random tidbits.

If your experience is anything like mine was, Micro$ofts web page will open in your browser.
Its also the first result that shows up in Google..

Here is a pretty rare item, a security flaw that effects multiple browsers, in fact nearly all the popular ones in use today. The affected browsers affected are: Internet Explorer, Pre 0.9 Firebird Pre 1.6 Mozilla Pre 7.51 Opera. Safari 1.2.2 Konqueror 3.1

Just for a change of pace, here is a security flaw that effects a browser other then IE, In this case it’s Mozilla and Firefox. This is not a critical flaw as such, and in some quarters it’s viewed as a feature. Its not a flaw that will compromise your machine, or steal your data, […]

Both patents, and in this case laws, must be totally explicit to avoid them being abused, so a law on inducement must NOT be permitted to be vague as it opens nearly every service provider or device manufacturer to litigation, and even if the cases are thrown out, it still amounts to millions of dollars wasted, and the only people happy about that are the lawyers, since they end up pocketing most of it.

Even more fascinating is the new court of appeals ruling that has declared that it is not illegal to read other peoples e-mails, if they happen to be in the ram of your computer at the time. Apparently a gentleman by the name of Bradford C. Councilman decided to spy on his customers by reading their e-mail from free e-mail accounts he had given them, he used this information to gain a leg up on Amazon by finding out what books people wanted.

For the second time in as many weeks, Internet Explorer has yet another security flaw that is being actively used to compromise users, and the sole purpose of this one is to steal your banking details. For the love of god people, why are you still using IE? How many virus’s must you be infected […]

Well, I’ve been pushing Firefox as a far better browser then Internet Explorer for a considerable time now, but recently a whole heap of security people around the world are agreeing with me. The US Computer Emergency Readiness Team (A United States government department) have recently started telling people to find and use an alternative […]

I’ve recently been trying hard not to express my dislike of M$ business practices on the front page of this site, and I’d almost canned this post as a result. Then I realized that it has nothing to do with M$ and everything to do with web development. Picture this, you have put up a […]

My day usually begins by firing up my laptop and starting Thunderbird (my e-mail client) and checking though my e-mail. On an average day I get roughly 1400 or so e-mails. Of that 1400 about 200 or more are spam. I loath SPAM with a passion and just being forced to read the subjects and […]

Those of you that know me, know I am partial to the Mozilla FireFox web browser, its small, fast, has tabbed browing and a popup blocker, and doens’t have a list of security flaws (also see Securityfocus and theregister) as long as your arm (IE6 has had 153 security flaws found at last count), but […]

It’s said that Longhorn will be a revolutionary evolution of an operating system. (mostly by Micro$oft I might add.) but for those of us that just want to get our work done and don’t particularly care about eye candy, what does this actually mean? Well, for one thing, it means that you’re going to have […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

For those of you following the IBM/RedHat/AutoZone/Chrysler/Open source community/whole world verses: “SCO” court case, (and if you are not, you should be as the vast majority of the internet runs on open source software like Bind (DNS), Apache (Web server) and Sendmail/Postifx (email) not to mention Linux itself.) Anyway, onto the story, and its a […]

I’m in the middle of updating the advanced counter, some of the stuff I have added or plan to add are: – More browsers detected. – Display fixes. – Fixed some minor bugs like return chars in referer strings, and occasional divide by zero error on empty stats counts. – Auto rollover/archive stats at 12am […]

Today I was reading a web page, (something I do allot). The page had reams and reams of text, and not allot of formatting, so it was very hard to work though. Now those of you that know me, know I am extremely partial to the web browser Mozilla FireFox. I’m about to show you […]

Totally unreleated to anything web design. (sorry) but I found this so interesting, that I had to share. Apparently numerous signs of WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) have been found in Iraq, but because there was no huge stockpile found (a figurative smoking gun), the worlds media have mostly ignored it. Where as the report […]

This new link is for those times when you really need to come up with a fresh new page design, and you just can’t seem to come up with anything you like. Lose that stress immediately. I could use that for hours.. I am thinking of making it my home page. rgds Franki

While doing my weekly check of securityfocus.com for news of any new vunerabilities, I came across this excellent article on Web application security: Securing web applications (session management). I’m paranoid as anyone that knows me is aware of.. so this sort of thing really appeals to me.. The session management of both the downloader and […]

In 2002, a company that has the patent on the JPG technology started enforcing their patent. They did so after waiting till JPG had become the industry standard and up till that point had kept quiet about it to make sure the prospect of patent enforcement did not hamper its uptake.. Once JPG reached maximium […]

Recently Google have created a new webmail service that looks likely to make both yahoo and MSN hotmail look really lame by comparision. For one thing you get a massive 1 gig of data storage for free, when both yahoo and hotmail charge you around $50 a year to give you just 100mb, (and only […]

Yahoo announces that it uses “web beacons” to track people around the web. Because you are registered with them, they can tell where you go when you visit sites containing their beacons. See their disclosure for more information. They also indicate that they use web beacons in html formated email to tell if you have […]

Now days, many of us have joined the mobile brigade and now work from laptops, recently it came to my attention that many laptop owners were feeling left out in that they can’t upgrade the video card of their laptops like our desktop brothers and sisters have been doing for years. There is no longer […]

I’ve been reading allot recently on the SCO/IBM legal debate about whether IBM is responsible for putting SCO proprietary code into Linux. (I should add that it hasn’t been proven yet that any proprietary code has been included in Linux because any time SCO reveal something they claim as illegal code, its found to have […]