Category: internet

Categories
geek internet software tips

IE is a no-no

Using IE as your browser is really something people shouldn’t do anymore. It used to be my personal preference not to use it, because browsers like Opera or now Firefox simply have more to offer IMO, but today it’s basically a must if you don’t want your system to be infested with spyware.

It’s amazing how fast that browser-hijack, trojan and spyware software find their way through IE onto your hard drive. Some are even that bad that it’s almost impossible to remove them completely from your system, and cause ignorant infected users systems to slow down considerably. In one case it even completely screwed up the network settings making it impossible to connect to the internet (the horror!!!).

If it’s too late already, you can use SpyBot to remove the nasties.
Try it anyway if you’re using IE, chances are there’s more going on your machine than you might know about.

Categories
firefox geek internet security

cookie monster

Recently I was testing a web application and needed to manually delete some cookies it had been setting.
It occurred to me how many cookies my browser was actually keeping track of, and how few of those where actually related to sites I frequently visit.
For a lot of those cookies I could guess their purpose by the name of the URL they where created from, but there where still a shit load of em in there that I didn’t have a clue what they where used for, and who they where from.

Call me paranoid, but somehow I don’t like the idea that some unknown people are keeping electronic taps on me. So clearing all your cookies now and then is one solution, but this also means that all your favourite websites will suddenly have completely forgotten who you are, and will require you to login again. And if you’re in anyway a bit like my you’re probably using different passwords for different sites, and you’ll be forgetting some of those meaning you’ll be hitting that “damn I forgot my password again and now feel like an idiot” button so they can help you out over e-mail.

But luckily there is another way to deal with this issue in Mozilla Firefox. This browser allows you to restrict how cookies are managed, and currently I only allow cookies to remain during a single session, unless the website setting the cookie is in my exception list.
In that exception list I’ll be only putting those sites I want cookies from, which will only be those yummy crunchy ones with raisins.

Like this I’ll be able to logon to my favourite sites without having to re-enter my account details a zillion times, and all other nasty, bad tasting biscuits will be zapped from my hard drive as soon as I exit my browser.
Sweeeeet :)

Categories
copyright internet law software

land of the free, home of the…

This is amazing, picked it up from slashdot

The Senate Judiciary Committee, led by everybody’s favorite senator, Orrin Hatch, is moving to outlaw P2P entirely by making it illegal to produce such applications.

The plan is to make p2p apps illegal in The States because they “indice” copyright violation.
It’s like WTF!? What kind of a stupid idea is that anyway. What’s next, are they gonna outlaw weapons next because they “indice” murder? They should actually, but they just don’t get that one apparently, but when it comes down to software and p2p, oh yeah, after being seriously brown nosed by MPAA and RIAA they’ll be passing that one for sure.

What happened to freedom of speech? Couldn’t that be applied to writing software as well? I guess not, since nobody in the US will have the right to write a filesharing app when this bill passes.
Funny though, but what about webservers, don’t they allow sharing of files as well? Maybe we’ll get rid of MicroSoft after all. Hey, when you come to look at it, this bill might not be so bad after all… not!

And since Europe isn’t following quite yet, we’ll be writing all the p2p apps over here (or the rest of the world for that matter), and the evil US filesharers can download and use those instead.
Besides, if I remember correctly Kazaa for instance isn’t even on US soil anymore, so how is this bill going to stop that in the first place.

Ah well, I’m glad I don’t live in the US. Now let’s hope the European lawmakers are just a tad smarter and manage to keep software patents out of the European patent system.