All you crazy downloaders out there might want to checkout this article I found – I’ve been having some issues recently with poor download times. I made the changes this guy recommends and my downloads are up around 100k/s again!
From the NineMSN.com website:
Police officers were forced to smash the window of a car in Queensland last week to save what they thought was an unconscious baby.
But the heroic deed, which took place in regional Gympie, became an embarrassing blunder when the baby rescued from the car turned out to be an uncannily lifelike doll, the Courier Mail reports.
A similar incident had occurred in the US when police smashed the window of a Hummer to rescue a “baby” that turned out to be a doll belonging to the owner’s wife, she told the Courier Mail.
“People do have to be careful when they go out with them…I tell them to hold them properly, not dangle them by one leg or something, because other people do think they are real babies and become alarmed,” she said.
Baby reborn dolls can sell for up to $1000 and are usually painstakingly hand-painted with real hair and eyelashes.
“They’re even weighted to feel like a baby’s weight and they flop like a baby,” Ms Cernik said.
Perhaps I’m missing something, but why does anyone need a doll this life-like? Am I the only one who thinks there is something a little creepy and disturbing about this doll. Call me old fashioned, but I just think there is some inherently unnecessary about having a doll which looks like the real deal – and even less need to carry it around town.
Just when you think the sky isn’t going to fall on your head, it turns out it is!
The flaw would be a boon for “phishing” cons that involve leading people to imitation web pages of businesses such as bank or credit card companies to trick them into disclosing account numbers, passwords and other information.
Attackers could use the vulnerability to route internet users wherever they wanted no matter what website address was typed into a web browser.
But what amazes me about this is the fact that it’s been like this for so long and no-one has noticed. It’s not like the Internet has changed much since its initial incantation.
Oh, well, lets hope that the boffins get this fixed ASAP before I unwittingly visit citybankgroup.com and some 14 year old pimple faced geek who’s life-long ambition is to give Jar-Jar Binks a blow job; can buy an iPhone 3G on me!
From the Official Google Blog, comes this little gem:
Late one night in the summer of 2000, I found myself answering user support emails in response to two new features we had just released, Advanced Search and Preferences (at the time catchily called “Language, Display, and Filtering Options” :)). Busy crafting answers about how to set Safesearch or change the number of results offered by default, I worked my way through the email queue. And then I saw it: The next email had just a number (“37”) in the subject – and no message text. What a weird form of spam, I thought. Why would anyone be motivated to just send a number? I searched for the user’s email address to see what else had been sent. Interesting. Lots of numbers: 33, 53, and then a clue: “61, getting a bit heavy, aren’t we?” Furthermore, the date on each of the messages seemed very familiar. Then I realized that’s because the dates were all days that I had launched various changes on the homepage. “Getting a bit heavy?” – that one did correspond to one of the wordiest homepage releases we had ever done. Could the sender be counting words? Sure enough, I looked back, counted the words myself, and he was – a manual, human version of a scale for the Google homepage. He was weighing our homepage and letting us know when it was getting too heavy. One of his earliest mails had a note in the body: “What happened to the days of 13?” – referring to the word count on the initial 1999 homepage.
This mystery and its revelation was really interesting because I thought about the homepage, and how to keep it simple, all the time. Yet I hadn’t thought to look at it through this very simple lens: just count the words. The fewer, the better. Ever since that night, this has been our discipline, and everyone who works on the homepage and its design knows the current number: 28. (That’s the word count for the basic page if you are signed out, there’s no promotional line running beneath the search box, you’ve set Google as your homepage and thus don’t get the “Make Google Your Homepage!” link, and you count “©2008 Google” as two words.)
So, today we’re making a homepage change by adding a link to our privacy overview and policies. Google values our users’ privacy first and foremost. Trust is the basis of everything we do, so we want you to be familiar and comfortable with the integrity and care we give your personal data. We added this link both to our homepage and to our results page to make it easier for you to find information about our privacy principles. The new “Privacy” link goes to our Privacy Center, which was revamped earlier this year to be more straightforward and approachable, with videos and a non-legalese overview to make sure you understand in basic terms what Google does, does not, will, and won’t, do in regard to your personal information.
How does privacy relate to homepage word count? Larry and Sergey told me we could only add this to the homepage if we took a word away – keeping the “weight” of the homepage unchanged at 28. Given that the new Privacy link fit best with legal disclaimers on the page, I looked to the copyright line. There, we dropped the word “Google” (realizing it was implied, obviously) and added the new privacy link alongside it.
hehe…nuff said!
Something I like to do in my downtime is to sit back with several friends and do a bit of old fashioned gaming, like our geek forefathers did before us. It’s pretty standard RP’ing, except that, in the age of the read-write web, my friend who typically DMs our games asked me if it would be possible to setup a wiki so that as a group, we can flesh out the details, collaboratively, of the universes in our minds.
So of course, there is MediaWiki; the same wiki engine that powers Wikipedia. But I recently discovered an alternative, TikiCMS.
Tiki CMS (Tikiwiki) is not only a full-featured wiki, content management system and groupware. Its theme management and template system also offer unmatched page design flexibility. While I really dig the themes aspect of Tikiwiki, of the dozens of themes I saw I couldn’t see a single one I’d be happy to use.
I was a little disappointed with the lack of choice, Wikis are not exactly new, I thought their would have been more choice…
I’ve been having some troubles with fast and reliable FTP server software for my servers lately, simply because IIS FTP was being far more trouble than it was worth.
On @stormwarden‘s advice, I checked out FileZilla FTP Server, and WOW, am I impressed. Configuring it is easy, the server is fast and simple to use and installs so easily even my mother could do it.
One of the main reasons I found it so great, was that you can easily setup ‘home’ directories for multiple users, something which is a LOT more difficult to achieve using the FTP server in IIS.
In sum, FileZilla is an excellent FTP server and I highly recommend it to any one with a self-managed windows-based server which needs FTP capability.
As the more perceptive of you have already noticed, my blog’s new design is online.
Enjoy..
Cross-posted from the Particls blog.
A recent headline from the Australian ABC really grabbed my attention today. Its says:
“MySpace and MTV say they have joined forces to let candidates for the US presidency individually discuss ideas and issues with young people in online webcasts.”
This sort of news really excites me because its seems, like never before just as the audience has the power in the web, the world can now have the power over governments. I’m sure there are many people who will complain about the potential bias of MySpaces cooperate linage – but I am of the optimistic belief that any conversation, especially political direction and debate is ultimately positive.
Its a perfect example I think of social media reaching out to the masses, giving people from all walks, the chance to be heard.
It also got me wondering, how would have the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s been different if we had Social Media and Social Networking resources back then? I wonder if Social Media might put us on path to finally start getting over our differences and start getting the work that needs to be done; done?
Cross-posted from the Particls blog.
3 severe security vulnerabilities in 3 weeks, is not good for any software company these days. But when you’re a company held with much higher standards and expectations (at your own request), its far far worse.
Haochi uncovered another XSS vulnerability that easily and without the victims consent can steal cookies and hijack your Google account. Just like the others, victim’s need only visit a hosted site by a malicious attacker. I can only imagine the panic at Google as they try to put out these spot fires.
Blogger Garett Rogers, highly recommends “making sure you are completely logged out of your Google account while browsing the internet, until we have an official statement from Google stating their security team has thoroughly reviewed every Google property for these types of vulnerabilities”. This seems a bit alarming, but maybe it’s better to be safe then sorry.
That being said, no-one suggests staying logged out of Windows until Microsoft fixes the bugs.
Well, maybe if they were black, white and feathered they might.
… or if they often felt compelled to put an “i” at the start of their surname.