Got 15 minutes? Give Ruby a shot right now!
Ruby is a programming language from Japan (available at ruby-lang.org) which is revolutionizing the web. The beauty of Ruby is found in its balance between simplicity and power.
Try out Ruby code in the prompt above.
Very cool idea…a great tutorial on getting started with ruby. Try it out and have fun.
Update: Changed the title because someone’s a butt…
This was just too good to not mention. I saw this link and instantly lost the next 10 minutes of my life just playing with this…Enjoy! 
Happy Holidays all. I hope everyone is having a relaxing holiday season. How was my Christmas? Quite nice, quiet, and relaxing. I will finally be going to Norway like I should have a long time ago. January 25th I am off to the land of Norwegian people and there strange 6 month old fish thing. 
I can’t wait.
What did I get for Christmas? Mainly just money because buying me presents is quite impossible so it seems. Not to mention the fact that one of the things I want to get (the Creative Zen Vision:M previously posted about here) isn’t available just yet. The Creative Zen Vision:M will be quite nice for the long plane ride over to Norway. 
See?…it’s all about planning ahead.
The December CTP has been released. The full build string is Build 5270.winmain_idx03.051214-1910. None of these screenshots are mine, yet. I will be getting this in the next day or two. *knocks on wood* 
Vista Build 5270 Screenshots
Microsoft Windows Vista December Community Technology Preview
December Community Technology Preview Fact Sheet
• Windows Defender. Windows Defender (formerly known as Windows AntiSpyware) helps protect customers against spyware and other potentially unwanted software. The Windows Defender solution in the December CTP is a functioning early preview of what will be available in the final version, and includes several enhancements and new functionality that reflects ongoing input from our customers, including these:
Improved detection and removal. Based on a new engine, Windows Defender is able to detect and remove more threats posed by spyware and other potentially unwanted software. Real-time protection, which helps keep unwanted software from being installed, has also been enhanced to better monitor key points in the operating system for changes.
A redesigned and simplified user interface. The Windows Defender user interface has been redesigned to make common tasks such as scanning and removal easier to accomplish, and to deliver a warning system that adapts alert escalations according to the severity of a threat.
Protection for all users.Windows Defender can now be run by all users on a computer with or without administrative privileges. This ensures that all users on a computer are protected by Windows Defender.
• BitLocker Drive Encryption. BitLocker Drive Encryption (previously known as full-volume encryption) is a hardware-based data protection feature that addresses the growing concern over corporate and customer data being accessed from lost or stolen machines. By encrypting the entire Windows system volume, data is better protected, preventing unauthorized users from breaking Windows file and system protection on lost or stolen computers. This improves data security and reduces equipment-repurposing concerns. The feature is simple to deploy and use, and enables easy recovery.
BitLocker works best when deployed on PCs with Trusted Platform Modules (TPMs), leveraging a new infrastructure in Windows Vista called TPM Base Services v1.2. BitLocker is available in Windows Vista Enterprise Edition, and should be implemented in a well-managed IT environment.
• Control over installation of device drivers. IT administrators can use Group Policy in Windows Vista to block the installation of removable storage devices, such as USB flash drives and external hard drives, to help prevent corporate intellectual property or sensitive data from being compromised or stolen.
• International Domain Names support in Internet Explorer 7. Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 in Windows Vista now includes support for International Domain Names (IDNs) in URLs, and protects against URLs that are designed to trick users into believing they have visited a trustworthy site. Supporting international URLs and allowing users to access the Web in their native character set enables customers to be confident in a truly worldwide Web browsing experience. Further, Internet Explorer has a number of built-in features to highlight potential spoofing of legitimate Web sites to increase security, including the anti-phishing capabilities that also are a part of Internet Explorer 7 in Windows Vista.
• Enhanced firewall. The firewall in Windows Vista enforces the rules set in the Windows Service Hardening platform, which limit the file, registry and network access allowed to only those that are legitimately required for a service’s operation. If the firewall detects abnormal behavior, as defined in the Windows Service Hardening rules, it will attempt to block it.
Inbound and outbound filtering. The Windows Vista firewall adds full directional control to the personal firewall, configurable by enterprise administrators through Group Policy. It allows administrators to block applications, such as peer-to-peer sharing or instant messaging applications, from contacting or responding to other computers.
Advanced security. Internet protocol security (IPSec) and firewall management are integrated in a single console. This console centralizes inbound and outbound traffic filtering along with IPSec server and domain isolation settings in the user interface, enabling increased visibility into security settings.
• Single-button on and off control. Windows Vista will enable users to switch a PC to Sleep/off mode using a one-click button, much like a TV or other consumer electronics device. Unlike Windows XP’s multistep process, the Windows Vista Sleep and Shut Down interface is simple and clean.
• Fast off. A Windows Vista-based PC will respond quickly and gracefully to the user’s Sleep, Shut Down or Restart request. This improvement eliminates the confusion caused by delays or a lack of responsiveness, and provides users with a consistent, reliable “off†experience.
• Expandable storage devices for Windows SuperFetch. Windows Vista gives users the ability to insert a USB Flash drive to provide additional memory that can then be employed by Windows SuperFetch. SuperFetch is the utility in Windows Vista that proactively loads all or part of the customer’s most-often-used applications and files into unallocated system memory before they are needed by the system. Windows SuperFetch adapts to a customer’s usage patterns, optimizing the utilization of available memory to help keep the PC performance at its peak.
What an interesting idea. It’s not practical in any sense, but it’s a great example of thinking out side the box and trying to do something different that is so ingrained in computer users. The main reason this would never take off has to be the lack of tactile stimulation. I am sure my beautiful scientist (*cough cough*) can back this up with some hard scientific data, but users prefer and in fact, respond quicker when they have the tactile sensation of clicking on something. One of the major compliants with the 5th gen video iPod’s is the almost entirely tacticle-less click-wheel. People like to feel what they are selecting. Nonetheless, very cool.
The Top 10 Weirdest External Drives Ever
Yeah, it’s official…some of these are indeed quite weird. 
Google has apparently won the battle to retain AOL’s affections, edging out a bid from Microsoft. But the cost is high, and establishes several precedents for the Mountain View company that might have been unthinkable a couple of years ago.
While AOL’s parent Time Warner has yet to make a public statement, published reports claim that Google has paid $1 billion to take a 5 per cent stake in the media giant. AOL’s sales team gets access to the Google Network, and Google will also give Time Warner’s media properties preferential treatment:
Click Here“Google, which prides itself on the purity of its search results, agreed to give favored placement to content from AOL throughout its site, something it has never done before,” reports the New York Times.
Wow…so long the good ol’ days of a search engine that is just focused on providing the most accurate and most relevant results. Say hello to the new Google. A Google where you get search results primarily from whomever they have ties to. Wow, I’m excited, aren’t you?
I just got back from back-to-back (to back) holiday parties and the rumors are flying that Meebo, which I wrote about a couple of days ago noting their stellar growth, has closed funding from Sequoia Capital at a $10 million pre-money valuation. I have not confirmed this with the company and it could be inaccurate. That’s quite a valuation for a company that is barely 12 weeks old.
Wow…they are just all over the news these days.
Update1:
According to this article it’s been confirmed that Sequoia has promised significant funding to this project:
No real details yet, but I’m hearing that the pre-money valuation was $9 million, not $10 million as I originaly reported. I assume the investment was in the $3 – $4m range.
The definitely raises the question “Are we seeing the Tech Bubble 2.0?” Hmm…there is a strange amount of capital that is being invested in several up and coming web 2.0 companies, but we’ll have to wait and see if the capital risks will pay off.
Meebois interesting service which lets you IM from anywhere just using a web browser, I talked about in an earlier entry. I didn’t think about it until just yesterday…using this service you can get around any type of firewalls and/or restrictions on software installed on a computer. Now students using school computers and employees on work computers can IM without problem. I will state the obvious in case you’re missing the point here. School and work computers typical have restrictions that block software from being installed, and they typically have in place firewalls that block the ports used by IM software to communicate. Here’s the cool thing, with Meebo you’re only browsing the web. If you can browse the web, then you can use Meebo, then you can use IM Now obviously, they could block Meebo.com if they wanted to get tricky, but this requires a bit more intelligence on the part of these people, and I think we can all agree…most of the sysadmins don’t have that kind of intelligence or motivation. Also…I won’t go into here, but we all know it’s not difficult to get around sites been blocked right?
On an entirely different note, Meebo has been doing a lot of updates as of late. They now support logging in and appearing offline. They also prompt you to verify that you in fact wanted to log off if the page tries to refresh. This service is just getting better every day. According to the developer’s blog they are planning adding in IRC, possibly VOIP, and maybe even a skype-like program. Keep an eye on this one.
So I found a weird “quirk” related to my webhosting company this evening. In the entry about reaons it’s great to be a guy, the word c-u-r-l was included. This turns out to have triggered a nice “feature” my webhost has in place to maintain security.
If the post has “w-g-e-t” or “c-u-r-l” in it, then this was blocked by mod_security.
What is the w-g-e-t he is taking about?
GNU W-g-e-t is a free software program that implements simple and powerful content retrieval from web servers and is part of the GNU project. Its name is derived from World Wide Web and get, connotative of its primary function. It currently supports downloading via HTTP, HTTPS, and FTP protocols, the most popular TCP/IP-based protocols used for web browsing.
W-g-e-t’s features include recursive download, conversion of links for offline viewing of local HTML, support for proxies, and much more. It appeared in 1996, coinciding with the boom of popularity of the web, causing its wide use among Unix users and distribution with all major Linux distributions. Written in portable C, W-g-e-t can be easily installed on any Unix-like system and has been ported to diverse environments, including Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, and OpenVMS.
And What is the c-u-r-l he is taking about?
PHP supports libc-u-r-l, a library created by Daniel Stenberg, that allows you to connect and communicate to many different types of servers with many different types of protocols. libc-u-r-l currently supports the http, https, ftp, gopher, telnet, dict, file, and ldap protocols. libc-u-r-l also supports HTTPS certificates, HTTP POST, HTTP PUT, FTP uploading (this can also be done with PHP’s ftp extension), HTTP form based upload, proxies, cookies, and user+password authentication.
Lastly, what is mod_security?
Running public web applications may seem like playing Russian roulette. Although achieving robust security on the Web is possible in theory, there’s always a weak link in real life. It only takes one slip of the code to allow attackers unrestricted access to your data. If you have a public web application of modest complexity running, chances are good that is has some kind of security problem. Take this URL for example:
http://www.webapp.com/login.php?username=admin’;DROP%20TABLE%20users–
If your application is vulnerable to SQL injection, invoking the URL above may very well delete all user data from your application. Do you make regular database backups?
So basically mod_security checks everything going through the webserver to make sure it isn’t outputting these designated danger words/phrases that could unintentionally (or intentionally) lead to information being disclosed that one did not intent to have public. I don’t know about you…but I learned several things tonight.
Wandering the Interwebs 