adarsh bhat’s blog

I’m back from Goa.

Tomorrow, we leave for Honeyvale estate. This time, I don’t even have to pay for it! >:D

I’m off to Goa for a week.

It is to be expected that the posts appearing on the Internet Explorer 7 (IE 7) blog are subjected to a lot of scrutiny from Microsoft. I wouldn’t be too surprised if lawyers actually approved the posts before they were made public. (Just guessing) Despite this, when a post is titled “How I’ll judge IE7 Security“, you know that there’s something to be suspicious about. It is apparent that Microsoft is treading on thin ice here and wants this post attributed to one man’s personal opinion.

According to the post, the greatest security advantage that IE 7 has over IE 6 is that IE 7 has a reduced attack surface area. And exactly how has that been achieved? By disabling certain vulnerable ActiveX controls by default. (By the way, these ActiveX controls in question are also from Microsoft.) In the very same post, they do admit that a lot of programs make use of these ActiveX controls; hence you will be some how forced to enable these ActiveX controls. Once you have done that, you have no one to blame but yourself, since yours is now a non-default configuration.

Any one who reads the post can, similarly, see through the justification provided for pushing the MHTML bug under the carpet. Their claim is that attackers need to know which banking site you use and require that you be logged on to the site. All that is fair. But I don’t understand how this situation is different from that of an XSS vulnerability that have been used for real attacks in the past. But this some how isn’t likely to impact many real customers.

Bringing in ActiveX controls was the original mistake Microsoft made. Covering it up with lame arguments is going to hurt everyone, Microsoft included. The humble and honest way to address this would have been to say: Oops, we goofed up. Here’s a fix for MSXML and MHTML. But Microsoft prefers to say: Oh, It’s nothing. But here’s a fix anyway.

web

I try not to whine, but sometimes I just can’t help it. This is one of those hilarious situations that I just have to write about.

I was looking for the a Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) bus route number to go to a certain place. I decide to google (on Google) using the keyword “bmtc”.

As an aside, note the confusion in the spelling of Bangalore. The new spelling is Bengalooru (with an ‘oo’).

As you have undoubtedly guessed, the site was/is down. Smart that I thought I was, I decided to look at the Google cache version on the page by clicking on the “Cached” link.

Wouldn’t you have guessed?

They used only images to build the site!! WTF??

The entrance to the Mysore dasara exhibition. Starting at the time of Dasara, which is typically September end or early October, the exhibition is on all the way up to the end of December.

mysore

In this age of religious extremism, it is reassuring to hear about a sect that is open and self-reforming. I quote from Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography, of a new sect (at that time), that of the Dunkers.

I was acquainted with one of its founders, Michael Welfare, soon after [it] the sect appeared. He complained to me that they were grievously calumniated by the zealots of other persuasions, and charged with abominable principles and practices to which they were utter strangers. I told him this had always been the case with new sects, and that, to stop such abuse I imagined it might be well to publish the articles of their belief, and the rules of their discipline. He said that it had been proposed among them, but not agreed to, for this reason: When we were first drawn together as a society, he says, it had pleased God to enlighten our minds so far as to see that some doctrines, which we once esteemed truths were errors; and that others, which we had esteemed errors, were real truths. From time to time He has been pleased to afford us further light, and our principles have been improving, and our errors diminishing. Now we are not sure that we are arrived at the end of this progression, and at the perfection of spiritual or theological knowledge; and we fear that, if we should once print our confession of faith we should feel ourselves as if bound and confined by it and perhaps be unwilling to receive further improvement, and our successors still more so, as conceiving what we their elders and founders had done, to be something sacred, never to be departed from.

This modesty in a sect is perhaps a singular instance in the history of mankind, every other sect supposing itself in possession of all truth, and that those who differ are so far in the wrong; like a man travelling in foggy weather, those at some distance before him on the road he sees wrapped up in the fog, as well as those behind him, and also the people in the fields on each side, but near him all appears clear, though in truth he is as much in the fog as any of them.

If only all religions would appreciate the sentiment behind this, this world would have immediately improved.

books, society