Slashback: Zip, Language, Opportunism

Slashback tonight brings you updates and corrections from recent and ongoing stories, including (this time around) non-silver silver paste, the return of the Orkut, Mike Rowe and his not-so-epic battle with Microsoft (one last time, I hope), the future of Zip for Microsoft Windows, and more. Read on below for the details.

Funny name, well-executed idea. YourMother writes "After almost 4 days of being offline, the social network Orkut is back online. The Orkut development team has been working nonstop since bringing it down on Sunday afternoon and quite a few new security features have been implemented to protect users information. Within the first 48 hours it was up, it gained almost 100,000 users, growing many times faster than other social networks like Friendster or Tribe. Did Google hit the social network bulls-eye?"

glinden points to a story with some more information about those security holes. "From the article, 'Sources close to Google suggest widespread XSS (cross-site scripting) hacks forced the closure of the service. It isn't clear how much personal data or communication was disclosed.'"

Playmate. Playmate, playmate playmate. An anonymous reader writes "A week after an appeals court ruling revived a Playboy Enterprises Inc. trademark infringement lawsuit against Netscape Communications Inc., the companies have reached a settlement in the case (See a ZDNet report) The terms of the settlement have not been disclosed. This puts an end to a closely watched case in the search engine advertising field. Several other lawsuits over misuse of trademarks in search engine ads are still in place. Google e.g. is embroiled in a lawsuit with Luis Vuitton regarding keyword-based ads in France and asked for a California court's ruling to back its trademark policy for AdWords after facing the threat of a lawsuit from American Blind & Wallpaper Factory Inc."

You have to admire such brave nomenclature. Michiel Frackers writes "Thanks for the link to my site, I got 3 gigabyte of traffic in a few hours! If I would have known, I would have written something in English. I have added an update about the Strangeberry product and its relation to Tivo at the URL you linked to.

I also included a link to my private blog (as www.frackers.com is more about my work in media & technology). Hopefully this clarifies some things for your readers, I did not intend to make this some kind of quest or game at all: it's just that I promised Arthur and his colleagues not to disclose what they are exactly doing, as you will understand."

And Anonymous joe writes with this link to an intriguing bit of Strangeberry speculation at the Register.

Nokia to port Python to Mobiles, not Perl An anonymous reader writes "Nokia was mistaken. In fact, El Reg reports that Python, not Perl, is the preferred language for scripting on its smartphone platforms. The availability of a Python implementation for mobile phones is part of a broader plan, including a JVM-based BASIC interpreter."

However, the Register article linked says that Perl is being considered, it's just that Python is being looked at as the primary language.

I wouldn't trust their pearls, either. Blade Leader writes "OCZ has issued a recall of OCZ Ultra 2 thermal paste after the Overclockers.com article on their lack of silver content. They blame the lack on their supplier, and claim they will be pursuing legal action."

A piece of history (or at least a piece of somethin' ...) Artemis writes "Searching along E-Bay and MikeRoweSoft.com I noticed that Mike Rowe has decided to sell the Microsoft Cease-and-Desist Letters and WIPO book he received on E-Bay. He is selling the WIPO book with the 25-page letter received from Microsoft's lawyers on January 14/2004.This inch-thick book contains copies of web pages, registrations, trade marks, other WIPO cases, emails between me and Microsoft's lawyers and much more. There are 27 annexes filled with information. This package also comes with the 25-page complaint transmittal coversheet that was sent with the inch-thick book."

What's wrong with gunzip, tar? whitefox writes "CNet News is reporting that PKWare & WinZip have settled their differences and will maintain Zip file compatibility for the foreseeable future with each supporting the other's security extensions. In addition, PKWare will include its SecureZip in the code it licenses to other software makers. This is good news in deed for users and developers alike!"

Orkut

[Anonymous Coward]

So are any of you guys members yet?

No-one I know has joined yet and I've not heard much on the net so are there really any members or is it just another conspiracy theory - ie you think it's good therefore you want to join?!?

The Zip Rip

[Anonymous Coward]

PKWare deserves whatever bad happens to it. I remember when there was one standard compression: "arc". "PK" got caught pirating and selling the "arc" code, and rather than rectify matters, they created a perversely incompatible standard instead.

What about infozip?

[phr1]

Will the new "secure" zip format be published so other implementations can use it? There's the old pkzip "password" feature that infozip implments, that's deliberately weak because of the old export controls, but that doesn't count.

Is a "copy" the same as a "duplicate original"?

[Nakito]

I read the description of Mike Rowe's auction on Ebay. He says that he is auctioning "the WIPO book with the 25-page letter I received from Microsoft's lawyers on January 14/2004," but then says, "I have two copies of these and I will be keeping one for my own personal memoirs." So -- is the subject of the auction a true original? Did Microsoft serve a duplicate set of originals on the same guy? Or is he just selling a copy that he made? If I bought that letter, I would want to see blue ink on the signature line.

Re:Orkut

[Rick the Red]

You remind me of the Groucho Marx line (paraphrasing): "I'd never join a group that wanted me as a member."

Re:Zip is old school

[DraconPern]

You forgot LHA.

Google and cross-site scripting

[Anonymous Coward]

As amazing as it sounds, Google don't really pay that much attention to web technologies. They may have some pretty impressive clustering, database and analysis technologies, but the way they apply web technologies such as HTML and HTTP is lacking.

For a start-off, their website isn't even valid HTML. If they moved some of the presentation details to CSS, they could lop a massive chunk of bandwidth off their bill and take some of the load off their servers and speed up access to their site. I don't know what they are paying at the moment, but it's bound to be significant.

Their spidering technologies only half implement HTTP. For instance, they ignore the content-type header, favouring the file extension instead. The only other software that I have heard of being that broken in terms of HTTP is Internet Explorer.

Their ranking algorithms pay a little attention to the HTML structure (e.g. they rank keywords in <h1> elements highly), but then they comlpetely ignore other significant markup, or screw it up, like definition lists.

So they didn't understand the rules for escaping special characters in HTML. It doesn't come as a surprise, cross-site scripting attacks bite many people who haven't paid attention to the HTML specifications.

It's a shame, because so many people bend over backwards to get ranked highly in Google, that if Google actually tried to use HTML and HTTP properly, it would cause loads of people to write higher-quality HTML overnight.

Strange irony

[techstar25]

In a strange twist of irony, he states that he will not accept bids from zero feedback bidders, yet he himself has zero feedback. Sorry bud, but I don't buy from zero feedback sellers, although serious sellers may email me with their intentions...

Re:Zip

[allaryin]

Sigh... 7z... I seem to recall having spent no less than two hours trying to decompress one of those on a unix box.

Apparently it works through wine, but nobody's thought enough of the format to actually port it, despite the windows code being open.

The clique click

[Anonymous Coward]

Upon clicking the link, you're taken to a page where you're told to get a friend to invite you.

And with no way to search to see if one of your friends is a member, just so you won't know to be offended if someone you thought was a friend was on the inside and hasn't invited you.

That's wrong, and makes me not even INTERESTED in becoming a member of Urkut!

That is, of course, until one of your friends invites you to click into the clique. That's when the test of your character will take place.

Orkut has no focus

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about Orkut, it somewhat feels clinched together and I miss a true focus on what TO DO there - just like friendster. I like "business social networks" such as Ryze [ryze.com] and openBC [openbc.com] much better because they try to concentrate on a specific audience and cater to their specific needs.

Ryze seems to be lost in a tide of MLM scamsters, though. You cannot escape those loons there, MLM everywhere even if the Ryze AUP says otherwise. At least on openBC, they actually kick spammers and MLM recruiters from the system. I also like that openBC is a European site. It somehow feels like they really thought on how to make it attractive for non-American users, as well. Ryze is very poorly designed compared to that.

I miss such features in Orkut. Their growth is impressive, but what for if there is no actual use for it?

Re:Zip is old school

[WuphonsReach]

I used LHArc for at least a few years straight during the BBS days, back prior to Info-Zip's Zip/UnZip programs.

I imagine that someone still has a working version of it, although I've long since convered everything to ZIP for doing archives. (Might switch to BZip2, might not...)

Frankly, the "secure archive" in PkZip/WinZip is usless to me because I'd rather use an open-source tool like GPG to encrypt.

Re:Am I the only one...

[msmikkol]

I've never heard of "The Snorks", but I find the name "Orkut" quite funny. It is the plural of "orgasm" in Finnish.

The text of my Orkut invite

[PCM2]

So are any of you guys members yet?

No-one I know has joined yet and I've not heard much on the net so are there really any members or is it just another conspiracy theory - ie you think it's good therefore you want to join?!?

Who knows? It's not like they've given anybody any impression of what to expect when they sign up. The Web site says next to nothing, and neither does the actual invite when you get one. Here's the text of the one I received:

[person] <name@address> invites you to join her network of personal friends at orkut.com.

orkut is a community of friends and trusted acquaintances that connects individuals through a social network that grows person by person.

With orkut, you can catch up with old friends, make new acquaintances through people you trust, and maybe even find that certain someone you've been looking for everywhere.

orkut helps you organize and attend events, join communities that share your interests, and find partners to participate in the activities you most enjoy.

To find out why [person] thought you'd enjoy orkut and to discover who else you know is already a member, click on the link below:

[link]

* * *

If you're already an orkut member, make sure that the email address at which you received this note is entered into your orkut profile. That way, you'll automatically be connected to all of your friends.

This invitation was sent to [me] <my@address> on behalf of [person] <name@address>. If you do not wish to receive invitations from orkut, click on the link below:

[link]

And that's about it! Now you tell me -- do I really want to join this thing? What does it get me? Since it's Google, I guess we're all assuming it won't land us on anybody's spam lists, but how can we be sure? Is there any way to back our information out of the system if we decide it's all a pointless waste of time (or worse -- a scam)?

And, to get philosophical -- is it really possible to meet people online? Can you really have "met" somebody ... whom you've never met before???! I just don't get the point of these "friend networks," at all.

Re:So who seeds Orkut

[kfg]

... As any fule know, the initial conditions can have a profound impact on any time-dependent phenomena :-)

I was once solicited, directly from the salesfloor of my then employer ( my customer was a sales manager who I impressed), to work in sales for a major international insurance agency.

Upon the formal application I was turned down for employment (thank God).

Why? Because I'm not a joiner. I didn't belong to fraternity, Elks Lodge, Country Club, The Rotary, what have you.

Thus I didn't have, in their eyes, a ready pool of people the "invite' to purchase insurance. My abilites and professionalism as a salesman were completely irellevant to them.

Does that shed any light on your curiosity?

KFG

Re:thoughts

[Kris_J]

Have you ever tried to extract a single file from a gzip'ed tar archive? It's not possible without unpacking everything and throwing away the bits that you don't want.

Sorry, but that's true of almost every compressor that gets a better ratio than zip. I used to use RAR, now I use 7z. They both create "solid" archives by sorting the files into an order most likely to place similar sections together then compress the whole thing as a single stream of data. Makes a huge difference to compression.

Re:What about infozip?

[mark_space2001]

If it isn't, we should come up with one.

De-facto standards and proprietary standards get started becuase no one has an alternative. If an open standard is created, I'm sure users and the market will prefer that one.

The best time to make such an open standard is before any proprietary one has a chance to get a strong foot hold.

Re:Orkut

[abigor]

I became a member via a guy I work with who's connected with some Silicon Valley people. I haven't actually filled anything in yet, and I don't really know what it's all about, because I've never done this social networking on the Internet thing before. Actually, I seriously doubt I'll make much use of it other than when I feel like changing jobs...I think it's probably a great job-networking tool.

Looking over his shoulder, I noticed that many people on the service seem to be in their 30s. That seems older than the normal "let's meet on the Internet" crowd, or am I mistaken?

So much for the exclusivity of Orkut...

[psykocrime]

Dozens of invitations are already up for sale on
E-Bay [ebay.com] and can be had quite inexpensively, it would appear.

Re:Google and cross-site scripting

[Anonymous Coward]

Do they actually IGNORE the header, or do they merely have it take less precedence than the extension?

All I know is that with two identical pages, with identical inbound links, if one of them uses a wacky extension like .page, it doesn't get indexed whilst the other one does.

If most of the internet sites out there are doing it the wrong way, google has to aquiese and go along with that in order to have a more accurate database.

I'd agree with you if your premise was true. The fact is that I can probably count the number of pages that I have come across with the wrong content-type on one hand. Apart from anything else, it effectively makes a site Internet Explorer only.

it is much slower

[ingenuus]

As the poster implied, extracting, adding, and removing individual files from a .tar.gz/bz2 archive is significantly slower than with a .zip archive (particularly as the archive becomes larger).

Theoretically, with the right vfs interface, you could mount a .zip file read/write, providing dynamic compression... I'd actually like to see that in linux (as a pluggable kernel filesystem, accessible from the command line)... I know mc provides something like this with its own pluggable vfs, but its use is thus limited to mc.

The main thing .tar.gz/bz2 has going for it is that it is a *nix standard and has higher compression.

Basically, the trade-off is size (tar.gz/bz2) vs. flexibility/speed (zip).

wow! it's up to $28,100.00 now!

[0biJon]

and there's still six days to go!
who the hell would pay that much for this shit?
it's probably not that hard to get your own C&D from microsoft.