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According to the HTTP/1.1 specification (RFC 2616, section 14.43) ( http://www.w3.org/ ):

14.43 User-Agent

The User-Agent request-header field contains information about the user agent originating the request. This is for statistical purposes, the tracing of protocol violations, and automated recognition of user agents for the sake of tailoring responses to avoid particular user agent limitations. User agents SHOULD include this field with requests. The field can contain multiple product tokens (section 3.8) and comments identifying the agent and any subproducts which form a significant part of the user agent. By convention, the product tokens are listed in order of their significance for identifying the application.

_{(emphasis by me)}

Despite this quite clear definition, a LOT of websites use the User-Agent in an attempt to identify what capabilities a browser has and deliver it to them. Some might say that Microsoft's usage (abuse) of the User-Agent was the cause of the mess of all this we have today when they made Internet Explorer identify itself as "Mozilla" when it clearly was not. When you think about it though, they most likely did this in order to OVERCOME these already incorrect uses of the User-Agent by web "developers" (as this mozilla page from '98 ( http://www-archive.mozilla.org/ ) also implies).

I use the following true, correct and legal User-Agent for my most used browser, uzbl ( http://uzbl.org/ ):

Uzbl/aa8c2e459cd035f13144c21400f8db1c47a15a36 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US) Webkit/1.1.6 (A browser built upon the highly renowned web standards compliant and secure Webkit rendering engine that is the heart of several open source web browsers, including Uzbl, Midori and Android Webbrowser)

(the "aa8c2e459cd035f13144c21400f8db1c47a15a36" is actually the git commit (source code version if you will))

User-Agent sniffing is SO bad, that my initial User-Agent (shown below) led to too many sites simply not displaying AT ALL (errors, blank page, etc):

Uzbl/aa8c2e459cd035f13144c21400f8db1c47a15a36 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; A browser built upon the highly renowned web standards compliant and secure Webkit rendering engine that is the heart of several open source web browsers, including Uzbl, Midori and Android Webbrowser)


So, whenever I come across a page that I notice does a User-Agent sniff (for example they say "we are sorry, you need to be using IE or Firefox to view this page") I contact the webmaster and inform them of their error. This leads to also no change and in most cases no response.

In the event a response IS received after I contact them, it is usually in the form of "We are looking into this" or something similar to the hilarious "If you tell us your User-Agent, we can add it to the list of working User-Agents".

I have not been hugely affected by this and in the event that a site really doesn't work properly due to this, I will simply go elsewhere and "blacklist" that site (after trying to help them of course).

I have noticed very recently however, a HUGE difference in pages I visit. An extreme number of sites have seemingly started User-Agent sniffing all starting around the same time. As time moved on, I noticed it was largely (but not only) wordpress ( http://wordpress.org/ ) blogs. So what was the symptom of these "sniffing fails"? "Mobile" versions of sites. I visit Amazon ( http://amazon.com/ ) and am presented with a rather plain page:

This is quite different compaired to the standard amazon page:

This page is displayed by the EXACT same browser, passing all the same header variables with the acception of the User-Agent, where it was changed to:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-au; rv:1.8.1) Gecko/20061010 Firefox/2.0


The effect is the same with all those Wordpress blogs. So why's it happening I thought, until I realised, they are all sniffing for 1 simple word... "Android". When they detect a User-Agent containing "Android", they go into this "Mobile" version.

I emailed Amazon to let them know, but got the standard "1-click" reply that's rather common with Customer Support these days:

Hello,

Thank you for your comments about using Amazon Anywhere with your mobile device. In addition to our large selection, one of the benefits we try very hard to offer our customers is convenience. I'm very sorry for the inconvenience you experienced while shopping at our store with your device.
...

Of course, they didn't actually READ my comments judging by the "... using Amazon Anywhere with your mobile device ..."

The funniest thing about this is, that even without any adblock or noscript plugins in my browser, I actually get a rather lean browsing experience as a result of this

Perhaps the solution would be to build a mobile device called "Mozilla"

People are so funny. I was speaking to my dad about it last night actually, how so many people (especially teens and pre-teens) have this intense urge for identity establishment. Now, I'm all for this act, i believe it is very important to have your own individuality and establish who you are (see my first post). But identity establishment should be for yourself more than for how others see you.

Take my younger sister for example (this is not a criticism of her, just an observation with a hint of nostalgia). She has started secondary school this year and it rapidly approaching the teenage years. I find it so amusing to watch her attempt to catagorise herself and her friends, which she does very often. She, like so many others her age, has this want to label and package themselves into these little, narrow, easy to define and describe boxes. I listen to her describe her clique to me...

"so-and-so is the arty one that loves animals and the environment and the colour green. Then theres so-and-so whos the math science sort of person, shes really into reading and always complains about how badly shes gonna do on a test then aces it. And then theres me; I'm the music one whos really into fashion and customising my stuff and loves singing and dancing and drama."

Now, I know that yes, I did this when I was a little younger as well, albeit hopefully to a lesser extent, but I still find it so amusing to see these young people perceive and communicate in this way.

Whilst speaking with my dad yesterday, I told him about this observation of mine, I don't think he was on exactly the same wavelength, he was thinking of it in more of an overall, long term self-discovery perspective (which I agree is highly important). But I was saying to him how thats not what this is. This act of persona building that I am describing in young people is far more about how they wish to present themselves to others and how they want themselves represented in other peoples minds. It has almost nothing to do with finding out who they naturally are! In fact, in some instances, I think people may actually delay their self discovery "journey" but catagorising themselves into such small confined boxes.

Ones personality, and consequently their life, does not have to conform to a cluster of similar fields. Just because someone enjoys listening to music and singing, doesn't mean they necessarily like to dance. Just because someone has an interest and innate predisposition to math, doesn't mean they enjoy physics OR that they do not intensely enjoy reflecting upon the big picture and observing human nature (just a hypothetical person of course).

I just think that people today, especially young people, need to worry themselves less with how other people catagorise them and more about who they themselves really are.

By me, who is "the math and science geeky type"...who also designs and sews her own garments, wishes everyone would use renewable energy and has an obsession with real estate.

I read an article today entitled "iPhone 3GS Gets Jailbroken, Hack Available Online" ( http://www.pcworld.com/ ). A single paragraph really stood out for me, namely:

"However, the purplera1n jailbreak will free your iPhone from the limitations imposed on it by AT&T and Apple. After jailbreaking, a user will be able to customize the iPhone with home-screen wallpapers and third-party ringtones. But the biggest advantage of jailbreaking is the support of unapproved apps such as iBlackList (blacklists and whitelists for contacts) and many others."

Upon reading this I thought simply, "so, hang on, people are actually truly dumb enough to pay $879 AU ($695 US at time of writing) ( http://store.apple.com/au/ ) for this?!".

You can't run your own applications. To me this is unbelievable. I recently purchased a Palm OS based phone for cheap (off eBay, couldn't get one new ( see my earlier "Good Products are hard to find" post ) and I have so much cool freeware on it it hurts! I've got a RSS/Website feed reader, email client, file manager, PDF viewer, dictionary, thesaurus, complex alarm clock, speech synthesiser, movie player (XVid, Quicktime, etc - you name it), Automatic call recorder, SMS Scheduler, Complex SMS auto-replier, C Compiler and Interpreter, VNC client, SSH client, Source code editor, Text editor, Barcode scanner, Midi editor, XMPP client, Google maps, IRC client, Programmable Remote control, Web browser, a GB/NES/SNES (yes, SNES, as in Super Nintendo Entertainment System)/SMS/SMD etc Emulator and about 4 gazzilion games. This doesn't include the built in apps either, these are just the FREE (as in cost) apps I installed. Stick that up your App Store.

People who own iPhones, just like those who own iPods, deserve what they've got.

For me though, the best bit is "After jailbreaking, a user will be able to customize the iPhone with home-screen wallpapers and third-party ringtones". Riiiiight, so out of the box, you can only have a wallpaper or ring tone that Apple sells/gives you?!

To be fair, with this new model they've added MMS support and copy/cut/paste, voice memo's too! - Apple REALLY lead the pack in tech don't they. Although, they are still missing some features Telstra's $99 AU ($78.55 US at time of writing) T6 ( http://shop.telstra.com/ ) phone has like a built in FM radio, video capture, expandable memory using microSD and proper Bluetooth that works with other Bluetooth devices, not just Apple ones. Oh, and the Telstra T6... I bet it supports having your very own background.

Disclaimer: Please note that the iPhone does actually come with a GPS receiver built in and 16Gb (albeit a hard drive not memory) whilst the T6 only has 45Mb but this comparison was more about showing what a rip-off the crap iPhone is and not how great Telstra's crap T6 phone is.

I use Firefox and have been doing so since before the name change from Firebird (which occurred early 2004) and whilst I have tried other browsers I find a lot of them lacking.

There's Lynx, Links and ELinks but they are text only (well elinks does support a vesa graphics mode I believe but I haven't tried that) and can be a little difficult to use and navigate. There's also dillo but it's SSL support is alpha only at the moment, it doesn't support frames and it's support for image formats seems a little limited.

I find Firefox somewhat better than these although out of the box it's got some annoying limitations - luckily it has extensions. In the past I had to add 20 odd extensions just to make Firefox "almost un-annoying" to me but thanks to Mozilla adding these features in Firefox over time, I've got my extensions list down to a mere 9 which I will detail below (roughly in inverse order of importance, just for fun).

• User Agent Switcher (https://addons.mozilla.org/)
  

  This extension allows you to change your User Agent, also allowing you to switch between user-defined User Agent strings. While a lot of people use this to visit websites that say "I'm sorry, you need Internet Explorer to view this" when it would render fine in Firefox, I use it just to set my User Agent to something more generic (namely "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.0.5) Gecko/2008123017 (A browser built upon the highly renowned web standards compliant and secure Gecko rendering engine that is the heart of several open source web browsers, including Camino, Epiphany, Firefox, K-Meleon, Mozilla, Netscape, SeaMonkey and XULRunner)", an idea I got from Mozilla Firefox Bug 334967 (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/)). In fact if a website says "You need Internet Explorer", I just take my business elsewhere.

• Add Bookmark Here² (https://addons.mozilla.org/)
  

  I realise while writing this, that I don't actually use this extension anymore but only because it doesn't really work with another extension I use that I cherish more. Add Bookmark Here² adds a menu item under each subdirectory in your Bookmarks called "Add Bookmark Here". This is a lot more intuitive and natural feeling than using Firefox's Add Bookmark dialog to navigate to where you want to place your Bookmark.

• Duplicate Tab (https://addons.mozilla.org/)
  

  This little beauty is essential when dealing with annoying pages that require you to click something and won't accept it when you open them in a new tab/window etc. It simply allows you to duplicate any given tab to another tab or window, including it's history.

• Image Zoom (https://addons.mozilla.org/)
  

  This extension allows you to right-click any image and zoom it to any size. This is a great little extension if you need to get a closer look at an image. As of Firefox 3 "zooming" the page no longer zooms just the text but also the images making this extension less necessary but I still find it better to turn that feature off and reserve their "zooming" to text only and leave the image zooming to this little extension.

• Stop Autoplay (https://addons.mozilla.org/)
  

  Stop Autoplay allows you to disable autostarting of embedded media (or exclude it altogether) as well as blocking Flash (though I don't use that feature (see below)). Quick, simple, NECESSARY for those dodgy GeoCities or MySpace websites that spew audio at you obnoxiously.

• Nuke Anything Enhanced (https://addons.mozilla.org/)
  

  Ever had a website that brought up an annoying "popup" within the page, blocking the content and not allowing you to read it until you clicked something? Maybe you want to print the page without all the unnecessary images (Note I haven't actually tested this extension for this purpose but I THINK it'd work)? Well, this extension will allow you to right click ANYTHING (yep even a table cell, paragraph, image, frame, div etc) and select "Remove this object". Until you try this, you have no idea how satisfying it is!

• Adblock Plus (https://addons.mozilla.org/)
  

  This extension will block ads from websites so that you don't have them in your face whilst trying to read the content. You can subscribe to ad list databases and even add your own manually or automatically (right-click any ad and say "AdBlock this"). I am actually torn with this one as I realise some sites rely on their ad revenue to fund their hosting etc. I would advise anyone who feels this way to still have this installed (but not subscribed to any database) and simply use it for the really obnoxious ads that insist on flashing in your face.

• Flashblock (https://addons.mozilla.org/)
  

  The web today is unusable without this extension. This extension is more advanced than Stop Autoplay's Flash blocking capabilities because it still reports to the website that you can handle Flash but it won't actually load the Flash unless you click a cute little play button. Stop Autoplay is aware of this extension and won't fight for Flash control if it sees it (so they play nice together).

• Vimperator (http://vimperator.org/)
  

  This one changed my life. It's the best extension EVER. It is designed to allow you to operate Firefox as you would VIM, including many of the same shortcuts and commands. The good thing is you can have it installed and still use Firefox normally and just take advantage of the features you like. It has a most excellent keyboard link navigating system where you press 'F' and start typing the text of a link. As you do so, the list of available will reduce until such time as there is only one left at which time, it is "clicked". While this is happening however, the links matching the text you've typed will be highlighted and numbered so you can optionally type a number at any time to follow that specific link. Features like this make keyboard navigation quick and painless. It has many other features worth looking into too - check out their website for more details. In short though, if you use VIM (and Firefox) you NEEEEEEEEED this.

Well, that's it. My list of required extensions to make Firefox really usable and an almost painless experience.

Over the past few months, my parents have been considering installing solar panels on our roof. We live in a fairly large house (around 34 squares) with 6 people (2 adults, 2 young adults, 2 early teens) and also 6 animals (3 dogs, 3 cats). Being the environmental nut that I am, my parents asked me to assist with researching solar panel installation companies, the costs involved and the current government rebates available. So I did some research. Based mainly on the two websites http://www.energymatters.com.au/ and http://www.solaronline.com.au/ I have discovered that solar panels are an extremely non-viable option for my family.

It appears that average figures for solar panel installations work out to be $2500 - $3000 per kWh per day, ie. for every $3000 one spends on a solar system, they gain 1 kWh per day. Now, after discovering this, I obviously investigated my families average daily electricity consumption. We use around 43 kWh per day. By this, my parents would be looking at spending around $100,000 (pre government rebates/solar credits) in order to produce the electricity we use, let alone produce any surplus to pump back into the grid and make money from (which is what most sales pitches work off).

After making this highly depressing discovery, I found myself asking "What's wrong with our household? Why is this such an impossible, expensive option?" So I decided to look at the average household energy consumption for Melburnians. Unfortunately, I was unable to find any current or almost current statistics, but I did find some from 2003. These stated that "In 2003 the average Melburnian consumed 2161 kWh of electricity at home" and that "The average metropolitan household consumed 6265 kWh of electricity" (http://www.aius.org.au/indicators/sectiontype.cfm?ThemeID=4&SectionTypeID=1). Now, as I live in a household of 6 people, I decided that the second figure was pretty irrelevant for my situation. So, based on the per person average I worked out the following:
(2161*6)/365=35.5

By this, my household is using 8 kWh, or around 22.5% per day more than the average...and we don't even have a dryer anymore! It makes me worry.

Plus, after reading a thread that showed a bunch of people who consumed a fair bit below the average (http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?t=756975), I can not help thinking that maybe the state mean would be a fair bit lower if it were not for outliers like my household.

It makes me worry even more...