better than Internet Exploder, which displays a "this page
cannot be displayed" error. I like Mozilla's blank page better. Can someone
check and see how Opera handles this? If Opera does the same thing as IE, then
this should be fixed to conform to their standard.

Comment 2

[MightyMu]

Reporter: Can you try to reproduce *after* removing the fork from the wall outlet?

Comment 3

[Jo Hermans]

Worksforme build 2003081403 on Mac OS X 10.2.6. Never saw a problem, except that
a few regulars on IRC (all channels) were missing.

PS: I'm in Europe, but that shouldn't matter. In your step 1, you never claimed
that you should try out to blow your own power. 

PS 2: to my accomplice in Pennsylvania (or was it Canada ?) : you can remove the
dead cat from that electricity pole now. It's done.

Comment 4

[Alex Vincent [:WeirdAl]]

Recommend WONTFIX for this bug.  Human beings don't work well during a 
multistate/country power outage either.  Thus, in the proper testing the ability to 
develop, much less review, a patch for this bug is HARD. 
 
-> Future? 

Comment 5

[kirun]

I phoned the power company, and asked them for a power cut so I could reproduce
this bug. The operator politely refused, and suggested I unplug my computer as a
means of reproduction.

Anybody willing to try this? I know the voltage during a power cut is the same
in the US and Europe, but the pinouts on my plugs may cause different behaviour.

Also, although the hardware is All, I think Sun machines are not affected as
solar power is usually separate from the main grid.

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

will this atrocious condition continue even after Pennsylvania power rates are lifted in 2010?

Comment 7

[Grey Hodge (jX)]

After lengthly conversations with the leading UPS vendors, none seem willing to bundle a UPS with each download of Firefox, nor any other Mozilla product. Apparently being in the business if SELLING them conflicts with just giving them away, so I see no other alternative than to mark this WONTFIX. Should in the future we can compile batteries into Firefox, it can be reopened.