Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Are there no safe attachments? Over at Ars Technica, Eric Bangeman points out a Safari vulnerability worth taking note of. "The widely reported Trojan horse for Mac OS X may be a dud. However, a security flaw in Apple's Safari browser is something to be concerned about." It looks like Apple made the poor decision of depending on the file extension to determine how "safe" a document is to open -- even if the document also has metadata making it an executable script. Tsk, tsk. Wise advice in the article: turn off the Safari option to "Open "safe" files after downloading." Even Apple puts "safe" in quotes -- that should be a hint! 11:31:36 AM    comment []

Oracle, MySQL, Interbase, Firebird, Ashton-Tate and XENIX, oh my! I'll try to put together a more comprehensive post later, but wanted to log a series of links I want to revisit. This is a WeB Log after all: Firebird News: MySQL to adopt Firebird Architecture http://www.firebirdnews.org/?p=129 Database Journal: "Oracle's purchase of InnoDB, their release of Oracle Express, and the effect on MySQL" 9 Nov 2005, By Ian Gilfillan http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mysql/article.php/3561731 "MySQL's response to Oracle's moves:" http://www.greenman.co.za/b2evolution/blogs/index.php?title=mysql_s_response_to_oracle_s_moves&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1 "Pressure on MySQL increases as Oracle purchases Sleepycat, with more to come" 15 Fwbruary 2006, By Ian Gilfillan http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mysql/article.php/3585266 Slashdot's reaction: http://it.slashdot.org/it/06/02/20/1337227.shtml Wikipedia's notes on Jim Starkey, InterBase, and Firebird Exciting times. 10:12:18 AM    comment []

Dan Bricklin: When The Long Tail Wags The Dog At Dan Bricklin's Log: Essay about the Long Tail and general purpose tools. "For months and months I've been wanting to write an essay about some thoughts on the Long Tail. I've finally had the time. (The material was part of the talk I gave for TTI/Vanguard and I had time on the plane to turn the slides into an essay.) The basic idea is that the value of the Long Tail isn't just that you make money selling an awful lot of unpopular things. The value comes from..." read more 10:01:32 AM    comment []

Microsoft facing more antitrust actions? Computerworld News notes Microsoft faces another antitrust suit. "A California computer services and hardware retailer last week filed a federal civil suit accusing Microsoft Corp. of continuing to violate antitrust laws." 9:59:23 AM    comment []

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