Yesterday it worked.
Today it is not working.
Servers are like that when some daemon was running in tests but wasn’t set to start on boot.
Category: Tech
Browser Sniffing Strikes Again!
As the first major web browser to reach a double-digit version, Opera has been testing out alpha releases of version 10 for months now. One of the early problems they encountered was bad browser detection scripts that only looked at the first digit of a version number and decided that Opera 10 was actually Opera 1, and therefore too old to handle modern web pages.
After extensive testing, they’ve concluded that the best way to work around this is to pretend to be Version 9.80. From now on, all versions of Opera will identify themselves as “Opera/9.80” with the real version appearing later in the user-agent string.
For example:
Opera/9.80 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X; U; en) Presto/2.2.15 Version/10.00
This is similar to the way all Gecko-based browsers identify themselves as Mozilla/5.0, then list the real browser name and version number later on, which makes me wonder why they didn’t just stick with that increasingly irrelevant prefix — though I suppose any scripts looking specifically for Opera versions might have still picked up Opera/10 later on in the ID.
It’ll be some time before Firefox or Safari runs into this issue, but with Internet Explorer 8 in wide release, you have to wonder…what will Microsoft do when they get to IE 10?
Sure it is
I love 419 scam emails that start out by saying that sure, most of the messages like this are fake, but THIS one’s real!
Double Meanings
A pair of spam subjects that recently came across the spam traps:
Looking to become a published author?
Give her climax after climax
Hmm, that sounds like writing advice when you take them together.
Kindle DX: A Digital Comics Platform?
Amazon has announced the Kindle DX, a new version of their e-book reader with a 9.7-inch screen. Unless I’ve got my numbers wrong, that makes it larger than the standard manga page, though not quite as big as the standard American comic book page. And it’s only 1/3 of an inch thick, comparable to a typical trade paperback.
This could be the first e-reader device suitable for simply taking comics formatted for the printed page and transferring them to a tablet. No need to break it down and show one panel at a time like most iPhone or Android comics. No need to zoom and pan. Just transfer the whole page.
Sure, it’s only black and white, but there are plenty of comics produced in B&W, or reformatted for printing in cheap collections like Marvel Essentials or DC’s Showcase Presents series.
Imagine 30 years of Justice League of America or Spider-Man in the space of the latest trade.
The only drawback is the steep price tag: at $489, I’m not picking one up anytime soon.
15 years of the Opera Web Browser
Hard to believe Opera has been around for 15 years. It’s only 14 since its first release, but 15 years ago two programmers started the project that became the Opera web browser.
I’ve been using Opera off and on for about 10 years. I think it was 1999 when a classmate showed me Opera 3.6, and how fast and small it was. (This was back when the installer fit on a floppy disk — and back when that actually made a difference.) I’ve followed it as they expanded from Windows onto Mac and Linux, onto high-end cell phones with Opera Mobile, and finally onto every Java-capable phone with Opera Mini. I’ve watched as they went from trialware to ad-supported to freeware business models. And while the desktop browser is no longer the speed demon it used to be, it’s been a consistent innovator in terms of both browser features and web capabilities.
So I’d just like to say: Happy 15th birthday, Opera! Just think, in a year, you’ll be old enough to drive!*
*In California, anyway. I think in Norway the driving age is 18.
Ambitious, crazy, or both?
Interesting read: Backing up Geocities: Lessons so far.
A side-effect of the whole process is I now know way, way, way too much about Geocities than I ever expected to. We’ve had to dissect every aspect of how the site functions to understand how to mirror things, from its history through how it does crazy javascript ads. Some of it is stupid and some is hilarious, but this contextual bit is important to understanding the data we have.