The European Google has no .com website

The european answer to Google? it's called Quaero (I search, in Latin). Quaero will be unveiled in January. I have the awful impression that it's full of hot air ("Say goodbye to text-based search, and welcome multimedia search"). Anyway, the funniest part is that they don't even have the domain name http://www.quaero.com ("High Performance Marketing !"), registered to QUAERO CORP., a North-Carolina company... I think Google may not be really scared by the competition. quaero.net is registered to someone not far from my house. quaero.org redirects to the official website of Quaero, the search engine. It is registered to Vecsys-Research, leading edge speech processing technology.

What do you do when your wine gets old?

The answer, if the wine is from one of the best years of the past century, if it is from a reputed château, if it costs between $1500 and $2000 a bottle, and if you have 500 bottles of it, seems to be that you have to change the cork every 40 years or so to prevent the cork from going mouldy. This is what Stanley Ho, a casino magnate in Macau, has just done.
According to this AFP story (in French, sorry), wine experts from Château Palmer travelled to Macau to open, taste and change the corks in 490 bottles of the 1961 Médoc, a grand cru classé. 1961 is one of the best years (as the drought reduced the output of wine to about a third of the normal years). This operation increases the remaining lifespan of the bottles. With a $1,000,000 collection, it is probably worth it...
In the specially weather controlled room of the Lisboa hotel and casino, the French wine experts delicately opened the bottles, fished out with a small net the small cork pieces that tend to fell out as the cork ages, tasted the wine to determine if the wine matured correctly, and recork it with the special machine Château Palmer has used for the past 50 years. The new corks will be labelled "Rebouché en 2005".
It was estimated that as much as 25 bottles would have to be discarded, but after the event only 5 bottles were deemed to have gone bad.

Acid2: Safari goes hunting & more browsers

Following up on my previous post on Acid2 rendering in most browsers, David Hyatt has started cramming for this exam and will blog as progress happens:

I started work today on making Safari pass the test, and I thought I'd blog my progress as I fix bugs in the test. This will be a fairly slow process as whole features may have to be added simply to make one row of the test render correctly.

Thanks to several comments in the previous post, I've managed to complete the collection of snapshots:
Here's how the test looks in Omniweb (Mac browser, thanks to Yoji Hirabayashi for this and other screenshots)

This is Netscape 7.2 for Macintosh (image courtesy of Kristen):

And Camino (a Mac native Gecko based browser) 0.8 nightly, not surprisingly, is identical to Firefox-trunk (image also courtesy of Kristen):

This is Safari as it is now (version 1.2 125.12, if those are enough version numbers for you! thanks William Wu)

On Yoji's computer it looks like this:

This is Safari 1.3 (dev version available when the Acid2 test was published, thanks to Kristen)

And here is what Hyatt has managed to do in just a few days: the red background is gone, the top and the mouth are better now. It will be interesting to see how Gecko tries to do the same.

So is YOUR browser ANY good at CSS2?

Seen on the Standblog (fr), the new Acid2 test page for browsers, "written to help browser vendors ensure proper support for web standards in their products". I tend to agree with Tristan that the test doesn't readily tell you what your browser is lacking in support, but then you can read the guide for that.
Here are some screenshots of the test page under different browsers. If you have other browsers, leave a message with a link to the image in the comments. It seems full CSS2 support is not here yet !
Update (2005/04/08 9:40): David Naylor has sent a link to some other screen shots; below (Netscape 6.1, Opera 7.54, and Firefox 1.0+ nightly).
I'm still missing Macintosh-based browsers: Safari, IE/mac, and Camino, though it will probably look like Firefox).

Here is how the test page should look:

These are under Links and Lynx ;-) (click for full size image)...

The different versions of Internet Explorer are pretty broken, but hell, you didn't need this fancy test to know that:
IE 5.01

IE 5.5

IE 6

What is funny though is that IE6 doesn't behave in the same way if it's running in Wine or in Windows 98:

With Konqueror 3.2.3 we're getting more supported features of CSS2: you know that because you can see more stuff from the happy face. Seeing how Konqueror 3.4 is touted as being CSS2.1 compliant, I'd be interested if somebody could post a screenshot !

Update 2005/04/11: Doug Wright has put a screenshot of Konqueror 3.4. Well, full support for CSS2.1 is a bit of an exageration, as it's only marginally better than 3.2.

Opera 8.0 (beta) is also not bad, except for the ugly looking red background (red means broken in the Acid2 test).

Opera 7.54 (courtesy of David Naylor) is only marginally worst than Opera 8.

If you compare Netscape 6.1 below (also courtesy of David Naylor) with the images farther down the page, you will see how Gecko (the rendering engine behind Netscape and Mozilla browsers) has matured in CSS2 support:

Firefox 1.0.2 is also not very far from that, but then it's still not the correct image !

Firefox 1.0+, nightly (ie, Gecko 1.8), image courtesy of David Naylor

We are no longer the knights who say: Ni!

It's official: Mandrakesoft (makers of a very fine linux distribution) has changed name and will now be called Mandriva (pronounced man-DREE-vah according to a post on the mailing-list). Mandrakesotf gives two reasons: the merger with Conectiva and the lawsuit about the "Mandrake the magician" name. This follows shortly after the roadmap for 2005 and the version naming scheme were modified. So the next version (what used to be called Mandrakelinux 10.2) will now be called Mandriva limited Edition 2005.
According to the press release:

After spending weeks balancing pros and cons, Mandrakesoft has decided to change its name!

The name change will apply worldwide to both the company and its products. The management team sees two good reasons for this change:

1. The recent Mandrakesoft - Conectiva merger calls for a new identity that better represents the combination of two key companies and their global presence.

2. The long-winding trademark lawsuit with Hearst Corporation has reached a point where we decided it is more reasonable for us to move forward. By adopting a new name, we eliminate the liability attached to the Mandrakesoft name and we can focus on what is important to us: developing and delivering great technology and solutions to both our customers and our user community.

Arbitrary memory exposure vulnerability

This just in: Secunia has found a bug in Firefox 1.0.2 that allows a JavaScript program to reveal "arbitrary amounts of heap memory". The bug in Bugzilla was filed on the 1st of April (alas, not a fool's day joke), and was fixed on the trunk that same day. So this bug will be fixed for 1.0.3, which should be coming as soon as the final bugs are squashed.

The bug allows any amount of heap memory to be read. The test case given by Secunia showed several interesting strings in my case: visited URLs, information on some extensions I am using, and even the text of this post as I am writing it. I don't know for sure, but it seems very likely that passwords and other sensitive information can be read in this way. The solution: disable JavaScript.

2GB and rich formatting in Gmail

Wow. Hadn't noticed before, but it seems Gmail has increased available space to 2GB (putting it on par with Yahoo! Mail Plus, $19.99). So far I only seem to have 115MB more:

You are currently using 196 MB (18%) of your 1115 MB.

Also new, rich text formatting, similar to what is done in Blogger.

With prefetch, it seems Google is incrementally improving its services, even though recent controversies seem to have eroded its geek-fan-base. We'll see how things go, maybe Don't be evil will stay that way, if not all the time, at least most of the time.

Why it pays to find bugs...

It seems good work has paid for Michael Krax. The Mozilla foundation has awarded him $2,500 —he'd have preferred 2,500 euros— for 5 security bugs (fixed in Firefox 1.0.2; have you upgraded yours?). Says Chris Hofmann:

"We developed the bug bounty program to encourage and award community members who identify unknown bugs in the software. This program is one of the many ways the Mozilla Foundation produces safe and secure software for its users."

The Mozilla Security Bug Bounty Program is designed to encourage security research in Mozilla software and to reward those who help us create the safest Internet clients in existence. Reporters of valid critical security bugs will receive a $500 (US) cash reward and a Mozilla T-shirt.
The Bug Bounty program was founded in 2004 with funding from Linspire and Mark Shuttleworth. Since its inception the Mozilla Foundation has awarded bug bounties to five participants. The previous winners were awarded on Sep 14, 2004: Marcel Boesch, Gael Delalleau, Georgi Guninski, and Mats Palmgren.

Color depth statistics in Awstats

I'm a big fan of Awstats (a log file analyzer). However one of the miscellaneous statistics missing is color depth (and it seems it's been promised "in the next version" for a long time). If you use the awstats_misc_tracker.js file to track things such as screen size, javascript usage and flash capabilities, you may benefit from the tip below to track screen color depth.
Just add the following lines in your awstats.XXX.conf file, near the part where you configure the extra sections:

ExtraSectionName1="Color depth"  
ExtraSectionCodeFilter1="200 304"  
ExtraSectionCondition1="URL,\/js\/awstats\_misc\_tracker\.js"  
ExtraSectionFirstColumnTitle1="Color depth in bits"  
ExtraSectionFirstColumnValues1="QUERY_STRING,cdi=([^&]+)"  
ExtraSectionFirstColumnFormat1="%s"  
ExtraSectionStatTypes1=P  
ExtraSectionAddAverageRow1=0  
ExtraSectionAddSumRow1=1  
MaxNbOfExtra1=5  
MinHitExtra1=1  

In a common-person oriented website I manage (as opposed to techies), 75% have 32 bit depth, 18% have 16 bit, 5% have 24 bit and 2% have just 8 bit (that's 256 colors). I'll have to use my screen in 16 bit mode once, so as to check how things look.

Funniest (and Geekiest) Spam Ever

(from expert@linux-mandrake.com)
DEAR SIR/MADAM:

I AM MR DARL MCBRIDE CURRENTLY SERVING AS THE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF THE SCO GROUP, FORMERLY KNOWN AS CALDERA SYSTEMS INTERNATIONAL, IN LINDON, UTAH, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. I KNOW THIS LETTER MIGHT SURPRISE YOU BECAUSE WE HAVE HAD NO PREVIOUS COMMUNICATIONS OR BUSINESS DEALINGS BEFORE NOW.

MY ASSOCIATES HAVE RECENTLY MADE CLAIM TO COMPUTER SOFTWARES WORTH AN ESTIMATED $1 BILLION U.S. DOLLARS. I AM WRITING TO YOU IN CONFIDENCE BECAUSE WE URGENTLY REQUIRE YOUR ASSISTANCE TO OBTAIN THESE FUNDS.

IN THE EARLY 1970S THE AMERICAN TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH CORPORATION DEVELOPED AT GREAT EXPENSE THE COMPUTER OPERATING SYSTEM SOFTWARE KNOWN AS UNIX. UNFORTUNATELY THE LAWS OF MY COUNTRY PROHIBITED THEM FROM SELLING THESE SOFTWARES AND SO THEIR VALUABLE SOURCE CODES REMAINED PRIVATELY HELD. UNDER A SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT SOME PROGRAMMERS FROM THE CALIFORNIA UNIVERSITY OF BERKELEY DID ADD MORE CODES TO THIS OPERATING SYSTEM, INCREASING ITS VALUE, BUT NOT IN ANY WAY TO DILUTE OR DISPARAGE OUR FULL AND RIGHTFUL OWNERSHIP OF THESE CODES, DESPITE ANY AGREEMENT BETWEEN AMERICAN TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH AND THE CALIFORNIA UNIVERSITY OF BERKELEY, WHICH AGREEMENT WE DENY AND DISAVOW.

IN THE YEAR 1984 A CHANGE OF REGIME IN MY COUNTRY ALLOWED THE AMERICAN TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH CORPORATION TO MAKE PROFITS FROM THESE SOFTWARES. IN THE YEAR 1990 OWNERSHIP OF THESE SOFTWARES WAS TRANSFERRED TO THE CORPORATION UNIX SYSTEM LABORATORIES. IN THE YEAR 1993 THIS CORPORATION WAS SOLD TO THE CORPORATION NOVELL. IN THE YEAR 1994 SOME EMPLOYEES OF NOVELL FORMED THE CORPORATION CALDERA SYSTEMS INTERNATIONAL, WHICH BEGAN TO DISTRIBUTE AN UPSTART OPERATING SYSTEM KNOWN AS LINUX. IN THE YEAR 1995 NOVELL SOLD THE UNIX SOFTWARE CODES TO SCO. IN THE YEAR 2001 OCCURRED A SEPARATION OF SCO, AND THE SCO BRAND NAME AND UNIX CODES WERE ACQUIRED BY THE CALDERA SYSTEMS INTERNATIONAL, AND IN THE FOLLOWING YEAR THE CALDERA SYSTEMS INTERNATIONAL WAS RENAMED SCO GROUP, OF WHICH I CURRENTLY SERVE AS CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER.

MY ASSOCIATES AND I OF THE SCO GROUP ARE THEREFORE THE FULL AND RIGHTFUL OWNERS OF THE OPERATING SYSTEM SOFTWARES KNOWN AS UNIX. OUR ENGINEERS HAVE DISCOVERED THAT NO FEWER THAN SEVENTY (70) LINES OF OUR VALUABLE AND PROPRIETARY SOURCE CODES HAVE APPEARED IN THE UPSTART OPERATING SYSTEM LINUX. AS YOU CAN PLAINLY SEE, THIS GIVES US A CLAIM ON THE MILLIONS OF LINES OF VALUABLE SOFTWARE CODES WHICH COMPRISE THIS LINUX AND WHICH HAS BEEN SOLD AT GREAT PROFIT TO VERY MANY BUSINESS ENTERPRISES. OUR LEGAL EXPERTS HAVE ADVISED US THAT OUR CONTRIBUTION TO THESE CODES IS WORTH AN ESTIMATED ONE (1) BILLION U.S. DOLLARS.

UNFORTUNATELY WE ARE HAVING DIFFICULTY EXTRACTING OUR FUNDS FROM THESE COMPUTER SOFTWARES. TO THIS EFFECT I HAVE BEEN GIVEN THE MANDATE BY MY COLLEAGUES TO CONTACT YOU AND ASK FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE. WE ARE PREPARED TO SELL YOU A SHARE IN THIS ENTERPRISE, WHICH WILL SOON BE VERY PROFITABLE, THAT WILL GRANT YOU THE RIGHTS TO USE THESE VALUABLE SOFTWARES IN YOUR BUSINESS ENTERPRISE. UNFORTUNATELY WE ARE NOT ABLE AT THIS TIME TO SET A PRICE ON THESE RIGHTS. THEREFORE IT IS OUR RESPECTFUL
SUGGESTION, THAT YOU MAY BE IMMEDIATELY A PARTY TO THIS ENTERPRISE, BEFORE OTHERS ACCEPT THESE LUCRATIVE TERMS, THAT YOU SEND US THE NUMBER OF A BANKING ACCOUNT WHERE WE CAN WITHDRAW FUNDS OF A SUITABLE AMOUNT TO GUARANTEE YOUR PARTICIPATION IN THIS ENTERPRISE. AS AN ALTERNATIVE YOU MAY SEND US THE NUMBER AND EXPIRATION DATE OF YOUR MAJOR CREDIT CARD, OR YOU MAY SEND TO US A SIGNED CHECK FROM YOUR BANKING ACCOUNT PAYABLE TO "SCO GROUP" AND WITH THE AMOUNT LEFT BLANK FOR US TO CONVENIENTLY SUPPLY.

KINDLY TREAT THIS REQUEST AS VERY IMPORTANT AND STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL. I HONESTLY ASSURE YOU THAT THIS TRANSACTION IS 100% LEGAL AND RISK-FREE.