Mozilla has updated Firefox to 1.0.1. This is primarily a bug and security fix release (recommended for all users).
If you’re familiar with bittorrent, please use the Mozilla provided torrents. If not, visit their main download page.
There is an unofficial changelog for the update.
The new comment spam plug-in automatically tracks caught spam statistics. Before that I used WP-Blacklist, which worked pretty well. Now for the shocking data. It caught over 2900 spam comments (doesn’t include spam trackbacks). With that number recorded, I will now delete them as the mail notifications of them take up 2.9 MB. Yikes.
Tonight on Dennis Miller, Gersh Kuntzman of Newsweek appeared on the Varsity discussion panel. I didn’t get a chance to get the entire quote but he said about Arnold Schwarzenegger:
He speaks Austrian better than….
Apparently, Austria has decided to rid itself of the German language and adopted its own new language. I’ll have to subscribe to Newsweek because I’m missing some major stories.
Truth be known, I do have a HoTMaiL account just for registration to sites that almost certainly will spam me. There have been rumors that access to Hotmail accounts through things like Outlook Express, Entourage, and third party plugins, such as the one for Mail.app would be shut off. You’d be forced into using the web interface (which still sucks).
It became official today:
Dear MSN Member,
Recently, Hotmail announced that in order to improve customer experience and reduce spam and junk e-mail abuse on MSN services, Hotmail will no longer allow new e-mail accounts to be accessed via Microsoft Office Outlook and Outlook Express.
Apple’s sticking with the new security update naming convention. Security Update 2005-002 is primarily a Java fix.
According to Apple:
Security Update 2005-002
Available for: Java 1.4.2
CVE-ID: CAN-2004-1029
Impact: Updates Java to address an issue where an untrusted applet could gain elevated privileges and potentially execute arbitrary code.
Description: A vulnerability in the Java Plug-in may allow an untrusted applet to escalate privileges, through JavaScript calling into Java code, including reading and writing files with the privileges of the user running the applet. Releases prior to Java 1.4.2 on Mac OS X are not affected by this vulnerability. Further information is available in Document ID 57591 from Sun.
Apple updated its line of iPod MP3 players. Specifically, the iPod mini and the iPod photo. The mini now comes in two sizes, and the photo had some pronounced price changing. In fact, it’s created an interesting pattern. For the most part, the pricing of all the models and sizes are separated by $50.
iPod shuffle 512 MB $99 iPod shuffle 1 GB $149 iPod mini 4 GB $199 iPod mini 6 GB $249 iPod 20 GB $299 iPod U2 20 GB $349 iPod photo 30 GB $349 iPod photo 60 GB $449 What’s really interesting about this is that while Apple has established a linear pricing structure, the sizes are exponential. Of course, the biggest bang for your buck change is still the difference between the high-end mini and the regular iPod (14 GB for $50). Apple has bent over backwards to woo the various MP3 player customer types.
Blogger icon Jason Kottke of Kottke.org has decided to make blogging a career. It’s a bold move to say the least. I must admit that I only recently (and by recently I mean in the last couple months) got turned on to his website in full. His remaindered links blog was the inspiration for my own supplement.
Pen for Hire # It’s been interesting to watch various weblogs have gotten acclaim for various reasons. The most notable and recognized by the public being the exposure of the CBS memos as fakes. However, in computer culture, other sites have earned more attention and respect from their respective audience. John Gruber of Daring Fireball has built a huge following using little more than a spartan web page and thought provoking commentary. I say thought provoking, but really what I mean is that his logic is so utterly relentless that any thought you might have had contrary to his generally gets a thorough beat down. He parlayed that following into a way to build revenue through ads and now subscription only content.
Just when you think those porn pushing, pill selling, poker playing swindlers had done everything in their power to try to get into your email box (and my comment system), I get the below message:
Hello, I’m a regular visitor to your site so i finally decided its time to sign your guestbook, so here i sign !
I assume the thought here is that I won’t notice the URL that the bot signed with and assume from the message text that it’s a real person. It does say that he is a regular visitor, right? Thing is, the blog isn’t a guestbook. Hell, I don’t even have a guestbook (how 90’s is that exactly?).
Yes, it’s geeky and there isn’t really much defending it, but my new favorite show is anime. It airs Thursday and Saturday nights on Adult Swim. Check their website for current showtimes.
The show of course is Fullmetal Alchemist. It’s about a pair of brothers extremely interested in alchemy, the science of making anything as long as you have the correct ingredients. They try revive their mother using this science/art, which is forbidden. They find out why. The older brother loses two limbs while the younger loses his entire body, being bonded to some empty armor.
As Logitech provides rather piss poor drivers for their mice, I’ve been using USB Overdrive. It’s a great product, but it lacks support for the MX1000’s horizontal scrolling features. No one had heard from the author since some time in 2003 (when the last version had been released). I tried writing to him, but like many others, got no response.
Good news for those that have been waiting (for side scrolling and Bluetooth support): he is still very much working on USB Overdrive and it shouldn’t be too long before a new version is released. He wrote the below on Versiontracker: