OSNews links to an MIT Technology Review article called “An Alternative to Windows“. A great quote: “When I plugged in my Wal-Mart machine and hit the power button, I got a
look at an alternate future that ought to be fueling Pepcid sales among
Microsoft executives.”
Archive | 2004
Microsoft Security Bulletins
Microsoft released their monthly securty bulletins identifying yet another cross-site scripting error, this time with the beleagured Outlook Web Access (OWA) in Exchange 5.5. OWA has a long history of issues. I don’t think that exposing Exchange via an HTML interface is a good idea. SMTP and POP with authentication, SSL, passwords and perhaps VPNs offer a far more secure way for clients to access Exchange remotely. Better yet, find a secure mail server. http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=29234 for more details.
The second email I got was a “re-release” of MS04-020 showing that more products are affected. If you are running INTERIX 2.2 (what’s that?), you’ll want to review the bulletin at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS04-020.mspx
Microsoft Releases Windows XP Service Pack 2 to Manufacturing
Yes, WinXPSP2 RTM’d.
Microsoft comes through with Windows Service Pack 2.
“After some last-minute waxing and buffing, Microsoft finally sent its
Windows XP Service Pack 2 to manufacturing early Friday. The product is
expected to be available shortly through the Windows Updates feature in
Windows XP, company officials said.” [InfoWorld: Top News]
Garrett Fitzgerald’s Blog advices: “Getting your website ready for XP SP2.
If your website uses scripting or ActiveX controls, your users may have
trouble with it after they upgrade to Windows XP Service Pack 2.
Microsoft recently published a guide to updating your site so that it works properly for SP2 users. With the release of SP2 widely reported as “imminent”, now would be a good time…”
Three-paned pseudo-table layout with CSS
A while ago, Laura took on the redesign of one of our sites, http://www.ucoes.com. We thought we’d use a layout similar to the three-paned table layout of http://www.tedroche.com,
but I suggested she try it in CSS rather than with tables, separating
the style from the text and modernizing the page. Little did I know I
was asking for the nearly-unobtainable “Holy Grail” of web layout,
according to glish.com. With the help of that site, and some great pointers from “Creating Liquid Layouts with Negative Margins”
at A List Apart, and a lot of hard work on Laura’s part, she came up
with a site design that looks consistently good in IE (our 94% test
case), Mozilla (version 1.7 only, though), FireFox, Safari and Camino.
Unfortunately, the site is not so good in Opera, which seems to refuse
to load the background colors for the left and right panes.
Following her lead, I’ve started working on the same type of makeover
for the tedroche.com web site. It was only a few hours to get a similar
layout working in FireFox, my preferred browser, but another few hours
of tweaking to get the same look in IE, fiddling with the interplay of
margins, borders and padding, which each browser seems to interpret a
little differently. Of course, that layout then broke in FireFox.
Lather, rinse, repeat. I’ve almost got it down now. Hope to post a new
website early next week.
MS Friday Security Bulletin
Garrett Fitzgerald’s Blog breaks the news of a Security bulletin from MS. “Microsoft breaks its normal security release schedule today to address the download.ject vulnerability, among others. Patch it while it’s hot! :-)”
Garretts also got a link on his blog to a really neat graphical demonstration of sorting algorithm efficiencies:
Sorting Algorithm Demos.
Edwards Leaves NPR to Host Satellite Radio Show
EdwardsLeaves NPR to Host Satellite Radio Show,
reports NPR. What a disappointment. The voice millions heard on their
alarm clocks each morning is off on a new adventure. I think NPR
management handled his departure poorly. Glad he had time to write his
book and go on a book tour, and I wish Bob the best in the
future.
Danese Cooper asks ‘What if Mozilla were to win in the end?’
Danese Cooper reports on a rare event:
Anyway, the presenter was doing his pitch in a polished way and at one
point he said he wanted to show us a “really cool” feature and he
looked up into the audience and said “Show of hands…How many of you
use Internet Explorer?”. Probably 99 times out of 100 when he asks that
question all the hands go up, right? Well first there was a pause and
then a giggle and then a whoop of laughter as the audience looked
around and realized that NO ONE had raised a hand.
point he said he wanted to show us a “really cool” feature and he
looked up into the audience and said “Show of hands…How many of you
use Internet Explorer?”. Probably 99 times out of 100 when he asks that
question all the hands go up, right? Well first there was a pause and
then a giggle and then a whoop of laughter as the audience looked
around and realized that NO ONE had raised a hand.
This was a pretty unusual crowd, but perhaps they know something…
JibJab threatened with copyright infringement
Outrageous! Parody or Satire, the hysterical JibJib take-off on “This
Land is Your Land” deserves protection as a work of art. There is
something wrong with a copyright system that doesn’t protect but rather
prevents the priviledge to use a song that has become part of American
culture. The song is sixty years old, and it’s author sadly left us too
soon, nearly four decades ago.
Parody or Satire? Threat To Sue JibJab [Slashdot:]
The Founding Fathers intended copyright (U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8)
“To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by
securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive
Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;” and the Congress
created a 14-year term for copyrights, later doubled, doubled again and
has since expanded to many times. Let us return to the Founder’s
Copyright or the doubled term, and return to the modern world the right
to use, derive and build on the great works of those who have come
before us.
Google’s got Bosworth: wow, what’s next from them?
Steve Gillmor makes some interesting predictions
in his news that Adam Bosworth has moved from BEA to Google: Google’s
quiet in its pre-IPO phase, but Steve tells Microsoft: Be afraid.
Interesting news, too: ECMAScript has been standardized with XML
datatypes, effectively making it the XML scripting language. That
should make for some interesting applications. Thanks to The Doc Searls Weblog for the link.
Rick Strahl: Flexible Web Service Consumption Using VFP
Rick Strahl’s got a great article on his site that shows how VFP can
consume more complex Web Services than the silly “Hello, World”
examples, using Rick’s free wwSOAP classes. I recently worked with a
client who was transferring data back and forth (from a non-Microsoft
based service) using parameter objects, and the VFP work was not
trivial. Wish I’d had this article then. Great stuff!
[Updated, a better link and article — ed] https://www.west-wind.com/presentations/foxdotnetwebservices/
“Article: Calling .Net Web Services for Data Access with Visual FoxPro.
Find out how to create a .Net Web Service that serves up data in a
variety of ways, then see how to consume this data with Visual FoxPro.
.Net Web Services are easy to develop, debug and deploy, but consuming
the data, especially with Visual FoxPro is not always as straight
forward as you might think. This article discusses how to pass complex
data between .Net Web Services and Visual FoxPro and provides several
tools to facilitate and standardize the process of building solid Web
Service clients for your applications and workaround some of the
limitations. By West Wind Technologies.” Link via FoxCentral News