Search
RSS

 Subscribe to the Bud Boy Tech RSS feed by clicking the RSS icon or subscribe to blog updates by email by entering your email address below.

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

Thursday
10Dec2009

Banking with Facebook - Probably not the best idea ever

Mike Bailey at Skeptikal.org wrote up last week about a new Facebook app called MyMoney. MyMoney is an application that according to its creators allows you to:

Manage your finances right from your Facebook profile, simply and securely! MyMoney is an online home banking application that interacts with a variety of financial institutions, so you can view your account balances, transfer money between accounts, review histories, and much more.  

Sounds kind of cool? Hold your horses. In a post dripping with sarcasm (letting you know in case your detector is a bit off) he says:

I know you're thinking this is a bad idea, and are concerned about MyMoney's security. Don't worry, I checked it out. They have "multiple layers of security protecting...data and accounts." The application iframes you into their site (hosted on https://mm.galaxyplus.com). If you forget the URL, they left zone transfers enabled for you, so you can just select from a list of galaxyplus.com subdomains. The iframe's URL has a parameter called "fb_sig_user." If you manipulate this parameter, you get to see the contents of all your friends' accounts (presumably so you can borrow money without all that awkward asking). The only thing I don't like about this application is that they left error reporting on. I don't like seeing those ugly ASP stack traces every time I use an HTML tag as a form parameter. Lol!

Note to readers: online banking should be done in a virtual machine if at all possible, and that is all that you should do with VM, nothing else. If that is too much of a hassle, at least download and install a browser like Firefox or Chrome and use that browser exclusively for your banking.

If you'd like to read the entire (hilarious) post, click here. 

Click to read more ...

Friday
04Dec2009

Unbiased Motorola Droid Review

Verizon Droid Smart PhoneIf you've been looking for a review of the Motorola Droid from the perspective of the average geek, check out a friend of mines review here. I worked with Andy at a previous company and he is both an excellent Network Administrator and writer, so I hope you enjoy it!

Wednesday
23Sep2009

3D Modelling in Firefox

I know I'm at risk of becoming a Ars Technica whore, but I thought their article on WebGL being implemented in Firefox was sweet. 

The future of the web is bright with the <video> tag coming with HTML 5 and WebGL on it's way perhaps even sooner. w00t!

If you are a nerd like me, definitely read the article.

 

 

Tuesday
22Sep2009

Chrome coming to Internet Explorer

According to Ars Technica, Chrome is coming to Internet Explorer in the form of a plugin. Once the plugin is widely deployed, web masters will be able to put in a simple meta tag telling IE to pass off the rendering of the webpage to Chrome's renderer. 

The plugin is not yet available, but Google has open sourced the code and is hoping for testers and contributors to contribute to the project. I honestly don't know how many people will actually install the plugin, or how many developers will require IE users to install it, but it could definitely become interesting if Google can get even 25% of IE users to install the plugin.

I'm sure web masters the world over will be rejoicing if the plugin can become mainstream. 

Friday
11Sep2009

Did the Google Search Bar Get Bigger or am I going crazy?

Am I crazy or did Google change their search bar?That seems to be a question many people are asking. No, you aren't going crazy, at least not in noticing this change. Google made the search input box larger, and also made the search suggestions that drop down while you are typing in your query a much larger font. I'm not exactly sure why Google didn't put a notice up on the main page explaining this change, perhaps they didn't think people would notice or care. People do care though, I have heard a few people at work wondering out loud WTF was going on. I would have been in the same boat, but thankfully I had read a post on the Google Blog explaining that the change was coming, so I could just cackle with knowing glee :). 

Click to read more ...

Friday
19Jun2009

German parliament passes internet censorship bill "for the children!"

This sickens me. The German parliament has passed a law that requires ISP's and hosts to block websites that host child pornography. Of course, the German government is in charge of creating the list, so the possibility for abuse is enormous. No one likes child porn, but laws like this are just the first step towards a society where free speech online is stifled. Apparently one member of parliament is already seeing if they can also block access to "killer games" like Counterstrike. How about this? Instead of creating a list of sites where child porn is, why not GO AFTER THE PEOPLE POSTING AND CREATING THIS STUFF IN THE FIRST PLACE! DO YOUR DAMN JOB, STOP PANDERING!

I saw a post by Phurge on Slashdot, and thought that the quote he posted was quite hilarious/sad in this context.

The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation.

Guess who said that?

 

This douche bag.