A reader sends along a perspective-enhancing link to a patent that rivals some of the ridiculous software patents I love to rant about in this space, illustrating that the incompetence at the PTO is broad based. Apparently, a patent has been awarded on the idea of exercising a cat with a laser pointer. The patent was actually awarded to two “inventors” … I guess this idea was too big for one person to come up with on their own. ...
I found the MP3s from the South Park Christmas episode, “Mr. Hankey’s Christmas Classics.” The songs are hilarious, if you’re not easily offended. They’re apparently ripped from the CD, not the episode, so they’re not bleeped either. There’s a port of ASP to Apache that uses Perl as the scripting language. I wonder if this is gaining much momentum. I guess if it works well, it would be preferable to PHP for Perl programmers, but how many Web scripting environments do we need? ...
Salon is running a story I can get behind today, a look at the three worst dot com IPOs in the offing. Talk about shooting fish in a barrel. But hey, I give them credit for their ability to narrow it down to three. The thing that has me so enchanted with the Internet “industry” is that so many idiots with bad ideas have made money that any idiot with a bad idea now thinks they can make millions. ...
Salon has an article today about increased monitoring of computer activity of employees at many companies. While the thought of my employer logging which Web sites I visit or reading my email is pretty disturbing, it certainly wouldn’t surprise me if they did it. I do think that employers should have to disclose to their employees whether they monitor their communications. The author of the article says, “anyone with an e-mail address knows it’s next to impossible to keep your in-box free of dirty jokes and sexually explicit JPEGs.” I’ve gotten my fair share of dirty jokes over the years (although not so many any more), but I’ve never received a sexually explicit JPEG via email. Maybe I hang out with the wrong crowd. In this day and age, there are so many free email services out there that using your work address for personal email is just foolish. Just sign up for Yahoo! Mail and exchange all your personal email there, it’s a lot safer. And if you’re checking out porn sites on the job, well, don’t say I didn’t warn you. ...
The Department of Justice has published its proposed conclusions of law in the Microsoft case. Now that the judge has issued his findings of fact, the DOJ is suggesting to the judge which laws they broke. Of course, the judge doesn’t have to agree with the DOJ on these, but since the facts are in, and the law is the law, I imagine that the judge’s conclusions of law will be similar to these. ...
People who think that Userland’s Manila is an incredible innovation should take a look at WikiWikiWeb. People have been “editing this page” for quite some time now. The LA Times has an article today about Patrick Naughton’s legal defense. Naugton is the depraved former Disney exec who got busted in an FBI sting for showing up to meet a teenager for sex. His defense is that everyone in chat rooms lies about everything, and that it’s all just fantasy–that he never expected that the person he was talking to would really be a teenager. Sounds pretty outlandish, except that the person ol’ HotSeattle met wasn’t, in fact, a teenager, they were an FBI agent. Of course, the child porn they found on his laptop is a bit more difficult to explain. I don’t think the “somebody else put it there” excuse is going to fly. ...
perl.com has an overview of using DBI to access relational databases from Perl. Readers of both of my books would probably find this article useful. I wonder how much Swatch paid CNN to put this stupid crap on their Web site, and include a link to it from the top of the home page. The thing I hate most about the Internet (it’s so hard to pick one thing), is that most advertising-based sites have no self respect whatsoever when it comes to selling out to sponsors. ...
That Carl Steadman. He’s so funny. Richard M. Smith has discovered a means by which email addresses can be associated with profiles created by banner ad networks using cookies. Hopefully this problem will be cleared up quickly, since cookies are a very useful tool and I hate to see companies abuse them. Web browsers really should let you filter cookies by domain. Internet Explorer 3 for the Mac did it, there’s no reason why all the browsers can’t. ...
I love the random crap you can find on the Web. Who would have guessed that Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch is a real place? I learned through an advertisement on TV last night about the dumbest .com concept I’ve seen yet. It belongs to piiq.com. I guess decent domain names are so scarce that they just picked two random letters, and registered a bunch of domains with words between those letters to create stores. Want books? Try pbooksq.com. Want shoes? Try pshoesq.com. Look for an IPO and valuation greater than a billion bucks soon, I guess. ...
One of the best things about writing computer books is the opportunity to interact with my readers. For example, a reader whose name I won’t disclose sent me this message today. Positive reinforcement like that makes all the time spent away from my wife seem worthwhile. (For the record, I sent the reader a helpful response, and he apologized for his use of foul language.) You probably already know this, but somebody paid 7.5 million bucks for the domain name business.com. Whatever. ...