5.3 4.9 near Yucaipa just minutes ago.
7.2 off the coast of Crescent City early yesterday morning.
5.2 near Anza Sunday morning.
Quakes measuring 5+ are fairly common. CA gets several each year.
Three in a week, aside from aftershocks, is unusual.
Of course, the craziest was probably the two unrelated 7+ 7.3 and 6.5 quakes in Landers and Big Bear that hit within hours of each other back in 1992.
Please read the following exchange, and tell me whether you think the response is inflammatory:
So what is opera? i thought it was gecko as well?
Opera Software is a company in Norway that makes its own, closed source, niche browser for desktops and small devices. They’re not based on Gecko.
(For those not familiar with it, Gecko is the “back-end” part of Mozilla, which is open-source. It’s the engine that handles displaying web pages in Mozilla, Firefox, and other spin-offs.)
I’ll link to the source after I’ve gotten some responses, but the context is a post containing browser traffic statistics.
The new Opera 8.0.1 includes an experimental feature called Browser JavaScript. It’s a collection of client-side scripts that automatically corrects known errors on websites as they’re displayed. Opera downloads updated scripts once a week.
It’s an extension of the User JavaScript concept. Firefox’s Greasemonkey is basically the same thing, and it’s gotten a lot of attention as a method for correcting or enhancing sites. The key difference is that these scripts are centrally maintained, and automatically updated.
Browser JavaScript is disabled by default, and can be turned on by putting Browser JavaScript=1 in the [User Prefs] section of your opera6.ini file.
Over the last few days, one of the viruses going around (probably a Mytob variant) has been trying to send its “Your account is being suspended! Open this file now!” come-ons. It forges the return address as support@example.net, admin@example.net, etc. We block any incoming mail using these addresses before it even gets to our virus scanner.
Now here’s the weird part. We’re also getting bounces sent to another domain we manage, let’s say another-example.com. Both sets are coming from someserver.another-example.com.br!
I think that the virus is finding itself on another-example.com.br and not recognizing the country-specific domain name, misreading it as just another-example.com. It then looks up the mail server, finds our domain, and targets both.
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![[Opera Logo]](http://www.hyperborea.org/images/cs/opera-ooo.gif)
I finally figured out why I’ve had so much trouble logging into sites with the latest version of Opera! (I’ve actually had to log into My Opera using Firefox. How’s that for irony?)
It’s all down to “Treat as specified in Server Manager,” which seems to be either the default or the way an old preference got interpreted after upgrading. First of all, you get to Server Manager by clicking on the “Manage cookies…” button. I’d been looking for something labeled Server Manager and didn’t find anything. Secondly, it seems to mean “Ignore any cookie for a site that isn’t explicitly listed in Server Manager.”
Once I added my.opera.com to the list, I was able to log in.
I may switch to “Accept all cookies,” though, since I’ve finally figured out another cookie issue.
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If you’re a Firefox user, and you see a little red circle with an up-arrow (or a tree, depending on your interpretation) in the upper-right corner of the window, it’s time to upgrade.
This icon tells you that an updated version of Firefox is available. There have been several security updates since Firefox 1.0 was released last October, with the current version being 1.0.4. I’ve seen a lot of these on computers I don’t manage myself. Either it’s too subtle or people have interpreted “more secure” as “completely secure” and don’t know they need to keep up to date.
You don’t need to uninstall Firefox in order to upgrade, and you don’t need to create a new profile. These used to be true when it was still in beta, but haven’t been necessary since it hit 1.0. (There also used to be a bug where Firefox would be listed twice in Add/Remove Programs, but it wouldn’t cause any problems.)
Just clicking on the red circle will give you a chance to grab the installer. Yes, with FF 1.0 it does still need to download the whole installer—all 4 MB of it, which is still smaller that some of the updates I’ve had to grab for IE—but Mozilla is working on major improvements to the updater for 1.1.
Incidentally, if you see a blue circle instead of a red one, that means some of your extensions have updates available. Just click and follow directions.
We went to see Revenge of the Sith again last night. Fourth weekend out, and the theater was still packed. (We were able to get tickets 15 minutes before showtime—or, rather, preview time—but it was pure luck that we managed to find a pair of seats that weren’t in the front three rows.)
And now, Decisions that could have changed everything.
Finally, some thoughts on viewing order. For a new viewer, I think watching the original trilogy first, then the prequel trilogy, probably works best dramatically. There’s so much in the prequels that has impact simply because you recognize elements from the original.
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Pardon the dust while I add a few categories, re-categorize old posts, and try to figure out just how I want to sort the tech stuff.
![[Starfire circa 1990]](http://www.hyperborea.org/flash/images/starfire.gif)
The Teen Titans’ Starfire is an alien princess from the world of Tamaran. A virtual paradise, populated by a proud, but beautiful and sensual warrior race. (Think of co-ed Amazons without the attitude.) When Starfire—or, rather, Koriand’r—was a child, the world was invaded. The war went badly, and the king ultimately agreed to sell his daughter into slavery in exchange for Tamaran’s freedom. (Years later she escaped her captors and ended up on Earth.)
Tamaran’s story unfolded during the 1980s in The New Teen Titans and The Omega Men (which featured Kory’s brother). Koriand’r returned home to help stop a civil war, but then her sister wrested the throne from their father. Komand’r (a.k.a. Blackfire) surprised everyone by becoming a much better—and fairer—ruler than anyone expected. Eventually Kory returned home to stay.
As The New Titans wound its way to a close in 1996, the story returned to Tamaran, now embroiled in a new war—one which ultimately destroyed the planet. The survivors settled on an uninhabited world to rebuild, dubbing it New Tamaran. (New Teen Titans #126-230, 1996)
Then things got nasty.
Just a few months after the final issue of The New Titans, DC published a prologue to the year’s big crossover, The Final Night. The sun-eater, before setting its sights on Earth, destroyed New Tamaran utterly, with no time for an evacuation. Starfire, exiled just hours before by her suddenly-evil-again sister, was believed the only survivor.
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A few days ago I noticed that while Safari accounts for about 2.3% of traffic to this site, Mac OS accounts for 4.4%. Since Safari only runs on Mac OS X, that means that just over half of Mac users visiting this site* are using Safari.
I realized that the detail page pulls out Mac OS X, which makes up 2.8%…but MSIE doesn’t say whether it’s running on Classic or OS X. Fortunately IE 5.2 is OS X-only, so we can add in that 0.6%, leaving us with an estimated 3.4% on OS X and 1% on Classic.
So, to the extent that these stats are reliable…
Anything more detailed is going to require going through the logs myself or writing my own stats script, so I have no idea how the remaining 15% breaks down.
*All of hyperborea.org.
I finally talked myself into reading New Spring, the prequel novel to Robert Jordan’s interminable long-running Wheel of Time series. It’s actually a very interesting character study of young Moiraine, and much more engrossing than the last two books in the series have been—perhaps because I don’t expect it to advance the plot.
Anyway, I’ve spent the last week thinking, “I really ought to see if there’s any news on Book 11.” I finally remembered it when I was in front of a computer, and discovered that Knife of Dreams has just been finished, the cover announced last week, and the book is scheduled to be released on October 11.
I came into the series when Book 8, Path of Daggers was the latest, and Winter’s Heart was released during the year it took me to read the series up to that point. I really liked books 1 (once it got going), 4, and 5, and book 2 still managed to keep me up for hours trying to finish when I really should’ve just gone to bed. The problem is that after book 5, he stopped writing novels, and started writing a novel. A really long one that spans multiple books. (Seriously, how long can he drag out the Faile kidnapping story?)
I just received spam from an organization urging me to boycott Microsoft products because they send spam.
The mind boggles.
Don’t tell me you aren’t thinking it.
(From the new Star Wars “Unleashed” statuette line.)
Received 9 messages to a set of related spamtraps. All identical, claiming to be an E-Gold payment with an attached zip file containing a scan of the check. Our server found that zip file suspicious and defanged it. The funny thing? While the From: lines all varied, they all claimed to be from Peter Gabriel.
Accidental Blogspam
I just got a complaint about the latest comment on Another One Bites the Dust. Apparently the previous commenter (who checked the “Subscribe to comments” box) either entered someone else’s email address or forgot visiting the site. It’s a name123@example.com-style address, so it could easily have been a typo.
Either way, the new comment notice went out, and the recipient sent me a spam complaint. I apologized and removed him from the update list, but it moves “accidental spam” from a theoretical risk to an observed problem. I’ve disabled the subscription plugin until I have a chance to figure this out.
The good news is that Subscribe to Comments 2.0 is out now, so I should be able to upgrade when I get a chance. The bad news is that it doesn’t seem to have added a confirmation step, meaning it’s still (effectively) opt-out. Sure, you have to opt-in to get it in the first place…but the fact is that anyone can opt you in just by giving your email address instead of their own.