I have been watching the Windows vs. Linux debate with interest for some time now. Security seemed to be the principle reason that the Linux community were suggesting that you move over to the open source operating system. Now Microsoft are fighting back and using Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) as their reason for staying with Windows. On the face of it that would seem to be an easy argument for Linux to win, after all it can be obtained at little or no cost.

Recently, as part of a project at work, we took at look at the open … Read the rest

I went to my website this morning and instead of seeing the usual posts there was the following message:

“El Pulpo Hacker Strike Again …
Las Malvinas son Argentinas …
See You in Canasvieiras ”

That was it, no other changes made. The reason it happened was because I had set the permissions on one file to give world write access, stupid I know. Anyway that hole is now pluged so that should be the end of it but never say never.

I have never understood why a hacker does what he/she does, although there was obviously a political element … Read the rest

There has been a lot written on the web about detecting a user’s browser. The reason why there is so much discussion is that Internet Explorer and Netscape have differences in the way that they render HTML and so the “experience” you get can be different for the same site. At least that was the reason so many people worried about it. Now that Internet Explorer commands over 90% of the browser market it is hardly worth worring about.

However, there are other reasons for detecting a user’s browser, such as redirecting to a different site or set of pages … Read the rest

I have been using the Greymatter content management system to drive my website for a few weeks now and have been very impressed with the results. The majority of my sites are written in the Perl scripting language and this gives me the flexibility to have my sites exactly as I want them. However, when I was looking for a way to refresh neilthompson.co.uk I looked for an open source script that would allow me to create my own look and feel and to easily update the entries. I had read an article on Greymatter in PC Plus magazine and … Read the rest