have just become aware of Flock, which is an interesting fork of Firefox 1.5. The much-anticipated version 1.5 has not been formally released yet, which makes this a somewhat controversial scenario. Flock is now being promoted by WordPress.com, where a download of Flock warrant a free WordPress blog (at least for the time being).

With all due respect, I am always slightly apprehensive when it comes to adopting, thus relying on forks. I am also aware of the problem associated with forking one’s own application. Once you lag behind, the long-invested dedication can wind up being disposed of. Flock appears to me like the conspicuous rationale behind Mozilla becoming a foundation and going by the identity of Mozilla.com.

As regards WordPress.com and the Flock relationship, I might give it a try, but I would certainly seek plenty of convincing arguments before I do so. My past experiences with Firefox 1.5 betas (AKA Deer Park) have been fairly disappointing and led to regrets. I have made two such attempts to migrate to a version that was not finalised.

Having said that, a certain other fact is worrying me slightly more. According to ZDNet, the lead developer of Flock said:

“Please note that this is a developer preview and that there are still plenty of bugs, many of which we are aware of.”

To me that sounds as if the application is not quite ready for “prime time” so WordPress.com are possibly getting users on a dangerous wagon.

It was also said, however:

“In architecting our software, build systems and engineering processes, we have given considerable thought to how our code will be able to evolve alongside the Mozilla code, without forking it”

This sounds rather re-assuring and I sure hope these folks will walk as they preach.

Related item: Best Technology Products of 2005

Let a BoxTrapper handle the ‘poop’

OXTRAPPERS are a mechanism for stopping large volumes of E-mail spam. The key idea is relatively simple as the following paragraph explains.

For each E-mail that comes in, require the sender to post a quick confirmation of his/her existence. The server sends the unknown sender a stub, which is then replied to as-is to complete verification. Once this is done for the first time, the sender is whitelisted and need never verify his/her identity again. Under this type of framework, untrusted senders must be accepted in order for their messages to be viewed immediately and not considered to be spam. And guess what? It works! BoxTrappers queues can be viewed periodically, just in case a genuine senders did not bother to get themselves whitelisted by replying to the verification request.

I have 3 BoxTrappers on this domains, but they are sometimes misused as spammers attempt to break them, much as they destroy anything where scams, links, and on-line shopping are involved. Spammers will often identify themselves using E-mail addresses of real people, who are not truly themselves, thereby causing traffic from the BoxTrappers (if not abusive mail from the spam recipient) to be sent to genuine innocent people and businesses. Moreover, I have recently come to grips with a trend where the spammers identify themselves as people coming from my own domain. They get whitelisted automatically in this way, so I guess they found a BoxTrapper weakness or loophole. Nonetheless, it remains easy to filter or identify such spam. It is only a shame that it can become visible by escaping the queue and thus be time-consuming.

These days, as I continue to edit this item, the spammers still manage to get past the BoxTrapper. Again, they do so by intentionally picking up E-mail addresses with my domain name, e.g. register@schestowitz.com. These come up with message bodies like “Please change you password, go to URL…” and with other username variations to register, e.g. webmaster, admin, etc.

As explained before, the domain name gets them automatically whitelisted, which is the core and very source of the trouble. These repeat almost on a daily basis (several times a day in fact) and I wonder how many Webmasters are gullible enough to fall for these scams, which I am convinced have become a widespread plague by now.

PDF‘s, text files, HTML‘s and
directories in the KDE Desktop with previews (click to enlarge)

ERTAIN issues arise when habits and user orientation in his/her desktop are interfered with. Desktop environments, installers, filesystem structures, or even platforms in general are often more workable and thus successful if they comply with the expectation of new users. What if these are made too stringent by the developers, however? What if decisions and conventions are voted for without involvement of the end-user?

Many desktop environments, free ones in particular, are not made uniform. The resulting diversity and flexibility leads to difficulties in using somebody else’s settings, i.e. working in conjunction under the same session. Some GNU/Linux distributions include more or less any desktop environment which exists while settings are kept apart and well-separable for each user of the system and each desktop environment. So, where does the the problem lie? Give users more freedom, I suggest, and make that the norm. It is, after all, their own computer and they understand their needs better than the developers of the operating system.

What appears worse than all is the scenario where decisions are arrogantly by the vendor and then enforced. This is often the path that operating systems such as Mac O/S (to its varieties) and Windows do. Give the user some more choice, I say, by adding options for endless customisation that has very few boundaries, if any (Open Source). Give all users the freedom they deserve and allow them to express individuality and adapt/tailor their desktop environment to suit their needs. Menu entries and other widgets will remain unaffected, so documentation, for instance, will not suffer as a consequence.

People work differently on a variety of applications, for a wide variety of purposes. The domains in which they work differ as well. A person working with many open windows at any given time might prefer to have “focus follows mouse cursor”. Contrariwise, to some, this “focus follows mouse cursor” behaviour is highly adverse to habits. To list yet another example, a Web server needs to have a light desktop environment that is less susceptible to breakage and consumes small amounts of RAM.

These considerations are all highly defensible. If Linux was to be deployed in more public clusters, for example, choice could (and should) be given as to which desktop environment should be used. Different strokes for different folks, but all can be catered for provided that disk space is made available. The pertinent settings would reside in the home directory of each user. Thumbs up to Gnome, KDE, and the rest of the self-motivated window manager teams around the world.

Related item: KDE Versus GNOME

Area 51 – used to be kept secret

T was rather interesting to discover that high-resolution aerial footage of Area 51 had been made available via Google Maps (and its sibling toy — Google Earth). You can review a little ‘photographic summary’ from those who have had a prolonged tour from up above. Do so if you do not wish to explore yourself.

In other news, related items were flagged to for me last night: “Google Satellite Photos Worry India Leader”

The governments of South Korea and Thailand and lawmakers in the Netherlands have expressed similar concerns.

South Korean newspapers said Google Earth provides images of the presidential Blue House and military bases in the country, which remains technically at war with communist North Korea. The North’s main nuclear facility at Yongbyon is among sites in that country displayed on the service.

UPDATE: I am noticing a similar CNN story, which has just been cited by Slashdot.

“Google takes governmental concerns about Google Earth and Google Maps very seriously. Google welcomes dialogue with governments, and we will be happy to talk to Indian authorities about any concerns they may have,” Frost said in an e-mail statement Saturday.

s some of you may have read, my site came under a large-scale denial-of-service (DoS) attack some while ago. It managed to endure it, but I was used as a ‘human filter’, getting sporadic exercise, sleep and food for a couple of days. Below I present the aftermath in my logs, which leaves lessons to be learned.

Click image to see it full-sized

As you can see, the motives of the attacker may have been high Google listings through referrer spam. However, as my site was requested for around 50 GB of dynamically-generated pages in just 1 day, there might be more to it. I suspect that the hundreds of hijacked Windows boxes were programmed to primarily wreak havoc; they were targetting my heaviest pages specifically.

am never too aure as to how E-mail should be counted (if it can be counted at all). There is a certain amount of traffic that can be quantified when it comes to E-mail, but not all E-mails should be equally treated. Points to ponder:

• Should spam be counted?
• Or spam that sank in a BoxTrapper and gets reviewed on occasions?
• Should mailing lists be counted?
• What about newsletters that anyone can sign up for?
• E-mails with multiple recipients?
• Uninvited E-mails that are not spam?
• Automated messages?
• E-mail one-liners?
• E-mails sent to deprecated accounts that are rarely checked, if ever?

I have reached the conclusion that if E-mail bulk is ever to be counted, there must be some weighting applied to the variety of E-mail ‘types’. I have never counted my mail, but I am somewhat fed up with people who brag about the quantity of mail (or spam) they get. I have recently read somewhere that there services that one can sign up for in order to increase the amount of incoming spam traffic. Amazing, is it not? More amazing is the fact that people may actually sign up and welcome the increase in junk. It’s a market niche, right?

Bill Gates arrested in his younger days (photo in public domain)

HE O/S industry continues to worry me. As a recent item suggests, if not practically reveals, Microsoft makes Windows-powered Dell computers cheaper than blank hard-drive computers, probably by subsidising hardware under the table.

This leads me to recalling a progmatic Ballmer reference to a $100 PC, possibly relying on kick-backs, lock-ins, steering of users towards MSN filled with adverts, not to mention extortionate Microsoft Office licences. When costs for hardware are being covered, it can be perceived as illegal practice if not bribery, which led to anti-trust lawsuits in the past. Software suffers the most from such legal loopholes due to (1) ‘duplicability’ and (2) compatibility, which make software different from most physical world analogies. Rules must adapt immediately to prevent a closed-circuit whereby competition is denied access.

If you are using Windows, be aware that 9 more vulnerabilities have been discovered today (check your favourite newsletter’s headlines for more details). Additionally while on the subject, Microsoft may soon be able to cash in on its own critical bugs, which is by all means outrageous.