New Blogger Templates Suck

Ok, so I just upgraded to the new Blogger templates & stupidly didn't save a copy of my old template -- specifically the extra CSS I was using to get everything looking spiffy -- and now I'm in the new template, can't go back, & am staring at a number of revolting errors.

*sigh*

One would think Blogger would actually test their templates out before launching them onto the unsuspecting public. Seems testing was not a priority for them here.

So -- please excuse the crappy broken links et al in the sidebar, the bog-standard fontage, & the fact that the sidebar doesn't now extend to bottom. I'll come back when I've got time & clean this 'ere thingo up.

Microsoft Firefox Professional 2007

Now this is hilarious.

Microsoft Firefox plus MSFirefox Mail Beta, with AKobe Phlash & TakeOver Technology... so many brilliant new ideas, I don't know where to start.

From the site:

Unexpected is good. An exceptional streamlined browsing technology known as the Cut Away Effect™, randomly prevents 9/10 of the browser from rendering properly in order to save system resources. This is not a bug.

Plus so much more. Check it out.

IE7 "on schedule to launch with Vista" (so, like, never?)

There's a flurry of news stories going round at the moment all proclaiming that: "Microsoft appears to be on schedule to launch IE7 in tandem with the upcoming Vista operating system".

Of course, this is hilarious, as are all M$ product launch date estimates.

Microsoft have given so many "official" launch dates for Vista over the last few years that you wouldn't be amiss in thinking this news means IE7 is coming out in a couple of decades.

Currently, Vista is "officially" going to be launched January 30, 2007. Yet only a few months ago, Vista was "officially" launching in November 2006. (Prior to that it had been October, after it slipped from August 31, which it slipped to from June, after it missed "early 2006".. and I could very easily go on for an extremely long time with this sentence, but I think you get my drift.)

Microsoft are still planning the November launch, which they're currently saying will be the date they'll ship Vista to businesses. (Translation/prediction: end of November, pushing December!) However, due to some problems with the build planned for that release, they've now had to work on another build -- which means a fresh round of testing, and, likely, another push-back of the date.

So -- IE7 is to be launched with Vista!

Just do not, under any circumstances, hold your breath.

ABC News: Expecting the Impossible from Microsoft

In his ABC News article yesterday, Internet Explorer 7 for XP Release Candidate 1, Matthew Sarrel writes:

"IE7 has now caught up to roughly where its competitors are now, but where will they be when the final IE7 code release occurs? I would have liked to see innovations in IE7 that leapfrogged it ahead of its competition."

Seriously!

Matthew, honey, Microsoft doesn't innovate -- it copies, steals, lies, & then, when all other avenues are exhausted, it buys the company.

With years of exactly that sort of history behind it, surely we all know this about Micro$oft by now!

CSS PLaY's Pure Css Image Gallery

Way cool -- an image gallery done in pure CSS.

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Worldmapper: The world as you've never seen it before

Watch Australia shrink away to nothing at this fascinating site, which presents our globe with dynamic territory sizing to show a variety of interesting statistics.

[The pic at left shows the relative proportion of the world's population living in each territory.]

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German Enigma Cipher Machine from WWII on eBay

First debuting in 1918, the portable Enigma encryption machine was picked up by the Germans in WWII to encipher military radio messages & hide them from the Allied codebreakers' ears.

Not many of these babies are still in existence today, however if you've got a spare $30,000 AUD in your pocket, you may just be able to pick yourself up an original when the hammer comes down on this incredible eBay one-off in a few days.

Considering, however, that the price has jumped another few thousand during the typing of this post alone, you may, instead, wish to build your own.

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And she's back!

Howdy, long time, no post.

Today I have been getting rid of the colourful (for want of a better word) spam that have been accruing in the comments for my most recent post.. actually, "recent" really ain't the way to describe a piece of writing from 6 mths ago. Tough; it is (well, it was) the most recent.

I was (apparently) scoring well with Yahoo Search for "cum shots". Ha!! How disappointing for the horny dicks who made it here, only to discover I write about computers, and testing, and other non-naked ambitions.

Most amusing.

WebProNews.com -- absolute NO idea about decent journalism!

This is the 3rd appallingly bad, unresearched article I've read on "WebProNews" in the last couple of months. Enough is enough.

Avoid WebProNews! There's absolutely nothing "pro" about it, obviously it's just a group of hacks who love the sounds of their own voices.

The linked article claims Firefox is less secure than IE due to the number of security threats logged against it at Secunia, which was greater than for IE, in the previous 6 months.

Reasons this is just garbage & that they obviously have no clue what they're talking about:

• The blog it quoted from took its figures from Secunia. Not that WebProNews bothered to mention that, instead quoting the blogger as an official source.
• Checking the relevant pages on Secunia for Firefox and IE, show that a fully patched Firefox is rated in the green ("Less Critical", a "2" on a scale of 1-5, 5 being the worst) while a fully patched IE is STILL rated in the RED ("Highly critical", "4" on the same 1-5 scale).
• 19 out of 85 Secunia advisories for IE are marked as "Unpatched", while only 3 out of 23 Secunia advisories for Fx have the same status.
• IE6 is almost FIVE YEARS OLD now. And people are still finding security faults.
• Mozilla have fixed all critical security issues within a fortnight of their being listed, while Microsoft are still struggling to address bugs & leaks from years gone by.
• IE is completely intertwined with the Microsoft Windows operating system (any flavour. For example, it provides the UI for Windows Explorer & the Control Panel, to name just one alternate role) such that issues with IE can allow direct access to the operating system for hackers.
  
• There are soooo many more good points about Firefox than just its far better security features than IE. The security "issue" is just one small reason why people are trumpeting the benefits of Firefox. IE simply cannot match Firefox in other (read: "any other") areas. Extensibility, customisation, speed & autonomy are just a few of such factors.
• The facts speak for themselves. I have NEVER had a virus, nor a piece of spyware/adware/trojan or other on my computer! Not a one. I have also never used IE (except when site testing), and have never used Outlook as my default email client. Related? Absolutely. It's a simple case of cause & effect, my dear Watson.
• the WebProNews page on which this article appears (actually, any page on their site, for that matter) is 75% ads, 25% content. Shows what their motivating factors are.

There was another ZDNet article recently that summed up the situation perfectly with the following quote:

If Firefox is still coming up with double-digit exploits four years after launch, then we'll know it's as bad as IE: until then, simple headline figures are in no way sufficient to help you decide which browser is safer.

As WebProNews so perfectly indicates -- do not believe everything you read on the web.

Law Professor argues against Indonesia's draconian drug laws

Excellent article that concurs with & expands on my own opinion about the whole drugs issue going on with Indonesia.

Professor Mirko Bagaric is Head of the School of Law at Deakin University, and has extremely clearly & eloquently put forth more reasons why we, as Australians, should not be tolerating Indonesia's apparent "anti-foreigner" drugs policy.

There is a massive drugs problem in Indonesia, but their current solution will only serve to remove their islands from the list of recommended holiday locations for travellers, something that will greatly damage their already fragile economy, and worsen the whole black market drugs situation.