Firefox has a large number of options, not of them accesible by menus. If you type 'about:config' in the address bar, you'll get a list of them. I fill show a number of interesting ones.
network.http.pipelining - when set to true allows multiple requests in one connection. Makes things faster, but there are servers incompatibile with this feature (rare).
network.http.request.max-start-delay - name tells it all.
network.http.sendRefererHeader - default is true. If you change it to false, your browser stops sending HTTP Referer header. In simple words: you won't show which site you came from.
You can enable/disable Java, SSL2, SSL3, TLS (security.enable_java etc). You can also say which ciphers you accept. If you don't know much about them, leave the options alone.
The list is much longer. You can find options related to the extensions you have installed and many others. Enjoy!
There's a comparision of search results from Yahoo and Google (the first one claiming to have over 20 bilion pages indexed). It shows that Google gave more results. The quiestion is: which were more accurate? What is much harder to measure...
I wrote in June about possible KDE 3.5 release and about Qt 4. Now KDE porting doesn't seem to be very fast (no release plan for 4.0). Version 3.5 is now official. Release plan places final version at the end of October. My guess is mid-November. Feature plan brings some interesting things like new apps (KGeography and, especially, SuperKaramba in kdeutils) and features (more support for SVN). The number of features on the TODO list is still longer than on the finished one.
After rumors started that Apple's using DRM-like technology in their Intel-bsed developers' machines (the thing I wrote about recently), there's a message saying that it was just a rumor.
Removing all comments, leaving just plain citations (from anonymous source) it doesn't say there's no such chip. All I can find is: ''not DRM or TCPA protected''. It means that if the technology is called differently, it may still be here.
One more interesting thing. It suggests that the chip is to make sure the non-disclosure agreement works. Nice way...
Now, no official statement. There are many possible reasons. One of the interesting one I can think of is that the whole thing is to see customer reaction to decide if such chip will be included in the final version.
Slashdot writes about DRM used in Developer Kit with Apple Mac OS X for Intel. The fact is heavily commented including a (strong) suggestion about moving to Linux.
I don't know what the chip will be doing, in fact. No details. Let's assume worst case -- locking everything so you can open/edit it only on authorized machine. What it means? For me it means the whole thing reverse engineered as soon as someone with enough knowledge and time is annoyed with it (what means: rather month than two).
The fact many people try to ignore is that no protection scheme works when user has physical access to the hardware. Especially when can filter and change all input and output going out of it. Reverse engineering is just a matter of time. The thing that can make it slower (not stop) is law that prevents reverse engineering for compatibility reasons. But even if you have such law in your country, it's still legal in many others. The process of reverse engineering will just be done somewhere else. Just as with DVD encoding, cryptographic algoritms in the time of US restrictive export law and so on.
It's not that I don't think DRM is dangerous. It is. It just doesn't work. Many companies have tried and failed. It looks that learning on someone's mistakes is not the preferred way.
Sniffing in my network (for absolutely different reason, also -- I'm the admin) I found that one of popular online RPG games (third person perspective, lots of graphics, 3D) uses TCP protocol, when UDP was the right choice. What's the result? To transfer approx 20 bytes of data it needs more than 200 bytes. It uses PSH flag in nearly all packets, so most acks are without data. Also, when a packet loss occurs, it causes a re-transmission. In simple words -- lags.
The funny thing is that when programming using sockets (most popular interface for network programming) it's really small change. I'm wondering about marks the person who designed the game's network things got from networking subjects. If every took such class...
Scientists from Stanford University have written a tool (browser plugin) that hashes entered password with domain name and sends it in that form. For those people, who don't check certificates it may be a good solution. Well...until the hash function the plugin uses is broken. It requires some work - you need to change you passes on all the sites you wnat to protect this way.
Polish KDE doc translation is moving and there's KDE Userguide available in Polish. It's also a good time to discover Userguide in your language. It may be a good link for all Linux and KDE newbies.
Today there are two interesting Debian-related issues. First is about management problems with patches applied to the system - Zdnet writes that it's solved and patches will be released on time.
The second one is about Mandriva, Progeny and Turbolinux planning new enterprise Linux distribution. Debian-based. It's interesting especially when seeing Mandriva in the team.
The patent directive was rejected today with 648 to 14 votes ratio. It means that (for now) there will be no US-style software patents in Europe. It's clear that new initiative - to push software patents or to clear the curent patent law will come. Maybe this time the issue will be handled in a better way (more democratic, more transparent etc).
My 'patent' index page is moved, but still accessible.
It's nota secret, that news are often just translated from another language. Sometimes, however, the translation quality is very poor.
I was browsing chip.pl when found a new about Palm developing version of Palm OS for Linux system. Both Palm OS and Linux anre systems, so they can't run on on another without emulation. After digging more I found that the note was transaltion of Vnunet note about Palm porting their applications from PalmOS to Linux... The difference is big.
I have missed it, but Qt version 4.0 has been released. Many new features, but it seems that the most important on is that there's GPLed version for Windows (Linux and MacOS X versions are also available).
It can be downloaded from Trolltech FTP site.
example.com is domain used for documentation, manuals and such things. You can't register it. What has it in common with Norwegian goverment?
Slashot is running a story about Norwegian goverment moving to open format. At the time I'm writing this I can't access the orginal material it links to. The site resolves to example.com. What it means? The material may not exist or, more likely, the site is under so high load that the owner decided to switch resolving to survive. Such effect is called a Slashdot effect.
As the battle about software patents progresses, many people express their views on the subject. The Guardian publishes a paper by Richard Stallman, founder of the FSF.
Stallman is agains software patents and shows it in his article. He compares patent system and copyright law using examples from literature. The text should be easy to follow for nearly everyone, not only people who know how programs are written.
KDE 3.5 is a very misterious KDE release. When the project is moving to version 4, which will be based on Qt 4 library, it's hard to say how much time it will take.
CVS version screenshorts were posted. From a post on kde-core-devel it looks there will be KDE 3.5. When? Hard to say. It probably depends on Qt4 and KDE4.