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Bytes and Bites

And no, that's not my computer. Not me either, but hey. Sometimes I learn things that some folks might be interested in, sometimes I just run across a particularly interesting case, or make new connections or observations that eventually wind up in the bottom of my ever growing pile of other soon-to-be moot bits of data stored on my biological hard drive. Might call it a mental compost heap. Tech is sorta like a garden, if you think about it. The veggies you live on, the flowers for fun, the weeds that come from nowhere and the bugs you hate. The compost of the ancient stuff. (From, like, last year.)

Just For Kicks

There's a new free PC game! Steam, an online game platform, good graphics and many fans, has lots of games out there for pay. Alien Swarm is their newest release, and this one is free. From their site: "Alien Swarm is a game and Source SDK release from a group of talented designers at Valve who were hired from the Mod community. Available free of charge, the game thrusts players into an epic bug hunt featuring a unique blend of co-op play and squad-level tactics. With your friends, form a squad of four distinct IAF Marine classes."

Of course, it requires a download and install and sufficient power to do so. But the price is right!

Security

Jaunted down to a security conference in Denver and finally started hearing the things from a security provider that I have been thinking for a long time should be pretty standard. Trouble is, it just isn't. Or hasn't been if you don't have the manpower and money to monitor it 24/7, and let's face it, even the government can't keep people out, so if you get a really dedicated hacker, they will weasel in.

But what if we could actually tweak the open source option and see what we could come up with for the small business that just wants to KNOW that all is well? Sounds like a rabbit trail we might go hopping down here pretty soon. My own linux guru and I might just see what we can see and then how and if it would port over to Windows. Keep ya posted!

Firefox

Recent events have reiterated to me the greatness of Firefox. What is Firefox, you ask? Well, I am sure out there is some sort of track of the lifeline but I can't really find it anywhere. Not that I really looked all that hard, mind you. But anyway, a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far, away, there was an operating system that didn't build in a web browser. Yeah, I know, hard to believe, but it happened. And there were little programs like Pine that took care of email if you could do without the graphical interface.

Then we only had 2400 baud modems, Compuserve and AOL. 3 miles to school, uphill both ways, you know the story. One day, this guy Marc Andreeson decided there needed to be a web browser for the people, a VW for the internet. He developed and released Netscape. I actually paid for Netscape Gold many moons ago, and I'm sure lots of others did, too, 'cause old Marc (I say old, he was a kid) became the wealthy prince.

Well, the king of Computerland didn't like that so much so he made Internet Explorer, and it never worked as well as Netscape, but more important, was less popular. Internet users already had a VW, they didn't need a Corvair. The justice department hauled the king into court for antitrust over the way the king had tried to force IE into all the machines in Computerland. The prince won and the king had to make substantial changes in his plans to rule the world. The prince sold Netscape and went off to another land, a wealthy young man.

About the time it was sold, Netscape spawned Mozilla, another train of thought about how web browsers ought to work. Mozilla allowed email to be a separate function for several reasons, security and overhead being chief concerns, and Mozilla morphed into Firebird which was renamed Firefox. Fast forward to now. (sound effect, the little whirring VCR noise, ready . . .?)

Web attacks . . . that was really the point all along. Did you know that you don't have to do anything these days to end up infected? Browse the wrong web site, that's it, go on I dare ya'. But only if you have Firefox. It is doing something against that kind of thing, building a safebrowsing system that will warn you if a site is known to have been hacked. In researching problems, infections, and the like, I inadvertently run into lurkers but I have not yet become a victim. Bottom line, even if you have only heard of it recently, don't let that fool you, it's been out there longer than IE in some form or another. And I'm really glad.