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Setting hidden Mozilla preferences.
Analysts shrug at Oracle’s new software. Oracle promised the applications would be easy to implement. In reality, many companies found an unusual number of glitches in the software and put the brakes on their projects.
Opera 6 review. [via Living Without Microsoft] If you’re happy with your current Netscape or Microsoft browser, there’s not much reason to switch to Opera 6.0.
I tried it for a few weeks but switched back because it has some weird bug where it get halfway through loading a page and then act like it was done, but it wasn’t. It seemed to happen more when my wireless connection was poor, or if I was saturating the router by downloading a Mandrake ISO. IE and Mozilla fared fine under the same circumstances.
Wireless LANs: Trouble in the air. The vulnerability of the American Airlines wireless LAN networks was highlighted by the fact that the security specialists witnessed an intrusion while conducting their monitoring.
AirPort Base Station administration tool for Windows.
The Onion presents: Dating Tips. Never date a married person, unless he or she is just about to leave his or her spouse and simply waiting for the right moment.
Creature Comforts. Yes, that Creature Comforts. Requires Quicktime, Real, or Windows Media Player.
New Wallace and Gromit coming soon. [via Slashdot]
Bruce Schneier: Cryptogram 1/2002.
Zimran Ahmed: License 6.0 removes the only competitor Microsoft has left — older versions of Microsoft [products].
A Cop in Every Computer. [via FOS] Introduction to SSSCA, a proposed bill that would mandate (read: require but not pay for) industry-standard security controls on every computer connected to the Internet. (And by “industry”, we mean “entertainment industry”. And by “entertainment industry”, we mean “Disney”.) This proposed law is so bad, even the BSA (the anti-piracy organization that threatens businesses with allegely-random-just-like-those-strip-searches-at-the-airport audits checking for software licensing violations) — even the BSA is against it. ‘We think mandating these protections is an abysmally stupid idea,’ says Emery Simon, special counsel to the Business Software Alliance.
O’Reilly: Why we’ve embraced Mac OS X. [via mac.scripting.com] Because it sells books. No, really. New tech, increasingly popular, sells books, let’s cover it. Seems like a good business model to me.
National ID cards roundup
- ACLU skewers DMV Proposal as ‘de facto’ national ID card. ACLU spokesman:
I, for one, do not believe that Americans trust their local DMV to keep many of the most intimate details of their lives safe and free of error.
That’s the key point here: that the database could, realistically, never be free from error. It’s populated by humans typing on keyboards, they make mistakes. People die, or move, or have sex change operations, and the data needs to be updated. Any plan that requires the database to be 100% perfect, all the time, is a recipe for disaster. Cf: Buttle, Tuttle. - Database Flaws Could Hamper Any National ID System. [via Bruce Schneier]
- Bruce Schneier made the same point last month.
- But, we’re doing it anyway. [via RRE] Sigh.
Gates’ vaccination program attacked. The charity says Gavi has a billion-dollar budget but only a five-year mandate. Save the Children says it is concerned that at the end of that period, poor countries may have come to depend on expensive vaccines for minor diseases.
A CS professor at McGill University is using my book in his advanced software design class. Specifically, this chapter on unit testing. That’s so cool.
Napster still sucks. [via Slashdot]
e.e. cummings reads four poems (MP3) [via Salon]
FreeBSD changes ownership again. [via Slashdot] Meanwhile, coding continues unabated, oblivious to such trivial details as corporate-ownership-of-the-week. Get what you pay for, my ass.
Radio 8 supports Manila. Unfortunately, it only supports a particular type of Manila site, which this site is not, so I won’t be using it after all.
AOL quietly launches “Magic Carpet”. [via Tomalak's Realm] Not to be confused with Microsoft’s Passport, or Liberty Alliance’s vaporware.
Creating ASP pages with Python. [via Daily Python-URL] I’ve done this. I wouldn’t recommend it, unless you’re in a position where you absolutely must use Microsoft IIS for political or legacy reasons. Apache + mod_python is easier and doesn’t put silly restrictions on what you can do in your server-side scripts.
Windows Media Player ’super-Cookies’ pose privacy risk. The ActiveX interface to WMP helpfully provides a ClientID function which returns the MS-assigned GUID from your registry. This function is accessible from Javascript once the WMP ActiveX control is loaded, and can therefore be returned to the web server without your knowledge. The Register has more details, and sample code.
Problems with iPhoto. Import of existing pictures is a pain; pictures can be tagged with keywords, titles, and comments, but then there are no search features to use these; no easy way to burn a slide show (or any part of your photo library) onto CD; etc. Nothing earth-shattering — what’s there works, it’s just a 1.0 app. iTunes 1.0 wasn’t all that hot either, but 2.0 is phenomenal. I expect nothing less of iPhoto.
