Books, tapes, movies, and gifts aren’t enough for Amazon.com … they’re about to jump on the auction bandwagon and selling pet stuff as well, according to this Wired News story.

More arrogant incompetence from Network Solutions … they’re now stating publicly that the contents of the whois database is property of NSI.

People are speculating that the Web server for whitehouse.gof, or perhaps some of the network infrastructure that provides access to it was compromised this weekend. Russian crackers are taking credit for it, but who knows if they’re lying?

I was just thinking about another risk involving the now famous Melissa virus (the source code to which can be found at http://rc3.org/clips/melissa_virus.html). Even if you don’t use Outlook as your email client, you’re still at risk because it’s installed by default with Microsoft Office. Nobody installs only the applications that they need any more, they install the whole suite. So, if you’re a gloating Eudora user, but you have Outlook on your computer, be careful before opening Word attachments.

JavaScripters might find this paper from mozilla.org on the future evolution of JavaScript interesting.

There’s a bug (or a feature, if you listen to Microsoft) in Internet Explorer 5 that allows Web sites to steal the contents of your clipboard. Microsoft doesn’t plan on rectifying this, saying that it’s a configuration issue. Of course, they don’t tell you when you install IE 5 that your computer is configured to allow sites to raid your clipboard, and that you have to navigate the twisty maze of Internet options to turn it off.

NetSlaves is an e-zine which offers a different perspective of the Web “industry” than you might otherwise expect, unless, of course, you work in the industry.

Rogers Cadenhead takes erstwhile Wired columnist and current Slashdot contributor Jon Katz down a notch in Stating the Obvious.

Geeks will appreciate this article. It’s an in depth evaluation of the advantages and disadvantages of Linux … one of those “pierce the hype” pieces. By the end it’s clear that it was written by a Linux partisan, although it’s still interesting.

A continuing theme on this site is the self-referential tendencies of the computing community. In this vein is the ACM compedium of Hello, World programs.