hang on, my dad has a Razor phone, thats exactly the kind of thing I didnt want. thats bloatware extreme. I dont want web acecss, or even the option for it, or the buttons for it, or anything. Not a camera, not a microphone, nada. zip. I just want a phone. to make and recieve calls. I dont even text.
"not a microphone"? So, you just want to listen, then.
IE7 fixes enough stuff in its CSS handling that the old IE6 hacks don't work anymore. But it still has enough broken CSS stuff that a valid CSS layout with floats and clears in a containing DIV will wind up borked in IE7 even though it will work right in every modern browser (Firefox, Safari, Opera, Konqueror).
So, essentially, IE7 isn't really a modern browser, it's a slightly hacked IE6 rendering engine with a prettied up interface (though "prettied" is certainly in the eye of the beholder... I, personally, don't like it).
It's a human issue. It's a social hack... not a technical one. These sites aren't being blocked because they'll crash the browser. Or install a worm. Or anything along those lines. They're being blocked because they're fake sites designed to trick people into revealing their personal information (like credit card numbers, passwords etc). Remember the PAYPAI.com site incident for instance? They would send out emails masquerading as paypal.com and have the site URL written in lowercase except for the final character, which was uppercase. Lots of people were tricked into going there. Even if they got to the browser and the browser lowercased it to look like paypai.com, lots of people simply missed it. So, technically, there was nothing wrong with the site. It didn't hack the browser. It even used valid HTML. But it was designed to trick the end user into revealing personal details. And it worked. The blacklist is designed to index sites like this and notify the user when they visit one.
This isn't something you could really design in. Not without changing internet protocols. There's only a certain amount of change you can affect when you're just the browser. And a phishing blacklist makes perfect sense. And, yes, it should be enabled by default. You, as a more technical user, are of course free to disable it. So, how is this even an issue for you?
And you do realize that all the browsers are adding the ability to do anti-phishing with blacklists, right? Firefox 2.0 has one. Internet Explorer 7.0 has one. Opera 9 has "anti-phishing technology" built in and, rumor has it, is adding a similar blacklist. I'd be willing to bet Safari and Konqueror will be adding one, too.
The thing is, this is a very *good* thing for average Joe non-techie, since that's the type of person that falls for phishing scams more often than not. And, even though it isn't much of a problem for us, it's still a huge issue in terms of most folks' online activities. If you're worried about a single connection to a server to download a phishing list, you can disable that. Just as you can disable automatic updates, which connects to the same server and is also enabled by default.
Firefox Portable 2.0 RC 2 has been released. For the unfamiliar, Firefox Portable is Firefox packaged with a PortableApps.com launcher so it can be run from a USB flash drive, iPod, portable hard drive, CD, etc and used on any computer. It can also be run from a local hard drive (even your desktop) making it a great way to test out another version of Firefox without impacting your installed version. Grab it from the Firefox Portable 2.0 RC2 Homepage.
I have some simple registry files up that allow you to easily disable caps lock, turn it into a control key or swap it with the left control key (for some old school keyboarding goodness). Just head to Disable Caps Lock.
Sigh. It would seem the Slashdot website lets you type more characters into the Subject field than it actually uses... which is just plain odd. The full subject line of that comment was:
Firefox Portable 1.5.0.5 & 2.0 b1: Works on USB & CD
Portable Firefox is now Mozilla Firefox - Portable Edition (or, Firefox Portable among friends) and a new version has been released. This new version sports some handy new features, including: CD support (aka Firefox Portable Live), partial update support, in-place upgrade support, full compatibility with Wine running on your favorite *nix distro, and more. It's available in three different versions: 1.5.0.5 for everyday use, 2.0 Beta 1 for testing the latest Firefox beta and 1.0.8 for web developers to test pages against. Full details are on the Firefox Portable Release Page.
There are lots of people in the world that are still using Windows 95/98/Me. More than Mac, Linux and UNIX combined. Many have older machines that don't support Windows 2000. Most have no idea how to upgrade an operating system. Some only get a new operating system when they buy a new PC. Many can't afford either a new PC or a new OS. None have a clue what Linux is or how to use it.
But, many of these people can, with a little help from a webpage or a techie friend, install a new browser. One that can protect them from online nasties. One that doesn't let people install random bits of code. One that lets them explore new areas online. This is far easier than an OS upgrade. Or a new PC. And it's free.
Firefox officially dropped Windows 95 support quite a while back, but it does still run fine on Windows 95. I keep instructions on how to Run Firefox on Windows 95 on my website for just this reason. It gets a couple thousand page views a month. And I still get emails from people thanking me for compiling it.
Windows 98, on the other hand, has been officially supported this entire time. And lots of people are running it. While we may not have a solid source for stats (and, no, W3 Schools is not a solid source for stats... it's geek-centric and not reflective of the overall web), something like TheCounter.com provides some global OS stats that are a bit more indicative of the net at large... at least in terms of those visiting smaller sites.
So, basically, dropping Windows 9x support would be a disservice to lots of folks around the world. Now, if Firefox 2.0 is going to keep support for it AND have security patches issues for quite a while after FF3 is released, that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. But having an actively-maintained, secure browser for these older Windows users is important.
The low-end tube HDTVs are now around 500 bucks (US). They won't have an HD tuner built-in... but for most people, that isn't an issue (if you have cable/satellite as most people interested in an HD will, the new HD cable/satellite box you get has everything you need).
I posted a few possible solutions at AOL Email Tax - Proposed Solutions earlier this week. Basically, I recommend people begin charging AOL users $1 to sign up for otherwise free email newsletters... allowing you money for the actual fee, the credit card fee, and compensation for the extra work to setup an AOL-only list. This should be clearly labeled as an AOL Email Tax with an explanation of why it is charged and a suggestion to contact AOL if they don't like it. For systems where charging isn't feasible... blocking AOL users or warning them they may not receive the newsletter are viable options as well.
Drupal really is what you make of it. True, installation isn't for the non-geek. Nor is adding modules (at the moment... though that will change). But the PHP theming engine lets you do pretty much anything you want to, which is great. That's why I chose it for PortableApps.com. (Granted, my theme isn't a huge departure, but I like it.) Well, that and the fact that friendly URLs are built right in and work really well without modifying the core code at all.
It was 206MB before I started. Between 7zipping the JARs and UPXing the EXEs and DLLs I got it to 144MB. Someone is working on recompressing the PNGs which may buy another 5MB.
If you're on a smaller drive, use Portable AbiWord as your word processor (only 14MB installed) and something like Spread32 for your spreadsheet. I'm working on a portable version of gnumeric, but it's a bit flakey at the moment.
Sorry about the 403, the site didn't handle a full Slashdotting as well as hoped (being on a shared web server, it was slamming the PHP resources). It's actually run on the Drupal open source content management system (Apache+mySQL+PHP). I'm working on having my host get it back up.
It's at 144MB down from 206MB with nothing left out. The JARs are compressed to max with 7zip. The DLLs and EXEs are UPXed. We're working on recompressing the included PNGs (which may buy us another 5MB or so) and a few other things along those lines.
I like the idea of taking along a full OS on a portable drive. They should consider adding a virtual machine that runs under Windows and can boot it. Then, you can use it in locations where rebooting would be an issue (internet cafes, at work, on mom's PC).
Until something like that comes along... and doesn't have a 5 minute startup timeframe... I'll stick to Portable Apps.
Portable Firefox has been updated to the 1.5 RC2 release. For the unfamiliar, Portable Firefox allows you to carry your whole web browser along with all your bookmarks and extensions with you on a USB thumbdrive, iPod, portable hard drive or any other portable media. You can plug it right into any Windows computer and use it just like you would on your own. It is a repackaged version of Firefox designed with portability in mind, so it has all the same great features, but there's nothing to install.
And if you're a fan of the portable apps, Portable Gaim 1.5 Beta was released to day, as was Portable Apps Suite, a preconfigured suite of portable applications including Firefox, Thunderbird, Sunbird, NVU, OpenOffice.org, AbiWord, FileZilla and Gaim.
Slashdot Mirror
hang on, my dad has a Razor phone, thats exactly the kind of thing I didnt want. thats bloatware extreme. I dont want web acecss, or even the option for it, or the buttons for it, or anything. Not a camera, not a microphone, nada. zip. I just want a phone. to make and recieve calls. I dont even text.
"not a microphone"? So, you just want to listen, then.
IE7 fixes enough stuff in its CSS handling that the old IE6 hacks don't work anymore. But it still has enough broken CSS stuff that a valid CSS layout with floats and clears in a containing DIV will wind up borked in IE7 even though it will work right in every modern browser (Firefox, Safari, Opera, Konqueror).
So, essentially, IE7 isn't really a modern browser, it's a slightly hacked IE6 rendering engine with a prettied up interface (though "prettied" is certainly in the eye of the beholder... I, personally, don't like it).
It's a human issue. It's a social hack... not a technical one. These sites aren't being blocked because they'll crash the browser. Or install a worm. Or anything along those lines. They're being blocked because they're fake sites designed to trick people into revealing their personal information (like credit card numbers, passwords etc). Remember the PAYPAI.com site incident for instance? They would send out emails masquerading as paypal.com and have the site URL written in lowercase except for the final character, which was uppercase. Lots of people were tricked into going there. Even if they got to the browser and the browser lowercased it to look like paypai.com, lots of people simply missed it. So, technically, there was nothing wrong with the site. It didn't hack the browser. It even used valid HTML. But it was designed to trick the end user into revealing personal details. And it worked. The blacklist is designed to index sites like this and notify the user when they visit one.
This isn't something you could really design in. Not without changing internet protocols. There's only a certain amount of change you can affect when you're just the browser. And a phishing blacklist makes perfect sense. And, yes, it should be enabled by default. You, as a more technical user, are of course free to disable it. So, how is this even an issue for you?
And you do realize that all the browsers are adding the ability to do anti-phishing with blacklists, right? Firefox 2.0 has one. Internet Explorer 7.0 has one. Opera 9 has "anti-phishing technology" built in and, rumor has it, is adding a similar blacklist. I'd be willing to bet Safari and Konqueror will be adding one, too.
The thing is, this is a very *good* thing for average Joe non-techie, since that's the type of person that falls for phishing scams more often than not. And, even though it isn't much of a problem for us, it's still a huge issue in terms of most folks' online activities. If you're worried about a single connection to a server to download a phishing list, you can disable that. Just as you can disable automatic updates, which connects to the same server and is also enabled by default.
Firefox Portable 2.0 RC 2 has been released. For the unfamiliar, Firefox Portable is Firefox packaged with a PortableApps.com launcher so it can be run from a USB flash drive, iPod, portable hard drive, CD, etc and used on any computer. It can also be run from a local hard drive (even your desktop) making it a great way to test out another version of Firefox without impacting your installed version. Grab it from the Firefox Portable 2.0 RC2 Homepage.
You have GoDaddy charging next to nothing for domain names and you expect to get the same service you'd get from a real registrar? C'mon.
I have some simple registry files up that allow you to easily disable caps lock, turn it into a control key or swap it with the left control key (for some old school keyboarding goodness). Just head to Disable Caps Lock.
I have registry files up on my site that allow you to easily disable one or both Windows keys.
Sigh. It would seem the Slashdot website lets you type more characters into the Subject field than it actually uses... which is just plain odd. The full subject line of that comment was:
Firefox Portable 1.5.0.5 & 2.0 b1: Works on USB & CD
Portable Firefox is now Mozilla Firefox - Portable Edition (or, Firefox Portable among friends) and a new version has been released. This new version sports some handy new features, including: CD support (aka Firefox Portable Live), partial update support, in-place upgrade support, full compatibility with Wine running on your favorite *nix distro, and more. It's available in three different versions: 1.5.0.5 for everyday use, 2.0 Beta 1 for testing the latest Firefox beta and 1.0.8 for web developers to test pages against. Full details are on the Firefox Portable Release Page.
There are lots of people in the world that are still using Windows 95/98/Me. More than Mac, Linux and UNIX combined. Many have older machines that don't support Windows 2000. Most have no idea how to upgrade an operating system. Some only get a new operating system when they buy a new PC. Many can't afford either a new PC or a new OS. None have a clue what Linux is or how to use it.
But, many of these people can, with a little help from a webpage or a techie friend, install a new browser. One that can protect them from online nasties. One that doesn't let people install random bits of code. One that lets them explore new areas online. This is far easier than an OS upgrade. Or a new PC. And it's free.
Firefox officially dropped Windows 95 support quite a while back, but it does still run fine on Windows 95. I keep instructions on how to Run Firefox on Windows 95 on my website for just this reason. It gets a couple thousand page views a month. And I still get emails from people thanking me for compiling it.
Windows 98, on the other hand, has been officially supported this entire time. And lots of people are running it. While we may not have a solid source for stats (and, no, W3 Schools is not a solid source for stats... it's geek-centric and not reflective of the overall web), something like TheCounter.com provides some global OS stats that are a bit more indicative of the net at large... at least in terms of those visiting smaller sites.
So, basically, dropping Windows 9x support would be a disservice to lots of folks around the world. Now, if Firefox 2.0 is going to keep support for it AND have security patches issues for quite a while after FF3 is released, that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. But having an actively-maintained, secure browser for these older Windows users is important.
http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/browsers/po
Also added in a few new features in the recent releases:
The low-end tube HDTVs are now around 500 bucks (US). They won't have an HD tuner built-in... but for most people, that isn't an issue (if you have cable/satellite as most people interested in an HD will, the new HD cable/satellite box you get has everything you need).
I posted a few possible solutions at AOL Email Tax - Proposed Solutions earlier this week. Basically, I recommend people begin charging AOL users $1 to sign up for otherwise free email newsletters... allowing you money for the actual fee, the credit card fee, and compensation for the extra work to setup an AOL-only list. This should be clearly labeled as an AOL Email Tax with an explanation of why it is charged and a suggestion to contact AOL if they don't like it. For systems where charging isn't feasible... blocking AOL users or warning them they may not receive the newsletter are viable options as well.
Drupal really is what you make of it. True, installation isn't for the non-geek. Nor is adding modules (at the moment... though that will change). But the PHP theming engine lets you do pretty much anything you want to, which is great. That's why I chose it for PortableApps.com. (Granted, my theme isn't a huge departure, but I like it.) Well, that and the fact that friendly URLs are built right in and work really well without modifying the core code at all.
It was 206MB before I started. Between 7zipping the JARs and UPXing the EXEs and DLLs I got it to 144MB. Someone is working on recompressing the PNGs which may buy another 5MB.
If you're on a smaller drive, use Portable AbiWord as your word processor (only 14MB installed) and something like Spread32 for your spreadsheet. I'm working on a portable version of gnumeric, but it's a bit flakey at the moment.
Use something like TrueCrypt to encrypt it. The next version of the Portable Apps Suite will include an option to encyrpt your personal data.
Links help... it's here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/portableoo
Sorry about the 403, the site didn't handle a full Slashdotting as well as hoped (being on a shared web server, it was slamming the PHP resources). It's actually run on the Drupal open source content management system (Apache+mySQL+PHP). I'm working on having my host get it back up.
Until then, you can view the Google Cache of the older Portable OpenOffice release and get the new release from the SourceForge Portable OpenOffice.org project page
Cross platform with the same profile is an eventual goal
It's at 144MB down from 206MB with nothing left out. The JARs are compressed to max with 7zip. The DLLs and EXEs are UPXed. We're working on recompressing the included PNGs (which may buy us another 5MB or so) and a few other things along those lines.
And the JARs are compressed to max with 7zip. That brings it from 206MB to 144MB.
Damn Small Linux can be run inside an OS, but it's rather slow that way.
Yup, I played with the Portable Virtual Privacy machine which runs DSL. It was just too slow.
I like the idea of taking along a full OS on a portable drive. They should consider adding a virtual machine that runs under Windows and can boot it. Then, you can use it in locations where rebooting would be an issue (internet cafes, at work, on mom's PC).
Until something like that comes along... and doesn't have a 5 minute startup timeframe... I'll stick to Portable Apps.
(Full disclosure: Yes, that's my website.)
Portable Firefox has been updated to the 1.5 RC2 release. For the unfamiliar, Portable Firefox allows you to carry your whole web browser along with all your bookmarks and extensions with you on a USB thumbdrive, iPod, portable hard drive or any other portable media. You can plug it right into any Windows computer and use it just like you would on your own. It is a repackaged version of Firefox designed with portability in mind, so it has all the same great features, but there's nothing to install.
Portable Firefox 1.5 RC2
And if you're a fan of the portable apps, Portable Gaim 1.5 Beta was released to day, as was Portable Apps Suite, a preconfigured suite of portable applications including Firefox, Thunderbird, Sunbird, NVU, OpenOffice.org, AbiWord, FileZilla and Gaim.