Stan's List

The Washington Post reports on a new study that pitted the anti-phishing technology in Firefox 2.0 against that of IE7 generated some interesting results.

From story: Firefox blocked 243 phishing sites that IE7 overlooked, while IE7 locked 117 sites that Firefox did not.’ Microsoft responded by pointing to its own supposed comparison study that put it in front of Mozilla and others in phish fighting, but the story notes: ‘3Sharp, the company that authored the Microsoft study, clearly state on their site that their goal in creating 3Sharp was “to use the robustness, flexibility, and sheer native capabilities of the Microsoft communication and collaboration technologies to enhance the business of our customers. More …

CNET reports that Apple announced a partnership with carriers Air France, Continental, Delta, Emirates, KLM and United whereby the six airlines will offer iPod connectivity so that travelers can charge their iPods in transit. “Additionally, the planes’ seat-back displays will be configured so that video content stored on the media players can be viewed on them.” More …

This announcement came on the day that M$$$$ announced Zune.

Consumer Reports writes in its latest piece that consumers will spend a mind-boggling $1.6 billion on extended warranties for portables, TVs and other consumer electronics and appliances. But the real story is that it’s the vendor or retailer that makes real money out of the warranties – up to 50% of the value of the warranty. More …

X11 is Apple’s software that allows X11 applications to be run on Macs.

This update addresses several issues in the X11 for Mac OS X package, enabling it to better handle:

- GLX stereo visuals
- offscreen rendering to GLX Pbuffers and Pixmaps

To tell X11 to take advantage of stereo visuals, enter:
$ defaults write com.apple.x11 enable_stereo -bool true

This update also addresses font issues present in X11 1.1.2, and is recommended for all users. More …

You can only use this to restore the firmware after an interrupted or failed update. If your computer is already in this state, you’ll need to download the software and create the CD on another Macintosh computer, or you can take your computer to an Apple Store or Apple Authorized Service Provider to restore your firmware. This CD can be created on both PowerPC and Intel-based Macintosh computers.

This CD cannot be used to return an Intel-based Macintosh computer’s firmware to a previous version if a successful update has already been performed. More …