Claude Montpetit -- Montpetit.net -- en

This is an excerpt from a real recommendation in a Microsoft security knowledge base article.

[...]a malicious user could create a link to a deceptive (spoofed) Web site that displays the address, or URL, to a legitimate Web site in the Status bar, Address bar, and Title bar. This article describes steps that you can take to help mitigate this issue and to help you to identify a deceptive (spoofed) Web site or URL.

[...]

• Do not click any hyperlinks that you do not trust. Type them in the Address bar yourself.

Whew...

Here is the link to the article. So, do you trust this link?

The rest of the article is also entertaining, especially when they suggest to put some JScript in the address bar to identify spoofed linked, followed immediately by a warning about the potential dangers of using JScript in the address bar.

While zapping a few minutes ago, I bumped into the conclusion of a reality TV show called Extreme MakeOver. A women was returning to her family with a complete tune up: nose job, boobs, chin, and other treatments that I must have missed while I was pinching myself to wake up.

Her family welcomed her in tears. They were all really really happy with the results. Her mother said should could become an actress now. The commentator concludes repeatedly saying that she is really really happy because she is now normal. Normal?!? Did I hear right? Not that there is anything wrong with wanting to have some surgery, but to say that she was not normal before the surgery is totally perverse!

A few minutes later, about a rock star wannabe that got a similar treatment, the commentator concludes like this: "From horror show to show time".

This is completely insane. And all this on a USA national TV network (ABC).

Take an increasingly popular phenomenon that has its merits (reality TV), and push it to the limit until it becomes completely ridiculous and even harmful: you get Extreme Makeover, among other things. I call it escalation that bursts the roof of sanity.

Tim bray presents his two laws of explanation:

1. When you’re explaining something to somebody and they don’t get it, that’s not their problem, it’s your problem.
2. When someone’s explaining something to you and you’re not getting it, it’s not your problem, it’s their problem.

...

This [the second law] actually turns out to be pretty hard; a lot of people, in particular young people, find it painful to admit they don’t understand. When, sometime in my thirties, I realized that I had enough experience and accomplishments that if I didn’t get something it was OK to just say so, my quality of life got way better.

Tim's series entitled Technology Predictor Success Matrix is also worth reading.

Tim Bray, a Canadian, comme moi, goes like this on his weblog:

I have no gift for foreign languages but due to having grown up overseas can limp along in bad French. [ ...]

In case it is still a well hidden secret, French is not a foreign language in Canada, but the other official language of this officially bilingual country. The University of Guelph, in Ontario, where Tim studied, is located at a couple of hours drive from the province of Quebec were most people can speak French. The east part of Ontario even has a majority of French speaking Canadian citizens. Normally in Canada, no need to have grown up overseas to be in contact with another language.

if you walk into a café or restaurant or store in France with a copy of Libération stuffed under your arm, the locals will instantly assume you’re not a gringo and you’ll probably get treated a lot better. Try it, it works.

And you do not need to buy any French newspaper to get a warm welcome in our mostly French province.

Excerpt:

Dans une entrevue à une émission de la radio de Radio-Canada en début d'année, Pierre Dansereau concluait qu'il était très confortable dans l'ambiguïté, cette zone grise où on n'est pas certain d'avoir LA réponse. Ce scientifique âgé d'au delà de... more