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Ask a Jedi: Creating a list of product options

Cisco execs deny directing Patent Troll Tracker blog

Cisco's former PR manager, along with the company's VP of worldwide intellectual property denied directing the now-defunct and controversial patent troll blog. Former PR Cisco spokesperson, John Noh, along with Mallun Yen are being sued for defamation by Texas attorney Eric Albritton. According to Marketwatch, Albritton claims that the Patent Troll Tracker blog, which was authored by former Cisco IP Director Rick Frenkel, called his ethics into question.

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Additional Tests Submitted to the W3C CSS 2.1 Test Suite

It’s been just over five months since the MIX08 conference and IE8 Beta 1. One of the things I remain committed to is the furthering of web standards through a comprehensive test suite for each standard. This is necessary to eliminate ambiguities or differences that cause implementation differences between user agents (aka browsers). Those differences create frustration for web developers who are just trying to build web sites that interoperate.

The IE team has been actively working on Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2. In parallel with the CSS 2.1 implementation in the upcoming beta, the IE Test team has been developing test cases against the CSS 2.1 specification. Today we’re happy to announce that we’ve submitted an additional 2524 more test cases to the W3C for inclusion into the CSS 2.1 test suite. This brings the test suite much closer to the necessary breadth needed to ensure that web sites will interoperate. These tests are available on the IE Development Forum until they are fully reviewed by the working group and accepted into the official test suite.

I also want to thank everyone that provided great feedback on the tests we submitted back in March 2008. Based on the feedback on the W3C’s CSS 2.1 Working Group’s mailing list and my March IE Blog post on the subject, we made corrections and design changes to 28 of the 702 test cases we submitted in March. We also deleted 5 cases that became redundant through the other 28 changes. These updated tests are also available on the IE Development Forum until the W3C integrates them. It is this collaboration with the web development community and the W3C that will really make these web standards more reliable and able to create a more predictable web development experience.

This brings Microsoft’s contribution in this suite to 3221 test cases and the entire W3C CSS 2.1 test suite to 3708 test cases. We, the IE team, will continue to work closely with the CSS working group on these tests and listen to any feedback you provide.

In addition to the CSS 2.1 standard, IE8 is supporting the new Accessibility Rich Internet Applications (WAI - ARIA) draft standard in development by the W3C. It provides a way to create web sites that are accessible to people that need Assistive Technologies to help them live and work. We’re using some of the existing test suite to validate our implementation. We also just submitted our first tests to the working group for inclusion into the test suite. They are also available for download on the IE Development Forum until they get included into the W3C test suite. As with the CSS suite, we will continue to work closely with the WAI – ARIA group.

Thanks,

Jason Upton
Test Manager
Internet Explorer

Cisco exec pops up as a strategic advisor to SaaS start-up

Yesterday we noted that Chirag Mehta, an exec working at SAP blogged that he believed that Cisco's virtualization efforts could eventually lead it to becoming a software-as-a-service player - even buying up a couple of key SaaS players. So it was interesting when today we came across a press release with "Cisco" and "SaaS" in the text.

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MAX Early Bird Pricing Ends August 31st

Linux Darknet Fun

Here in the CodeCave I run a large Dark Net and report my findings to my Twitter followers. If you are not familiar with darknettin' this is the practice of having servers out on the internet for bait to allow hackers to hack them. Folks do this for many different reasons but my reason is to learn the latest and greatest methods in use on the net today to break into networks.

Many times these servers are just trashed out. Hackers try to destory them if they are discovered. I had a major exploit found in my FireFox add in FlashGot. A hacker got in and trashed my system and then changed the password of the root account. Now this is a big deal since I need to log on to that server to gather the data to learn from this attack. Now what? I remembered a little physical access trick I learned a few years back at SCO users group conf (back when SCO was cool) from a guru. It works like this:
- Boot the system and got to the GRUB screen. I moved the arrow key so I did not go into normal boot mode.
- Select the version and hit the "E" key to edit the kernel
- Arrow key to the line that begins with Kernel and hit the "E" key
- At the GRUB Edit line, I just simply append the load string with a number 1. So it looks like this:
grub edit>/vmlinuz-2.5.9-22.DRnetsmp ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet 1
-   Now hit ENTER and B and the system will boot up into single user mode
- Newcastle time!!!  A simple:
sh-2.51# passwd
New UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully

I got in and grabbed the data and released the forensics to the open source community. It is like I heard the Olympics theme music playing in the back ground....

Jimmy Ray

Great Resource for Writing Article Headlines

Condomunity has an excellent article about writing good headlines and includes a cautionary tale about the cost of writing a dull headline (hint: lots of lost traffic).

The exhaustive article pretty much covers everything you need to know on this subject, including:

• Why headlines are important
• Tips for headline writing
• Writing headlines for social media web sites
• Headlines, title tags and SEO
• Keywords and research
• Correct writing style for headlines
• Where to find headline inspiration
• Tools for writing headlines
• Considerations for graphical headlines
• Headline resources

Great stuff!

360|Flex Recordings posted to AMP (and cool AIR fact)

ColdFusion Ajax Bindings - Form Fields only?

Make your 404 pages more useful

How to Block Unwanted Bots from Your Website with .htaccess

Who Moved My Brain ? - A must see presentation

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Who Moved My Brain ? - A must see presentation

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Why one-time passwords are weak against SSL VPN vulnerabilities

Cisco security expert and Cisco Subnet blogger Jamey Heary has returned from Black Hat with lots of network security tips to share. Read Jamey's posting about the best way to defend against SSL VPN vulnerabilities. He writes: "Blackhat '08 disclosed several SSLVPN and DNS vulnerabilities that caused several people to sit up and take notice. Some of these new exploits performed a brilliant Man-in-the-Middle attack on SSLVPN tunnels.

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Busy Weekend in the Lab

Why Cisco could have SaaS in its sights

It appears that bloggers are writing more about Cisco and cloud computing than Cisco itself is. In his aptly named Cloud Computing blog, Chirag Mehta, an architect and design and innovation strategist with SAP raises the issue that Cisco could partner with a cloud vendor to offer richer network management. He also believes that Cisco could aquire a couple of key SaaS players to offer network-managed services.

He writes:

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CXtec bounces back after losing Cisco refurb vendor status

Networking reseller CXtec says it is bouncing back after cutting 45 staff in July following the loss of its Cisco partnership last fall, reports The Central New York Business Journal. The company was apparently the only authorized reseller to sell refurbished Cisco equipment under its "equal2new" program but CXtec lost that status when Cisco moved to a standard indirect channel strategy. The deal with Cisco began in 2001 and sales of those products eventually grew to about a quarter of CXtec's business, reports CNYBJ.

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ColdFusion Unconference Update - The Uber Panel

BFusion And BFlex Less Than Three Weeks Aways

Per-core licensing charges?

A Messy Security Software Review

• The timing of the story is absurd. All the major vendors are about to release their new versions and even the antivirus in the "free suite" they test is no longer available
• Most of the data in the story comes from a general population survey, requiring self-reporting of technical matters by non-technical people. Many of the numbers seem out of line to me and I'm sure this is why.
• When the story says that "36 percent didn't have an antispyware program" I suspect they don't appreciate that antivirus programs these days generally perform antispyware functions, and that the distinction between antispyware and antivirus is phony. When it says "75% didn't use an antiphishing toolbar" I suspect they don't appreciate that Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 3.0, now a clear majority of Internet use, both integrate antiphishing functionality. The story is filled with similar ignorance of how things work these days.
• Why would it be a good idea, as the story advises users to do, to use a separate credit card for online purchases?
• The story says that 1 in 94 households lost money to phishing scams in the last 2 years. This seems high to me, and would correspond to at least a million households. At the same time, eMarketer, the people from whom CR got their data, have a different report downplaying the danger of online ID theft.
• The review has essentially no elaboration on the testing methodology used. The description of what composes the various Performance ratings are so crowded with unrelated functions that it's impossible to make anything of them. No data on the testing is provided at all. They only will disclose their methodology under a non-disclosure agreement.

ColdFusion Ajax Grid - and POST

Exporting CSS and images in Fireworks CS4 beta

Creating a branded, ad-enabled show for Adobe Media Player

Six reasons to use ActionScript 3.0

Learning Flash in a flash

High availability clustering ColdFusion — Using ColdFusion Enterprise Manager

Introducing Flex SDK 3.1 and Flex Builder 3.0.1