We interrupt our regularly-scheduled weblog programming to bring you this public service announcement from the United States Postal Service:
Thank you for your attention.
Until very recently, the 'open source' Mozilla Web browser continued the tradition started by Netscape Navigator 4.x of surreptitiously telling a server at Alexa.com of Web pages that you browse. After a high-level person raised a fuss a few days ago, that was changed to not be the default behavior — users will now have to explicitly enable the Mozilla feature that allows Alexa to track what Web pages you browse.
(For those not familiar with free software, please note that having your computer secretly spy on you and report back to a dotcom is not typical of warm-fuzzy community-oriented free software. Rather, it is an artifact of Netscape the commercial entity driving the requirements of Mozilla from the start.)
I wasn't going to say anything, after the Mozilla project decided to disable that feature by default. However, this evening I caught some of the Alexa crawlers attempting to archive some internal-use-only Web pages that Alexa should never have known about, since the pages are not linked from anywhere. Then I realized that I had visited those internal Web pages while testing Mozilla last week, and that Mozilla had presumably told Alexa about those internal pages, and that Alexa had automatically decided to crawl and make copies of those internal pages (not knowing, or caring, that they were internal-use-only).
There are a number of ways to block Alexa from your Web servers, but
while Alexa does check robots.txt, they don't check it frequently
enough. For now, I'm redirecting Alexa's crawlers to their own corporate Web
site:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_HOST} .alexa.com$
RewriteRule ^.*$ http://www.alexa.com/ [L,R=301]
A better way may be to have your internal Web server deny all access
from what appears to be Alexa's IP address block, 209.247.40.0/23
(info courtesy of Dangerous Dan McGrew).
Ideally, you should centrally block all computers in your organization's networks from sending information to Alexa, to reduce the possibility that an employee's Mozilla or Netscape browser can tell Alexa of intranet servers and documents (URLs alone can reveal sensitive information, even if Alexa's crawlers can't access the documents pointed to by the URLs). At least one network administrator has started firewalling all traffic with Alexa's known addresses.
If you live in the Virginia area, and want to set up a collaboration HCI lab in your living room, grab this dirt-cheap Xerox Liveboard on Ebay. (I'm not an Ebay addict; I was actually just searching for a basically-free ruggedized touchscreen PC.)
On the topic of national ID cards, one might recall this clichéd dialogue from American war and spy movies, often in a German or Russian accent.
INSPECTOR: [authoritatively] Citizen, halt!
[INSPECTOR approaches startled CITIZEN]
INSPECTOR: Your papers, please!
[CITIZEN nervously hands over ID]
INSPECTOR: Your papers... [pauses] are not in order.
INSPECTOR: You will come with me.
Ideally, the inspector should conspicuously not even glance at the papers. For added dramatic effect, two soldiers or officers should accompany the inspector and audibly ready their automatic weapons once the papers are pronounced to not be in order.
For my periodic contribution to geek cultural
dialogue...
Some vi user just asked a question about the Islamic calendar.
Today in the People's Republic of Cambridge, I saw a nice flag arrangement.
When the Apple Macintosh was first introduced in '84, it had to compete with the IBM PC and PC/AT, which had Intel 8087 and 80287 math coprocessors available as options. Less well-known is that, as shown in this file photo, the Mac could likewise be purchased with a math coprocessor.
On Ebay this morning, I was sorely tempted to spring $100 on the ultimate IBM ThinkPad (auction 1281843437). Slapping this baby down on the boardroom table would instantly assert your alpha-male status over fellow techies, literally dwarfing their piddling little top-of-the-line Sony Vaios and wireless PDAs. And if, during the meeting, someone forgot their place and was trying to ursurp your dominance by talking too much, you could unnerve them by frowning and then printing something.
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