Rubenerd

It seems Mark Zuckerberg has started poking fun at the folks who adamantly hate the latest in a string of new Facebook changes.

I HATE CHANGE AND EVERYTHING ASSOCIATED WITH IT

I WANT EVERYTHING TO REMAIN STATIC THROUGHOUT MY ENTIRE LIFE

I DO NOT KNOW WHAT I WANT FROM THINGS I CANNOT CONTROL

BY LOGICAL DEDUCTION I AUTOMATICALLY OPPOSE THE NEW FACEBOOK STREAMING HOME PAGE

IF I HAVE TO EXPLAIN THIS GROUP IT IS NO LONGER FUNNY

First, good on Mark for ignoring the people who made him rich and telling them what they should want and expect, and secondly good on him for getting away with it while people still use it, those people afraid to leave because "other people use it". He's a marketing genius!

Personally, I can't wait for another five years to pass when Facebook becomes MySpace and Friendster and there's a new service people are using. Given the string of companies and services lying in the dust behind it, it'll probably be just as closed and suspect as Facebook, but one could always dream of an alternative open system that has data independence and a bit more accountability.

You've got to love the people setting up groups on Facebook demanding they change the site back. As long as they're still using it, Facebook management couldn't care less what they post about! The only way they'd start to care is if Facebook stopped growing and people started leaving it for another service which in the short term they know people won't do. Perhaps it's akin to people like me using hashtags to spread awareness of causes on Twitter that doesn't end up achieving anything but we all feel good doing it.

On a related note, other people have tagged me in photos but I haven't updated my Facebook profile since early October. In social networking terms, that's an eternity!

Presumably the agency Kaspersky Labs hired to plaster their advertising everywhere didn't bother to do a user agent lookup when they presented me with this graphic. Unless they have a FreeBSD anti virus solution of which I'm not presently nor currently aware that I'd want to "Say G'Day to". I guess one could release such a product for users of Wine and Mono ;-).

I need to install AdBlock Plus in Firefox in this VM, or set up some Opera filters!

This originally appeared on the Annexe, back when I recorded daily puzzles.

This originally appeared on the Annexe, back when I recorded daily puzzles.

The Singapore Search Site has started a list of 24 hour shops and businesses in Singapore which given the name of the site makes sense. Whatever they're paying me, it isn't enough. Or too much. Don't prey prey prey PCK will be back.

Below is a 24-hour shop directory containing the website (with address) of shops and services in Singapore that operate round-the-clock. Be it entertainment, food, medical or shopping, we have you covered with all the places and services you may need.

So far the listings are contained in seven subheadings: Clinics, Entertainment, Food Courts, Fast Food / Restaurants, Convenience Stores, Supermarkets and Shopping Malls.

Right off the bat I can see they don't have any listings for 24 hour prata anywhere, not even under Restaurants. 24 hour prata is so important that I'd argue it deserves its own subheating! Did I say "subheating", I meant subheading. Don't study all day, drink litres off coffee, get all depressed then attempt to write a witty blog post.

I could go for some prata and teh tarik from Mr Prata on Evans Road right about now, anyone in Singapore want to air freight me some here to Adelaide? It'd really help during my exams!

As I said with the Ghostery Firefox extension back in May (Ghostery Mozilla Firefox extension review), it bowls me over when I go to some sites to see just how much sneaky crap is going on behind the scenes, and how most people simply have no idea. With NoScript, I'm starting to see the same thing, and it's rapidly getting much worse.

NoScript of course is a simple extension that blocks all JavaScript from executing in your Firefox browser unless you specifically authorise it; in security parlance it's an "opt in" system. Above all others, it is the primary reason I use Firefox.

So many scripts!

The point of this post though is to do with the sheer number of JavaScript snippets that are attempting to run, even compared to a few years ago. When I started using NoScript I was lucky to see half a dozen JavaScript snippets attempting to run, thesedays it seems to be the norm.

Now having a trillion different things trying to run on a page perhaps is to be expected with so many external Web 2.0 services jostling for our attention all over the place now, and the number of scripts attempting to run doesn't necessarily translate to less security and privacy, but I am becoming increasable wary of the direction things seem to be heading.

Why Worry? (apologies to Chet Atkins)

More scripts are a problem. Each script introduces a new potential vector for attack, meaning the more we have the greater the surface area of the target we're wearing on our backs as we browse. Unfortunately as this progresses tools such as NoScript could potentially become less effective for the same reason the Windows Vista UAC system ultimately failed; as we start to drown in the sheer number of scripts, picking out legitimate scripts from sneaky ones is also only going to get harder which means many people will simply give up and allow all scripts again, defeating the purpose. As more pages start to depend on scripts to operate, so too will people's frustration.

I just shudder to think all that nonsense would be running unfettered in my browser if I didn't have an extension like NoScript for Firefox, and it makes me shudder even more that the vast majority of internet users don't use such a utility.

It also makes me wonder just how many of these scripts are really necessary at all and whether they're also systematic of a broken web architecture that's failed to keep up with what we've ended up using it for. As with Flash, will HTML5 help to alleviate some of the need for client side scripting?

My home is back in Singapore and I'm studying in Adelaide, and in both places over the years I've collected huge collections of computer books, like these ones! Computer books are bulky and heavy just by themselves, so carrying a few dozen of them between cities in luggage is completely out of the question. What I need are ebook versions.

What bothers me is if I really wanted to, I could simply fire up a bittorrent client, aim it at a torrent for a bootleg PDF or EHF copy of a book and download it in a few megabytes; right there on my screen I could have a copy of the Perl Cookbook or Oracle SQL for example. I wouldn't do this of course because the books are available to me in dead tree form at bookshops for sale and it'd be copyright infringement.

If we leave aside the knee jerk legal response though, consider the ethical question. If I've legally purchased a copy of a book, is it okay for me to then download a copy of it? I think most reasonable people would say yes, but the law certainly says no. Or does it? When I go to the shop and purchase a copy of a piece of software, I'm buying a licence to use it; am I not doing the same thing for a book essentially?

The legal solution

The problem is, the closest we have to a legal avenue for electronic forms of commercial computer books is the Safari Books Online service of which I've been a member for many years. Unlike a traditional book shop, you purchase credits which you can use to download chapters from books, so if you want a whole book you need to spend all your credits on it.

It gets messier. If you enter the code from a paper book you bought in the real world, instead of being given free access to an electronic version of the book (which I assumed it would do) you're given extra credits you can use to download chapters as described before. Technically you could use those credits to download chapters from the same book you have in the real world, but there isn't enough and you'd end up spending extra to have a full electronic copy.

What they need to do

Welcome to the 21st century. Call me naive, but it's my belief that if I purchase a book (especially technical documentation) I should be allowed to download an electronic version as a value added feature rather than getting watered down chapters in a confusing format. Heck with the cost of flash memory thesedays they could even include a SD card or thin memory key in the book with an electronic copy too.

When I'm buying a book I'm paying for the distribution of this huge, lumbering hunk of paper and glue that had to make its way from some remote publishing house, but I'm parting with my money to get it for the ideas printed in it — a licence for the ideas if you will. It would cost publishers virtually nothing to distribute PDF or other electronic forms of this book that would contain the same ideas.

Whaddya say OReilly? Developers Library? APress? Help a brother out?

This originally appeared on the Annexe, back when I recorded daily puzzles.

This originally appeared on the Annexe, back when I recorded daily puzzles.