Juvenall Wilson

What do you get when computer geeks begin stockpiling unpatched exploits for highly popular web browsers? An entire month of brand new ways to bring you’re browser to a stand still and 31 new possibilities at allowing a nefarious persons to run arbitrary code on your system. Noted security expert HD Moore is doing exactly that.

This blog will serve as a dumping ground for browser-based security research and vulnerability disclosure. To kick off this blog, we are announcing the Month of Browser Bugs (MoBB), where we will publish a new browser hack, every day, for the entire month of July. The hacks we publish are carefully chosen to demonstrate a concept without disclosing a direct path to remote code execution. Enjoy!

Since most of the bugs are reported to be Internet Explorer issues and considering how slowly Microsoft is known to address problems, it’s likely these could turn into something far worse then a simple crash (since that’s really a gateway to code execution). To be fair to MS, I’m assuming that most of these are unknown to them. If that’s the cause, you can’t really blame them for their existence; it’s just the nature of coding software. So this could be a great test of the company’s recent commitment to protecting it’s users.

Update: I’m retarded. Most of the bugs listed so far indicate they were reported to Microsoft. Many of them months ago.

How do you know you’re a dangerous, vile cult bent on ruining the lives of everyone you touch for the sole of personal gain for the higher-ups? When you use a legal team to take down a website for posting what your “religion” is really about. Take the case of codebot.org. Yesterday, they managed to get an article up on Digg that talked about the church works. However, like every cult, “they” don’t want you know know the truth. So they send in the legal team:

This office represents the L. Ron Hubbard Library, the owner of the copyrights to a number of scriptures and trade secrets, the founder of the Scientology religion, has issued the following notice to Verio Inc, a subsidiary of NTT Communications. The website “codebot.org” under your control registered to IP address 161.58.73.89 is in violation of federal trademark and copyright laws.

This information summary contains the details necessary for you to understand the events, background and issues of the equity and law that pertains to the Church of Scientology’s fight for its property and First Amendment right of free religious exercise.

A small portion of the Church’s scriptures were broadly released on said website, and made available to the general public who have not completed the prior steps of religious study and counseling. Conspiracy to disseminate Scientology’s copyrighted and trade secret scriptures is a crime and will result in arrest, prosecution, conviction and imprisoned for theft. Additionally, The Church faces economic harm from what would be essentially black market trafficking in its protected works and attempts to dissuade individuals from becoming Scientologists by holding its scriptures up to derision. As a result we request you suspend the account holding this website, and place this notice up in reparation for our damages. Your prompt attention to this matter will result in no further legal action.

We appreciate your attention.

I would *love* for the “church” to explain to me how I’m not supposed to think this is a dangerous cult bent on hiding the truth about itself from the public. Until then, here are a few great resources about why Scientology is a dangerous cult and should be stopped.

Scientology Murders People
Time: “Scientology: The Cult of Greed”
Scientology’s Human Rights Abuses
Scientology Uses Brainwashing
Scientology Attacks & Spies on America

Let’s get something out of the way here; if you are trying to break into my house by kicking in my front door, I will be trying to break into your skull with a slug from my .45. Not that I’m pro-death, I’m just pro-protecting-my-family-and-property. Needless to say, I reafferemd my dislike of Canada when I read that a man is now being charged with murder for doing just that.

Two men kicked in the front door of the home, and the property owner grabbed a firearm.

At that point the invaders left… but as they were going, a shot was fired at their vehicle and hit the driver.

The culprits drove to Russell to complain to the RCMP.

The driver was treated for his injuries and released to the police.

Now, 28 year old Harvey Joseph Young is charged with Attempted Murder, along with eight other weapons and firearm-related charges.

So what this tells me is that the government of Canada wants to protect the rights of criminals to break into the homes of it’s citizines. They’re telling their own constituents that if you defend your home and protect your family, you are guilty of a crime. I’m glad to see they have everything in order.

Those of you who know me, know I’m a huge fan of the First Amendment and the right of free speech it provides us. The ability for anyone to express their opinion or beliefs is the cornerstone of the success of the modern world. That’s why, as much as it pains me, I will always defend the rights of the of vile groups like the KKK, Neo Nazis, Canadians and even the Westboro Baptist Church it’s perversion of Christian teachings. At the same time, however, I will also defend the rights of others to put your stupid ass in it’s place. Take this example from the Fox News show “Hannity & Combs”. They exercise their right to free speech right up this wackjob’s ass.

Go on, watch the video. Ill wait.

Damn, dude. You know you were just served a big plate of shut the fuck up when Alan Combs is man enough to make you look stupid. Just try and tell me he wasn’t the guy everyone would urinate on in the locker room back in his high school days. Though, the highlight for me was Hannity’s “What are your sins?” Her reaction was just pure gold.

As fun as this is though, there’s still the question of why the media sees the need to put them on. It’s only giving them the pulpit they’re looking for to spread their dumbass thinking. I mean, you don’t see them invite the The American Nazi Party on, do you? Just like trolls on the Internet, if you ignore them, they will go away.

Allow me to be the first to say that I, Juvenall Wilson, am a picky bitch. Back in January, I took a couple of days to rework this site with the design on the right. It fixed a number of display bugs, reworked the font classes and added some sexy AJAX goodness. When I finished it, I was thrilled; for about a week. It was still too dark, the fonts too small and I hated the general look of it.

Normally, I would have worked on fixing it right away, but I started working for a health food company a few days later and the design took a back seat. Clearly, I had to put work before personal sites. Little did I know that the company was in such a sad state, that it would take up 95% of my day. It was so bad, that I even found myself unable to post as much as I had in 2005. For a while, it was looking like this was going to turn into a ghost town.

So two nights ago, I spent a few hours in Photoshop and comped out a new layout. Then, at 6am, I finally hit upon something I liked and started to work on the build. Then last night, I worked it into Wordpress and let it go live while I knocked out some bugs. Today, I finished off the photo gallery, cleaned up a few IE bugs and now I think it’s ready to go. Sure, it’s not the best work I’ve ever done, but for 2 days of work, I’m happy with it.

Now, I’m sure some will jump on me for using a fixed width layout that’s wider than 800px. To them, I say “piss off”. First, a “liquid layout” is a retarded idea for a site where text is the primary content. The vast majority of people (and a number of well funded studies) show that people find reading monitor text uncomfortable when the lines are longer than 10-15 words. With a liquid layout, an entire paragraph could span into a line or two. Aside from the fact that’s ugly as sin, it’s hard to follow the point when vertigo sets in. Really, just try reading a really long Wikipedia article on a 21 inch monitor and see how long it takes before you find yourself slumped over the back of your chair vomiting and praying for death.

With respect to the width of the page, I can see several good arguments for this. Some people have a hard time reading things at a larger resolution, some simply can’t afford a modern monitor and yet others don’t browse at full screen. So we, as designers have been locked into this 800×600 death trap. This, in spite of the fact that for the last year or so, the majority of uses (on most sites) are using 1024×760. The numbers here show that 800×600 only accounts for 8% of uses. At that point, you have to ask yourself why you’re dumbing things down for the lowest common denominator? After all, bigger sites like ESPN and Yahoo’s new beta are giving them the boot, why not me?

I would love to hear what you think about the changes. Post or die!