Category: Compgeeky

*sigh* I am oh-so-tired of sites that browser sniff to determine whether, in the site designer’s idiot mind, the site will “work” with my browser. Typically, sites that won’t function at all can be made to be fully functional when I simply RIGHT-CLICK, choose “Edit Site Preferences” from the context menu, select Network, tell Opera to mask itself as Internet Exploder or even just Firefox, then reload the page.

If all that’s different (and it is all that’s different; no functionality is changed, no emulation of another browser is implemented) is that the site now “thinks” I’m using a browser on its approved list, so now the site works, then browser sniffers are worthless wastes of time.

But idiot site builders still use ’em, because… they’re idiots, I suppose. No, worse: dumbasses. Heck, even Microsoft only warns of browser incompatibilities when it’s going to insist on using mondo insecure ActiveX controls or needs a Silverlight plugin. (That’s when I download and install Moonlight, if I’ve not already. Thanks but no thanks, Me$$y$oft; I prefer open source for that. Of course, Moonlight’s only for Linux systems, but that’s what I’ve been using whenever I’ve visited a Silverlight-“enabled” site. *heh*)

Just thinking on my One Major Software App…

I’ve used more than a few web browsers since my first explorations using Cello and other early Mosaic-based browsers. I still have five I use, depending on which “side” of a dual boot or which computer I’m using. Internet Exploder (version 8 only right now), Firefox 3.x–whatever it is with the latest bug stomp–Sea Monkey (which is now in version 2!), Konqueror and Opera 9.64 and Opera 10 Beta (in various flavors, including some “anonymized” proxy-based setups). But I’ve been using Opera Browser as my primary browser for 14 years now. I forget when Opera first brought tabbed browsing out, but it was more than a few years before Firefox, which has popularlized tabbed browsing to a degree Opera’s smaller eye share had not, brought it out and something around a decade before M$ decided to move Internet Exploder into the 21st century.

Still, until I moved to this 23″ widescreen LCD monitor (Acer 223W), I rarely had more than 30 or maybe 40 tabs open at once. I just counted off my current tabs. 89. The first 10 are locked so they can’t be closed down absent some direct intervention (two mouse clicks to unlock ’em and a mouse gesture to close), but the others are things I want to keep open for various reasons. Two are books I’m reading (one or the other when I’m on this computer, depending on whether I feel like reading a book at any particular time during a compy session and which one I want to bring up), several are products I want to keep links to somewhere out “in the open” as it were and others are related news or stories or pages with links to music, etc.

Handy lil things like moving the tabs around to group them by subject or relatedness make things easier to deal with when so many tabs are open.

And then there are the 50 or so links I’ve placed on a toolbar, cos I want ’em handier than a bookmark.

I had my tabs collection pared down to just about 30 just yesterday…

Of course, bookmarks are easier to manage in Opera than any other browser I’ve tried, and all my bookmarks are in 45 folders, most with more than a few subfolders, for classification into categories that speak to me. Adding new folders or subfolders is easy-peasy compared to other browsers, and that’s a Good Thing since I like things in their places.

And then there is the easy-peasy facility for managing, creating and modifying keyboard shortcuts. CRTL+F12>Advanced>Shortcuts>Edit brings up a wealth of built-in keyboard shortcuts, and changing Opera’s behavior is trivially simple from there.

And what can I say about simply typing opera:config in an address bar? Almost everything else that can be modified by a user is available there. Almost. I do have to import my saved passwords and a couple of handy config files when adding a new, separate, Opera build to a computer, but there again, it’s simply either copy-paste the config file into a new folder for the new instance of Opera (so I can run two different versions of Opera on the same computer but also still have all the same configuration) or point the new Opera to the old config files using… opera:config.

Nice that some other browsers are letting folks add on things like mouse gestures, although I think Opera’s implementation is better, cleaner and less prone to breakage since it’s a built-in part of the software itself. And has been for the past four major version numbers. Ditto with the nice lil extension that now allows Firefox users (sorry Internet Exploder users, no joy with this for you) to emulate Opera’s Speed Dial feature.

But still, having 89–Oops! now 90; added one to check something a minute ago–tabs open is the single most typical indicator of my dependence on Opera. Hmmm, there’re some things in this session I don’t want to lose. Time to implement another Opera first now emulated by FF: save this session. Sure, Opera saves all my sessions automagically whenever I exit (or an OS crashes or my UPS powers down during a power outage or whatever) but saving a session with some comments to goad my memory is a Good Thing too.

Well, that’s enough rambling for now. I think I’ve used up my word allowance for the da_

N.B. Confession is said to be as good for the soul as it is bad for the reputation. Well, so be it. Here’s my confession of tech lust.

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OK, I’m a technophile, but even at that I don’t often actually drool over a prospective techie toy. This hit my hot buttons, though:

“[T]he Eee PC Keyboard is a full-size input device that is likely based on the Atom chipset. Though it has a small 5-inch touch screen on the right, we suspect its role is more of a secondary display as this system is meant to be hooked up to external screens via the wireless HDMI or VGA port.”¹

Well, that was last January. This is now:

“Engadget ‘has it on good authority’ that the world’s dominant Netbook purveyor will launch the product first shown in January at the trade show next month.

We know it will have a 5-inch touch screen embedded in the keyboard, an Atom processor, and, according to Engadget, a 32GB SSD, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and both wired and wireless HDMI.”

I’ve been toying with the idea of a Netbook (probably Asus, since I like so many of its products), but really only for use “being there” with my Wonder Woman while she’s on her notebook, which is almost always in the other room (well, especially since there’s so little room in here, largely because of my massive collection of “techie junk” *sigh*). This could easily displace a Netbook for such use as that, especially for some really fun applications using a good-sized LCD screen–maybe even one of these Asus (only in prototype, so far) wireless LCD screens!–the HDMI wireless linkup and this lil keyboard/mini-touch-screen… Or, of course, simply use it with the lil touch screen as a standalone for minor computing use. It’s at least several times larger than what some folks manage to use with their iPhones, and with a full-size keyboard, well, I’d be a happy camper.

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Asus wireless LCD demo’ed in March, ’09:

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Oh, I just realized the reason for all my excessive salivation may have been the pistachios…

I blogged about this once before, and have emailed family, friends and clients about it as well, but perhaps it bears repeating.

Worm breeds botnet from home routers, modems
More than 100,000 hosts invaded

Sounds awful, doesn’t it? Well, it could be dangerous to your personal info, so taking steps to avert having your router infected is just good sense. You see, your router/firewall that’s connected to your cable or dsl “modem” is really just a limited, highly-specialized computer. Many of these devices, whether consumer router/firewalls or high-dollar Big Business router/firewalls for large networks, are run on linux versions that have a very minor, well-known vulnerability that this ‘bot exploits to gain control of a network. Most router/firewalls used by large networks in a business environment have long since been patched, but most consumer router/firewalls are run without ever being updated–and some may not even have updates to remove the vulnerability available from the manufacturer. Which are vulnerable? There’s not a well-documented list anywhere, so you have to be proactive.

1. Check to see if your router/firewall could be infected. “Ports 22, 23 and 80 are blocked as part of the infection process.”¹ Use your router’s admin access to check this. Don’t know how? Read The Manual! If these ports are blocked or admin access is blocked when you Follow Your Manual’s Instructions,

2. “…perform a hard reset on your device, change the administrative passwords, and update to the latest firmware. These steps will remove the rootkit and ensure that your device is not reinfected.”^ditto 😉

It’s an easy ‘bot to protect against, and just as easy to kill, so if your firewall/router is still vulnerable after reading this, it’s certainly not MY fault. 🙂

BTW, a strong password will be at least eight characters long and contain a mix of upper/lowercase letters, numerals and whatever “special characters” your firewall/router’s admin interface will accept. It will be memorablem to you (for whatever reason resonates with you) but will NOT contain any part of a real word, correctly spelled, that can be cracked with a dictionary attack, nor will it contain such immensely stupid content as the name of a relative or friend or a birthdate associated with you or anyone you could possibly know, etc.

In other words, don’t go out of your way to make it easy on password crackers.

Here’s an example of how I generate memorable passwords of medium security. I choose the technical name of a real geographical feature, or a lyric from an old, old hymn or the name of a long dead pet and an item associated with it, then I misspell it and then substitute characters and numbers for some of the letter, but NOT in standard “l33t” speak. It results in a password I can usually figure out if I forget it, but which will be relatively secure from dictionary attacks and from attacks by someone who may already have access to some personal info. I’ve been able to defeat 0phcrack–a password cracking utility for cracking Win2K/XP/Vista login passwords–with this technique, but it is still more vulnerable to brute force attacks than highly-randomized passwords of much longer (say 64 characters or more) length would be–the kinds of “passwords” I use for wireless access keys, for example.

Still, an eight-character password of medium strength is probably quite good enough to defeat psyb0t. Just do it.

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BTW, I have lost count of firewall/routers I have dealt with in homes and small businesses that have the username and password for admin access STILL SET TO THE FACTORY DEFAULT!!! Folks, I’m not going to mince words. That is stupidity cubed.

For non-technical users who nevertheless want to have access to their home computers when away from home (or easily share pictures with Aunt Sadie or whatever), Opera has announced Opera Unite:

Opera Unite is a unique technology that turns any computer or device running Opera into a Web server. In other words, your computer (running Opera Unite) is truly part of the fabric of the Web, rather than just interacting with it, and it’s something anyone can use. With Opera Unite, everyday non-technical users can serve and share content and services directly from their own computers in the form of intuitive applications.

Easy-peasy access to ones files from anywhere? I’ll be testing this out over the next few days and weeks to see how different (and better for non-techies?) this is to other remote computing/file sharing options like VNC.

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