FIXIT MENU:
home about us contact us

WHAT'S AVAILABLE:
free scripts advanced scripts online tools great books web related tutorials contributed tutorials news archive geek toys!

SUPPORT:
help forum live chat help



Archive

Get Firefox! The most secure, and featured browser on the Internet.
RSS feed   enewsbar Live Subscribe    Add to MyYahoo

HTMLfixIT Archive for March, 2005




Friday, March 4th, 2005 by Don

At least not for any of the reasons sited by Scott Granneman in his March 3, 2005 article: Where is Google Headed? As the bad guys start using Google more and more, the company wrestles with some new security and privacy issues with AutoLink.

Scott suggests that Google should somehow stop bad guys from exploiting sites with security flaws, giving an example where Google stopped the activity after just ten hours. Ten hours! That isn’t a very long time for something that was unknown until the day it hit. If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns as the old saying goes. Likewise, guns don’t kill people, people kill people. Google didn’t do anything wrong. The authors who created the security problem did. Bad things happen to good people sometimes. That is just life.

He goes on to question the ethics of Autolink, something that only works with Internet Explorer thus far, adding links determined from term searching the page. As he points out, it only works IF EVERY TIME the reader manually hits the autolink button (thereby indicating he wants the auto links.) Google is not rearranging the page, changing the text, or doing anything else untoward — it is doing what the reader asks, providing other possibly relevant links.

I need better examples than these to convince me Google did anything wrong on these issues.

Comments Off on Google Isn’t Evil

Thursday, March 3rd, 2005 by Don

A hacker gained access to the ApplyYourself system that handles admissions applications for Harvard, Stanford, Duke, MIT and other similiarly successful business schools. Apparently some students for whom a decision had been made were able to get a preview of the decision. The schools apparently see the previews as an ethical breach sufficient to warrant a reversal of the admissions. I wonder if it has occurred to them that a possible source of the hacking instuctions might be someone hoping to displace other students? Read the AP story for more details.

Comments Off on Hacker Hits Business School Admissions

Thursday, March 3rd, 2005 by Don

Microsoft won a battle in the United States Court of Appeals yesterday. Microsoft was alleged to have infringed a patent in the development of the Internet Explorer development. The “reversal gives Microsoft the opportunity to tell the jury the whole story of how this technology was developed and to present evidence that shows that Eolas did not invent this technology, and that it was developed by others, particularly Pei-yuan Wei and his colleagues at O’Reilly and Associates,” according to the Microsoft Press Release.

The entire opinion in Eolas Technologies, Inc., et al. v. Microsoft Corp. is available in pdf format.

Comments Off on Microsoft Upsets $521 Loss in Court

Thursday, March 3rd, 2005 by Don

In November, a jury in Loudon County Virginia convicted a brother and sister of violating the state’s tough Anti-Spam Statute. This week, according to the Leesburg Today news site, the Judge dismissed the case against the sister, overturning the jury verdict finding a lack of evidence to convict her. The brother, Jeremy Jaynes, is accused of sending 10,000 unsolicited commercial emails in a three day period. The sister, Jessica DeGroot, was alleged to have purchased domain names that were then used in the sending process. Finding that the only proof introduced against here was that she had a name on a credit card, and a lack of proof that the card was used during the period in question to purchase any domain names, the Judge dismissed the charge indicating he felt the jury may have become confused regarding the brother and sister pair.

Jeremy Jaynes attorney says he will appeal the decision. The trial judge, refusing to act on Jaynes’ dismissal motions, has set his sentencing for April 8th, 2005. At that time it is expected that Jaynes will be sentenced to incarceration.

The case is triable in Virginia because many of the targeted recipients had AOL addresses, and AOL has processing operations centered in that jurisdiction. One wonders if others will open processing facilities in Virginia to avail themselves of the tough anti-spam act.

Comments Off on Spam Judgement Dismissed in Virginia

Thursday, March 3rd, 2005 by Franki

A new Virus is in town, it’s name is “searchmeup” and it is the first virus to make use of the image loading buffer overrun flaw found in Windows late last year. If your PC is unpatched for that exploit, you can be infected simply by visiting an affected website in Internet Explorer and loading a suspect image. You can also get infected by viewing a HTML email in Outlook and Outlook Express. The Virus can also download a Trojan horse or other malicious program onto your PC. Panda Software has written about the Virus and advises everyone to keep their anti-virus up to date, it’s also a good idea to ensure your Windows PC is fully patched. If you don’t have an up to date anti-virus application, head over to tips.littlehosting.com and grab yourself a free one. This virus affects Windows 2003/XP/2000/NT/Me/98. Mac and Linux are as usual, unaffected. Users of Firefox/Thunderbird are likewise unaffected. If your homepage in Internet Explorer suddenly changes, you should immediately run a Virus scan with an up to date scanner.

Comments Off on Visit site in Internet Explorer (IE), get a virus.

Thursday, March 3rd, 2005 by Don

It appears there may be issues this year if you blog about political campaigns. C|Net has a story by staff writer Declan McCullagh that indicates a weakening of the Internet exception to the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, better known as the McCain-Feingold law. Previously, publishing a campaign link on the Internet was not considered a gift-in-kind to a campaign. It now may become one.

In a previous article we talked about the comparison of bloggers to press. The press can generally discuss a campaign or give a web address without it being deemed a gift in kind. However if XYZ Corporation put a link on it’s front page for a campaign, does that have value? Probably. What about a link from a blog? Does it matter if I advocate for the candidate or if I am discussing issues about the candidate or his/her positions? These are not new issues, having been discussed in detail in a 1999 publication titled: Square Pegs & Round Holes: Applying Campaign Finance Law To The Internet Risks To Free Expression & Democratic Values

If the Federal Election Commission is serious about getting after this issue, they should come up with some clear rules now. While ignorance of the law is no defense, the law should not be something one must have to find by divine means.

Comments Off on Political Blogging Could Be Hazardous to Your Wealth

Thursday, March 3rd, 2005 by Franki

Nowadays there are a ton of tools on offer, all of which promise to revolutionize the search experience, there are tools for all the big search engines and many of the smaller ones as well. My own needs are much simpler, I don’t require any toolbar and don’t need local search as over the years I’ve learned practises that mean I know where any given file is, or at least where I need to look for it, I also don’t require a toolbar to access search engine functionality, I’m quite happy with the advanced search screen at Google and it serves me just fine.

However, sometimes you find something that enhances the experience in a way that is actually beneficial rather then just offering an alternative. I found such an enhancement today. It’s called Bettersearch and it is a Firefox extension that doesn’t provide an alternative interface to the search engines, it just enhances the standard interface. It does this by inserting a thumbnail image of the sites listed in the search results on the search page, allowing you to get a rough idea if the site actually matches your terms and is likely to be helpful or if it is just a saved page of search engine results from someone trying to game the search engines for advertising dollars, (something I’m seeing allot of nowadays). The extension does other things as well, but that one alone was reason enough to try it. The tool works with Google, Yahoo, MSN and more. Well worth the 20 seconds or so that it takes to download and install. Try it for yourself and see if I’m not right.

Comments Off on Optimising the search experience.







This site is totally free to use, you have absolutely no moral or legal obligations to help us continue.
There are however, some costs involved in running the site.

<random humor>
Plus sometimes Franki prefers EMU bitter to VB.
</random humor>

So if this site helped you find your way, perhaps you could consider contributing to our costs. Whatever amount you feel this site was worth to you would be just wonderful.
Use PayPal if you do decide to share and help us with the costs and in appreciation for our time and attention, or alternatively buy a book from our Bookstore..


  Time  in  Don's  part  of the world is:   November 26, 2024, 4:20 am
  Time in Franki's part of the world is:   November 26, 2024, 5:20 pm
  Don't worry neither one sleeps very long!



privacy policy :: support us :: home :: live chat help
contact us :: forum ::tutorials :: bookstore :: Site Map



      Valid XHTML 1.0!             powered by Apache Server
Pic 3 Pic 3

SEARCH:
USEFUL LINKS:

CIGHTML Firefox Thunderbird ClamWin WordPress SpyBot S&D TheGIMP Apache for Windows Registry Cleaners More cool stuff:

//-->

HTMLfixIT Site Stats.

Browser Statistics
Internet Explorer 85.88%
IE 717.63%
IE 62.3%
IE 50.00%
IE other8.6%
Moz Firefox 3.x3.03%
Moz Firefox 2.x0.18%
Moz Firefox 0.x/1.x26.65%
Netscape 8.x0.00%
NS 6+/Mozilla2.73%
Moz Seamonkey0.00%
K-meleon0.00%
Epiphany0.00%
Netscape 4.x0.00%
Opera 9.x0.00%
Opera 8.x0.00%
Opera 7.x0.42%
Opera 6.x0.00%
Opera other0.42%
Safari Mac/Intel5.21%
Safari Mac/PPC0.06%
Safari Windows25.2%
Google Chrome1.51%
Konqueror0.18%
Galeon0.00%
WebTV0.00%


Resolution Statistics
640 x 4800.25%
800 x 60026.14%
1024 x 76836.55%
1152 x 8640.25%
1280 x 80011.68%
1280 x 8540.00%
1280 x 102417.01%
1400 x 10500.00%
1600 x 12001.02%
1920 x 12007.11%
2560 x 10240.00%


OS Statistics
Windows 741.55%
Windows Vista2.4%
Windows 20033.91%
Windows XP20.86%
Windows 20000.36%
Windows NT40.05%
Windows 98/ME0.05%
Windows 950.00%
Linux/UNIX/BSD8.76%
Mac OSX8.03%
Mac Classic0.00%
Misc14.03%



New Windows Virus Alerts
also by sophos.

17 Apr 2011 Troj/Mdrop-DKE
17 Apr 2011 Troj/Sasfis-O
17 Apr 2011 Troj/Keygen-FU
17 Apr 2011 Troj/Zbot-AOY
17 Apr 2011 Troj/Zbot-AOW
17 Apr 2011 W32/Womble-E
17 Apr 2011 Troj/VB-FGD
17 Apr 2011 Troj/FakeAV-DFF
17 Apr 2011 Troj/SWFLdr-W
17 Apr 2011 W32/RorpiaMem-A

For details and removal instructions, click the virus in question.