Flash ‘Cookies’ and Security Settings

I’ve found that a large percentage of Internet users don’t realize just how they are being tracked on a website. Most people are aware of HTTP Cookies, but very few realize that browser plugin technologies like Adobe Flash also maintain data about a user’s activities.  Worse yet, while HTTP Cookies are limited to 4k, Flash can store up to 100k per website.

Clearing of standard HTTP cookies is relatively easy to do in mainstream browsers.   However, while Flash is almost ubiquitous, it’s settings are not easy to locate… in fact you cannot even find them in your browser or computer settings, you have to visit a website!

When you visit this link you will first see the sites and amount of data they have stored about you,
http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager06.html

Secondly, if you look on the other tabs or follow the next link you’ll be able to control Flash access to your microphone and webcam (provided that you have them connected).
http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager02.html

Other tabs will allow you to control various settings related to updates and global security settings, as documentation is provided for each tab it should be relatively easy for you to decide which configuration you prefer in each case.

FYI – I can see some real potential for misuse of these settings if they could be altered externally by a motivated hacker.

References:

Cheers!

Veterans Day

Happy Veterans Day.

As a former submarine sailor, and son of a career Navy “Chief”, I’ve got first hand experience as to the sacrifices made by our men and women in uniform.  Please take the time to thank them for their service to the country, not just today…. but every day.

If you’re a vet, please consider joining one of these or the many other organizations that support you:

If you’re a civilian, please consider contributing to one of these organizations or their respective causes.

I salute you all.

Open Source Office Suite

I am surprised that I have failed to neglect this topic for such a long time.

Some of the most common business applications in use are in the Microsoft Office suite, notably Word, Excel and PowerPoint. If you’ve ever had to purchase this package at retail prices, you were probably amazed at just how expensive this package is, particularly when you only use a small portion of the functionality that they each provide.

The alternative is to use compatible software; originally this meant that you relied on one of many packages that were available in the free-domain. Sun has it’s StarOffice suite which was later released as OpenOffice which over several releases has become the Gold Standard for office suites. It is available on most platforms and is regularly updated. Many features even outperform the Microsoft offerings, my favorite of which is to save just about any document in PDF format.

Cheers

Apache Native Client

If you do any development or even production testing with Apache Tomcat, you may have seen the following message in your logs.

“The Apache Tomcat Native library which allows optimal performance in production environments was not found on the java.library.path”

Here’s a quick solution that will leave you with greatly improved performance.

  1. Go to the following URI’s:
  2. Download the appropriate version of tcnative-1.dll
  3. For Windows, place that file in c:\windows\system32\ 
  4. Restart your Tomcat server
  5. You are done!

Cheers

Chiropractic Care

Like most ‘nerds’, I’ve had my share of back and neck pain. As I’ve aged, I’ve also experienced some severe lower-back pains. I’ve found that main stream doctors simply prescribe medicine, typically pain killers to mask or hide the pain, but never seem to actually resolved the core problem. In an effort to live a less ‘medicated’ and pain-free life I’ve turned to chiropractic care with great success.

Let me be clear here, I was on a jury several years ago where chiropractors were essentially labeled as quacks, and their services amount to massage. I’ve even had a personal doctor (that I no longer see) that treated me like I had seen a witch-doctor when i said that I’d gone to a chiropractor after an emergency room visit for severe pain that I thought was a kidney-stone. This is clearly not the case as I’ve seen numerous almost immediate benefit after very brief visits to a chiropractor where I’ve taken medications for months with no change in a problem.

Here are a few doctors that I’ve used and recommend:

Cheers!

G.I. Bill 2008

On June 30th, 2008, President Bush signed the new GI Bill into law, marking the end of a year and a half long struggle to ensure today’s veterans get the benefits they have earned.

Being a veteran of the first Gulf War, my benefits were much smaller. To compare, here are the benefits I received:

  • $1200 buy in, this amounted to $100/month for the first 12 months of my enlistment in the Navy. (As an E-1 or E-2, this was a fairly large amount of the monthly paycheck).

In 1995-1998 while I was in college, I received the following:

  • 10 years to use benefits from time of separation from service.
  • 36 months receiving $340-430/month as a check (it raised each year as “Cost of Living” increases, the most significant only 2 months before completing school).
  • No Housing Allowance, though rent in Chicago area was apx. $700/month
  • No additional amount for books.
  • No ability to transfer unused benefits to spouse and siblings. (especially as I used every cent).

The new bill represents a significant change in benefits, I applaud all groups and individuals that made it happen, I’m only saddened that I could not take advantage of this new plan as school left me with lots of debt that took years to repay.

Cheers!

Mozilla Firefox 3.0 released

After months of anticipation and three Release Candidates, the new version of Firefox is now available for download. (Due to demand, servers are still a bit slow, so just keep trying and you will eventually get it!).

http://www.getfirefox.com/

Most common developer plugins were updated to support FF3 in the last week or so:

  • YSlow! was finally updated on launch day
  • Unfortunately, Google’s discontinued support for their “Google Browser Sync” and does not plan to update it to support FF3.

Cheers!

Custom Webclip Icon for iPhone and iPod

I found a few references to this lately and just had to look into it. This is similar to the FAVICON approach used in browsers, but supports a (60×60), officially a 57×57 pixel icon.

The code is simple:

<link rel="apple-touch-icon" type="image/jpeg" href="/example.jpg" />

References:
Old Reference (no longer works):
Cheers

NLS for CSS?

Okay, so this is a little odd. This does not effect the language or direction of the website, but instead is a measure to ensure proper encoding of the CSS file itself.

The browser will generally rely on the HTTP Headers to determine this value, but in cases where the server or application configuration does not, you can provide the equivalent in the file itself.

WARNING: This needs to be the first line of the .css file, before any spaces or comments.

Example:
@charset “UTF-8”;

Other common value:
@charset “ISO-8859-1”;

Reference:
http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-css-charset

Cheers!