Month: July 2002

Mozilla 1.1 Beta

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Ah, I see that Mozilla 1.1 Beta has been released!

It’s here! Mozilla 1.1 Beta. New to this release are full-screen mode for Linux, BiDi Hebrew improvements, Arabic shaping improvements for Linux, and significant improvements to Venkman, the best cross-platform JavaScript debugger on the planet. […] And if you’re confused about all these alpha and beta releases (and what ever happened to that 1.0 branch?) then take a look at the nice picture available at the Mozilla Development Roadmap.

Grab it here:

Or, if you don’t have one of those OSs, there’re more downloads on the release page.

Slashdot Meetup

Ashley Bischoff3 Comments

The Slashdot Meetup for Dallas is tomorrow (Thursday), I’ll have to make sure not to forget about that. For those not aware, Meetup is:

A local gathering of a group of people brought together by a common interest. Over coffee, over a beer maybe.

Basically, it's a means of meeting meeting and organizing people with common interests (such as Slashdot, Blogging, or even Xena).

And, hey Julie, there’s even a Meetup for Buffy fans in Dallas ;).

Nine Free 2002 Hugo Nominee eBooks

Ashley Bischoff2 Comments

Fictionwise has now released six 2002 Hugo nominated works as free eBooks (for your Palm or other PDA). And, each link link below includes a book-excerpt, so you can get a feel for the book before downloading it. The free eBooks include:

“The Hugo Awards are among the most prestigious literary awards available and are presented annually by the World Science Fiction Society”. Thanks to PalmStation for the heads-up on this one.

And, if Josh reads this, hopefully he can enlighten me as to the proper means of citing books. For instance, I used double-quotes around the titles, but that was mostly an educated guess ;).

Pasta Sauce Jars

Ashley Bischoff2 Comments

I always intend on “finishing one jar before opening the next” (such as with juice or, in this case, pasta sauce). But, wouldn’t you know it, I accidentally opened a second jar of pasta sauce. D’oh!

So, we now have two jars of pasta sauce taking up valuable space in the fridge. And, not just the “regular size” jars (26oz), but these are both 48oz monsters that I actually got at a good price ($1.26 each at Target). Sorry about that, Jason.

Defeating the Passenger Screening System

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Samidh Chakrabarti and Aaron Strauss have written a paper “Carnival Booth: An Algorithm for Defeating the Computer-Assisted Passenger Screening System”. As with any paper, it can be a bit wordy at times, but the majority of it is quite readable. And, with any luck, Declan McCullagh will write-up a summary article in the next few days.

This transparency is the Achilles’ Heel of CAPS; the fact that individuals know their CAPS status enables the system to be reverse engineered. You, like Simonyi, know if you’re carryons have been manually inspected. You know if you’ve been questioned. You know if you’re asked to stand in a special line. You know if you’ve been frisked. All of this open scrutiny makes it possible to learn an anti-profile to defeat CAPS, even if the profile itself is always kept secret. We call this the “Carnival Booth Effect” since, like a carnie, it entices terrorists to “Step Right Up! See if you’re a winner!” In this case, the terrorist can step right up and see if he�s been flagged. […]

Rock.