What happens when graphic artists become geeks? Why they get together and start a Miss virtual world pageant. That isn’t as bad as it could be I guess, but I find myself wondering how long it will be before virtual playboy comes out?

On the downside, this might lead heaps of geeks further away from reality, but depending on your perspective that might be an upside. 🙂 The other upside is that it will benefit the world if they can work together and figure out ways to make virtual girls look as good as real ones, without removing the “human look” but by the same token, I’ve seen a few real world models that seem to be missing the human look as well, so who can tell?

I notice on the top ten column is a picture of Bloodrayne, the only game I have actually bought in the last 8 years, and she looks better then any of them. That would tend to indicate that the path to the virtually perfect woman, is to be a nicely endowed half vampire. See? That was easy wasn’t it?
Wired have more on the story here.

Franki

TheRegister has an interesting article that talks about a new method spammers are using to get new email accounts that they can use to SPAM people. The new method entails tricking the gullible into creating the new accounts for them by suggesting that it will aid Yahoo prevent automated systems from creating SPAM accounts. (The big webmail firms have all created systems that make it extremely difficult to automate the creation of email accounts in an attempt to reduce spamming.)

Social engineering is becoming the biggest trick in a malicious hacker/spammers book. social engineering involves tricking the user into doing something that hands control over to the malicious party. Such tactics have long been used in the spread of Viruses, Trojans, Spyware and other such nasties. The trend appears to be gathering momentum.

Don’t follow the instructions of anyone you meet, or are contacted by online, unless you have some sort of proof that they are the trusted party they want you to believe they are. (after all, you wouldn’t in real life would you?)

Franki

This article from TheRegister, details security services firm ScanSafe’s report that tells us that Internet Explorer flaws were the biggest security threat to enterprise businesses. And they included Viruses and Trojans when making that pronouncement, noting that many Viruses use browser flaws as a means of infection.

Considering that Microsoft told us that SP2 was going to make a huge difference to security, it makes you wonder why the number of exploits found hasn’t really changed since SP2 was released and there is already a list of exploits that effect IE6 SP2 as much as previous version. No web browser can yet claim to be security perfect, but Internet Explorer currently has the worst security record of all of them, possibly counted together.

In case this is the first time you’ve visited us, I’ll make the same suggestion I make regularly on this site: Get your free copy of Firefox now. Firefox, the best browser on the Internet.

Franki

WebSideStory has released a report stating that the Mozilla foundation’s browsers have taken another bite out of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, that now accounts for just under a 3% drop in only months. It doesn’t sound like much until you consider just how many browser installs it accounts for. (we are speaking of many millions here.)

It is likely to cause Microsoft to rethink it’s policy of no new Internet Explorer versions that don’t come with a new version of Windows. I expect Microsoft initially thought that they could use a new version of Internet Explorer as another way to lure people to buy newer versions of Windows, and I don’t imagine they were expecting browsers as good as Firefox to show up at the crucial stage. After all, why would you pay hundreds of dollars to buy a new version of Windows to get a better browser, when you can get a much better browser right now for free?

I’m going to make a prediction, and that prediction is that Microsoft will pull a John Kerry (a flip-flop) and release Internet Explorer 7 sometime before Longhorn comes out. If they wait until the end of 2006 to update their web browser, they will likely have lost allot more then 3% of market share. After all Internet Explorer 6 is already about 4 years old, and in the software world that’s positively archaic. By the time Longhorn is released, IE6 will be at least 6 years old. The point to remember here, is that they didn’t update it, because they had no real competition for most of that 4 years, so why should they bother? (That is my way of pointing out that competition is a great way of making sure that huge companies like Microsoft offer value for money. They go on a lot about innovation, but unless they get real serious competition, they are apparently quiet happy to stop development and wait until they do. So regardless of what they would have you believe, they are not in this to help the customer, only to take his/her money.)

The WebSideStory story has been covered by TheInquirer and Eweek.

Franki

Two new bugs in Internet Explorer have recently been found, both relate to the status bar showing one address on mouse over of a link but taking you to another address when you follow the link. One flaw is stopped by SP2 for XP, and the other is not.

Eweek has the story.

Regards

Franki