Drive-by downloads

I consider myself a fairly computer savvy user. I block ads via my hosts-file, I don't click on untrusted links, i don't run flash except by whitelist, I don't click on punch the monkey. I've never had any viruses, never been infected with any trojans. Until today. Today, I got the "AntiVirus 2010" virus. It's a variation of the other similar viruses that circulated in 2009 and 2008. It basically shows fake virus alerts, prompting you to buy the full version to clean all the fake viruses off your system. Obviously, the only virus, is "AntiVirus 2010".

I was very surprised to get this virus, as I'm a firefox user. I always keep both my windows installation and my firefox installation up to date. I thought I was immune to this crap. I was wrong. I got it by means of a drive-by download. I was visiting fairly innocuous sites, looking at some pictures, and them BAM, out of nowhere, this thing is already downloaded and installed on my machine. There are .exe files everywhere, and it lives in my system tray. I never saw a dialog box or anything.

Perhaps it's my own fault, for not running any anti-virus, but quite frankly, most anti-virus solutions are total fucking resource hogs, and since they are only actually useful in extremely rare cases, they are a total waste of money and cpu cycles (hey, run-on sentence, what the hell, man?).

So I ask you now, what can I do to prevent this shit? Obviously the bad guys are getting smarter and the good guys have their hands full. Clearly being up-to-date is not sufficient anymore. I've installed no-script, but last time I did, I got so frustrated with how bad the internet worked, that I simply disabled it. I guess we'll see how long it lasts this time.

Firefox 3 revisited

I'm back to Firefox 2 again. Firefox 3 had such different behavior and look compared to Firefox 2, none of which was customizable, that I just couldn't stand it. Also, the fact that Firefox 3 was a HUGE memory hog didn't go over particularly well with me either. It's not unheard of to see FF3 use 2-3 times as much memory as FF2 for the same set of tabs. They also added their own custom widgets, because there were some behavior problems with Mac, that this is where the slippery slope to hell begins. it is VERY rare that you have to make your own widgets. The scrollbars and buttons that come with the OS are excellent, work great, and in the vast majority of cases do exactly what you want them to do. Apparently that wasn't good enough for the FF3 team, so decided to roll their own, to the detriment of all their users. While I did find a plug-in that would let me use Windows native scroll-bars, it just wasn't the same. It felt like they were fucking me over, simply because they could. FF2 is crisp, clear, fast, and doesn't cause my mouse to freeze up when I play wow. FF3 is none of these things.

All in all, FF3 is an absolute horror and a mess, and I really hope I see a 4.0 soon that takes care of all the fucking garbage they put in to FF3. I'd stick with FF2, but they stop support in mid-december 2008, which is mere months away. Most companies continue supporting their old products for a lot more than 6 months (Windows XP will be supported with security patches to 2014, if I'm not mistaken), but apparently not the Firefox team. What with the 8 million downloads on release day, maybe they don't give two shits about people still running older version. Then again, I did run Netscape 7.2 for ages until I finally switched. I think I can do the same thing with FF2.

I'm a Switcher

Those of you who are somewhat tech savvy might have heard that expression before in connection to something else. You can rest assured, I'm not switching to Apple (although I had two delicious granny smith apples yesterday, with only a mild allergic reaction).
What I'm switching is my internet platform. As I have mentioned before, I have always been a staunch supported of Netscape. It was my first browser (there might have been some mosaic before, I don't remember), and for the rest of my life it has been my only browser. I have sometimes been forced to use Internet Explorer, and I have tried on my own accord to use Opera, but the conclusion has always been that Netscape is the king of the hill.
Unfortunately, Netscape hasn't come out with a good browser since Netscape 7.2, which was several of years ago. That, coupled with the fact that Netscape has now kicked the bucket has left me little choice. While I could keep the Netscape I know and love, I have run across Thunderbird here at work, and I've also gone over to using Firefox here, and I must say that my previous reservations about Firefox have all but disappeared. Thunderbird is even, dare I say it, a better email client than the one built-in to Netscape 7.2.
As a result, I have decided to switch my internet platform at home to a combination of Firefox for browsing and Thunderbird for email. It is with a heavy heart that I lay the legacy of Netscape to rest. We have had some good times. We've shared laughter, we've shared sorrow. Netscape has been my companion as I have explored the internet from its relative infancy in the early 90ies all the way up to today.

So good bye Netscape! You have served me well. You will always have a special place in my heart, and I will never forget you.

So ends an era

I have the gravest news. AOL announcer earlier that they are discontinuing the Netscape browser.
This is sad for many reasons. One reason is that the browser poised to take the crown from Netscape, the spin-off Firefox truely and utterly sucks (at least in its current 2.0 state). The primary reason that this is sad, however, is that it ends an internet era for me. I have been using Netscape since 1994, version 1.0 (with the throbbing N, you might have seen it in the first Mission Impossible movie). I remember sitting on some crappy modem and using, which was at the time, virtually the only browser around.
Recently (since 2004) I've been using version 7.2 of Netscape's browser. The last version to truely be the Netscape that some of us know and love. Netscape 8 was a joke, and Netscape 9 is basically firefox with a theme.
I tried using Opera, but slow startup times and no added value keeps leading me back to my beloved Netscape 7.2. I believe that I will keep on using Netscape 7.2 for as long as it will run. I realize that HTML5 is in the works, but I think it's a bad idea. XHTML is the way of the future.

If Netscape stops working due to funky web design, I really have no clue where I will turn. Hopefully, by then, there will be something around that is actually usable.

For those of you who are interested, my User-Agent string is: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040804 Netscape/7.2 (ax)


Edited to add: apparently I was wrong on the year. This article points out that netscape was founded in 1994, not 1993. I wonder what I was using before that then...

Browser Wars

Another casualty.
I use Netscape 7.2 as my browser. It's great, it's fast, it's got a wonderful email client, and it uses an old gecko rendering engine (the same that was in firefox circa 2004) that does virtually anything you ask of it.
I say virtually, because one application (that I don't particularly like) has fallen off the wagon and now prohibits me from clicking buttons.
This application is facebook.com.
Whenever I go to respond to a message or accepting a friend request anything that involves any kind of submission, it just does not play ball. It doesn't give me an error message either, so I can't know it has actually failed. It just sits there as if the action I just took was lost somewhere between my mouse and my browser.
It used to work well up until a couple of weeks ago. Did my rendering engine deteriorate all of a sudden, or are the writers of facebook total asshats that will change a working solution to a non-working one without adding any other benefits?
I would have been more willing to accept it if they had some explanation like "as part of an upgrade, clicking a button will not dispense candy from your cd-rom drive, but as a result clicking buttons in Netscape 7.2 will not work".
I would have even settled for something less extravagant, but they have given me nothing, and yet taken a core feature away from me.
Now, I really hate to have an account on that glorified address book, but since "everybody is doing it", I figure I have to throw mine in with the rest.
At least until now.

From now on, please, those of you who read this. Don't contact me on facebook. I don't want to have to fire up another browser just to answer some message that could be sent to me via a plethora of other services (email being one).
People who don't have any other means of contacting me than via facebook, fine, you do that, but the rest of you. Please choose another proven means of communication where I don't have to suffer needlessly.
I would change browsers, if it wasn't for the fact that they all suck. I guess Opera is ok, but it still can't stand up to the awesome performance my Netscape 7.2.

Also, for hitherto unknown reasons, I get a "500 internal Server Error" when I try to use the blogger spell check.