NoScript Sightings

[Nan M]

Idea for a NoScript sightings thread.

Edit - removed reference from Australian backwater. ha!

[Giorgio Maone]

Approved, moved, renamed and made sticky

[Giorgio Maone]

Richard Stallman (comments welcome)

[Giorgio Maone]

BBC News's Click aired on March 27th 2009, one whole minute dedicated to NoScript
Online audio quality is not great (for me at least), so could any English native speaker of good will transcript from 20':30" to 21':30"? Many thanks!

[therube]

Those on the other side of the pond can never understand what an Englishman is saying even though we both speak English .

"Browser plug-ins like Java, Flash and Silverlight offer functionality, compatibility, and a load of other bells and whistles we have come to expect from our web browsing experience nowadays. But they have their downsides too.

You'll no doubt have heard talk about malicious code embedded in certain plug-ins, so if you want to be sure of being totally safe online, this nice little plug-in I found for Mozilla-based browsers should help you sleep better at night. It physically blocks any codes from running unless you give your express permission to do so.

It can also be handy if you're running on a slow connection and don't want loads of movies and animations trying to launch into the page you're accessing. Equally, many marketing organisations will run applets in the background that tell them when you're using their site, and how.

Download and install take literally seconds and then you'll see a noscript icon in the bottom right hand corner of your browser window. Each time you visit a new web page, if it tries to load any scripts the applet will block these and alert you. Clicking the noscript icon now will allow you to block or allow certain scripts on the page. Individual panels in the web page which are blocked can also be right clicked to allow you to set the permissions for that particular script.

http://www.bbcworldnews.com/Pages/Progr ... ureID=1092

[Tom T.]

Steve Gibson, whom I've previously cited as giving up prematurely on NS despite preaching security to a large following, but later becoming an enthusiastic supporter, does his analysis of first full release of IE 8. Some good points, some rather weird statements, but his conclusion:

And as you say, they will never get rid of scripting completely. So it'll probably be Firefox. I mean, again, you can do what I used to do
when I was under IE, which is you're able to use the Trusted Zone to enable scripting, and let the Internet Zone have scripting disabled. So you can get some of the effect of Firefox. But we've got Firefox. And Firefox has a mature ecosystem of add-ons. It's doing much more for you, I think, than IE is. And it's still, Firefox without question is still, in my opinion, the more secure browser. ... In the meantime, I think everybody who's listening here is probably happy with Firefox. And I think they should be.

OK, he never mentions NS by name, but he did extensively in the podcast linked inside my link above, and it's pretty clear that that "effect of Firefox" is actually the "effect of NS". Or will be to new Fx-ers, when they don't find the fine-grained script control described and start asking where it is.

High-quality mp3
Lighter mp3 for lower bandwidth

For Italian ears even less trained in American "English" than in British:

Text transcript
.pdf transcript
Web page transcript

[Tom T.]

Steve Gibson's weekly podcast for April 2 gave NoScript a nice plug from one of his listeners:
"I, too, use Firefox NoScript plug-in and Block All and run only the main sites as temporary allow. I sometimes enjoy figuring out which scripts allow a page to work."

mp3
lighter mp3 for lower bandwidth

pdf transcript
text transcript
html page

[GµårÐïåñ]

Is it just me or does our beloved Steve Gibson seem to keep changing his position on NoScript, one minute he is whining that its difficult to use and then he is saying nice things about it, would being consistent on the subject be too much to ask?

[Tom T.]

Is it just me or does our beloved Steve Gibson seem to keep changing his position on NoScript, one minute he is whining that its difficult to use and then he is saying nice things about it, would being consistent on the subject be too much to ask?

A month or two ago he was whining, but he's become a True Believer and a consistent one: "There is no zealot like a convert".
He's controversial to many people, a cult figure to others, but he's donated numerous security freewares, (just like our BD,) like the ShieldsUp! firewall and router tester that you mentioned in pm. Also, when the first Win Metafile Critical Vuln came out, about two years ago IIRC without researching it, while MS was sitting there scratching their heads and other parts and plodding towards a fix for the second Tuesday of the next month, Gibson gave a simple one-line command that any novice user could copy/paste into Start-Run that would unregister the corrupt dll until such time as MS decided they would patch it.

Anyway, I don't always agree with him (or anyone else, nor does anyone else always agree with me -- makes the world more interesting), but I'll listen to what he has to say, and that podcast has about 100,000 listeners, plus people like me who don't listen but just d/l the transcripts and read them. He and his co-host have been consistently favorable to NS ever since someone told him how to disable the notifications. (part of the inspiration for the Quick Start Guide)

[GµårÐïåñ]

Oh don't get me wrong, I love the guy. I have the utmost respect for him. I was just saying its funny to see the difference. That's all.

[Lundholm]

Slashdot has an entry about the ABP "war":

http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/01/236248&from=rss

My prediction about the adware hall-of-fame is coming true faster than I had imagined.

[Tom T.]

Slashdot has an entry about the ABP "war":

http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/01/236248&from=rss

Reply from yours truly here.

[Nan M]

http://www.gulli.com/news/the-noscript-creator-giorgio-2009-02-02/
There's a german version too.

Edit to remove comments.

[Giorgio Maone]

Guardian article about JavaScript, the web as a platform and Google Wave, with a very nice NoScript plug.

[Tom T.]

Guardian article about JavaScript, the web as a platform and Google Wave, with a very nice NoScript plug.

I think I'll pass on the Wave, thank you. Can you picture the possibilities for misuse? The article is not only a nice plug for NS, but if people think just a little, it shows that the need for it is just going to keep growing and growing. Nice link.