The Firefox evangelists at Mozilla have a novel goal: they want to set a Guinness World Record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours. To get there, the open source browser builders declared a Download Day and are soliciting pledges to grab the browser on release day, which hasn’t yet been announced.

Interesting idea, and I sure hope the marketing folks had a long talk with the network group before running with this one. It’s normally sound practice to try and spread out major traffic so as to not overburden your network. Mozilla learned that lesson when it first implemented automatic updates in Firefox- it didn’t stagger them out well enough and ended up slamming their network.

Here’s hoping they’re better prepared this time around (I strongly suspect they are). In any case, I’m eager to see the new browser launch, and even more eager to see my must-have add-ons (like Foxmarks) update for version 3

Hackers took over Comcast Corp.’s Web portal for several hours overnight, denying 14.1 million subscribers access to the cable company’s site for e-mail, news and technical support.

The front page of Comcast.net went down shortly before 11 p.m. EDT Wednesday and was replaced with a note saying the hackers had “RoXed” Comcast, according to postings at BroadbandReports.com.

Comcast spokeswoman Jennifer Khoury said Thursday that the hijacking had been reversed in the morning, but that it was possible some users were still unable to access Comcast.net and Web-based e-mail.

There was no indication that e-mail or other private information was compromised by the attack, Comcast said. It didn’t stop customers from getting their e-mail through programs like Outlook.

The hackers appeared to have seized control of the Comcast.net domain name at registrar Network Solutions Inc. and redirected it to other servers, Khoury said.