Spirit: I was so gonna show you the DRM of Copyright Past, but you totally wasted my time with your music infringement… Rudy: Satire!
Via Hugh McGuire.
Tag: technology
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WordPress 2.3.2 Security Update
From the WordPress Blog:
WordPress 2.3.2 is an urgent security release that fixes a bug that can be used to expose your draft posts. 2.3.2 also suppresses some error messages that can give away information about your database table structure and limits and stops some information leaks in the XML-RPC and APP implementations. Get 2.3.2 now to protect your blog from these disclosures.
Stop! Update time! Ta dadada tada tada. Update time!
Done! Painless.
Update: Here’s Peter Westwood’s “WordPress 2.3.2 in detail“, with backlinks to addressed Trac tickets.
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End of Support for Netscape Web Browsers
From: “End of Support for Netscape web browsers – The Netscape Blog“:
Given AOL’s current business focus and the success the Mozilla Foundation has had in developing critically-acclaimed products, we feel it’s the right time to end development of Netscape branded browsers, hand the reins fully to Mozilla and encourage Netscape users to adopt Firefox.
Sniff… But only in a nostalgic kinda way. It’s the right decision, and I praise AOL for advising their users to move to Firefox. Now please please pleeeeeze just do the same for AIM/ICQ, in favour of the Jabber protocol (XMPP), and we’ll be on a roll!
While I’m on the browser subject, everybody’s favourite Factory Joe (aka Chris Messina) has a great post touching on the rising trend of site specific browsers and the state of the Mozpad project (and by association, XUL).
And since I’m in the subject chaining mood, check out Spicebird, a new neat Mozilla-based collaboration suite coming to us from India.
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Improbable Research Magazine Now Free Online
Talking about the Ig Nobel, CNET announces the following:
The Annals of Improbable Research, best known as the host of the Ig Nobel Awards, will now offer a free online version of its journal.
Via Slahdot.
Update: ReadWriteWeb also reports on the news that “all research funded by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), an agency with a $29 billion research budget, will now be required to be published online, free to the public, within 12 months after publication in any scientific journal.” Very nice! Twelve months is a long time in science though, and we’ll have to see what loopholes greedy researchers might find.
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Montreal's Sexiest Geek
From “Vote for Montreal’s sexiest geek in 2007“:
In the spirit of Wired Magazine’s poll of the year’s sexiest geek, TechnoCité wants to show a little love for the brightest and most beautiful in Montreal. […] Below are the six nominees, chosen for their having made the news this year in a tech-related field, and for being breath-stopping gorgeous. Choose with your heart, and vote at the bottom of the post.
Via MontrealTechWatch.
I know quite a few more that should have been on this list, but one can’t really disagree with the selection.
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Sperm Power could Drive Nano-Scale Robots
From “Sperm power could drive nano-scale robots“:
Scientists are examining whether they can harness the energy driving human sperm to propel nano-scale robots or deliver medicine to targeted sites in the body.
Betcha they’ll be nominated for the 2008 Ig Nobel.
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Release: wpDirAuth 1.2
I have released a new version (1.2) of wpDirAuth, my LDAP connectivity plugin for WordPress.
The release brings the ability to specify alternate ports for the chosen LDAP server(s), as well as a few bug fixes found through the help of the development and support group members.
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WordPress is Infinitely Extensible
The main “Extend” page on WordPress.org states:
One of the core philosophies of WordPress is to keep the core code as light and fast as possible but to provide a rich framework for the huge community to expand what WordPress can do, limited only by their imagination.
That’s a statement I’ve heard about countless platforms before, but have often been disappointed to find it to be more of a marketing catch-phrase than anything concrete. Not so with WordPress!
I’ve been doing research on how to achieve specific goals with yet another plugin project, and the more I look, the easier it gets. Every time I catch myself thinking “hmm, this one’s gonna be tough”, a quick trip to the WP Codex changes my attitude within just a few minutes. Everything is possible.
Don’t get me wrong, WP is far from the only extensible platform out there and everybody has their personal pet peeves with the code base, but when coupled with amenities such as the wp-hackers mailing list and the wp-plugins dev repo, Matt and Automattic sure made it easy to adopt WordPress as a full featured scaffolding. And that’s coming from a guy who’s usually happy to start his projects from scratch.
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Big Win for the Samba Team
From “FOSS folk who make us proud“:
Samba developers Andrew Tridgell, Jeremy Allison and Volker Lendecke have, along with some intrepid investigators from the European Union, wrested an agreement with Microsoft that specifies that every one of Microsoft’s network protocols which are used to work with Windows Server will be provided to a newly formed body, the Protocol Freedom Information Foundation.
This is great news! Three years in the making.
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Internet Brain Implant: Why We Should Say No
From “The Internet Brain Implant: Why We Should Say No“:
This Fall pollsters Zogby International released the results of a survey that asked nearly 10,000 US adults the following question. “How likely would you be to implant a device into your brain that enabled you to use your mind to access the internet if it could be done safely?” 11% of respondents said they were very or somewhat likely to do so.
Two-for-two from ReadWriteWeb today, and not entirely unrelated if you think about it.