Wired News has the inside scoop on GUIDs. Unfortunately, the author seems to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what cookies are, and how they can be used. Yes, they can be used to track your behavior on the Web, but they can also be used for hundreds of other more innocuous things. Cookies are just a way for sites to store data specific to you that gets sent back to them every time you visit their site. ...
The Apache Software Foundation is widening its diversification by branching out into XML tools. They’ve launched a new site at xml.apache.org. The first projects will provide XML parsers, stylesheet processors, XML-based Web publishing, and XML formatting objects. We desperately need well supported reference implementations of this stuff, so I think this is a very worthy effort. The lawyers for the movie industry are trying to stuff the DVD crack genie back into its bottle. Too late, guys. You can’t un-crack the current DVD format. ...
Phil Agre has updated his useful article, How to help someone use a computer. Salon asks, “Is self-appointed Web privacy advocate TRUSTe a toothless watchdog?” Umm, they’re an industry funded trade group, so of course they’re not going to punish the industry. Jon Carroll’s column today provides a pointer to plagiarism.org, and an anecdote about plagiarism to boot! I don’t know how much I trust the people who made the site though. They engage in a bit of spamdexing at the bottom of the page. I hope their service does work, because I find plagiarism to be one of the most revolting kinds of dishonesty you’ll encounter. ...
This week, the Industry Standard is running an article about the business of online gaming. I’m going to try to put my thoughts together on the findings of fact in the Microsoft case this week, once I’ve had the chance to read the entire document. Really, though, this was all I wanted. I don’t care what the verdict is, or what the remedy is. Just the fact that a theoretically unbiased officer of the court saw exactly what sort of company Microsoft really is, and the damage they’re doing to the computer industry, is enough for me. I’m happy now. ...
Microsoft loses! Not only did the judge find that Microsoft has a monopoly on the OS market, but he went on to reject every single claim that they made! Especially sweet is the finding that the browser and OS are separate products. Hallelujah! Here’s a link to the New York Times story. Salon has a Janelle Brown story that contains some details that weren’t in the NYT piece. They’re also running a piece by Andrew Leonard that gauges the reaction of the open source community. ...
People seem to think that the findings of fact in the Microsoft case will be released today. Here’s an explanation of how the DVD hack worked, in geek terms. No wonder George W. Bush won’t participate in debates, he doesn’t study very hard. SBC now has 100,000 DSL subscribers, giving about half the total number of DSL subscribers in the nation. That’s right, there are 200,000 people with DSL service in this country right now. What are the projections for everybody having a fat pipe into their house, again? ...
Not even the stuff from rec.humor.funny is all that funny, when you think about it. Andy Patrizio at Wired News has some pretty whack ass suggestions about how to protect the content on music CDs and DVDs from pirates. One of his suggestions is to just prevent CD-ROM and DVD-ROM drives from playing music CDs and movies. Fantastic! I’ve got an idea, why don’t we just make people pay extra for recordable CD and DVD drives and media, just in case people do pirate the content? That worked really well for DAT. ...
The Chris Nolan flap over at the San Jose Mercury News continues. She just quit her job and sued the paper. With the release of Windows 2000, the licensing fees for windows are going up, up, up! There’s a story at ZDNet that I haven’t seen anywhere else: as of January, computers will no longer come with a Windows install disk. I’m having trouble believing that ZDNet’s Screen Savers has a scoop here. Anyone else read anything about this? ...
I finally received a copy of my SQL book from the publisher yesterday. The book is very aesthetically pleasing, which is nice. Amazon.com still has it listed as not yet published, but that should change any time. Getting my hands on the actual dead trees almost makes all the work seem worth it. It’s certainly a lot more fulfilling than looking at a directory of Word documents on my hard drive. ...
A recent survey discovered that three quarters of the people who shop online have abandoned full shopping carts in the last three months. Why are they dumping them? About 30% changed their minds, and about 25% thought that shipping and handling cost too much. I will say that when I put stuff in my cart at an online store and don’t buy it, it’s almost always so that I can see what shipping and handling are going to run me. ...