Do (Computer) Geeks Really Rule the (Computer) World?

I just read about an interesting development with the latest iPhone. It all started when we found out the iPhone’s antenna is bad. Now we’re finding out AppleCare has informed customers it won’t be fixed (really), Consumer Reports specifically does not recommend the iPhone 4, and Apple forum moderators are deleting threads right and left, which apparently isn’t out of the ordinary, nor will that likely change in the future. (Whew, that was a mouthful!)

If that weren’t enough, Megan McArdle reported about a growing aggravation with Apple’s policies among the geek crowd (surprise, surprise).

Now, what I have to say here is largely speculation. It’s one of those thoughts where you think about it, and it interests you, but you have no real way or need to prove it at the time, but, as time goes on, you start to notice patterns that add leverage to the idea.

Mozilla Weave

This is a short blog post to say that I’ve found an excellent must-have for Firefox users. It’s called Mozilla Weave. It keeps history, bookmarks, passwords, Firefox settings, and soon add-ons in sync. My experience of any kind of automated syncing software has been poor, but this one seems to be flawless. Minus connectivity issues when I’m offline, it’s never reported an error or bugged me about some conflict or other. It just sits there and uploads data to Weave servers (or your own if you so choose) so other computers may stay in sync. Even if you don’t have multiple computers, this is great for just backing up, especially considering the Firefox data folder is a pain to back up.

Privacy concerns are non-existent here, because everything is encrypted with a pass-phrase, on top of your Weave account username and password.

The only bummer about Weave is it’s limited to just Firefox, and Firefox’s competitors have no equivalent yet. It looks like I won’t be switching to Chrome any time soon.

Firefox Saved Password Security (Beyond the Master Password)

I don’t know whether or not Firefox even allows JavaScript access to the passwords automatically filled out when you visit a page, but I sure am not going to wait until some cracker finds a hole in whatever security Firefox provides and gets at my automatically-entered password.

So, this time around I’ve decided to require Firefox to wait until I’ve entered the username before the password is filled out. If I forget the username, I simply hit the down arrow in the username box and it gives me a selection.

The setting is located at about:config (for those who don’t know: type that into the address bar) and is called “signon.autofillForms”. I set it to false. Long may security prosper!

Firefox 3.0? More like Swiftfox!

Firefox 3 is really what they say it is. Fast, efficient, and with a few new features to boot. Mostly the enhancements are under the hood with the revamped Gecko engine, making XHTML developers like myself uber happy.

The first thing that hit me was the speed. This little guy can really chew them pages up! I browse the GP32X forums, keeping myself up-to-date on the Pandora console, and speeds become an issue when you start opening 8 or more tabs at once. To demonstrate the difference (which is substantial), I’ve done up a little video. It’s nothing fancy, just the two browsers, one run after the other. The screen capture software actually makes my computer appear (and at times act) a little slower, so imagine a 110%-130% (guesstimation) speed increase as you watch this.

Firebug In Gentoo: Fixed!

If you have the Firebug extension installed, and it fails to open no matter what buttons, menu items, or key combinations you push, you probably don’t have the mozdevelop USE flag enabled in Gentoo or Gentoo variants. Took me quite a while to finally figure this out, so I thought I’d share.