Microsoft's patent scare campaign thankfully hasn't scared everyone. Red Hat and Ubuntu have declined to sign any agreement that provides legal protection to users related to "unspecified patents".
More can be found on the ZDNet article "Ubuntu, Red Hat reject Microsoft patent deal ".
Apple have made a big fanfare this week over the release of their Safari 3 public beta, which is also available for PC. Many commentators have offered their opinions as to why Apple have provided a PC version. The general consensus being that the same browser will be available on the iPhone, so thereby having a PC base they will encourage more development for their up and coming iPhone product. Most of the iPhone applications will be browser based.
Public reaction to the beta has been unimpressed, with many vocal people decrying a number of bugs and security issues. Apple were quick to tend to these.
I tend to think that the uptake of Safari for PC will be mostly limited to iPhone and web developers. I fall into the second group, being only interested in have a copy to test my website for Mac users. Otherwise I have no need or desire to struggle with a new browser that lacks the development community support that FireFox has. The range of plugins available to FireFox extend its features way beyond what Safari can currently offer.
As for Apple's claim that is the fastest browser on earth, my testing of it so far shows this to be only a marketing sham. Their browser speed comparison graph on the Safari download page is a farce, as they don't offer any information on what tests they made to arrive at such claims.
Safari for me will end up like Opera on my computer, only ever used for testing. I will still recommend to Mac users that they should use FireFox or Camino.
I have a client Rebecca Caroe of Rowperfect that I work closely with on her blog. She will often send me little tip bits of information that she comes across when surfing the internet, and asks whether it is of any benefit for her site or my other customers. There have been many times that this has been invaluable. An extra pair of eyes on the internet never goes astray.
On this occassion I was directed towards Andy Beard's post "Akismet False Positives & Spam Karma Configuration". While Andy does not actually say Spam Karma is the be all and end all for blog spam, his enthusiasm does. It may indeed warrant a closer look, however as I've noted, many people are looking for that holy grail of the ultimate spam killer, a "set it and forget it" solution.
The sad reality is that because bloggers are using freely available plugins, the very same plugins are also freely available to the programmers working for the spammers. The plugins become victims of their own success. The more popular they are the more targeted they will be.
Towards then end of his post, Andy goes on to suggest a combination of spam filter plugins. This the best solution, a combination of filters makes your defenses less predictable and more complex for the spambots, especially if you choose your own cocktail of spam filters.
