Spontaneous Monotony

According to the BBC, there are three newly-discovered Internet Explorer bugs which are already being exploited by malicious hackers. Microsoft’s response? Wait until their monthly update on 11th April – until then don’t go on any infected websites (which could potentially be any website) or open any infected emails (which could potentially be any email). In other words, if you’re an IE user you’re screwed for the next 15 days.

I normally hate to say I told you so, but when incidents like this occur on a regular basis you wonder why anyone is still using Internet Explorer, which is the computer security equivalent of leaving a high-performance car unlocked, unalarmed, with all the doors open, in an unpleasant part of town in the middle of the night.

Public service link: Visit Browse Happy for an impartial comparison of alternatives to
Internet Explorer

UPDATE: Microsoft feel that it is justifiable to leave their users without protection until April 11th. Two third party developers beg to differ, and have released their own unofficial patches. Typical Microsoft efficiency for ya!

Sony have announced that they are ceasing production of the Playstation. A poignant moment – the official end of the road for the most groundbreaking console in gaming history. It needs no better tribute than a reminder of some of the all-time classic games, which count the PSX as their home

• Final Fantasy VIII. Ignore what the FFVII (also a PS game btw) fanboys shout at you – Final Fantasy VIII is the Best. Game. Ever
• Tekken 3. Sure, Soul Calibur and its successors have better graphics, and are more free-flowing, but I still think this is better. Its sequels aren’t fit to tie its shoelaces
• Metal Gear Solid. Still the best stealth game around – I’ve played all three Splinter Cell games, and MGS beats them hands down.

That list could go on forever, a testament to how fantastic a console the Playstation was. OK, a significant proportion of games are complete dross (take a bow, Spec Ops Stealth Patrol), but this isn’t something we should hold against it. The quality of the good far outweighs the quantity of the bad. The Playstation is the best example of a bygone age in gaming – where graphics could not be used to sell a game (although the FMVs in the Final Fantasy games were awesome) and the developers therefore had no choice but to rely on gameplay.

Gamespot says that Sony are planning to release a PS1 emulator for the PSP, and make some of the games available as (paid-for, obviously) downloads. If this happens (and they can get the licensing permissions for the third-party published games such as all three of those on my list) it will be fantastic – a whole new generation will be exposed to games they were too young for first time round. If Sony can pull this off, it might even convince me to buy a PSP despite the console’s significant shortcomings.

See Also

• Gamespot – Sony stops making original PS
• PlaystationMuseum.org
• Wikipedia – List of Playstation games
• Wikipedia – Playstation

Now that there’s a new version compatible with Wordpress 2.x, I’ve installed the X-Valid plugin. In a nutshell, it checks posts and comments to ensure (as the name may suggest) the use of valid XHTML. Previous versions occasionally caused some weird problems, so if you see any. let me know.

I’ve always wondered why Microsoft software is released with zillions of bugs despite extensive ‘technology previews’ (thats public beta testing to the non-Vole world). Now we know – it isn’t [just] incompetent programming, but in fact due to Microsoft charging people money for the privilege of helping M$ fix flaws in its software. Whatever you think about the openness (or otherwise) of the development process of certain open source apps, I can’t remember ever being charged $35 (or any other amount) for accessing Bugzilla or Trac!

See Also

• Digg story
• Original story on Stranger, yet

For those of you who don’t know, Lightning is a redesign of the long-running (but somewhat growth-stunted) Mozilla Calendar/Sunbird project which aims at achieving greater integration with the Thunderbird user interface to turn the rather nice email app into an Outlook-killing PIM. Well, the first alpha test version of it has been released.

As far as calendaring goes, it is already fairly solid. However there are two problems with it:

• No device (e.g. PocketPC, Palm) sync support. For most PIM users this is fairly basic – after all people who do not have such a device will probably be using an online calendar such as 30 Boxes anyway
• No information on where the files are stored. Everything seems to be stored in the monolithic Thunderbird profile folder, whereas Calendar (in Thunderbird Extension form) stored each calendar in its own .ics file, so you could use FinchSync (specially designed for Mozilla Calendar) to compensate for Mozilla’s slowness to implement it themselves

See Also

• Digg story
• Download page