AfterBurner is the latest entry in the high performance Web server market. Today, Slate is running a silly comparative taste test of beer. Bug found up Bill Gates’ ass … this story is from The Register, not The Onion. The new Power Mac G4 is the most aesthetically pleasing computer I’ve ever seen.
Web Review has an article on Rebol, an up and coming scripting language that’s got easy to read syntax and powerful features specific to the Internet. The language was created by Carl Sassenrath, the father of the cool but ultimately doomed Amiga computer. Forbes Magazine is in trouble for running Microsoft ads that look too much like real editorial content. I’ve seen these lame “Microsoft Daily News” ads at the New York Times before. The version of the ad on the Forbes site really does look like editorial content, nowhere does it say “paid advertisement,” and it’s nicely integrated into the design of the page. If they didn’t want it to look like unbiased news coverage of Microsoft, instead of public relations crap, then why would they package it that way? ...
My SQL book is now available at Amazon.com for pre-order. You know you want to go ahead and reserve your copy today. Mozilla M9 is on the wire. I should have noticed a long time ago that Phil Greenspun published an article about managing Web projects with CVS. A couple of major security holes in Windows have been discovered recently. The first is a Java bug that allows malicious applets to execute any code they want on your system. It affects users of IE 4, IE 5, Outlook, Outlook Express, and the version of Eudora that utilizes IE to render HTML mail. The other security problems involve Active X, which should probably be classified as one giant security hole into and of itself. ...
I wish I lived in Wisconsin, just so I could vote for Senator Russ Feingold. Nobody who’s actually managed to get elected has done more to combat the rampant, legal corruption of the United States government than Feingold. The linked article discusses his tactic of listing big money contributors to pieces of legislation when they come up for debate. National Geographic and Wired not doing it for you any more? Perhaps some of these interesting publications should find their way to your coffee table. ...
The New York Times has an article about a syphilis outbreak among gay men who participated in a particular AOL chat room, and how the San Francisco health department and AOL got together to handle the problem without violating the privacy of the men involved. Janelle Brown does the world a favor by taking a skeptical look at the contrived phenomenon of Internet addiction for Salon. http://www.bushwatch.com is keeping a close eye on George Bush, Jr. for us. ...
From the “We may be pimps, but at least we’re not ashamed of it” department comes the report that Network Solutions, entrusted by our government with a monopoly on domain name registrations, is going to sell advertising on the whois lookup page. Are you a Perl hacker or are you the Perl hacker? Wired News is reporting that Richard Belluzzo, who left SGI Monday is going to be the new head Internet guy at Microsoft. This is mainly interesting to me because Belluzzo was the guy who led SGI’s transition to building Windows NT workstations alongside their existing Unix products. I wonder if his departure will hasten SGI’s move toward Linux. ...
Netscape is now officially dead. Wired News has a story on the Bill Bradley campaign’s use of the Internet in boosting their underdog Presidential candidate. The story is somewhat interesting, but at the end you arrive at some statistics that make absolutely no sense. According to the article, Bradley’s Web site gets 3,000 hits per day, and 16,400 page views per day, and Gore’s gets 60,450 hits, and 6,671 page views. How can that be? ...
CNet has a recent gossip column discussing the executive exodus at Microsoft. There was a small victory for common sense yesterday when a judge ruled that AOL could not trademark the phrase, “You have mail.” Phil Agre’s most recent set of notes and recommendations is fascinating as always. Most interesting in this dispatch is the discussion of how a company’s quality of service can be too high from an economics standpoint, and how that creates technology risk. Anyone who uses consumer software knows that software companies understand that their customers don’t expect or pay for perfection, and thus, they don’t spend the resources to strive for it. Microsoft Windows, the Mac OS, and Netscape Navigator (to name three popular examples) are and have been full of bugs. The reason open source software is, for the most part, reliable when it matures is that the people who work on it have no reason not to try to squish all of the bugs. On the other hand, commercial software publishers know that people pay for features, not bug fixes, so that’s where they expend their resources. (His rant on the dangers of public relations is fabulous as well.) ...
I see that you’re interested in a CD from the band The Negro Problem, perhaps you’re also interested in this Aunt Jemima cookie jar (86k screen shot). Seattle Weekly has found even more excellent recommendations from Amazon.com if you’re in the mood to spend money, but you’re not sure what to spend it on. About 70% of people surveyed are saying that fear of their personal information not being kept private prevents them from buying online. I can say for sure that I will never buy from CDNow again, because they have sent me several email messages a week since I purchased a CD from them. I always search order forms for boxes that allow me to opt out of annoying email messages, but I didn’t see one on the CDNow site, and now they’re sending me email like crazy. Unfortunately, that cost them a customer. By the way, the article I cited uses the completely idiotic term “e-tailer,” I hate that. ...
Two things. First of all, not all marketing people are lying little drones who completely lack technical knowledge and do nothing but spread disinformation for a living. Only those who don’t read this site are like that. Secondly, some people do think the new Mattel computers look cool. I think the Hot Wheels computer looks cool, and the Barbie computer doesn’t, but then again, I’m a boy. Salon has a short story about Internet company insiders cashing out through secondary offerings, at the expense of other shareholders. The main company discussed in the article is Priceline. Regular readers will remember that a few months ago, I mentioned the fact that Priceline’s market cap was higher than that of several real airlines put together. ...