I wanted to go into computer security when I was in college. So I keep a interested amateur eye out on computer security issues, and this is a big one. But it illustrates the biggest problem with computer security - people don't want to do it. People take shortcuts to make their systems and networks easier to use, and make them far less secure in the process. They take the easiest option to make resources available, and all too often, it makes other resources available at the same time. A...

As much fun as this is, I do usually use google for real searches.

One current method of fighting robots that sign themselves or other people up for mailing lists, contests, etc. is to have a random alphanumeric string presented in a way that makes it difficult to OCR the string. What happens when OCR tech improves? (Note, I believe that humna-grade OCR is considered to be an AI-complete problem, along with natural language recognition (though great strides are being made there in number recognition. Also see the language recognizer in Unreal Tournament 2...

I've been trying out on my laptop the past fews days an internet browser called Avantbrowser. It runs over top of IE (you have to have IE installed, etc), and has several features that IE does not. It uses the MDI interface to give tabbed browsing in IE, has a pop-up blocker, a form filler, and a search bar similar to the google bar, except that you can specify your search engine. I've been playing with it for a bit, and like it enough that it is currently my default browser. Try it out - ...

The linked article is all about what happens behind the deliberately minimalist white page, text box, and search button. Some of the numbers are simply mindblowing.