Dr. Bill | The Computer Curmudgeon

Microsoft just released TONS of patches for IE due to it’s being a dog browser and full of security holes… but no sooner did they release all these patches… another HUGE problem has turned up!

HUGE IE Issue!

“Barely two weeks after shipping an Internet Explorer security makeover to cover a wave of drive-by malware downloads, Microsoft is scrambling to address the public disclosure of a new zero-day vulnerability that could be used in code execution attacks. Michal Zalewski, the researcher who discovered the flaw and published the advisory without notifying Microsoft, said the issue was confirmed on fully patched versions of IE 6.0 and Microsoft Windows XP SP2 (Service Pack 2).”

An Internet campaign to get web surfers to move from Internet Explorer to Firefox is making news! They have code that a webmaster can include on their sites that will detect Internet Explorer, and flash up a message for the user to move to Firefox! Dewd! Making the Internet safer for us all!

Explorer Destroyer Web Site

They have started a competition to see you can get under 50% of their web site stats from IE.

“What percentage of visits to your site are with Internet Explorer? Check your stats. If it’s more than 50%, you’ve got some serious work cut out for you…

Think how psyched you would be if less than 50% of your sites’ visitors used IE. It’s a good target: ambitious, but achievable. So we thought we’d make it a friendly competition.

Here’s how it works: if you want to you can turn on code in those scripts that will pass stats to our site about the percentage of IE users who visit. When you get under 50% IE usage, you’ll show up in the list below (coming soon!). It’s like a hall of fame.

There’s even an ‘Under 30’ and ‘Under 10’ section for the overachievers (sorry, mozdev.org is ineligible). So install the script and join the race.”

Wild!

You know that I have long said that the Linspire desktop Linux is the most “Windows-like” of the desktop Linuxes. Now, Linspire has announced a free, open… fully Open Source version of their Linspire system.

Freespire

“Freespire is a community-driven, Linux-based operating system that combines the best that free, open source software has to offer (community driven, freely distributed, open source code, etc.), but also provides users the choice of including proprietary codecs, drivers and applications as they see fit. With Freespire, the choice is yours as to what software is installed on your computer, with no limitations or restrictions placed on that choice. How you choose to maximize the performance of your computer is entirely up to you.”

What if there was a piece of hardware in your DVR that forced you to watch ads? Arrrgh! (That’s what I say!) The beauty of DVRs is being able to skip ads! Now Philips has come up with a technology that may end our days of TV watching bliss!

Philips TV Device

This is evil of the basest sort!