and I mean it
David Boschmans was a kind, thoughtful and much appreciated man. He has left us way too early. My condoleances to his family, friends and colleagues.
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For those of you with Wordpress blogs, does this look familiar?
The new Internet Explorer 7 blocks a lot of (Javascript) scripting for security reasons, which means that clicking on “link” in the Wordpress editor gives the warning message above. You have to select “Temporarily Allow Scripted Windows” to be able to use the WP editor buttons. But if you save the post and the editor window is refreshed, you have to do that whole procedure again. Security is nice, and we know why IE makes a point out of it, but it shouldn’t interfere with convenience too much.
Luckily there is a way to let IE switch the security warning off for URLs that are under your own control (like your blog, for instance):
Add your own URL to the Trusted Sites (Options/Security/Trusted Sites) and you do not get the scripting warning anymore. Happy posting!
I just received an email on my Hotmail account from someone that normally never contacts me. The email itself is clearly generated by an automatic process:
When I take a look at the website that was cited (I won’t link to it), it is not clear to see what the service is actually about: I’m guessing it is to see who blocked you (MSN contacts that look off-line to you, but that are actually online). To check if one of your MSN buddies has blocked you, you ‘only’ have to fill in your Hotmail username and password. This should already make you nervous: you should never give those credentials to a site that’s not Hotmail or MSN.
Take a look under the “Verder” (= “Continue”) button. In a very light gray (#dfdfdf to be exact), there is the option to email all your MSN buddies, and by default it’s ON. Since it is hardly visible, I guess most people who try out the service leave it like that and as such ‘give permission’ to send out a couple of dozen to several hundreds of emails. You only need a few gullible recipients to create a ‘viral’ effect.
In the terms and conditions on the bottom of the (very long) page, you’ll find:
6. De gebruiker die deze dienst gebruikt is zelf verantwoordelijk voor het goed bekijken van de opties alvorens hij of zij op de knop [ verder ] drukt.
7. U dient zelf de optie [ mailen naar uw MSN vrienden ] uit te vinken als u uw vrienden niet wilt mailen.
8. Er kan geen aanspraak worden gemaakt op de werking van onze diensten omdat wij het checker systeem niet zelf hosten. Wij zijn alleen een technische kant die er voor probeert tezorgen dat u contact kunt krijgen met de MSN server. De MSN server/checker kan soms offline zijn. Wij mailen absoluut zelf niet. Alle mailtjes worden door de gebruiker zelf gedaan. Hij of zij is hier dus ook zelf verantwoordelijk voor. Bij overmatig gebruik kunt u mailen naar de persoon waarvan u het mailtje heeft ontvangen. Bij gebruik van onze dienst stelt u ons vrij van enige schade aan derden.
In short:
#6: the user is responsible for verifying all options before clicking [ Continue ]
#7: you should disable the option [ send mail to all MSN friends ] if you don’t want to send those messages
#8: we don’t send the emails, the user does. If you have complaints, contact that person, not us.
I certainly don’t agree with their point #8. Technically, they send the messages. They could claim the user ‘requested it’. In any case: it’s spam!
The person responsible for the site is already known as the “Mongool van scripthosting“: ene P.J. (Peter) Bierling from Groningen.
For some reason this “web” conference has been transformed into a political rally.
This bothers me a lot:
OK, this post will give away my age: I went to a Level 42 concert. For those of you born after 1980: Level 42 was quite popular between ‘81 and ‘88. They make music that can be described as funky pop. Their lead singer, Mark King, is also a bass guitar pop-n-slap virtuoso. Up til that moment, bass acrobatics could mostly be found in jazz circles: Marcus Miller, Stanley Clarke and (more recently) Victor Wooten. Mark King not only took the technique to a mainstream audience, the guy actually sang while doing amazing stuff on the bass.
Continue reading ‘Mark King plays a mean bass’
“Babel” links up three stories on three continents in a clever way. Mexican director Iñárritu has probably made one of the best movies of 2006. I’m not gonna tell anything more about the plot (but girls: it features Brad Pitt and Gael García Bernal). Just go and see it!
One very pleasant discovery halfway was the excellent Japanese remix of “September” (Earth Wind and Fire). It starts off all sampled and cut up, but I recognized it quite fast (I have a thing for sampling). So who was responsible for this funky rework of an already fabulous original?
Continue reading ‘Babel: Japanese “September” remix’
In 1987 it was decided that a high-speed train connection between Brussels, Paris, Amsterdam and Köln would be built. Ten years later, the Thalys train already achieves a travel time of 1h25 to Paris (over 200km/h). So the Thalys is this High-Speed-Train? Well, not always, as I experienced recently. While travelling to Paris is fast enough for daily commute, the train to Amsterdam is even slower than driving.
I actually had to go to the Hilversum Mediapark, the nerve center of the Netherlands’ broadcast industry. Apparently you’re supposed to take your car there, because the only train connection from Amsterdam to it is a small stop-everywhere train that only runs twice an hour. That combined with a Thalys that only runs once per two hours, is the reason it took me almost six hours to get back to Brussels in the evening. When I had to wait for an hour and a half in the Amsterdam station, I went to the only reasonable restaurant there, and when I asked the waiter for the non-smokers zone, he frowned and said “This is a restaurant designed like a ‘grand café’, sir, smoking is just part of that”. So I had to take a table next to the toilet, to be able to enjoy my meal without disgusting smoke in my face. As you might guess, it was not the best of evenings.
Continue reading ‘Thalys to Amsterdam is way too slow’
Ine mentions that Dreamhost has become a more reliable hoster. I am actually tracking Dreamhost performance, and I can only agree.
This is the current response time of a Wordpress blog on Dreamhost:
Wordpress is a database-powered PHP application, so this response time includes the MySQL queries and PHP overhead.
This is the very similar performance of a second blog on another Dreamhost server:
Continue reading ‘Dreamhost has better performance now’
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