Code Monkey -- "Quelltextaffe" -- so nennt man hierzulande Software schreibende Zeitgenossen (wie mich), meist scherzhaft, nur manchmal böszungig.
Titanic vs Tokio Hotel
Es macht einfach viel zu viel Spaß über Tokio Hotel zu bloggen. Das letzte mal hatte ich 633 Kommentare von Menschen die bis heute den Unterschied zwischen einem Blog und einem Diskussionsforum nicht verstanden haben.
Security Software and the Bad Idea of Having People Switch Them Off
It's the second time in only a few days that I read this, so I guess I have to comment on it.
Today I had some minor problems loading my GMail account, so it showed me an error as follows:
Alright, so imagine I am a naive computer user who just got this message and I obviously believe what they are saying. Now I am going to go ahead and disable my firewall altogether and live happily ever after -- until I come across the first script kiddie that turns my workstation into a spam bot, virus nest, or both.
Similar issue: That blogger on MSDN.com who nicely suggested to switch off the Phising protection altogether when the CPU usage of your new instance of MSIE 7 spikes on some AJAX websites. -- While he meanwhile revised it to an acceptable "add these individual sites to a whitelist for which you switch off the phishing protection", his initial suggestion was just as bad as the one up there by Google.
Come on, people. Not everybody is a computer geek. People actually believe what you are writing there.
So please start thinking before you type. Having people switch all their security features off first (but burying the information that this might be a bad idea somewhere deep inside the help files) is harmful and -- sorry -- just plain stupid. People will switch it all off, they will see that "everything works" and they will stop reading about the issue right afterwards.
If you really, really, really have to have them switch off part of their software (which is not too surprising for some paranoid security products), at least spend half a minute explaining how the workaround can be done securely, and only for the page in question.
You owe this to your customers. Or, to put it differently: If you handle your customers' privacy as carelessly as you handle their web security, I sincerely hope nobody ever tells you their social security number.
80,000 Percent Growth
alexa -- a search engine that provides traffic rankings about web pages too -- currently lists the first five websites on their "movers and shakers" list from Mozilla.
This blog is ranked #6 with an 80,000% growth and a weekly traffic rank of 4,277.
Chances are that's the one of the biggest growths Alexa has ever recorded for a single website :) -- I'm impressed!
Update: I am number 2 now! :) The growth percentage has fallen to a less impressive 460% this week but I guess being higher in the list is nice too ;)
Fortpflanzungsbeschwerden
Ich will ja nicht in die gekerbteste Kerbe hauen, in die man so hauen kann, aber:
Michael J. Fox wirbt für Stammzellenforschung
Stammzellenforschung wird kontrovers diskutiert. Und das nicht nur in Deutschland, sondern wahrscheinlich auch überall sonst.
Video: Steve Ballmer sells Windows 1.0
I came across a nice video this morning: 1985, Steve Ballmer sells Windows 1.0.
Un-be-lievable! It comes with Write and Reversi and runns bla-zing-ly fast on a 286! And all that for only 99 Dollars! :)
(via Google Blogoscoped)
60 Prozent pünktlich
Das ist ja fast wie bei der deutschen Bahn:
Ungewohnlich wöhnen
Lustiges erreicht mich aus der Heimat: Unter dem Titel "Studenten-WG mit Loft-Charakter" suchen ein paar Kommilitonen einen Mitbewohner für ihre Wohnung in Karlsruhe.
Firefox Parties: Join the Fun!
The release of Firefox 2 is coming up, and great things need to be celebrated. Thus yesterday, the firefoxparty website was released!
Partying is easy: If you host, add your party to the list and let the world know that you are going to celebrate the new, exciting release of your favorite webbrowser.
If you want to join a party, take a look at the map or the list and register as a Firefox party goer.
At the time of writing, you have the choice of more than 130 firefox 2 parties worldwide with at least 400 fellow party animals :)
Let's rock! Firefox: Take back the dancefloor!