Hasta La Gadget!

I just bombarded Futurama’s co-creator David X. Cohen with some very important questions, including what he would name his Roomba, why he’s not afraid of robots and what Futurama’s chances are for renewal. (Spoiler: 50/50.)

Mouth: dry. Stomach: queasy. Head: racing. Not only is David X. Cohen the co-creator of one of my favorite shows of all time, he’s a fellow Berkeley computer science alum, fellow nerd, and a tremendously funny guy. He also holds the dream job—comedy writer and creator of a successful Sci Fi TV show. After fully preparing myself by watching the latest Futurama movie—Into the Wild Green Yonder—I had hours worth of questions for the man, but he only had 30 minutes.

I had to get the most important question on everyone’s minds out of the way: Will Futurama be coming back to Fox for a 6th season? Although Fox has indeed been making noises about the show’s return, Cohen said DVD sales of the fourth movie may be a deciding factor in whether or not the project would be profitable. Basically, we need to go out and buy the DVD and Blu-ray if we want to bring Futurama back. Cohen also revealed that although there is a fifty-fifty chance of the show returning, he has yet to hear more concrete details about it from Fox—according to him, though, “No news is good news.”

But how is the movie? In a word, good. In two words, very good. Into the Wild Green Yonder feels as if the Futurama writers used the first three movies as practice for getting back into the groove of writing Futurama episodes and was a final coda to the series. That’s not to say that the first three movies were bad—they were just different.

If the Bender-focused, first half hour of the movie were its own episode, it would solidly land in any “top ten funniest Futurama episodes of all times” list, hands down. However, because the next 58 minutes covered some very familiar, classic Futurama-esque territory, it made Into the Green Yonder feel like the one movie—out of the four—that connected the most with the series. But why this movie, why now?

Bringing this movie back to the feel of the series, as Cohen revealed, was somewhat intentional. For each one of the Futurama movies, the writers decided that they would cover one major area of Sci Fi. The latest one, like the series itself, is more of a large space opera that comfortably cradles you back into the company of the Futurama characters you grew to love. Cohen also pointed out that a scene in the newest movie—the one where Leela is giving out space coordinates—is probably one of the “most hardcore things they’ve done” in terms of showing respect for actual science.

It’s these science fans as well as the more hardcore viewers that would have noticed when Futurama’s writers give shout outs to real-world physics in their jokes—such as when the Professor invoked the observer effect after a horse race. This ability to mix humor with scientific intelligence is one of the greatest benefits of having so many smart writers on staff. The other benefit? The ability to actually have an interesting vision of the future.

And it’s this future that Fry’s trying to save once again. This could be why the Green Yonder felt like it was slightly retreading old territory. If you’ve seen some of Fry’s Nibblonian episodes, I’m sure you’re familiar with the basic premise—we get it: Fry’s special and he’s the only one who can save the universe. But that’s not to say there weren’t some great moments to be had during these 88 minutes. This is more akin to strolling down a familiar street you haven’t seen in years, examining which stores have changed and which haven’t, and reveling in the fact that you’re lucky enough to be back once more.

As the series draws to a (temporary) close, we wonder if we’ve learned the entirety of Fry’s origin story and how he came to be in the year 3000. Not to worry, Cohen assures that he is not finished with that tale quite yet. When asked how much of it was left—after the Nibblonian saga was finished and the “Lars” adventure in the first DVD movie—he responded that there is “one sentence,” uttered in the series that was left unaddressed. But it’s up to superfans to figure out which sentence, not to mention which episode, he is referring to.

Because David X. Cohen helped create the entire world and backstory of Futurama, he’s given a lot of thought to the future. Our future. Because he didn’t want to go to extremes and create either a utopia or a dystopia, Futurama’s universe is only about 50% realistic, according to Cohen. It does, however, borrow some ideas from our own world for both comedic and dramatic effect.

So what, if anything, in our real world future is David X. Cohen most afraid of? It isn’t robots, surprisingly enough. It’s stuff like nuclear bombs. Wars. And technology that kills people, fast. Things that—when taking the fact that Cohen grew up in the cold war and studied physics at Harvard into account—makes a lot of sense. But robots? Nope.

You would think that because Cohen is such a fan of robots, it would make sense that he’d own a Roomba. But he doesn’t. He laughs that Matt Groening gives him shit for this fact (if anyone should have a Roomba, it would be Cohen).

Is there any Futurama left to tell? Cohen thinks so. Besides further expanding on Fry’s origin story, he’s got plans to make the Planet Express crew exhibits in an alien zoo (among other things). However, beyond little ideas here and there, what’s currently occupying Cohen’s mind is how to escape from the crazy corner they’ve painted themselves into at the end of Green Yonder. Given Fox’s recent interest in bringing back the show for another season on television (50/50 chance!), it’s one mess Cohen will likely have to bend his way out of.

As for the Roomba, if Cohen ever were to get one, he’d name it Browser.

This article was written on August 08, 2007 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

Opera is a free web browser that is available for the Windows, Linux, and Mac operating systems. One of the things that Opera is best known for is being highly customizable out-of-the-box, but I think that some people overlook how customizable the toolbars are.

I’ve seen quite a few people using Opera before, and almost none of them move thye toolbars or buttons around. I’m not sure if that’s because they don’t know how, or whether they love the default layout that much. On the other hand, almost all Firefox installations that I ever see have customized toolbars, and a good example of that can be seen at Lifehacker’s “Show Us Your Firefox“.

I thought about making this your typical tutorial that walks you through all of the different steps, but it would be extremely long and hard to explain. For that reason I’ve assembled a video demonstration that starts with a fresh installation of Opera, and shows you how I go about positioning things.

–Customize the Toolbars–

In the video demonstration I show you how to customize the look and position of any toolbar in Opera. Even the bar with the tabs and the sidebar are included in this category, and changing their location is as simple as right-clicking on them and choosing the Customize option. Then there is a drop-down menu next to a label called “Placement,” and that is what you’ll need to adjust to move toolbars around Opera.

–Tab Bar–

One of my favorite things in Opera is that you can move the tab bar to the bottom of the browser, or to one of the sides. Seeing that I have a widescreen monitor, I prefer to utilize the extra screen width by placing my tabs on the right-side, which is also nice because your tabs don’t get so small that they are unreadable.

In the video I’ll also show you how to move the tab bar below the address bar without any hacks or inconvenient tricks. By default the tab bar is above the address bar with Opera, which is something Firefox and Internet Explorer users might have a hard time getting used to.

–Sidebar–

I like to view myself as a minimalist when it comes to icons and clutter, but there are some things that I do simply because it makes me more productive, and the sidebar is one of those things. It takes up way too much room out-of-the-box, and I was anxious to find a way to condense it down. The reason why this is important to me is that I have hundreds of bookmarks that I frequently access, so to allow me to be as productive as possible, I need to leave the bookmarks sidebar open at all times. As you’ll see in the video, there is a surprising amount of customization options that pertain to the sidebar.

–Video–

Are you ready for the video? I spent a lot of time making sure that, despite the low-resolution, you can still clearly see everything that I’m doing. So without further ado…

–Overview–

Opera is about as powerful as you want it to be. Once you get diggin’ under the hood you’ll find all kinds of surprises that you didn’t know existed, and that’s one of the joys with using it as your browser. Play around, mess with the options, and don’t be afraid to screw something up…that’s my motto!

Opera Homepage

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on July 31, 2007 by CyberNet.

One of the things that I’ve never liked about the BitTorrent files is that they can be such a pain to download. Often times you need a separate application, such as uTorrent, to download any of the files. I have found that it is something that most people just don’t understand.

BitLet might very well be the thing that breaks the learning curve when it comes to BitTorrent files because they’ve got the easiest downloader that I’ve ever seen, and it works in all browsers. The service uses Java to begin the file transfer process on your computer, and it doesn’t require that you setup port forwarding or configure a ton of settings.

All you have to do is go to BitLet.org and paste in the URL to the torrent file that you want to download. BitLet will instantly pop open a new window, and the process will begin by having you pick the download directory. The BitLet homepage will keep a list of downloads that you have been performing, and any of them can be resumed in case you accidentally close the download window or need to restart your browser.

There are a few downfalls that I see with this. The first being that it uses Java…which is an application that I truly despise. I always have it disabled, and hate running it because it consumes a lot of my system’s resources.

The other problem that I see is that there is no mention of full sharing going on. By that I mean you are downloading the file, but you’re not uploading it to other people. That may seem great because it will save on your bandwidth, but it will probably end up being something that many services block. The downloads might be fast now, but if BitLet starts to get blocked you can count on excruciatingly slow speeds.

Of course BitLet does have something that will tremendously help them…a code generator for torrent links. If you paste the URL of a torrent file into the box, BitLet will spit out some code for you to use on your own site. When a user clicks on the resulting link like this one:
Ubuntu 7.04 Torrent (x86)
the download will start immediately in a new window. This makes the BitTorrent download process extremely painless for anyone.

BitLet Homepage [via TorrentFreak]

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on July 23, 2008 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

The new Firefox 3 address bar is one of those things that you either love or hate, and it’s quite amazing how much buzz such a simple aspect of the browser can cause. The new address bar is often referred to as the AwesomeBar because of how useful it can be, but more officially it is considered the Smart Location Bar.

Why does the Smart Location Bar get so much attention? In most browsers the address bar only looks at the sites you’ve previously typed directly into the bar, but in Firefox 3 it also includes results from both your history and bookmarks. This kind of behavior definitely takes some getting used to, and it wasn’t until I had been using it for a few weeks that I really began to love it.

We’ve got a bunch of different things in store for you to today. To get the ball rolling we’re going to briefly explain how Firefox 3 calculates what results should be at the top of the address bar when you’re typing, and what should be at the bottom. Then we’ve got a bunch of tips on how you can tweak and alter various aspects of the location bar until it’s exactly what you want it to be.

–The Algorithm: Frecency–

Firefox 3 assigns a rank to every site that you visit, and it uses multiple criteria to do so. The two main things that factor into how a URL’s value is calculated are how often you visit that site in conjunction with when the site was visited. This value is often called the Frecency: frequency combined with recency.

That sounds simple enough, but as Mozilla’s documentation demonstrates there is a lot more to it. Bonuses are given to sites that you manually type into the address bar, bookmarks that you visit, and more. Plus more weight is given depending on whether you visited the URL in the last 4 days, 14 days, 31 days, or 90 days. All of this plays into what appears in the address bar when you start typing.

The good news is that you can essentially customize each aspect of the algorithm using about:config in the browser. If you pull up about:config and type frecency into the filter list you’ll find all of the different values associated with the algorithm. It’s helpful to know the formula used in the calculation because it will help explain what each of the different entries represent:

Visit Value = Bucket Weight * (Visit Bonus / 100)

The bucket weight values appear in in the about:config as firstBucketWeight, secondBucketWeight, and so on. These “buckets” correspond to the recency of your visit (4 days, 14 days, etc…) which can be adjusted with the firstBucketCutoff, secondBucketCutoff, etc… settings.

Visit bonuses are given to various URL’s depending on a variety of factors, including whether a site is bookmarked, whether it was visited by clicking a link, or whether it was visited by entering the address into the location bar. All of these values can be adjusted as well, and of them have the word “Bonus” on the end of them in the about:config frecency section.

–Deleting Entries & Resetting Stats–

Although the system seems overly complicated it’s pretty easy to mange what items appear. For example, I’ve read stories by several people saying that they don’t want results from their history showing up in the address bar because of questionable sites that they visit. Well, the results that are available are only those that are in your history, which means clearing out your history will wipe out those “questionable sites.”

You can do this in a variety of ways. If you want to wipe out your entire history (and therefore reset the stats) you can go to Tools -> Clear Private Data, and from there you can erase your browsing history among other things. Alternatively you can go to History -> Show All History where you can manage individual items, and you can also search through your entire history. Just select the items you want to remove and press the Delete key.

If you want a really fast way to remove items from your history you can use the… address bar! That’s right. Select an item from the address bar using the keyboard arrows, and then press the Delete key (Shift+Delete on a Mac) to see it get removed immediately.

–Removing History & Bookmarks–

If you don’t want the address bar searching both your history and bookmarks there is actually a quick fix. Open up the about:config, navigate to browser.urlbar.matchOnlyTyped, and change the value to true. Now the address bar will behave just like it did in Firefox 2 where it only searches those addresses you’ve typed into it.

–Removing Bookmarks–

Believe it or not you can prevent your bookmarks from showing up in the results without giving up the history results. Just open up the about:config and set places.frecency.unvisitedBookmarkBonus and places.frecency.bookmarkVisitBonus both to 0 (that’s the number zero). The next thing you’ll want to do is restart Firefox and clear your history. This is because Firefox has the frecency values stored, and without clearing the history your bookmarks will likely still show up.

Tip: If you want bookmarks appearing that you have visited only set the “unvisited” option to zero. That way your visited bookmarks will continue to show up as normal.

–Hide Unvisited Extension–

The Hide Unvisited add-on is similar to the method I described above for removing your bookmarks from the results, but it eliminates some of the hassle. What it does is set the following values in the about:config to zero:

• places.frecency.unvisitedTypedBonus
• places.frecency.unvisitedBookmarkBonus

After those have been set to zero it will erase the frecency values for the bookmarks that you haven’t visited before. This prevents you from having to wipe out your browser’s history in order to see the new values take effect.

This doesn’t, however, prevent your bookmarks from being displayed all together. This only affects those bookmarks that you haven’t visited since the last time you cleared your browser’s cache.

–Alter the Appearance–

The OldBar add-on for Firefox 3 won’t touch the address bar’s algorithm, but it will change the appearance to make the results look like they did in Firefox 2.

–Displaying Google Results–

We’ve supercharged the Firefox 3 address bar with our own homegrown CyberSearch extension. In a nutshell it lets you search Google and see the results right there in the address bar. It’s highly customizable and can make you a lot more productive.

–Distinguishing the Types of Results–

If you want it to be easier to recognize the different types of results in the address bar you may have to look no further than this style designed for the Stylish extension.If you don’t mind diving into the CSS code you can (of course) customize the color scheme, too. With it results from tags will be highlighted in light yellow, bookmarks in light blue, and history items in light green. Similarly our CyberSearch extension has a built-in customization option so that you can pick what background color its results use, and so this works well with it.

Thanks for the tip Mark! [via Ghacks]

–Overview–

Hopefully this article has helped you understand exactly how the Firefox 3 address bar functions, and how you can make it work for you. Be sure to checkout our other Firefox 3 tips, and let us know in the comments how you’ve gone about customizing the address bar.

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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This article was written on August 03, 2007 by CyberNet.

Cookies are used in your web browser to store information, but have you ever thought about how easy it would be for a hacker to quickly gain access to them? It is actually frighteningly easy as Robert Graham, the CEO of errata security, demonstrated at the Black Hat security convention. All it really takes is a point-and-click of the mouse:

First Graham needs to be able to sniff data packets and in our case the open Wi-Fi network at the convention fulfilled that requirement. He then ran Ferret to copy all the cookies flying through the air. Finally, Graham cloned those cookies into his browser – in easy point-and-click fashion – with a home-grown tool called Hamster.

The attack can hijack sessions in almost any cookie-based web application and Graham has tested it successfully against popular webmail programs like Google’s Gmail, Microsoft’s Hotmail and Yahoo Mail. He stressed that since the program just uses cookies, he only needs an IP address and usernames and passwords aren’t required.

In front of everyone at the convention Graham demonstrated how he could intercept the cookies from a person sending an email. He had someone creat a Gmail account, and in no time at all Graham had intercepted the cookies therefore enabling him to send an email disguised as the victim. As mentioned in the above quote, there were no usernames or passwords needed.

–Secure Yourself–

One of the easiest things that you can do to secure yourself from such an easy attack is to use https:// instead of http:// whenever it is available. Some services like Gmail offer this alternative, and using it encrypts your session using SSL so that these types of attacks don’t happen.

Firefox users (with Greasemonkey), Internet Explorer users (with IE7 Pro or Turnabout), and Opera users can use a script such as this one that is setup to automatically replace the http:// with https:// anytime that you visit Gmail. That way you never have to think about doing it yourself.

You should also try not to visit sites that use sensitive information while connected to a public hotspot, but I think we all know that by now.

Source: TG Daily [via Slashdot]

Copyright © 2008 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

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