Going to be away for a few days and out of the loop, back in the world of the living late on Wednesday.

The CFMX 6.1 updater has now been released, it contains a number of hotfixes previously released, security updates and more.

Full Details

Downloads Page

Quick note on this, if you’re installing on Red Hat Enterprise Server 3 (as I just have) you may the following error message, don’t worry about it though it will installed fine.

You’re also going to need to recompile the connector if you’re using Apache 1.3, doesn’t seem to affect Apache 2.

Got this in an email today and feel I should spread the word.

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Right, I’m not normally one to be appealing about this kinda stuff, I certainly don’t go around forcing my political views on people, but I saw Mark Thomas (a UK comedian) yesterday in the Edinburgh festival, and I feel I should try and pass on his message to even a few people.

I need to say I don’t know the full situation (Mark Thomas made it extremely clear tho). I might not be exactly right with what I say, but I’m gonna try and give the general summary of it.

Basically, it’s about multinational companies, in this case namely Coca Cola, and what is happening in Colombia.

Coca cola are employing workers in s*** conditions and crappy pay. they do this all over the world you will say, and they do, but in Comolbia they are blatantly doing some SERIOUSLY underhand stuff.

As we all probably know, Colombia is a poverty ridden state, which has a ridiculously corrupt government. Colombian paramilitaries have a strong place in the power over the country.

Coca Cola have quite clearly been working with these paramilitaries, and they have actually been killing people in the trade unions, and threatening kidnap and death to members of trade unionist’s families. this is actually happening, not some conspiracy theory s***, make no mistake.

Once the people in unions have been eliminated, there is no one to appeal for these workers at these plants, and Coca Cola then lower wages.

Have a look here at what has been happening in more detail:

http://www.colombiasolidarity.org.uk/urgentaction.html
http://www.colombiasolidarity.org.uk/Urgent_actions/18June2002.html

Now, my appeal is this. boycott Coca Cola.

Mark Thomas said this at the end of his two hour show. That the workers and unionists who are being terrified and abused don’t ask for people to go to Colombia and help them, they don’t ask for money from other countries to help them. All they ask is that you stop drinking Coca Cola. that’s all. I personally am not going to touch a drop of the stuff anymore.

I wish you could see Mark thomas state the facts in his brilliant way for yourself. I’m sure I don’t get this across very well, but it’s just so important.

http://www.colombiasolidarity.org.uk
http://www.killercoke.org

Please take a few minutes to look at this and perhaps you will be swayed to stop drinking coke. Have an orange juice instead, much healthier (a can of coke has 12 lumps of sugar in it ffs).

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SP2 is coming out very soon, 16th August I’ve heard. Though it’s coming with issues.

The whole browsing experience is going to change in the way it handles plugins, downloaded files etc. Macromedia have put up a page that details changes and provides links to the M$ pages of interest.

Interestingly though IBM are blocking the update and M$ themselves have released this tool which lets you “Temporarily Disabling Delivery of Windows XP Service Pack 2 Through Windows Update and Automatic Updates”.

Edit: BBC News article on SP2 “issues”.

Some preview’s and more information on the next version of ColdFusion, codenamed “Blackstone” are posted on the Macromedia site.

Are you stuck behind a firewall at work? Not allowed to install MSN on your PC? Well this is your saviour, go have a look at Web Messenger. Very cool.

Having a look round the Microsoft site and it seems that Windows XP Service Pack 2 is finally going to get released this month. A few more bug fixes sorted.

Friday was like a monsoon, drove through 3 floods and could see about 5 metres out the window and today it’s 33 degrees, blue sky and lovely. You’ve gotta love british weather.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Microsoft fixes big browser bug

Seems it’s the day for browser bug fixing.

Following on from the Shell security issue recently here’s another vulnerability in Mozilla.

A flaw in the Mozilla/FireFox web browsers (which I typically recommend,
and (probably) still do recommend), has come to light.
The problem was raised in 1999, and has been opened under a “5-year rule”
(similar concept to UK Gov’s “30-Year rule” for Official Secrets).

BACKGROUND:

Mozilla allows the user interface (menus, toolbars, etc) to be customised
by “plugins” – extra bits of software which add nifty features like
blocking adverts, etc.

EFFECT:

This means that a malicious website could change the “Location:” bar to
say something trustworthy.

IMPACT:

www.badsite.com can present a copy of your bank’s login screen, and you
can’t use the “The Location: bar must say ‘www.goodsite.com’” test to
ensure that you are really visiting that site.
So you can see a webpage that looks like the site you expected to see, and
the Location: bar says www.goodsite.com, but you would actually be sending
your password to www.badsite.com

CAVEATS:

- Internet Explorer has a more deeply-rooted bug, for which a patch is
expected in the next few weeks (this is a *POOR* excuse)
- You would have to be hoaxed into visiting the bad site
- We have no way of knowing what flaws exist in other web browsers (this
is a *VERY POOR* excuse, at best).
- tru5tn01

SUMMARY:

The “Caveats” are insignificant. This is a significant problem, which has
existed for 5 years, and has only just come to light.
The fact that Internet Explorer is crap, is no excuse at all.

WORKAROUND:

- In Mozilla/FireFox, type “about:config” in the Location:bar
- Change the settings below to “TRUE”:
- Restart Mozilla/FireFox

SETTINGS TO CHANGE:

It could be argued that these should be set to “True” by default, which
would avoid the problem in the first place.

REFERENCES:

• http://www.nd.edu/~jsmith30/xul/test/spoof.html

• http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=22183
• http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=102334
• http://secunia.com/advisories/12188/
• http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=252198
• http://it.slashdot.org/it/04/07/31/0037210.shtml?tid=..snip..

Thanks to the person that sent me a mail on this.