Recently, I’ve been thinking about just how much market share Microsoft really has on the Internet.
While there is no doubt that it is by far the most popular browser and OS, many browsers like Opera trick sites into believing that they are Internet Explorer on Windows in an effort to open up content that would otherwise be hidden from them. (At least that used to be the case, there is not much content like that around anymore.)

While considering this, I thought that this incorrectly gives web masters the idea that nobody is looking at their site with anything other then IE on Windows. The likely result of that, is that these web masters will never swap to W3C standard compliant code.

Since “choice” is the catchword of the future, it’s in our best interests to encourage open standards as the way of the future, or our options will become very limited. We will have to run Windows and use Internet Explorer. I’m not happy with just having one “choice” though I suspect Micro$oft would be pretty happy with that result.

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Macromedia, the makers of such programs as “Flash”, “Dreamweaver”, “Fireworks” and other web development tools, has just announced a release of Flash 7 for Linux.
Nothing indicates that a platform has reached mainstream then when the big boys start porting their applications over to it.
You can read the press release from Macromedia here.
In short, it means that Linux web browsers like Mozilla, Firefox, Konqueror, Epiphany, Galeon and more will be able to display and run the latest Flash page content as well or better then their windows using brothers (and sisters).

They (MacroMedia) also recently helped with getting their Studio MX software to run under WINE, the Linux/Windows compatability layer that allows many Windows programs to run in Linux. They have said that it is likely this will lead to Linux native versions of their software in the future.

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I just read this on the register, it’s some very good advice and an excellent tip on how to protect yourself online.

The Register

It’s about password safety and how to chose a good password and remember it.
I don’t know about you guys, but I’m paranoid and I have been for years, so my passwords are already about 12 characters long and full of letters, numbers and symbols, but that doesn’t make them any easier to remember. The article above however, has some handy tips on how to do exactly that.

Reading this should be obligatory to anyone that doesn’t want to “air their wares online”, or end up in court charged with something that someone who got access to your computer actually did.

I’d also add that if your running any variant of windows, you combine the above advice with a good anti-virus program and a program like
Adaware to remove spyware. (which you should get in the habit of running weekly.)

Also see Wired for more good password advi ce

rgds

Humour!

Its been revealed that Micro$oft will begin selling advertising in windows error messages.

Considering the number of error screens that are seen on windows machines, this could conceivably become a big money earner for them.
The only question that remains to be answered, is how do you follow an advertising link on the “blue screen of death” when the screen is there to indicate that windows has just exited stage left ?? 🙂

rgds

Micro$oft, that big fuzzy warm software litigation company, has just lost an appeal against Lindows, a young Linux upstart.

M$ sued Lindows claiming that Lindows confused customers because it sounds too much like “Windows”.
Lindows then changed their name to Lindash, but appparently M$ thinks that still sounds too much like “Windows”.
(If they think customers will be confused between Windows and Lindash or even Lindows for that matter, it goes to show what they think about the average intelligence of their customers.)

Anyway, the case in the US seems to be going well for the Linux upstart, but M$ are making it as hard as possible for them by starting lawsuits all over the world for the same reason. (having nearly 50 billion of your money in their bank accounts is handy isn’t it.)
See: The Register for more.

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Apparently its our fault that Windows has a continious string of security flaws that are getting compromised by virus’s, at least thats Micro$ofts take on it.
ComputerWorld

<Quote>
See, last week a high-level Microsoft manager named Jonathan Perera was making the it’s-your-fault-too pitch at the Infosecurity Europe conference in London. At exactly the same time, security companies were reporting a new round of attacks on Microsoft products, including IIS and Exchange Server, based on yet another Microsoft buffer overflow vulnerability.
Microsoft had issued a patch for that security hole just two weeks earlier. But the hole is in every version of Windows NT and XP Pro that has shipped since Windows NT 4.0 in 1996.
In other words, it took Microsoft almost eight years to find and fix this hole — a hole that exists only because of Microsoft product development policies that in another profession would be called malpractice.
</Quote>

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A couple of new virus’s are doing the rounds at the moment.
They are all “MicroSoft windows only” virus’s, Mac and Linux users need not worry as they are totally unaffected.

First is the Sasser virus, see here for info and removal details.
The Sasser virus is unusual in that it is not transferred by email like the rest of the current crop, instead it transmits itself directly to other windows PC’s by looking for machines that have an unpatched microsoft windows security flaw. So not opening emails with attachments is no defense against this one.
If your computer is running extra slow, and is restarting for no good reason, checking for Sasser would be a good start. (there are already different variations of Sasser appearing.)

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