At least according to Chapin Information Services, all your password are belong to us.  (That is to say, all web browsers fail at protecting your passwords.)

In their latest test of web browser password protection they ran Opera 9.62, Firefox 3.0.4, Internet Explorer 7.0, Safari 3.2, and Google Chrome 1.0.  And they all sucked.  Of the twenty one password tasks tested, Opera and Firefox (no surprises there at either) did the best, passing a whole seven tasks each.  That’s right, one third.  In school terms that would be 33%, which is a very right depressing solid F.

Oh, but it gets better.  Those were the best scorers.  From there we have Microsoft’s IE7 succeeding at a whole five of the twenty one tasks.

And then the real failures: Google Chrome and Apple Safari, only passing a mere two out of twenty one tasks.  Two.  Two!

(For more detailed information on which browser fails which task, visit http://www.info-svc.com/news/2008/12-12/.)

The moral of the story?  As you shop around online this Christmas season, really really really don’t trust your web browser, even the best of them, to protect your passwords.  Don’t let your browsers save your passwords.  You’ve got better security just writing the passwords on a Post-it and sticking it to your monitor than you are letting your web browser remember your passwords for you.

So you got yourself a fancy new G1 cellphone.  It’s so fancy!  It’s so intuitive!

It’s so fancy and intuitive in fact that it even thinks for you.

Like, say, if you were texting someone, and you were telling them how you had to reboot your computer at work, like magic, the fancy G1 would reboot itself upon seeing the word.  It’s that intuitive.

Yes, you read that right.  The G1 handset has a bug that it picks up on keywords you enter, say in texting someone, and operates itself according to those keywords.  So if you text the word reboot to someone, your G1 reboots itself.

Neat!

No, not really.

Even worse, if you had texted that to a server running Google’s Android like your G1 phone does, then that server would have rebooted too.  Or if someone knowing your phone’s flaws was just evil and vindictive, they could keep texting you the word reboot over, and over, and over, and over…

Fortunately Google has issued a fix.  Well, a partial fix it seems.  I guess Android isn’t built in a day.  Or fixed in one either.

Still, how in the world did this bug ever get past testing?  And who even thought this was a useful feature anyway?

Earlier, in my blog “Grisoft AVG - Making The Web Safer … Unless You’re Running A Website“, I went over how Grisoft’s AVG product included a new feature, LinkScanner, that pre-scans search results from common web search tools like Google and Yahoo. And in its way, made the web safer for users.

The downside was, of course, a lot of fake traffic hits and bandwidth usage. Because every search result was loaded as if it were a normal user opening that web page, and then scanned, before a user ever clicks on the link. This, of course, drove a lot of paranoid delusional web site owners insane and created a lof of “the sky is falling” yelling across the web. Because, heaven forbid, their numbers were off.

Well, thanks to them, the internet is going to be less safe again. Instead of an invaluable technology being promoted across several security products and making the world wide web that much safer for the common surfer, it is instead falling into the annals of ignominy where no one will likely ever repeat the attempt. Congratulations squeaky wheels. You have won.

Scuttlebut is that in a few days Grisoft will terminate this feature of LinkScanner. It will still scan links as you click on them. It just won’t pre-scan anything for you anymore.

While I can’t say that I am entirely disappointed, as the concept seemed to need some form of tweaking, I also can’t say that I am in any way pleased. We should be making the web safer, not catering to people freaking out over marketing numbers. And instead of either side trying to communicate with the other and work out any reasonable form of compromise, we instead have idiocy and paranoia. I guess I shouldn’t expect anything better from people these days. Still, I can’t help but feel a blow against that age old wisdom, common sense.

It was bound to happen sooner or later. Actually, I’m amazed it has taken this long. Someone is working on software that turns your computer into a media server that broadcasts your movies and music through your home network to devices like your Playstation 3. And that someone, is Google.

The concept is quite basic really. It should be a dime a dozen. Computers, known for their large hard drives and neato processing power, are great devices to store movies on. Rip your DVD collection to your hard drive, and such the like. But what if you don’t want to watch those movies on your computer? What if you want to watch them on your TV?

Well, people have been building set-top box computers for just this purpose for many a year now. Store the movies there. Hook them straight up to your TV. Problem solved.

In a lot of ways that’s all a device like the PS3 and XBox360 are, is a set-top box computer. A specialized and mass-produced one. It has a hard drive. It stores things. It has a network that it can use to talk to other systems on. It connects straight to your TV. It just also happens to be great for playing video games.

And since computers connect to each other over these things called networks, why not access the files over a network?

That’s been done too.

To the extreme. I mean heck, look at YouTube.

But back to the point. So the concept of watching video streamed from another system is fairly old. And we should have a million good solutions out there. But we don’t. Oh, we have a few … just not a million. Most revolve around DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) or UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) media sharing.

So what make’s Google’s Google Media Server so different? Well, it works in tandem with Google Desktop for one. After all, the Google Media Server is just a Google Desktop plugin. So you need Google Desktop installed to run Google Media Server. If you like handy but intrusive apps like that, that’s kind of neat then, I guess. And it’s free, which is also always nice. Other than that, meh, not really so much special about it. It’s just another UPnP server app, basically. UPnP clients like PS3s and XBox 360s will gladly pick up on its network presence and stream away. Just like they would any other such UPnP or DLNA server.

Still, it’s a Google thing. The company is really branching out into all sorts of software. They’re clearly reaching for any niche they can get their hands on. As if being a web search giant isn’t enough. But they hire good programmers. And sometimes they hit their mark.

But no, the Google Media Server is far from perfect. It’s still in development. It won’t run on Macs. It won’t run on Linux. It’s Windows only it seems. At least so far. And of course it has bugs and flaws. Given time though, it might just turn out to be handy. If you like Google Desktop and you own an XBox360 or PS3, it’s certainly worth taking a gander at.

It’s Memorial Day, 9:15AM Eastern Time.

I log on to my computer.

I open Mozilla Firefox.

Google is my starting page.

Those wonderfully cute ways in which Google changes their logos for holidays? (Or lately it seems just for the heck of it?) Zilch. THERE IS NO SPECIAL GOOGLE BANNER FOR MEMORIAL DAY!!!!!

Yes. That’s right. Minus the “NAUGHTY!” (which Google well deserves for this) that is a screen capture of Google’s logo at the time of writing. No honoring of our loved ones lost in war. No Memorial Day change to their logo.

Did they think we wouldn’t notice? Did their visual department just drop the ball? Are they just going to put it up for an hour at 3 p.m? (The national moment of remembrance.) Are they no longer an American company? What gives?

I, for one, am not impressed.

For all intents and purposes, it looks to me, that Google just simply forgot to be patriotic.

It’s something I can understand in people. Even these days unpatriotism seems at an all time high. With a government being run like it is, it’s hard to stay proud of your country. But you can still support your troops without supporting a war. And I can’t think of one good reason not to honor those who died, if not for the present then at least for the past, no matter how anti-USA you might be.

But for a company like Google to just not do anything on Memorial Day? That’s just wrong!

Soldiers who gave their all should not just be forgotten.