Don’t Rely On Anyone Next Month!

Here we are again, preparing for another 3 weeks without sleep.

Online

• Tour de France 2011 – The Tour 2011
• SBS: Tour de France 2011: Home [SBS]
• Tour de France 2011 Live Dashboard [SteepHill.TV]
• Tour De France: Stages, Route Maps & Results [Cyclingnews.com]
• Follow Team HTC – Columbia with Google Maps and My Tracks – from 2010 might be active in 2011? [Google]

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The Official Tour de France Guide
* The Official Tour de France Guide

SBS Tour de France Tracker
* SBS Tour de France Tracker HD 2011 for iPad [iTunes]
* SBS Tour de France Tracker 2011 for iPhone and iPod [iTunes]

And more …
* Mapping the 2011 Tour de France — In 3D! (2011-Jun-23) [bicycling.com]
If you want, you can download a Google Earth file in the DOWNLOAD TO section on the left side on the page, and then you can view this map in 3D, which is really, really cool. And only Bicycling.com Ride Maps brings you this awesome technology, right to your desktop!

* Ride the Tour de France on Google Maps (2011-Jul-02) [Google Maps Mania]

* Follow the Tour de France on Google Maps (2011-Jul-01) [Google Maps Mania]

* How to watch the Tour de France 2011 (2011-Jul-02) [geek.com]

Banff Mountain Film Festival 2011 (YouTube Reprise)

A revisit to the 2011 Banff Mountain Film Festival movies via YouTube.

Mac OS X v10.6.8

On 23 Jun 2011, Apple released Security and OS updates. These updates fix a number of vulnerabilities, impacts include data disclosure and arbitrary code execution.

… some folks seem to have issues after applying the update and are subsequently unable to boot their machines. Until we get some guidance from Apple and/or figure out exactly what is causing the issue, I guess we need to exercise a bit of caution updating critical machines (based on your own definition of critical). [2]

This weeks links (2011-06-27)

You are at the airport ……… your flight has been cancelled due to volcanic ash clouds ……. you and your mates are getting very restless …… what do you do? Go for a bike ride through the terminal ……. of course. [File from Sam via email]

In brief:

* Mozilla to enterprise customers: “Drop dead” (2011-06-23) [ZDNet]
… A minute spent making a corporate user happy can better be spent making many regular users happy. I’d much rather Mozilla spending its limited resources looking out for the billions of users that don’t have enterprise support systems already taking care of them. …

* Seriously, how private is the data on your iPhone? (2011-Jun-26) [The Conversation]

* ISP filtering goes ‘voluntary’ (2011-Jun-27) [ZDNet]
Australia’s mandatory internet filter is at least two years away, but Telstra and Optus are only weeks from implementing their “voluntary” equivalents. Where are we up to with this controversial issue?

* PHANTASMA: LEE BARRON’S CLOUD CLUB (2011-Jun-30) [Dig Boston]

* A Peake at the uniquely fantastical (2011-Jul-02) [The Age]
Titus is back. Not Shakespeare’s Andronicus, not Rembrandt’s son, but Titus Groan, the hero of one of the most extraordinary fantasy trilogies of the 20th century. …

Some reading/listening:

* Transcript of Interaction Between Astronaut Mike Scudderman and the OnStar Hands-Free A.I. Crash Advisor (2011-Jun) [Light Speed Magazine]
The following transcript details the last known use of the OnStar Hands-Free A.I. Crash Advisor, once a mandatory install on all craft equipped for interstellar travel. The remains of Astronaut Scudderman were found approximately one year after this interaction was recorded.

Music Monday #064 – Bushwackers Band

Just back on deck after a weekend of camping, how about we follow that up with some bush dance music? Don’t mind if I do

Bushwackers Band
The Bushwackers Band, often simply The Bushwackers, is an Australian folk and country music band or Bush band founded at La Trobe University in Melbourne in 1971.
Originally calling themselves The Original Bushwackers and Bullockies Bush Band the three founding members, guitarist Dave Isom, tea-chest bass player Jan ‘Yarn’ Wositzky and lagerphonist Bert Kahanoff. They were later joined by various players, including accordionist Mick Slocum, and fiddlers Tony Hunt and Dave Kidd, until 1974 when the band went full-time, and Kahanoff was replaced by lagerphone player, Dobe Newton. With an ever-changing line-up, and adding tin whistle, harmonica, concertina, 5-string banjo, bodhrán, bones, spoons, electric bass and guitar as well as drums, the band worked throughout Australia and Europe. …
- wikipedia

And now for some music …

Firefox 5.0

Firefox v.5.0 was released 21nd June 2011

Mozilla has released Firefox 5.0 for Windows, Mac and Linux and it is the First Web Browser to Support Do Not Track on Multiple Platforms. This version includes more than 1,000 improvements and performance enhancements.

What’s New in Firefox 5 [3]
The latest version of Firefox has the following changes:
* Added support for CSS animations
* The Do-Not-Track header preference has been moved to increase discoverability
* Tuned HTTP idle connection logic for increased performance
* Improved canvas, JavaScript, memory, and networking performance
* Improved standards support for HTML5, XHR, MathML, SMIL, and canvas
* Improved spell checking for some locales
* Improved desktop environment integration for Linux users
* WebGL content can no longer load cross-domain textures
* Background tabs have setTimeout and setInterval clamped to 1000ms to improve performance
* Fixed several stability issues
* Fixed several security issues

Fixed in Firefox 5 [4]
MFSA 2011-28 Non-whitelisted site can trigger xpinstall
MFSA 2011-27 XSS encoding hazard with inline SVG
MFSA 2011-26 Multiple WebGL crashes
MFSA 2011-25 Stealing of cross-domain images using WebGL textures
MFSA 2011-22 Integer overflow and arbitrary code execution in Array.reduceRight()
MFSA 2011-21 Memory corruption due to multipart/x-mixed-replace images
MFSA 2011-20 Use-after-free vulnerability when viewing XUL document with script disabled
MFSA 2011-19 Miscellaneous memory safety hazards (rv:3.0/1.9.2.18)

Vulnerability ratings: 5 Critical, 2 Moderate, 1 Low
Affects: Windows, OSX, Linux, Android …
Evaluation: Be brave, upgrade to a dot zero release

LINKS:
[1] Firefox Updated: Firefox 5 (2011-Jun-20) [Mozilla]
[2] Firefox features [Mozilla]
[3] Mozilla Firefox 5.0 Release Notes (2011-Jun-20) [Mozilla]
[4] Security Advisories for Firefox [Mozilla]

This weeks links (2011-06-20)

In brief:

* Navigating the net like a digital native (2011-Jun-19) [The Age]

Some reading/listening:

Music Monday #063 – New Wheels

Something different this weeks Music Monday, some driving based tunes as we picked up some new wheels on the weekend

And now for some music …

LulzSec leaks 62,000 login combinations

LulzSec leaks 62,000 login combinations in a 2.3MB text file [1].

Gizmodo.com have created a search tool [2] which is using exact matching so if you search “.edu.au” you get the confidence inspiring “Your information has not been released to the public” where a quick search over the actual text file [1] will give you 11 positive results.

@LulzSec: Releasing 62,000 possible account combinations is the loot for creative minds to scour; think of it like digging a very unique mineshaft.

The internet is reporting that the list includes login information for multiple websites such as Paypal, Facebook, Gmail, and online multiplayer games.

Time to check to see if your details have been listed and ensure that none of your online accounts have been compromised?

LINKS:
[1] LulzSec Delivers.txt [Media Fire]
[2] Find Out if Your Passwords Were Leaked by LulzSec Right Here (2011-Jun-16) [Gizmodo]

[TED] Jack Horner: Building a dinosaur from a chicken

Renowned paleontologist Jack Horner has spent his career trying to reconstruct a dinosaur. He’s found fossils with extraordinarily well-preserved blood vessels and soft tissues, but never intact DNA. So, in a new approach, he’s taking living descendants of the dinosaur (chickens) and genetically engineering them to reactivate ancestral traits — including teeth, tails, and even hands — to make a “Chickenosaurus”. [TED]

Next step? The skeleton of a rare Malaysian dragon – from chicken bones!