External Brain

Sigh! Apple, Apple, Apple! What are you doing!

Safari 1.2 has been released, but if you’re not running Panther then you can’t. Yes, yes I know same goes for Safari 1.1, and not a peep was made by me. I don’t know, I was too busy to notice, and was kinda hoping that Apple would rectify this shortly. Then I thought that maybe the 1.1 release were just minor changes to get it to run on Panther, I don’t know, like some porting thing or something. I don’t know, I’m not a geek, I’m a designer. Maybe this is the case for 1.2 also, maybe, maybe not…

Is Apple intentionally doing this to force users to upgrade their OS? Will users keep having to upgrade almost every time there’s a new Safari release, like a certain Microsoft company you might know about will be doing with their browser from now on? (security patches are of course the exception).

Is this not good or am I just whinging? Maybe some answers will turn up here someday.

Proving yet again that this site, especially the X-Files bit, attracts freaks is the search engine report for the week. Someone really wanted to know who killed the red headed man by searching for the phrase 156 times. There’s been a recent wave of people search for Home, the episode about the incestuous family of genetic mutants. I think that search has some connection to the trial of the German cannibal guy because they all seem to think the episode involves cannibals, it doesn’t, the cannibal episode is Our Home. Then there’s the clueless hoping to find reference to Law and Order and Babylon 5 hidden amongst the X-Files information. The blog searchers show more intelligence, although I still wondering what Daimler Chrysler guy was looking for

A computer virus that targeted the noxious SCO Group, performed as its perpetrators promised yesterday, bringing down company’s web site. The massive denial-of-service attack is expected to continue until 12 February

The arsehole from IP 68.15.51.63 tried to spam the site again yesterday arvo to pimp his used cars. MT-Blacklist hummed away quietly in the background denying his efforts. He’s in my blacklist if anyone would care to add him to theirs

While not exactly the Comprehensive guide to .htaccess it claims itself to be, it is nevertheless a very good beginner’s guide for basic .htaccess tricks like setting up custom error documents, redirects, preventing specific file types from being listed, denying access by domain (not just IP), and a wealth of other goodies. Its easy to understand for those who are .htaccess challenged and offers some really good tips

In Cambodia, motorbikes act as routers [BugMeNot] for a store-and-forward email system. They have a system that allow remote villages in Cambodia to send and receive email via Wi-Fi-equipped motorbikes. The Motoman system converges in the provincial capital where a satellite-enabled school uploads and downloads email for the remote recipients. The system is funded in part through US benefactors who aren’t just sending money; they’re spending time there as well, and helping to improve the quality of medicine and people’s livelihoods

The last MovableType update added comment throttling to stop spammers and it was nice to see it at work. Last night some wanker on IP address 68.15.51.63 hit the site in two sustained bursts of ten spam messages each. All successfully throttled

BugMeNot circumvents those annoying registration requirements that haunt sites such as the New York Times, via the simple strategy of allowing people to post the login and password for accounts they’ve created so that anyone can use those logins. Contributors of fake logins get banned from the site