Posts

One of my favorite fake April Fool’s news stories. The webtechs.com domain has been hijacked by porn purveyors from Denmark (no link due to offensive material). The porn company found a site that was already linked to from all over the web (webtechs provided a very useful HTML validation service), and sent a bogus fax to Network Solutions requesting a modification of the domain name. The modification was put through, and voila, now the URL points to a porn site. Yet another example of the incompetence of the people in charge of the most fundamental infrastructural component of the Internet. ...

The IETF has formed a working group to create an open protocol for instant messaging. Interestingly, none of the people listed as being involved with the working group represent any of the major players in the current instant messaging arena. So much the better. Mozilla at One: A Look Back and Ahead: Frank Hecker’s state of the project address for Mozilla. C-Net’s Dan Goodin won a case in which Microsoft wanted him to reveal his sources after he broke a story containing material from sealed internal memos in the Java case. ...

jwz bids farewell to Netscape and Mozilla. In a white paper discussing software that runs on thin servers, the Gartner Group benchmarks FreeBSD against Linux. In raw Web serving performance, FreeBSD wins by a large margin. I read a strange reader review on Amazon.com today for Ben Forta’s book, Advanced Cold Fusion 4 Application Development. Apparently the reader was a research scientist, and thought that the book discussed applications for cold fusion (the energy source). When this person got the book, they read it anyway, became interested, and left the PhD program to become a Web application developer. See the five star review by the reader from Arizona, entitled “I thought it was about energy and ended up doing web apps.” ...

Readers would do well to note the date when before clicking on this link. Wanna-be geeks will appreciate this introduction to Linux/Unix programming. The death of a web log or April Fool’s prank? Lots of people are linking to the Neal Stephenson essay on operating systems, but the FAQ on cryptography and his new novel that he just posted is pretty cool too.

Every time I read a story like this one, I find myself dwelling on the fact that it only takes one good idea to relieve yourself from the necessity of working for the rest of your life.

NewsHub, the tool of choice for Web-loggers like myself, has redesigned.

In the wake of Intel’s settlement with the FTC, it looks like Microsoft may be looking for an escape hatch as well. The Register reports breaks down the odds of the two sides in the case coming to an agreement. My opinion: Microsoft is too arrogant to be pragmatic. Oh, and it looks like the two sides aren’t talking after all.

I was looking for a resource on English grammar and punctuation, and it took me about 20 seconds to find a Guide to Grammar and Writing. It’s quite good.

The stupid Internet scam of the day award goes to: http://www.majon.com. These guys sent an email message to my parents telling them they had won “Majon’s Select Web Award,” and that they should put up the award logo on their site with a link back to Majon. What do they get from Majon in return? The right to link to Majon. Thank goodness my parents have me to look out for them. ...

John Schwartz covers the neverending crypto debate for the Washington Post.