So, in Firefox you can configure and view various configurations by typing “about:something” in the address bar. That “something” can be the following:
about:config
about:plugins
about:crashes
about:robots
Please let me know what other abouts you can come up with in the comments section!
Hey all you Mozilla fans out there! They JUST released Firefox 3.0 RC1!!
Please note: The Firefox 3 Release Candidate is a public preview release intended for developer testing and community feedback. It includes new features as well as dramatic improvements to performance, memory usage and speed. We recommend that you read the release notes and known issues before installing this release.
The first Firefox 3 Release Candidate is now available for download. This milestone is focused on testing the core functionality provided by many new features and changes to the platform scheduled for Firefox 3. Ongoing planning for Firefox 3 can be followed at the Firefox 3 Planning Center, as well as in mozilla.dev.planning and on irc.mozilla.org in #granparadiso.
New features and changes in this milestone:
(You can find out more about all of these features in the “What’s New” section of the release notes.)
Testers can download the Firefox 3 Release Candidate builds for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux in over 45 different languages. Developers should also read the Firefox 3 for Developers article on the Mozilla Developer Center.
Note: Please do not link directly to the download site. Instead we strongly encourage you to link to this Firefox 3 Release Candidate announcement so that everyone will know what this milestone is, what they should expect, and who should be downloading to participate in testing at this stage of development.
You can follow the Firefox 3 RC release schedule here.
Right now, Mozilla is saying that the first RC will be finished by the end of May. Unless the code is perfect, they will ship a few more release candidates and then the final release is set for June. I would say late June at this point.
WilksNet (formerly BonEcho) has officially moved from the WordPress domain to a new top level domain:
All requests being directed to the previous address http://bonecho.wordpress.com/ will be redirected to the new domain above.
I plan on making this blog better in the next year, so any comments or suggestions are welcome!
“Thanks to the end-of-term for many colleges and some K12 schools, brute-force attacks against SSH servers surged sharply this past weekend, according to the SANS Internet Storm Center. The sudden jump in SSH attacks merits a re-examination of how such servers should be properly secured. Jim Owens and Jeanna Matthews of the Department of Computer Science at Clarkson University have published a paper on the methods that such attacks frequently employ and on the best ways to defeat them.”
“If you’ve got an SSH server that you want to secure from brute-force attack, Owens and Matthews recommend taking several steps. First, all passwords should be strong, usernames should be non-obvious, and SSH logins for the root account should be disabled. The two also recommend running the SSH server on a non-standard high port, though they recognize that this is a “security through obscurity” tactic, and they advocate the use of software capable of parsing log files and noting multiple failed login attempts. These steps, taken in aggregate, should be sufficient to protect an SSH server, even if the number of attacks continues to rise.”
You can now download Fedora 9 from here:
http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora
Please use BitTorrent! 
I just hopped on Mozilla’s FTP site and they have finally posted an RC build! I’m going to hold off on downloading it until they place it in the releases directory but it’s good to know they are working on the final code.
If you read the Meeting Notes today, they say the tentaive date for the first release candidate is “late May”.
I just found this but have not had a chance to test it it. Apparently, it has a more intuitive user interface as far as options go and gives the same features as AWN (Avant Window Navigator).
The OpenOffice.org team has released a public beta of v3.0 It now has native support for Mac OS X and many more features.
“Thanks to all the hard work of the Mozilla community as of 9:15 AM PDT today we are code complete for Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1 (RC1). New nightly builds are available – if you are a nightly tester/Minefield user you can help test these builds by selecting “Check for Updates” from your help menu.
Assuming no new issues are found today the build team will start official prep work for Release Candidate 1 (RC1) tomorrow. QA will start their extensive RC1 test pass on Monday. If all goes well we should have the Release Candidate publicly available in late May.
RC1 is intended for wider scale public testing. Our 1.2M+ active beta users will automatically get updated to RC1 when it is released. If no new showstopper issues are found in RC1 it will become Firefox 3 final. If we find any critical issues we will continue to release new Release Candidates until we are ready for final ship.”
Source: Mozilla Developer News
I’m super excited to get my hands on QA tested RC builds of Firefox 3. I’ve been using Minefield for months now and it keeps getting better everyday, so maybe I’ve ruined some of the surprise but at any rate, it’s going to be good.
If I had to predict, I would say they’ll go through at least 2 official RC builds before final release. That places the final code of Firefox 3 to be out in mid to late June.
