Yes, authors, shoot yourself in the head… I’d rather buy bootleg or secondhand copies of books off the streets. Much cheaper… And I’ll ask my parrot to do the Text-To-Speech part…

Read more here http://techdirt.com/articles/20090227/1759173928.shtml

And as a result, I’ve vowed never to stoop low enough to put in any extra code just to make IE6 work like it should have in the first place. That’s for my own sites… If my clients want bugs fixed in IE6, well, that’s a different story. They cant turn their clients away…

Now you know why I truly, truly, hate Internet Explorer 6.

(Sigh)

Here are some truly brilliant browsers, if you ever feel like using them (please do, they’re all free, much quicker and safer than Internet Explorer 6) :

• Firefox – My favourite for the security add-ons
• Opera – Brilliant option 2
• Safari -  From Apple
• Flock
• Camino

Use any of them… Just dont use Internet Explorer.

There are some issues though… According to Google:

• Event reminders/alarms don’t currently sync between Google Calendar and iCal. Event reminders will only function according to the calendar settings of the application in which they were originally created.
• When an event is created or modified in iCal, Google Calendar email and SMS notifications are not distributed at this time.
• This feature (iCal File > New To do) will either be unavailable for selection or you’ll receive an error when selected.
• It’s not possible to browse room availability or reserve conference rooms from within iCal. This feature is not supported by CalDAV.
• For a small percentage of Google Calendars, a certain iCal bug will prevent your events from appearing inside the iCal application. We’ve notified Apple of the issue, and hope that they’ll fix it soon.

Well, now that does not help our notification issues… but atleast you can see what your schedule is going to be like. Hopefully Google and iCal will get these two apps working well together. I for one will be really happy when they do.

Now, I was surprised the first time around, so I just let it pass… (after visiting the link to StopBadware.org, of course!) Then I came across it again! Like so…

So I visited the site again. The home page details that Stopbadware.org has tied up with some majors, including Google, Lenovo, Sun Microsystems, AOL, Trend Micro, VeriSign and PayPal. And apparently Google has been showing the warnings for quite a while now, and I’ve been somewhere else in this universe…

They also seem to have some influential members on the Advisory Board and on the Working Group. Their blog also lists some interesting cases where software has been allowed to do bad things to your system, and you’re not aware of it.

What Do You Do?

Has your blog or website been blocked by this notification? You’re sure that you’re not a malware producer or distributor… So, why has Google ranked you as one? It sure is discouraging people from visiting your website, so you need to get it sorted out quick.

Are you REALLY sure that you’re not sending out badware to every person who visits your site? Take a look at what Stopbadware.org says in its FAQs -

Currently, many sites that are the subject of Google’s warnings have been the victims of a malicious hacking attack, in which code linking directly to badware through exploits was inserted onto an otherwise innocent, but poorly secured, website. In other cases, a website with no intention to distribute badware hosts content (such as ads or hit counters) provided by a third party, and can inadvertently distribute badware through that content. If you are confused about why your site has a Google warning, then there are strong odds that your site has experienced one of the above situations.

To remove the warning, you will need to discover what code on your site caused Google to flag your site, and then clean and secure your site.

So, maybe something has happened that you were not aware of, and someone has exploited a loophole in your website’s security. StopBadware.org has also got some tips to get you started on cleaning up your website and to get out of their list. Here’s the form to request removal from the Stop Badware list.

In Conclusion

It looks to me like they’re doing a good job of it… but what if my ideology about what software can and should do differs from theirs? I can no longer even tell the world about it, Google is blocking my website!

Well, my take on it is, that if you’re out to harm my computer, I’d rather have your website blocked. If you’re un-intentionally promoting sites/software/ads that do bad things to my computer, I’d like a warning… and I’d like you to get your site cleaned up so that I can tell the world just how great a website it is.

Cheers all!