It seems Lindows has changed their name again.
I think I liked LinDash better. Even if it was obviously a temporary gimmick.
Category: Tech
It never fails
I finally get around to downloading Mandrake Linux 10 Community Edition, and they release the “Official” edition.
(Mandrake has moved to a release model where they release a download-only “community” version, refine it and fix bugs for a couple of months, and then release the “official” version to put on CDs and sell in boxes. Essentially, it’s recognizing the fact that new bugs are always found shortly after release of any software, because the average user and average beta tester are not the same, and a lot more people will install the “final” version of a product than will beta test it.)
Interesting omission
CNET posted an article today, Concern grows over browser security, about the rise in browser-based attacks (mostly spoofed sites for phishing, but also attempts to install viruses and other malware through web browser security holes).
What’s interesting about the article is that nowhere does it mention Mozilla, Opera or Safari.
Could it be that attacks through these browsers are less common than attacks through Internet Explorer, even adjusted for market share? (Sure, IE has more than 90%, but there are a lot of people using the others.)
Or could it be that the author has succumbed to the “Web Browser = MSIE” belief?
If nothing else, you’d think that their statistics would have a bit more information, but it’s a single number for “browser” attacks. Nothing more detailed than that.
To be fair, the press release doesn’t provide any better numbers. In fact, it mentions no browser by name at all. (One can hope their data is a bit more detailed, but the purpose of the study appears to have been to identify trends in types of attacks, not in the software targeted.) And yet IE is the only browser CNET mentions, despite the alternatives’ better security records.
Silly Censors
A few weeks ago I was looking at the website error logs and noticed some attempts to access images with names like /flash/images/%20%20%20%20%20%20%20ans3.jpg. I got around to looking at it today, and all of them are the same name, all of them from browsers looking at my profile of the Teen Titans, which includes an image called teentitans3.jpg.
I finally realized what’s going on. Some moronic filter has broken up the name not as “teen titans” but as “teen tit ans,” decided it must be porn, and replaced the “offending” words with spaces (%20 is the code for a space in a URL).
It really makes me wonder how badly mangled the page looks to these people, especially if it turns out that every instance of the team’s name gets pointlessly erased.
Further reading: The Censorware Project, Peacefire, Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Eeeww! (EvilML)
I just caught a reference to Arve Bersvendsen’s EvilML file. What is it? It’s an HTML document designed to make use of the fact that HTML is, technically, SGML, which has all kinds of strange shortcuts you can use. Of course, no one has ever bothered to make a web browser that actually handles all these shortcuts.
It’s hard to describe it. The code is barely readable. The first line of text looks like this: <body<h1<em>Emphasized</> in <h1></>. No browser in existence is likely to display it correctly, and yet — amazingly enough — it validates…
I already thought that moving to the more rigidly-defined XHTML was a good idea, but suddenly it makes a lot more sense!
Apple Operating Systems
I found this article on OSNews: A History of Apple’s Operating Systems. The article starts with the Apple II and works its way up to Mac OS X, touching all the various branches in between – as well as Apple OSes that never quite made it out the door, and other OSes – like NeXtStep (whatever the capitalization is) – that influenced it on its way. Hey, where else are you going to find screenshots of the Apple I and Macintosh System 1?
It’s a fascinating read. I suspect the site will be due for another Slashdotting soon…
Far-Flung Finances
In CNN’s report on the discovery that Mars once had liquid water – and thus may have once been hospitable to life – it mentions that the Spirit and Opportunity missions cost about $820 million. The IMDB estimates the budget for Spider-Man 2 at $200 million.
In other words, each mission cost two big-budget summer movies.
Maybe we should get Hollywood to finance space exploration. It might help placate the “We’re wasting too much money in space!” crowd without abandoning the pursuit of knowledge.