Recent Posts
Q: Dude, this anonymous commenter said that Google claims that they own everything you touch when you run Chrome! Should I be worried?Apparently he's not personally worried about it, and is more than comfortable giving others the impression that this means nothing. Trolls like this could only get popular through the ignorance of Digg.
A: No, of course not. I debunked that misconception last night in a Mashable comment and this morning in a ReadWriteWeb comment. Google does not want to claim the rights to everything you surf or do in Chrome, just like we didn’t want it the time before with Google Docs.I’m sure that other Googlers will clarify that point more officially. It is good that people pore through the license and ask these questions though, because if something looks worrisome then we can use that opportunity to make it more clear.
Q: Another browser? Geez, I’m a webmaster/search engine optimizer/front-end programmer and I don’t want to worry about another browser.Perhaps his brain was a bit bogged down after reading that comic and he missed the fact that Google had to rewrite WebKit in order to have it render a decent amount of pages correctly (23%-99%). He may also want to consider the reports that while Chrome has good standards compliance, it's quirk mode (rendering non-standards-compliant pages) leave a substantial amount to be desired.
A: Google did not add another rendering engine. Google Chrome uses WebKit for rendering, which is the same rendering engine as Apple’s Safari browser, so if your site is compatible with Safari it should work great in Chrome. Personally, I do think creating clean code that validates and works on many different browsers will be an important skill for webmasters and web designers. These days a smart site owner thinks about how their web site looks to all browsers, from Internet Explorer to Safari to Opera to an iPhone.
System administrators have a surprising amount in common with electricians. Both professions require intensive training. Both professions are plagued by amateurs who believe (erroneously) that they can do a good job as a professional. Both professions are based upon a shared body of knowledge.
But electricians can call upon several resources that system administrators lack. Electricians have a legally mandated mentorship/apprenticeship program for training novices. They have a well-defined and generally-accepted profession of job grades, from apprentice to journeyman to master. They advance in grade partly through legally mandated apprenticeship and partly through legally mandated certifications. These certifications test for knowledge of a set of standards for practice—again, mandated by law. The regulations are almost universally accepted as essential to assuring quality workmanship, function, and safety.
A study conducted by security company Cyber-Ark indicates that a significant number of corporate IT personnel snoop sensitive data, and nearly 9 out of 10 would take company secrets and remote access credentials with them if they were fired. This could pose a serious security risk for many companies and expose them to industrial espionage and other dangers.
The results of the Trust, Security and Passwords study are based on a survey of 300 system administrators at the Infosecurity 2008 event in Europe. Of the study respondents, 88 percent admitted they would take sensitive data with them when leaving their current place of employment, and approximately one-third said that they would abscond with company password lists. That could be a serious cause for concern for companies that have complex and loosely secured technological infrastructure.
Companies that handle credit cards can expect to see revised security rules released in early October, according to the group responsible for maintaining the Payment Card Industry security standard for storage and processing of credit and debit cards.
The next version of the 12-part PCI Data Security Standard is aimed at clarifying questions that merchants and service providers had regarding the current PCI DSS 1.1 standard, says Bob Russo, general manager of the PCI Security Standards Council. Some changes in the forthcoming Version 1.2 may prompt merchants and service providers to make adjustments in their security practices to achieve PCI compliance in the future, he adds.
Last week's decision by the European Court of Human Rights to ignore the pleas of Gary McKinnon's solicitors to have him tried in the UK prompted a peaceful demonstration outside the Home Office.
The possibility of McKinnon being extradited could lead to his incarceration for 70 years and fines worth millions of pounds.
Even more data is stored in the browser's cache, a feature designed to speed up performance of websites by storing a copy of recently accessed information on a user's hard disk. InPrivate Browsing failed to disable this feature.In all fairness this is a beta, it will be interesting to see if Microsoft at least fixes this problem in the final.
Thanks for responding to my posts, it's nice to know people find this interesting too 
Conflicting claims by Best Western and Glasgow's Sunday Herald over the scope of a recent security breach have been put under the microscope by security watchers. The paper claims that eight million records were potentially exposed, while the hotel insists only ten records were accessed.
Register readers familiar with Best Western systems said that the issue turns on whether the compromised PC was able to access the hotel chain's worldwide reservation system or only local data. The issue of whether archived data on guest records was accessible from the infected PC also comes into play.
In the continuing computer security arms race, a technique called fast flux is the bad guys' latest way of thwarting attempts to shut down phishing scams and other Web nasties.
Fast flux was first seen around two years ago, according to Derek Manky, security researcher with Fortinet Inc. in Vancouver. Around a year ago it became popular with operators of botnets - networks of computers belonging to unsuspecting users and infected with bots, allowing them to be controlled remotely and used for phishing and other scams.
One of the new trends in spam e-mails used for malware distribution is the use of maliciously crafted SWF files hosted on legitimate servers. The ActionScript code of the files includes a redirect that takes users to websites that host malware or prompts them to download the malware directly.