Monthly Archives: February 2005

Posh and friends strip for charity

Posh and friends strip for charity
A new book will feature photos of Sarah Ferguson, Paris Hilton, Kate Moss and Geri Halliwell and it’s in aid of the Elton John Aids Foundation.

Victoria Beckham has been photographed naked – aside from a piece of Cartier jewellery and a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes – for charity.

Run, run, run away!!!!

Multiple Browsers URL Spoofing Security Issue

This recently publicised problem with almost all browsers (except IE) occurs when “domain names with certain international characters” look like common domain names. It’s not a new issue however, being a well known problem for several years.
You can test your own browser by following this link – does the url say http://www.paypal.com/?
For Firefox users there’s Spoof Stick which “prominently displays only the most relevant domain information”. It’s not foolproof though, and Secunia recommends that users:

Don’t follow links from untrusted sources.
Manually type the URL in the address bar.

Later… Richard Eibrand has the scoop in an ILUG post. Here’s how to disable this feature in Firefox:

  • Visit about:config
  • Search for “idn” in the search box.
  • By default it’ll be “true”, but double click on it to set it to false.
  • You don’t need to restart your browser, just go to the test page to see if it works. It did for me!

As a side note, Fuzzbucket says that IDN isn’t used much so it might be worth while having it disabled by default!
Later Still… That’s only a temporary fix as it’s reset the next time you restart Firefox. Here’s a more permanent fix using an extension that warns of IDN characters – Japanese and other sites that use those characters will still work!

Householders Against Service Charges

This afternoon while I was in town I saw a peaceful protest against household service charges on Cork’s Patricks Street. Stories in the newspapers have been accompanied by photographs of garbage piled high on the streets of Cork as the Corporation refuses to collect rubbish bins without tags. Unfortunately, bins put out at night quite often have their tags stolen. Local TD Kathleen Lynch has complained but the City Manager is on record as saying that there’s no problem!
The People’s Republic of Cork have their own analysis of the problem, offering suggestions for what Corkonians can expect for their hard earned cash.

Imagine it. A loud hailer booms: “Ladies and Gentlemen! Roll up! Roll up! For JUST A FIVER (plus the annual standing charge) have your bin collected by the amazing, the spectacular, the heavily unionised Cork City Rubbish collectors!”

At least this time I had a camera, the last time I was on Patrick’s Street 2 elephants went running past and this is all I got with my pitiful camera phone..

Close

Ad-blocker not detected

Consider installing a browser extension that blocks ads and other malicious scripts in your browser to protect your privacy and security. Here are a few options.

  • uBlock Origin is a free, open source, ad blocker for your browser.
  • Use pi-hole if you have a spare Raspberry Pi on your network.
  • Set the private DNS settings on your phone to dns.adguard.com to block adverts and trackers.