Sometimes I check out other hosting and VPS providers, mostly as some kind of procrastination. The latest company I looked at had some alarming claims, contradicted by their Acceptable Use Policy. I’m going to take the opportunity to outline these for you. They’re fairly common amongst hosting and VPS providers and proof that you need to be careful who you host with.

The company in question offer unlimited bandwidth and storage on their sales pages, but their Acceptable Use Policy clearly states:

For websites that allow downloading of video, audio or other files we reserve the right to impose a bandwidth limit of twenty-five (25) gigabytes

Wait. 25gb? I thought it was unlimited? Perhaps this is Talk Talk’s version of “Unlimited Broadband”; you can only download a fairly restrictive amount per month, but it’s unlimited because you can use it any time! (I’m not kidding by the way, check out Talk Talk’s policies)

Prohibited Uses

Prohibited uses are usually pretty standard, in this case some pretty interesting points showed up:

use more than 5 % of our server’s processing capacity

Well, it’s good to know they’re overselling their servers to that degree.

run stand-alone, unattended server-side processes or any daemons

This one is very interesting. It means you’re not allowed to actually have an operating system, use a web server, mail server etc.

run cron entries or other scheduled tasks other than by configuring them through our control panel

Well, that immediately stops me installing cPanel (or pretty much any third party control panel) on their VPS. You’d think their ridiculous 5% processing capacity clause would cover this…

There are also a number of other interesting points, like not using any part of their service for backup purposes.

I know web hosting is a pretty competitive business, but some of these contradictions should be dealt with by the Advertising Standards Authority, Trading Standards or some other appropriate organization.

Thanks to Heart Internet for unwittingly being the target of this entry.

Once again I was checking StatCounter – it’s my source for knowing which browsers I must test in. On that note, Woo hoo! Internet Explorer 6 is about 1% in the UK! RIP, please. The point however, is Opera.

There are a few trends on the statistics and popular sites such as ZDNet: It’s all about Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome. Safari gets a look-in from time to time, but largely because it’s the forced browser on the iPad and iPhone which inflates it’s popularity (say, anyone remember the Microsoft anti-trust case surrounding Internet Explorer a while back?). What about Opera?

Let me tell you a few things about Opera, from a guy who uses every rendering engine, and a number of their UI shells*:

Opera has average performance for all tests in cutting edge browsers. “Only average?!” I hear you cry: The tests I refer to have all the browsers swapping places because they’re all optimised for certain types of work. The browsers optimise for certain types of work too, so some excel at some tests. Opera sits in the middle every time. This tells us that Opera is a mature and capable browser that beats every other browser in at least some performance related way. It’s very fast and capable of beating Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer 9 in some areas.

Opera displays websites flawlessly as much as any browser does. Infact, I’ve had less issues with Opera than I have with Chrome, and I’m sure that’s partly due to Opera’s diligence in ensuring this – they’ve gone to the extraordinary step of including fixes for some badly written popular websites. It’s as accurate as any browser.

It’s secure. If you read my blog, you’ll remember the Diginotar certificate issue, and that Opera was the only one who didn’t actually need updating. I’m never going to pull the security through obscurity card with proprietary software because I believe the opposite to be true, but one truth is exposure: Hackers target whatever will give it them the best results. Opera at 1% usage in the UK is not the target of anyone serious. Every application has weaknesses, Opera isn’t even being targeted.

I would pitch the developer tools against Firebug and Chrome any day. Have you ever included a script via jQuery’s .append() function? Opera is the only browser at the time of writing that’ll handle it correctly AND give you a hint to which file was included.

Opera:

• It’s fast
• It displays websites properly
• It’s secure
• It has arguably the best developer tools

http://www.opera.com/

As a sidenote, Opera also comes with a mail reader, a news reader, an IRC client, an interesting social-esque server and works on almost everything: Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and probably that old phone you have shoved in a drawer somewhere.

* A rendering engine is what does the work. Internet Explorer is Trident. Firefox and Fennec (mobile) are Gecko. Chrome and Safari are Webkit**. Opera is Presto.

** Webkit is a KDE project for their browser Konqueror. Apple liked it, and repackaged it. Google liked Apple’s work and continued it. Chrome is Safari. Safari is Konqueror. It all started with the Linux KDE project. Remember that when you next load your iPad, iPhone, Safari, Chrome or any number of the plethora of Webkit derivatives. The respect is due for Linux’s KDE.

Well, it’s happened. An extremely stupid, incompetent and mis-informed judge has ordered BT to block Newzbin via their CleanFeed system. CleanFeed was there for a reason and he’s just, not legitimised as such, but given those for whom CleanFeed was intended, plausible deniability for their reasons to bypass the block. I’m simply aghast at the ineptitude of this judge and his total lack of forethought or consideration for the effects of his decision.

I don’t see why the MPAA were targeting Newzbin in the first place. Are they going to attempt to block Google next for including the site in their search results? That’s roughly what it amounts to. The issue here is the rampant abuse of news groups for file distribution, and ISPs (and news group access providers) who are easily able to check and block access to these posts should be made to filter the newsgroup access.

If you’re a user of Newzbin, just think: If you attempt to access the site in a fortnight, there’s a router out there somewhere that’ll assume you’re looking for something far more sinister.

I’m a bit late with this one, because I’ve had to collect my thoughts.

Firstly, let me say that I… I am sorry for his family and friends, and their suffering and loss. His demise is a loss to the IT community, to some degree, and I would not have wished him dead. Ultimately he was a man with his wildly documented success and somewhat less documented flaws.

I do have an issue, however.

The media as a whole seems to be evangelising him, and crediting him far more than is due. I find this disrespectful to the IT industry as a whole, and more so disrespectful to his memory.

Steve Jobs had a great eye for the future, product design and inciting a fanaticism that few can rival, perhaps aside from the pope. Lets raise a few points though, for historical accuracy:

Apple created the MP3 player: This is simply not true, and one of the most irritating falsehoods the media seem to perpetuate. Companies such as Creative Labs and iRiver were developing remarkable MP3 players way before Apple even looked at the market. Apple were actually late to this, and I believe only made the splash they did through marketing and fanaticism. If anything, the iPod was a step backwards in it’s reliance on iTunes and proprietary nature.

Apple created the GUI: Kinda. Apple licenced the ideas of Xerox and benefitted largely due to Xerox’s incompetence and lack of foresight. Xerox even attempted to sue in 1989. Apple did not invent the GUI, they simply made it a commercial product. This is a demonstration of foresight, not genius.

Apple invented the smartphone: Wow, before the iPhone was even an idea, I owned a Symbian and Windows smartphone. They were pretty good, and not a far cry from what we consider a smartphone now. The main difference between smartphones then and now is power (which would have come from Moore’s law anyway) and the various application market places. RIM’s Blackberry and the original Android (before Google’s acquisition) were on-track with this. Apple simply packaged up an acceptable UI in expensive hardware. It’s amusing to see the patent wars in the smartphone market – I’ll credit Apple with multi-touch and clean design, but now Apple is copying their competitors and making security mistakes worthy of Microsoft 10 years ago (Siri usable on locked phones for example).

Apple created Mac OS X: Yes. Yes they did. Canonical created Ubuntu too. By create, what we mean here is: Assembled an operating system from existing technology created by other companies. As much as Ubuntu is Linux, Mac OS X is Nextstep, and by extension OpenBSD. They both happen to share their roots in free Unix clones, and you can download a large portion of Apple Mac OS X as Darwin. They’ve had to keep a portion of their operating system open source because it was based on an open source project. Mac OS X includes a massive amount of open source software, and isn’t a far cry from Linux itself. It’s shipped with Apache, PHP and even Safari is a version of the KDE projects Konqueror.

The difference between Canonical and Apple? Canonical makes a large contribution back to the community that fed it.

If you’re going to praise Steve Jobs for his fantastic contribution to technology and computing, do you with respect to the facts.

Steve Jobs, master of design and foresight, RIP 2011.

I’ve just been reading ZDNet, as I often do. It’s a pretty good source for technology news. The bias is extreme, but it’s extreme in all camps which balances itself. Infact, not one to recommend news sources in general, if you haven’t subscribed to their daily news, you should.

Thanks to ZDNet, I’ve been notified that Microsoft’s newest technology in Windows 8 may well be blocking access to Dual-Booting Windows and Linux. Let’s keep this simple: Dual-booting means when you start your PC, you get a list of Operating Systems to choose from (Windows 7, Windows XP, Ubuntu Linux, FreeBSD etc).

Microsoft are claiming this technology is to prevent certain types of malware, but it also stinks of anti-Linux. We’re yet to see if this will actually disable Linux dual-booting, though Microsoft’s silence in denying this is not comforting.

If this goes ahead in the worst possible scenario, it won’t affect me personally as I don’t use Windows, but ironically I was thinking earlier: Maybe I should ditch supporting Microsoft products full-stop from this point – if you want my personal support, use a proper operating system.

If Microsoft hinders Linux in any way with Windows 8, I will refuse to support their operating systems in any way. I’ll also use any influence I have with anyone to promote Linux (Yes Andy, Simon, expect a rant).

Though professionally disappointed, personally I’m happy either way. To you, Microsoft.

DigiNotar are a Dutch certificate authority that were hacked recently. Their role in the grand scheme of the internet is to provide certificates allowing secure connections to websites (SSL/HTTPS as used on shopping websites etc). The hackers generated a number of fraudulent certificates and used them as part of an elaborate hack against Iranian Gmail users, amongst other things.

Browsers are provided with technology and/or “trust” lists to allow it to verify the authenticity of the website you are using, and rely on the sanctity of these certificate authorities like DigiNotar. What is interesting then, is how each browser manufacturer responds to these issues.

I would like to quote a section from Wikipedia on this issue:

In reaction, Microsoft removed the DigiNotar root certificate from its list of trusted certificates with its browsers on all supported releases of Microsoft Windows to protect its users. Likewise, Mozilla released new versions of its Firefox browser, revoking trust in the DigiNotar root certificate. Google Chrome was able to detect the fraudulent certificate, but Google still removed DigiNotar from the list of trusted certificate issuers. Opera always checks the certificate revocation list of the certificate’s issuer and did not need a security update. Safari and Mac OS X do not detect the certificate’s revocation, and users must use the Keychain utility to manually delete the certificate, then restart Safari, to clear DigiNotar certificates from the system.

In summary: Internet Explorer and Firefox jumped on the issue and have released updates to block access to these fraudulent certificates. Chrome and Opera didn’t even need an update because they detected the fraud automatically. Safari has done nothing, yet.

It’s hard to ignore the elephant in the room at this point, and while I’m not going to outright say it, perhaps you, yes you should consider your browser choice more carefully.

Entry created with Opera 11.5 on Ubuntu 11.04, and yes, I do feel a little smug.

Yesterday, the Amazon EC2 Europe service suffered a major outage due to lightning. Yes, lightning is a terrible thing, but isn’t the point of the cloud based services “reliability”? Surely they wouldn’t have all their metaphorical European eggs in one basket? Surely the loss of ONE major data centre wouldn’t cause an issue at all.

Well, apparently I’m wrong.

My non-cloud based server in London with Tagadab has had less downtime than Amazon EC2 Europe in the last 2 years.

Oh well.

This isn’t really about Java. Yes, it’s the most popular language in the world, but I still dislike bytecode languages. The irony that I’m an expert PHP developer does not apply, as it’s an interpreted language which is a different level. Besides, I’m also an experienced x86 assembler programmer too.

The main issue in this story from CNet is once again Oracle aren’t showing sufficient care in their handling of open source projects. They’ve already dumped OpenOffice, yet they’re suing Google for a technology they can’t even get right themselves. Oh dear.

The general uncertainty and issues in modern development makes me glad I chose PHP.

Do you live in the USA and want to get a Spotify Free invite? I have 9 available and will send them on a first-come-first-served basis.

If you want an invite, leave a comment on this blog entry and make sure your email address is correct.

I received some emails from a friend today linking to some seemingly legitimate websites, and the page indexz35X.php which redirects to your typical pharmacy website. This appears to be a variation of the LizaMoon style attack, coupled with a takeover of personal webmail accounts and a spam campaign through them.

While the redirected site appears to be a moderately harmless pharmacy website you can close and ignore, I would exercise caution when following any such link. It’s distribution methods are extremely suspect and this could be a source of malware.

You heard it here first, people!