Jan-Piet Mens

Did you know that James stumbles over the tiger eleven times in Dinner for One? We counted 'em.

If you've never seen it, here is a version.

In Germany there is no law that houses need smoke detectors installed, but when we moved in to our house, I purchased six of them and placed them at strategic points in the house according to the manufacturer's suggestions. That was five years ago and, apart from having to replace the nine-volt batteries once a year, they haven't been of much use.

Until last night.

I was upstairs reading The Three Little Pigs to my daughter, and the missus was applying war paint. Unknown to me, the Advent wreath with four huge lit candles was unwatched. Three of the smoke detectors started issuing a very loud signal. We ran downstairs to see the wreath in flames.

I doused it with a bucket of water, and we then took the mess outside, opening all doors and windows to let out the smoke, the alarms ringing all the time. I had to disconnect the batteries from the detectors to silence them.

Apart from ugly burn marks on our wooden floor (and a very frightened little girl), no damage was caused.

If you don't have them: install smoke detectors! They can save your life.

I had some trouble getting the BlackBerry Browser to connect via our MDS to an HTTPS site, which might be due to us only allowing HTTP through the MDS; we supply neither the BlackBerry Internet Browser on the handheld devices, nor do we allow direct TCP connections, mainly because the 8707v doesn't support direct TCP connections.

On the device itself, the TLS settings showed

I found a hint to the problem but no real description. In spite of the clear warning

This configuration also includes a security gap. Triple DES-encrypted HTTPS requests from the device are decrypted at the BlackBerry Enterprise Server, passed unencrypted to the Mobile Data Service, and HTTPS-encrypted before they are sent to the origin server

I changed the settings to use the MDS proxy; the security implications are clear to me, and I'm confident we can live with them.

and the BlackBerry Browser can now access secured sites.

techChannel is offering a 2007 calendar with erotechnical pictures.

In order to ensure that you'll see plenty of advertising, each of the twelve months must be clicked on individually.

via Schockwellenreiter