Safari for Windows

Posted on March 25, 2008 by Jeremy Clark

I just downloaded Safari 3.1 for Windows, yes downloaded not forced-updated, and my initial impressions are good. Apple has been catching crap over the way the have released Safari to Windows users through Apple Software Updater. While the name implies that it will only update software you’ve installed Apple decided to push out Safari with it as well, the kicker is that it is checked by default. Infoworld explains more.

Safari feels very fast opening pages. It’s got all the standard web browser features, tabbed browsing, rss feed reader, form auto-fill. I really like the built-in rss reader, it puts Firefox reader to shame. Screen shots will follow. Another big feature is the private browsing right out of the box in Firefox you need a plugin for that but Safari has this as a standard feature.

Update: It seems that Apple violates it’s on EULA with the new Safari for Windows. According to The Register Safari can only be installed on Apple hardware running Windows.

Continue reading →

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Ubuntu 8.04 Beta

Posted on March 21, 2008 by Jeremy Clark

Ubuntu has just released a beta for the new April release of “Hardy Heron” as it’s called. Lots of new features have been included.

  • Linux kernel 2.6.24
  • GNOME 2.22
  • PolicyKit
  • Firefox 3 Beta 4
  • Virtualization
  • ActiveDirectory integration
  • Memory Protection
  • Wubi

I think one of my favorites has to be Wubi, what this is an installer for Windows. What it does is allows a user to install/uninstall Ubuntu just like any other application, with no need to have another boot loader or separate partition. For those that prefer KDE to Gnome the Kubuntu beta is also out and can be found here. Kubuntu has is available with either KDE 3.5 or the shiny new KDE 4.

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Spammer could face 26 years in prison

Posted on March 17, 2008 by Jeremy Clark

spam.jpgRobert Soloway from Seattle was once consider the eighth largest spammer in the world, now he’s the first biggest loser. He has been arrested and charged with multiple counts of mail and electronic fraud. He also charged with operating a bot-net used to send out spam to a database of 150 million email addresses. Soloway has been in legal trouble before, in fact an Oklahoma ISP sued under the CAN-SPAM act and after firing his lawyer and refusing to show up to court the ISP got the default $10 million dollar judgment. For his crimes he is facing up to 26 years in jail and up to a $625,000 in fines, but since he’s broke that doesn’t really matter. Just goes to show that crime doesn’t pay especially spamming.

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FTP viruses

Posted on March 13, 2008 by Jeremy Clark

F-secure has noticed a trend that more malware is being spread though FTP. As most can remember when viruses and other nasties were spread through email attachments, well that’s be fairly well defeated. Then came the drive-by-downloaders which use http to transfer the infectious payload, that’s been slowing down since browsers have evolved. Now though there is a new way to become infected, through trusty old FTP. How this happens is that a user receives a spam email with some links claiming they have an offer which can’t be refused and as we all know most really can’t refuse it. So the unsuspecting user clicks the link and a ftp connection to some bot-net controlled computer is initiated and some infected files downloaded. So now there is one more thing to scan for in your emails.

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Firefox 3 Beta 4

Posted on March 12, 2008 by Jeremy Clark

firefox-logo.png I’ve been testing the latest betas of Firefox for awhile now and Firefox 3 is shaping up to be very nice in my opinion. The biggest thing is the Mozilla team seem to have started plugging some of the memory leaks. Just my rudimentary test but after having both version open for two minutes and surfing the same few pages the memory usage of Firefox 2.0.0.12 is over 63 Mb and was still climbing when I stopped. While Firefox 3 the usage hovered around 55 Mb at the end and was steady. With some basic calculations thats over an 80% decrease (please don’t hold me to these numbers just very basic tests).

Some of the new features are very nice as well. My favorite being the adaptive autocomplete address bar. What this does is based on your usage patterns of the sites you visit the most and sites you visited recently and of course by letters your typing, it shows you the most relevant sites in the autocomplete menu. Also another nice thing is the ability to save your current tab layout when you quit. So when you come back to browsing everything is just how you left it.

Firefox 3 Beta 4 can be found here.
PC Magazine also has an article about the new beta: PC Magazine

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