We have been tracking hits to our site using the best statistical hit counter we know of … ours … and we keep getting this unusual hit to this to one of our tutorials:
(hold your mouse over the link to see the url popup.)
HTMLfixIT box model hack tute. (via Google)

It appears that adding the ?sa=D&q= before an address, will transport on from a page at google to the specified page. So why are we getting these hits? I did find that the google blog uses this method for links contained in it. I presume it then counts the hit as an outgoing follow.

I wonder how long the googleblog will survive with publicly traded stock … and by the way, I am looking to buy exactly one share of google. I have yet to find out how.

First it was the US government telling people that it is a good idea to ditch Internet Explorer in favour of a more secure alternative, then Microsoft’s security boss accidently revealed that he had Mozilla Firefox on his PC, and now those responsible for German government online security are also recommending users change away from Internet Explorer for their own security.

Wow, at this rate even newbie’s will get the message soon. It is slowly happening though, checking the browser stats at W3schools shows that Mozilla usage has risen from 8 to nearly 18 percent since the start of the year. The same stats reveal that in that same period, Internet Explorer 6 usage has dropped 3 percentage points and Internet Explorer 5 has dropped by over 6 percentage points. Internet Explorer still has a pretty good lead, but it is eroding as the word gets out.

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It seems that Paypal is about to start fining people caught using their services for tasks that are against the Paypal usage policy. Basically, if you use Paypal to collect payment for adult content, gambling or the selling of uncertified pharmaceuticals, you can expect fines of up to five hundred (500) dollars.

News.com has the full story here.

Regards

Franki

Online payment transaction fee’s have always been a big problem for small e-commerce start-ups. When it costs 2-5% as well as a largish per transaction fee, it’s something akin to walking a tightrope trying to maintain profitability, and when you sell cheap items, it gets even worse. Consider that a song online goes for around 99cents, and then wonder how you could sell them using your existing online payment charges.

Payment services like Paypal have proven that money isn’t really money until it’s withdrawn from their service, (thereby avoiding huge unnecessary fee’s), and look at how popular that has turned out. Right now, online payment services like Paypal are starting to make the direct credit card services look extremely bloated (charge wise) by comparison.

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Never one to miss a chance to have a jab at Microsoft, I came across this article on TheRegister.

Without getting into too much detail, (you can read the article yourself if you want copious amounts of detail.) It appears that the Microsoft Newham council win might have more to it then meets the eye. In fact, to put it quite bluntly, TheRegister poked holes all though the report that won MS the deal. It seems to have some very questionable aspects and assumptions. (I’m deliberately understating it.)

Like I said, read the article for yourself, at the very least, it’s good for a laugh.

Regards

Franki

Cyber Security Tips are available from the CERT folks. They are from the government and they are here to help you.

Well in this case they actually have a bunch of helpful information. They explain a lot of the common scams like phishing, how to avoid spam, and so forth.

CERT stands for: United States Computer Readiness Team by the way.

[Franki: It should be added that these guys are the same US government security folk that suggested that a possible alternative to IE security woes was to use a different browser.]

Google is our favorite search engine at htmlfixit.com for many many reasons. First it produces the most relevant search results. Second it has an entire Linux section. Third, even though it accepts paid ad’s (and pays us something for ads on a page here or there), they have not used pop-ups, they don’t compromise the result for people willing to pay, etc. Let us hope that third feature remains!

Anyway for those visiting today, they are celebrating a sixth birthday as is evident from the banner on the site. HTML fixit, in it’s second year now says: Happy Birthday and Many More!