Needles, noodles and nanodes

Goolge has celebrated the work of science fiction author Stanislaw Lem with a doodle inspired by a story in The Cyberiad about two bickering robotic inventors who create a robot that can produce anything beginning with the letter 'n' upon request. The robot brings forth a needle, noodles and nanodes before one of the inventors foolishly asks it to make nothing, and the robot obliges.
The illustrations in the book were apparently by Daniel Mróz, and it's these that inspire the doodle as much as the Lem story.

The safest web browser? Part II

I've written before about browser security. I found that if you look at browser exploits in the wild, which is really what matters, Internet Explorer and Firefox have been affected by such exploits in recent history. (Internet Explorer has been affected by far more further back in history, but let's put that behind us.) Looking at that criterion, Opera and Chrome are "more secure".
Of course it's also possible for a browser to be a vehicle of security compromise via a deliberate download of malware, rather than a "drive by" download as the result of a security exploit. I've also written about Microsoft's claim that Internet Exporer is much better at blocking this sort of malware than other browsers, and found that it is, but possibly with a 30-75% chance that the "malware" blocked is a legitimate file or program- a false positive rate that would cause outrage if it was a third-part anti-virus program doing it.
Now there's a new story which claims that Internet Explorer is the safest browser and Firefox is the least secure. To cut to the chase, it's Microsoft doing its own evaluation of browser security, and giving more weight to Internet Explorer's (somewhat contentious) ability to block malware than its record on security vulnerabilities.
 The story has been greeted by derision by two other writers on the ZDNet site, who point out that at the same time the story appeared Microsoft Explorer contained a major security vulnerability that affected even the latest version (IE9) which Microsoft was touting as much more secure, and that the "online security test" that Microsoft was doing was merely looking at the browser ID string and reporting Microsoft's previously-determined security assessment based on its own (some would argue biased) weighting.
Is there any truth to Microsoft's claim that Internet Explorer is "more secure" than Firefox? Another story I came across this week takes a slightly more objective look.

Paul Mehta, senior research scientist at Accuvant, told the SecTOR audience the Web browser rendering process should run at low integrity so, if it is compromised, the underlying system is still ok. In IE, the browser is assigned low integrity and the same is true for Chrome. Firefox runs everything as a medium integrity process, according to Mehta. (eSecurity Planet.)

So Internet Explorer and Chrome are "sandboxed", and Firefox isn't. Doesn't that make Firefox less secure? Well not if there are exploits which can get through the sandbox and infect the system, which is exactly the sort of exploit reported in Internet Explorer above. Which makes the Microsoft claim regarding Firefox debatable. I have reported a story which claimed that Chrome's sandbox had been breached, but never found out if there was any truth to it. So the Microsoft claim that Internet Explorer is more secure than Chrome is also debatable: we have a proven exploit of the MS sandbox, verses an unsubstantiated claim of a breach in the Chrome sandbox.
An important point to make here is that Internet Explorer is "sandboxed" and Firefox not because Microsoft won't let non-Microsoft software use its sandbox. The playing field is not level for Mozilla, Google or Opera. Chrome has chosen to add its own sandbox, which may give it a security advantage.
So what is the safest browser? Well, if you really feel the need for a sandbox, possibly Chrome. If somebody tells you its Internet Explorer 9, they've probably been listening to the Microsoft FUD. If they tell you Firefox is the least secure, then they've definitely been listening to Microsoft FUD, and as I pointed out before, they're very likely doing so for partisan rather than evidential reasons.

Gnome users are revolting IV

Here's one Gnome user who is definitely revolting:

Reactions across the Internet were virtually identical with one fine division; users who were using Gnome 3 in a production environment or had use cases that required them to maintain a productive work-flow were completely hampered by the experience while the much smaller class of adventurous casual users thought that it was pretty and offered enough bling for them to impress their friends with.

I have to say I don't recognise myself from the description. Is this claim based on some sort of scientific survey, or just pulled from the author's behind? Certainly there are a lot of anti-Gnome 3 reviews on the internet, but there are some good ones too.

Here are a couple of examples.

Two reasons Why Jim Nelson Likes GNOME 3 Shell:

Stability – Considering this is an initial release, I’ve found the Shell to be remarkably stable. I’ve had no freezes or crashes. While that seems like a low bar to overcome, this is essentially an 0.1 release. Not much 0.1 code can make the claim that it’s stable. Most 0.1 code is just happy it compiles.

Productivity – I should list this first, but I decided to save the best for last. My productivity has jumped since I switched to GNOME 3 Shell. This might be a highly subjective evaluation. I suspect I’m not alone.

No, you're not. Jack Wallen likes it too. Here are a couple of examples of the 10 things he's grown to love about GNOME 3:

1: Minimalism I have always been a minimalist. No icons, no widgets, no nothing. I want a clean desktop, and GNOME 3 offers about as clean a desktop as you can get without running E16. The only object on the desktop is the panel — until you reveal the launcher. But just because GNOME 3 takes a minimalist approach doesn’t mean it’s not easy to use. In fact, once you get used to it, it’s one of the easiest to use desktops you will come across.

7: Compositing The compositing of GNOME 3 is elegant and far from overstated. Instead of going the Compiz route, GNOME 3 opts for subtle use of transparency and a few simple, clean effects that highlight how a compositor can actually improve the efficiency of a desktop. Transitioning between windows or in and out of the Dash is about as graceful a transition as can be had on a computer desktop. Best of all, the compositor on GNOME 3 does not, in any way, take a hit on the performance of the machine. GNOME 3 compositing is so much in the background, you will hardly notice it doing its thing.

Gnome 2 is a Windows 95 paradigm. It's inefficient and redundant. Put a quick launch icon on the panel and it will launch the application, but it won't let you switch to it or tell you what that application is doing. No you can't minimise windows in Gnome 3, because it doesn't have a crowded and unreadable bottom panel. No, Gnome 3 isn't perfect, but it's already getting better.

I'm sure there must be more people like me who love the elegant efficiency of Gnome 3. Let's make out voices heard!

Gnome users are revolting III

Hate Gnome 3? Looking for an alternative?

Jack Wallen has a suggestion.

Which is clearly an elegant improvement over the ugly and dated Gnome 3 paradigm.

Er... Or maybe Jack Wallen is taking the piss?

Mozilla Extended Support Release

I've previously blogged on how the new fast development cycle from Firefox was making corporate deployment difficult.
Mozilla is now making a concession  to corporate users with an Extended Support Release with security updates for 42 weeks instead of six weeks with the fast release cycle. Datamation has the story.

Gnome 3 built-in screencast

Gnome 3 has built-in screencast recording. Just press Ctrl-Alt-Shift-R (you'll need to be a bit of a digital gymnast). How cool is that? No. 9 of Ten Gnome 3 features that won me over. Find the screencast in /home as a .webm file (reddit).

Gnome 3.2

I've been using Gnome 3 for a couple of weeks now, and enjoying it a lot. There are a few things about it that I was thinking could be improved, but today I discovered from the As far as I know blog that the Gnome team is already ahead of me.

Gnome 3.2 is going to get:

• A matching GDM welcome screen.
• Integrated chat- no need to launch Empathy.
• More natural workspace switcher behaviour.
• Device hot plugging work nicely with the shell.
• More obvious  waiting messages.

The last one, for me, is the most annoying. Leave the computer for a few minutes and the only way to see if an email has arrived in the meantime is push the cursor into the bottom right of the screen to bring up the message tray.