Wired News Changed The ‘internet’
Wired News has officially changed the ‘internet’. How? They stopped capitalizing it. ‘Internet’ is now ‘internet’…meaning they will stop capitalizing it in all of their writings. Sounds small, but this puts it in the class with radio, television…etc.
You know, I always thought it was a bit stupid that anyone capitalized it.
Airport Express Cracked
Pretty much everyone is reporting this, but the Airport Express’ encryption has been broken by the same guy that broke the DVD encryption and narrowly escaped criminal charges. What this means is that with his program, one could stream any music or sound over to the Airport Express.
I’ll leave it at that for now, becuase the links to his blog and the program, have either been taken down or are being pounded by clicks. Not only that, but I’m sure we will be hearing a lot more about this soon.
Firefox’s Spoofed UI
We all know that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is flawed beyond belief (even with Service Pack 2 installed), but you should also be aware that like everything in this world, no browser is perfect.
Such is the case with everyone’s new favorite browser: Firefox
Although there have been reports of different weaknesses in Firefox within the past few weeks involving different exploits. However this one is really the most imaginative, and well, frankly, pretty cool. It turns out that with a little work you can spoof the interface of Firefox. i.e. One could make a fake toolbar at the top, or a fake padlock at the bottom to fool you into thinking you are making a safe transaction.
To have this work on your Firefox, you have to have some settings turned on (they are by default):
* Web Features | Advanced | Allow Javascript to hide the status bar
* Default selection of toolbars and toolbar buttons
* No particularly bizarre browser extensions installed
* Javascript should be enabled.
Get yourself Firefox, and go to the Firefox spoof demonstaration to check it out. Its really pretty amazing.
It turns out though that this problem isn’t all that new. From Nitesh Dhanjani‘s weblog at the O’Reilly Network:
The Discussion/Links section of the above URL provides a link to Bug 22183 and mentions ” This is the first mention of the problem that I am aware of. It was marked confidential for five years until 7-21-2004.” In defense of the Mozilla foundation, the author also goes on to state: “The original bug was filed 5 years ago. The year 1999 was a completely different internet than we have now. Back then, the Mozilla folks were just trying to get a functioning browser out the door. However, the only people who actually used it were nerds and geeks. These tech-savvy users didn’t often fall for paypal, ebay, and banking scams. Back in 1999, there really weren’t any scams like that. “Phishing” was not in anybody’s dictionary………The bug was filed, and duly examined. Some suggestions were made, some patches were produced, but in the end, it all seemed kinda silly. People more or less forgot about the bug….”
For the record, I still think that Firefox is one of the best browsers out there. No software is perfect, especially ones that are given out for free. Firefox is the best of what is out there today, but this is some interesting stuff to watch out for though.
Sources:
O’Reilly Network: Firefox UI Spoofing
Firefox spoof demonstration
Updates Galore!
Windows Service Pack 2 was released by Microsoft today. Its not yet available via Windows Update, but you can still download it from them here. I just installed it and the differences are…ummm…basically more security. I haven’t noticed much else yet.
Meanwhile, back in Cupertino…
Apple released a few updates in Software Update today: A security update, 10.3.5 (that includes the aforementioned security update), and iSync 1.5.
I have installed those updates as well. Apple lists several things that are updated, including Bluetooth. But, I haven’t noticed any cosmetic or surface changes yet.
Have you installed any of the above? Let me know what you think.
Testing Meme Propagation In Blogspace: Why The Hell Not?!
Steal This Post!!!! This is a GoMeme– a new way to spread an idea along social networks. This is the second generation meme in our experiment in spreading ideas. To find out what a GoMeme is, and how this experiment works, or just to see how this GoMeme is growing and discuss it with others, visit the Root Posting and FAQ for this GoMeme at www.mindingtheplanet.net .
By adding this GoMeme to your Weblog you can get higher Google rankings for your site, and help your friends get higher Google rankings too. Your blog will be linked from every other blog that discovers this GoMeme downstream from your blog (from your readers, their readers, and so on). And that will raise your Google rankings in proportion to the number of downstream bloggers that get this GoMeme from you and post it to their blogs. The more people who blog the GoMeme from your blog, the better your Google rankings will get.
By hosting this meme on your blog, you will also be participating in an experiment to generate a distributed Blog survey and test how memes spread through social networks. The dataset from this experiment is public, open and decentralized — every blog that participates hosts their own data about their own blog. Anyone can then get the whole dataset by just searching Google for this unique string: 98818912959q This code is the “global unique identifier,” or GUID for this GoMeme — it marks every web page that participates in this GoMeme so that it can later be found with all the others. (Note it may take a week or longer before Google indexes your blog, so be patient).
Disclaimer
This is purely an experiment and is just for fun. We are really just curious to see what will happen and this is not a commercial project. Participation is voluntary. We don’t mean to annoy anyone. However, if you don’t have much curiosity, or at least a sense of humor, you may find this experiment to be upsetting. In that case, you might try drinking a good strong cup of coffee. If after that you are still unhappy with us, just don’t read any further and have a great day! (If you don’t want your blog to get better Google rankings, that’s purely your choice!) On the other hand, if you are interested in exploring new technologies and pushing the envelope, then keep reading and we look forward to your participation in this experiment. We also request that participants in this experiment refrain from spamming anyone with this GoMeme. To spread it, just put it on your blog; that should be enough.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR ADDING THIS GOMEME TO YOUR OWN SITE
Step 1 First, to add your site to this experiment, copy the GoMeme to your site from the “Copy This GoMeme From Here” heading above to the End of this article. Please copy this whole article and try not to alter the text so that it is authentic for the people who get it from your blog. If you would like to come up with your own catchy headline, or anything else to help your GoMeme spread, feel free! Let’s see what works best.
Step 2: Now, fill in your answers to these Required Survey Fields (Note: Replace the answers below with your own answers). These will later be automatically data-mined by bots to compile the survey results.
(1) I found this GoMeme at URL: http://www.mindingtheplanet.com
(2) I found this GoMeme on date (day/month/year):04/08/04
(3) I found this GoMeme at time (in GMT format): 05:00:00
(4) I foundit via “Newsreader Software” or “Browsing the Web” or “Searching the Web” or “An E-Mail Message”: Browsing the Web
(5) I posted this GoMeme at my URL (use a hyperlink): Hell Yeah Bitch! .com
(6) I posted this on date (day/month/year): 04/08/04
(7) I posted this at time (in GMT format): 05:32:48
(8) My posting location is (city, state, country): St. Louis, Missouri, USA
Step 3: If you’re feeling very altruistic today, also fill in these optional survery fields (Replace the answers below with your own answers):
(9) My Weblog is hosted by: Me
(10) My age is: 23
(11) My gender is: Male
(12) My occupation is: Still looking for IT work.
(13) I use the following RSS/Atom reader software: None (Maybe the new Safari reader when Tiger comes out.)
(14) I use the following software to post to my blog: Movable Type
(15) I have been blogging since (day, month, year): 02/03
(16) My web browser is: Safari
(17) My operating system is: OS X 10.3
Step 4:Now add an entry for your site after the last entry in the PATH LIST below:
Your entry should be of the form: line number, URL, hyperlink, optional personal GUID for your blog.
(Note: If you would like to track all postings of the Meme that result from your posting of it, once Google has indexed them, you may add your own optional GUID after your hyperlink on your line of the Path List — just make sure it is short, unique, and doesn’t return any results on Google — for example “mysitename137a2r28″. Also note, if the path list gets too long, you should still try to include the whole path in your blog — even if you have to put the list on a continuation page rather than the excerpt for your posting — and make sure others copy the whole GoMeme along with your Path List when they get the GoMeme from you — If they don’t copy it, your blog and your upstream blogs won’t be linked from their blogs).
PATH LIST
1. http://www.mindingtheplanet.net Minding The Planet, mindingtheplanet14798
2. http://hellyeahbitch.com Hell Yeah Bitch! .com, hellyeahbitch6221981)
3. (your Path List entry goes here in the form URL, hyperlink, GUID. Also, please add a new line after this one, for the next person.)
The End
You did it! Now spread it! If all goes well and others find this GoMeme from your blog, you should see some interesting results. Please comment back on the original post and tell us how you’re doing or what you observe, if anything noteworthy happens.
Work
Ok, I know that the update stream has been a bit slowed in recent weeks. There is a(re) reason(s) for that.
1. Best Buy sucks. We are really understaffed right now and because of that, my usually very nice 15 hour a week schedule which allows a good amount of computer / xbox / job hunting time has been cut down quite a bit. Hopefully that will change soon. Because either we will hire more people and my hours will get less, or my hours won’t get less and I’ll end up murdering the next person that walks in and has convinced himself that he knows everything about computers and preceeds to prove this to me by how many times he is reformated his hard drive (On his own!!!).
2. I have actually had a few interviews. Even though I haven’t had much out of Best Buy time as of late, I have still had a few interviews. Obviously, by my complaining about Best Buy, none have gone as I would have liked…but interviews are still something.
3. I’m working on something. I have a hard hitting expose in the works about a certain question that has been plaguing the world for several years now. Hows that for a teaser? I guess a teaser is only as good as the number of people that it teases, and since we haven’t quite reached “google status” in hits yet, this teaser can’t be that good I guess. At least I tried!