Spoofing your Browser

Web servers sometimes behave differently for different browsers, for compatibility reasons usually, but not neccessarily.

If you want to test how a system or site behaves for different browsers, plugins for firefox such as the ‘User Agent Switcher‘ can help. With it you can enter any data for the User Agent string.

The User Agent String is essentially a text string that your browser sends with each request to tell the server what browser, operating system, extensions/plugins, etc you are using.

I didn’t initially find the format or usage of this plugin to be very intuitive, but thankfully there are importable files online with settings for many of the more common combinations of browser/os etc. One such list I have used is at http://qainsight.net. Check for updates to the version of the script. Right now the site is offline, but the latest (March 2008, from internet caches) appears to be here.

Last I read it does not properly cater for the different User Agent String formats of other browsers, for instance the IE and Firefox string are quite different in both content and organisation. So while it will usually work, it may sometimes fail, and will probably not hide the fact of what browser you are actually using from those who might really want to know…

Robust Referencing with DOI

I’m doing some research this year and am coming across more and more use of the DOI.

This Robust Referencing for arts. Pretty cool. I like the thought of being able to include a “URI” for each reference, that will always resolve to that particular material.

It’s nice when reading a paper if the author(s) have included the details for that paper, and nicer still when you find one with a DOI included. You can include that DOI with your reference to the paper should you use it, and make it easier for others to quickly get at the paper, or at least the details, as above.

This isn’t a new idea though, as I read more I’m finding lots of references to ‘openurl‘.

Some quotes(ish)/paraphrases and references on the subject if you are new to it, from a podcast I listened to :

http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/01/26/a-conversation-with-tony-hammond-about-digital-object-identifiers/

http://www.nature.com/index.html

Robust Referencing, at an abstract level, of a work. Not tied to a specific release, edition or part of a work, but the work as a whole.

Multiple Resolution is possible. i.e. to Articles, Books, etc over many versions, errata, images, video, text, etc etc etc, including smart awareness of updates!! (errata, new version/revision, etc)

Somebody else caught it and mentions openUrl @ http://onebiglibrary.net/story/crossover-event-jon-udell-and-tony-hammond-on-doi-etc

What about Purl ? [http://purl.org/] (no multiple resolution)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_object_identifier

Connotea is like a social bookmarking site for scientists and academia, allowing users to reference online versions of publications, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connotea

http://www.connotea.org/register

Ericsson HM230dp ADSL Router

I have the above router at home and am using it as a backup device.

I never got any firmware upgrades for it, and finding nothing on-line or at any of the ericsson sites, I decided to e-mail them.

A very nice chap responded with the below in a matter of hours :

“The HM230 has reached end of support, you can find the latest firmware and documetation via the link below:
ftp://ftp.cpeps.ericsson.net/HM230/ “

I have downloaded all the files and will try the update later.

If you find the site unavailable, drop me a note, I may have them on backup for a time.

The are :

Index of ftp://ftp.cpeps.ericsson.net/HM230/

---

Up to higher level directory
hm230d_userguide_r3.pdf	10294 KB	19/04/2007	00:00:00
hm230di FW 4.28p3.zip	2154 KB	19/04/2007	00:00:00
hm230dp_FW 4.28p3.zip	2144 KB	19/04/2007	00:00:00

WordPress Security : User account details at risk

The wordpress.com login mechanism is not secure!

[Update, it has been addressed, pity there was no announcement, and no warning with details of how to login securly]

Even when you go to it via secure-http, at https://www.wordpress.com, the login is done insecurely.

Why ? Because the login information is still posting to a non-secure http:// location !

What does this mean ? Consider :

1. your login name and password are sent in plain text, not encrypted.
2. there is the potential that anybody on your lan, at the internet-cafe, at school, work, in the airport etc can get your password. They don’t even need to be a technical genius.

Closer analysis of the website @ https://www.wordpress.com reveals the form is set as follows :

<form name="loginform" id="loginform" action="http://wordpress.com/wp-login.php” method=”post”>

Shouldn’t the action be to https://wordpress.com/wp-login.php ??

Thankfully, firefox alerts me to this with a message, so at least with that browser I may be aware something is not quite right.

“Although this page is encrypted, the information you have entered is to be sent over an unencrypted connection and could easily be read by a third party.” is the message, as per the image below.

Image Link

I find this very suprising, don’t you ?

For instance, here [http://wordpress.com/blog/2006/03/08/secure-blogging/] is a blog entry touting the security of WordPressfrom 2006, yet today the login is very far from secure.

Slow browsing

I just installed Ubuntu on my laptop, and again I am hit with a slow browsing experience on some networks.

For instance, if you are in Éire and get “broadband” from eircom, you may be having a slow browsing experience on your Linux machine.

From what I’ve been reading each time I hit such an issue, the problem is usually that the cheap router(s) supplied and/or on the ISP’s network are not responding to AAAA requests, so only after a timeout will a backward-compatible A request be sent which will then be honoured.

All this, per request to the internet, has significant imapct on day to day browsing.

You can work around this kind of ISP issue by stopping your machine from sending the AAAA requests (which the cheap, non-standards-compliant router won’t respond to… ?).

To do this on ubuntu try :

1. Disable these AAAA/IPV6 requests only for your browser. For firefox, go to

about:config

in the address bar, locate the line starting with

network.dns.disableIPv6

(the filter capability is your friend here) and change the value to

true

2. Disable these AAAA/IPV6 requests at a system-wide level,

edit

/etc/modprobe.d/aliases

perhaps via

sudo vim /etc/modprobe.d/aliases

or

sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/aliases

and change the line

alias net-pf-10 ipv6

to

alias net-pf-10 off

Save the file and you should be motoring nicely again.

Richer internet experiences with SIP/SDP?

Recently I have been taking a look at SIP.

When I thought more about the voice and video encoding negotiations primarily, I began to wonder about uses for this kind of negotiation a richer web browsing experience.

I have regularily come across web-sites offering a link to some content, only to find myself brought not to the content, but to another page where I then have to select which format I would like to get that content in ? Think of having clicked a link to some audio or video content, only to find yourself at yet another page where you have to select which encoding your computer or browser has support for (aac, mp3, m4a, mpeg, flash, quicktime, wma, wmv, etc.) . Then, if you are lucky and chose correctly, you will get to see the video or hear the audio.

Even when just looking for a document one can encounter a similiar situation, which format would you like a document in(text, ms-word, pdf, html, ps, etc.).

I’m not suggesting SIP itself is the answer, but I thought that a browsing experience with SIP/SDP-like capabilities could solve this manual step nicely.

Click a link to some content, or just to a web site with various content at it, and the web browser and web server transparently negotiate which methods to use to send to content to you, based perhaps on the capabilities of your system, or the bandwidth available or some preferred format defaults in the browser setup, or whatever.

Perhaps with Flash becoming so popular for video and audio content, PDF for text and static image content, and renderers for both coming to more and more client devices, this idea is somewhat diluted…???

Also, perhaps this has already been otherwise addressed in the web world ? Now that I have thought about it, I find it hard to believe that it has not been.

Yet I still find many sites with many choices available for selection of some audio, video or document content for download…

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