Chris: Geek Guy

The Spread Firefox community website suffered a security breach this week. There doesn’t seem to be any information on the site, but the Mozilla Foundation has sent out an email to all registered users advising them of the attack, the text of which follows:

On Tuesday, July 12, the Mozilla Foundation discovered that the server hosting Spread Firefox, our community marketing site, had been accessed on Sunday, July 10 by unknown remote attackers who exploited a security vulnerability in the software running the site. This exploit was limited to SpreadFirefox.com and did not affect other mozilla.org web sites or Mozilla software.

We don’t have any evidence that the attackers obtained personal information about site users, and we believe they accessed the machine to use it to send spam. However, it is possible that the attackers acquired information site users provided to the site.

As a Spread Firefox user, you have provided us with a username and password. You may also have provided us with other information, including a real name, a URL, an email address, IM names, a street address, a birthday, and private messages to other users.

We recommend that you change your Spread Firefox password and the password of any accounts where you use the same password as your Spread Firefox account. To change your Spread Firefox password, go to SpreadFirefox.com, log in with your current password, select “My Account” from the sidebar, select “Edit Account” from the sidebar, then enter your new password into the Password fields and press the “Save user information” button at the bottom of the page.

The Mozilla Foundation deeply regrets this incident and is taking steps to prevent it from happening again. We have applied the necessary security fixes to the software running the site, have reviewed our security plan to determine why we didn’t previously apply those fixes in this case, and have modified that plan to ensure we do so in the future.

Sincerely,
The Mozilla Foundation

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I have mentioned before that I’m feeling restricted by Blogger, so I have started work on a new site powered by Drupal, an open-source content management system. Another reason for the change is that I am hoping to use Drupal or a similar CMS in a few upcoming projects, so I need to play with it anyway.

Updates on the existing site will continue, but may be less frequent than usual. The new site will be unveiled as soon as it’s ready, and I assure you that it will be worth the wait!

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Beaterator is a groundbreaking real-time music sequencer and sampler built to work right in your web browser.

The site recommends IE6, but works in Firefox as long as you make sure you are scrolled to the top of the page.

(via digg)

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One of the changes that came in with Windows XP SP2 is the emphasis on the fact that you should keep Automatic Updates enabled, and the incessant reminders to reboot.

Unfortunately I don’t know of a way to stop the reminders, but this blog post explains how you can prevent XP restarting your machine automatically, which it does if you don’t tell it not to within 5 minutes. This could be inconvenient at best, and could even lead to loss of work.

This particular method only works on the Professional Edition of XP, so if you have Home Edition you’re on your own, I’m afraid.

(via digg)

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XSPF Web Music Player is a streaming MP3 player written in Flash which you can embed on your website. It’s completely free to use, and while not as feature-packed as commercial offerings – it’s only at version 0.2 currently -it does the job well.

It works well with Webjay, a service which allows users to share playlists of streaming music culled from various sources.

On a related note, I feel I’m beginning to outgrow Blogger, and would like to move to something more customisable. I’m using a slightly tweaked standard Blogger template, which means my blog looks like so many others, and would like to build something like this into it (on an opt-in basis – I’m not going to blast you with music as soon as you type my URL). So keep an eye out for changes in the near future!

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A friend bought a new Microsoft desktop set today and was initially having problems getting Winamp to work correctly with the multimedia keys. They worked apart from the fact that Winamp would come back into focus when minimised when pressing the Play/Pause key.

I decided to install the new IntelliType Pro 5.2 software supplied with the set on my own machine, as I own an older version of the same desktop set. And it turned out to be a problem with the latest software, as I started experiencing similar issues – whenever I pressed Play/Pause, my default media player (which happens to be iTunes) started up.

The easy solution to the problem is to downgrade to the older 5.0 version of the software which, fortunately, is still available to download here on Microsoft’s site. I decided to get rid of IntelliPoint, the associated software for the mouse, as I don’t use any functions, but I guess you could stick with IntelliPoint 5.2 or give 5.0 a try.

I found this blog post which proposed a couple of alternative solutions – either set the key function for Play/Pause to “disabled”, in which case it will only work in Winamp, or get rid of IntelliType altogether and instead use Microsoft’s free TweakUI PowerToy to set the key functions (under Explorer -> Command Keys), although I found that not all the keys on my keyboard were listed so this may be a less than optimal solution.

The conclusion? Microsoft hardware might look nice and is cheap compared to alternatives such as Logitech (my friend’s set was £40 in Dixons and mine was a £30 OEM version), but it can be a pain to set up given its bias towards Microsoft software. My personal bugbear with this line is the fact that Microsoft has deviated from standard keyboard design in a number of minor but irritating ways.

All this just makes me want to go out and by a dual G5 with 30″ Cinema Display (I was in the Apple store in Birmingham’s Bullring shopping centre today and was in awe!) but I’ll probably just end up with a Mac Mini and the same old trusty MS desktop set a few months down the line, especially given the news of Apple’s controversial switch to Intel processors.

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Sorry for the lack of updates recently – I have been concentrating on exams, work and sorting out a job for next year. Normal service will be resumed shortly…

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NASA’s free World Wind software lets you zoom from satellite altitude into any place on Earth. Data from various satellites lets you experience Earth terrain in visually rich 3D, just as if you were really there. You can visit any place in the world, from your home town to the Grand Canyon, via the Alps and the African Sahara.

The software weighs in at a hefty 180MB (and more, it downloads a lot of its image data on the fly) and is available via HTTP and BitTorrent – possibly the US Government’s first use of the controversial technology.

read digg story

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PC2Mac.tk shows how to make your Windows XP interface look like that of Mac OS X. This is probably nothing more than a novelty item really, as it’s still Windows under the bonnet, but it might be useful for Mac die-hards who are forced to use Windows at work. It’s worth a look anyway, because some of the software used (such as ObjectDock) is useful in its own right.

If you decide to give this a go, don’t forget to stick one of those Apple stickers you got with your iPod to the front of your case to complete the effect…

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At 8:58 AM Pacific time (4:58 AM GMT), Firefox rolled over the 50 million download line. For the Firefox team, this is a validation of 5 years of work and the beginning of 5 more. The “50 million” minisite features some of the tales of spreading Firefox that have won submitters one of 50 limited edition coins minted especially for the event.

There are still 38 coins available, so keep your stories coming to fifty@spreadfirefox.com!

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