Technocrank

If you have a BT wireless router/modem you might have noticed a strange PC server called Thomson sharing on your network.  Apparently, the router is running an undocumented version of Samba and sharing out the USB port as a network drive.  I can’t find any actual documentation to verify this.

Apparently, this router was, as of firmware version 6.2.6B vulnerable to hijacking via a cross-site scripting attack (which NoScript would ostensibly prevent).  *sigh*

WordPress 2.7
Firefox 3.1b2
Firebug 1.4X.0a12

The Firebug add-on for Firefox seems to have an odd effect on the WordPress administration panel.  I haven’t tested it thoroughly to figure out which pages or why (or in what other ways, or what other versions), but it unexpectedly reloads the post editing page.

That is, if you’re writing or editing a post it reloads it without warning.  It also seems to embed a copy of the whole page in the Categories <div> on the RHS…perhaps they’re related.  Turning Firebug off or disabling it for the page kills the problem.

I do realize that version-wise, I’m somewhat on the razor’s edge.

Update: WP 2.8, Firefox 3.5RC2 and Firebug 1.5X.0a05 works.

I’ve been trying to be responsible by using NoScript, a Firefox add-on.  Its supposed to stop malicious Javascript code and cross-site scripting (among a host of other nasty web bugs) from ruining your life.  I understand and appreciate that this is an important and noble goal.  However, it uses preemptive blocking, meaning that every single website on the internet (or 99% anyway) is broken until you tell NoScript not to break it.

I’m sure the author of NoScript would argue that the internet is broken the *other* way around and its a far lesser evil to do the extra clicking.  But I’ve just come to my wits end with trying to figure out why, so often, I’m wondering why a button doesn’t click or menus are NOT MENUS.  So I’ve disabled it for now until my life gets ruined by cross-site scripting.

I’m running a development version of Firefox on an Intel Mac.  The new Google Earth browser plugin doesn’t recognize it as Firefox 3.0+ so I installed the User Agent Switcher plugin and added an agent that the plugin would recognize:

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; nb-NO; rv:1.9.0.3) Gecko/2008092414 Firefox/3.0.3

You also need the Nightly Tester Tools plugin to get the User Agent plugin to override the compatibility check too.