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CWmike writes
"Mozilla has shipped a release candidate build of Firefox 3.6 that, barring problems, will become the final, finished version of the upgrade. Firefox 3.6 RC1, which followed a run of betas that started in early November, features nearly 100 bug fixes from the fifth beta that Mozilla issued Dec. 17. The fixes resolved numerous crash bugs, including one that brought down the browser when it was steered to Yahoo's front page. Another fix removed a small amount of code owned by Microsoft from Firefox. The code was pointed out by a Mozilla contributor, and after digging, another developer found the original Microsoft license agreement. 'Amusingly enough, it's actually really permissive. Really the only part that's problematic is the agreement to "include the copyright notice ... on your product label and as a part of the sign-on message for your software product,"' wrote Kyle Huey on Mozilla's Bugzilla. Even so, others working on the bug said the code needed to be replaced with Mozilla's own."
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theodp writes
"It's the not-too-distant future. They've turned off the Internet. After the riots have settled down and the withdrawal symptoms have faded, how would you cope? Cracked.com asked readers to Photoshop what life would be like in an Internet-addicted society learning to cope without it. Better hope it never happens, or be prepared for dry-erase message boards, carrier pigeon-powered Twitter, block-long lines to get into adult video shops, door-to-door Rickrolling, Lolcats on Broadway, and $199.99 CDs."
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tiffanydanica writes
"For a lot of us our browser history is something we consider private, or at least not something we want to expose to every website we visit. Web2.0collage is showing just how easy it is (with code!) for sites to determine what sites you visit. When you visit the site it sniffs your browser history, and creates a collage of the (safe for work) sites that you visit. It is an interesting application of potentially scary technology (imagine a job application site using this to screen candidates). You can jump right into having your history sniffed if you so desire. While the collages are cool on their own merit, they also serve as an illustration of the privacy implications of browser history sniffing."
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JustinBrock writes
"Dvorak's article yesterday, entitled Don't Trust the Servers, argues that the danger of software as a service was highlighted when 'the WGA [Windows Genuine Advantage] server outage hit on Friday evening and was finally repaired on Saturday. It was down for 19 long hours.' The whole fiasco raises an interesting perspective on the software as a service 'fetish'. Dvorak highlights it hypothetically: What if the timeline were reversed, and we were moving from online apps to the desktop. Hear his prophecy of the marketing: 'You can image the advertising push. "Now control your own data!" "Faster processing power now." "Cheaper!" "Everything at your fingertips." "No need to worry about network outages." "Faster, cheaper, more reliable." On and on. I can almost hear the marketing types brag about how much better "shrink wrap" software is than the flaky online apps. The best line for the emergence of the desktop computer in a reverse timeline would be "It's about time!"'"
