News and commentary from the cross-platform scripting community
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News and commentary from the cross-platform scripting community
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Cate Corcoran on CNET: Inside the W3C.
SJ Merc: It was a day of tears and mixed emotions.
Caryn's Halloween Graphics and Clip Art.
Two Amiga web browsers: iBrowse and Voyager, displaying Scripting News
Mac OS Rumors defends against charges made by Jim Carlton of the Wall St Journal. To me, what counts is how creative their rumors are, and how much they get me to challenge my assumptions. Carlton may be judging them by the WSJ's standards. They're different kinds of publications.
NPR interview with Jim Carlton and Guy Kawasaki. (RealAudio)
InfoWorld: Jobs walks on beach.
Rasterboy carved a Mac OS logo into a pumpkin!
More Mac OS pumpkins from 1995.
MacWEEK: Metropolis does Rhapsody work flow.
We're transitioning some of the production software for Scripting News from the Mac to Windows this week. As a result the Mail site isn't active. I'll keep browsing and linking for the next few days, but things will probably be relatively quiet here until the new functionality is working. Still diggin!
Yesterday IBM did something cool to help investors have confidence in their stock.
Frontier 5/Mac milestone.
Yesterday we upgraded to 5.0a5 on this server.
Last night it produced the log digest and it's running
the 10 Random DaveNets application.
Lookin good!
NewsBot is a nice HTML-based JIT-SE from Wired.
I found a site with pictures of many of The Simpsons characters! Doh!
Ye-hi! ZDNN picked up today's DaveNet piece. I made some money! Coooool.
The last time I had a regular writing gig.
The Dow is up 107 at 9:19AM Pacific. Whew!
10 Random DaveNets. There's a lot of stuff back there! The source code and data for the CGI application is in a fat page.
8/17/95: Apple & Netscape Should Merge. If they had, there would have been no reason for the DOJ to sue Microsoft.
From Christoph Jaggi in Switzerland:
Les Horribles Cernettes
sing about colliders, quarks, microwaves, antiprotons and the Internet.
They sure are cute!
Chris Nolan writes, in the SJ Merc, about Gore/Doerr politics and the Upside party last Thursday. Ye-hi! My lips made News.com. Yeah, it seems like everyone's singin the same tune! (Me too.)
Introducing Dave Carlick, web marketing pioneer, and (new!) UserLand Software board member.
Press Release: Microsoft Countersues Sun Microsystems.
Microsoft FAQ and the full text of court filing.
My email conversation with Bill Gates continues.
Teaser: This screen shot of Frontier 5/Win shows what it looks like when I'm editing a DaveNet piece called Cookies. It's getting sexy!
How to create a screen shot on Windows:
Shannon Posniewski adds "If you hit Alt-PrintScreen, then the current window is copied to the clipboard instead of the whole screen. No need to crop!"
Acronym soup on WebMonkey.
4/24/95: The Baseball God.
CNN: A Denver blizzard and in Florida, the last day of the baseball season.
Sun: JavaMail API Preview.
Microsoft VP Brad Chase responds to Moral Arguments, 10/23/97.
Daylight Savings Time ended last night at 2AM. Your clocks go back one hour. Spring forward, fall back.
Barry Frankel just watched This Week with Sam Donaldson on ABC on the East Coast. Microsoft's Steve Ballmer is a guest. Barry says it's worth watching. If you're in the Bay Area, it's on KGO, Channel 7 at 10AM.
Andy Grove, CEO of Intel, says you have to be paranoid to stay in business. Perhaps he should look at this cartoon on the Xerox PARC website. Who's the artist?
From CNET, ten technologies that don't stand a chance:
push,
ISDN,
56K modems,
Internet phones,
NetPC,
spam-blocking software,
PDAs,
PC TV,
Java,
TV.
Upside: Religious crusades don't work against Gates.
Bill Gates sent a copy of an email to Jim Carlton after reading his book. This memo contains more insight into the cloning of the Mac OS, and Microsoft's dealings with IBM in the late 80s.
How this memo came to be on Scripting News... I read the memo in Jim Carlton's Apple book. I heard it was going to appear in the current issue of Wired, print only. I wanted it to be on the web. I asked for the memo. Microsoft sent it to me.
DaveNet: Hope That Clears It Up.
SunWorld has a wide-ranging, very interesting interview from August, with Larry Wall, the creator of PERL, and Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly Associates.
News.com: Microsoft woos wary venture capitalists.
From John Doerr, a partner at Kleiner-Perkins, in response to yesterday's A Message to Washington: "To the very best of my knowledge, its absolutely, positively not true that KP has lobbied regarding Microsoft anti-trust issues. I certainly have not."
Here's the full quote Doerr was responding to: "Is the DOJ lawsuit the result of lobbying by Netscape and Kleiner Perkins? It seems that way. I don't hear them protesting."
To John and his partners, I apologize for going down the "seems" path. It was unfair. Someone else called me on this. I hate it when people do that to me. But I felt the question deserved asking, based on an email exchange with a PR person from TechNet, a lobbying group headed up by Doerr and Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale. Later in the day, when the depositions from the Microsoft OEMs were made public, the question seemed much less important. I can't apologize for that, things are moving quickly, I'm doing the best I can.
Take the Fortune charisma test!
MSIE is my default browser because Microsoft implemented a feature for the Frontier community that makes object distribution thru the web easier for us. See Fat Web Pages, 3/26/97, for more info.
You are invited to subscribe to DaveNet via email.
Dave Livesay on Macromedia Flash.
Rafe Colburn on Microsoft and a gas station and why Windows is so cheap.
In his column on microsoft.com, Robert Hess lists Frontier
as a web tool along with two MS products and PowerSite you need in your lunchbox to be a web wonk.
Today was a historic day. For the first time Microsoft OEMs broke their silence. Can Microsoft cancel their licenses? If not, they just became more independent. Will we learn more?
Today's Reuters report on Microsoft's relationship with Compaq makes me wonder what would happen if Compaq bought Apple. Just a thought experiment. If they wanted to make Macs, could/would/should Microsoft revoke their Windows license?
News.com: Microsoft says Compaq was free to bundle Netscape browser.
PC WEEK: Microsoft threatened Compaq, Gateway, Micron over IE.
Sun: Jacl and Tcl Blend add TCL to Java.
DaveNet: A Message to Washington.
Interesting! If you want early access to Sun's JavaMail APIs, you have to register, giving them your phone number, fax number and snail-mail address.
BTW, JavaMail is a good idea. Standardized programming interfaces for email are a big opportunity in the Java world.
A coool macro that makes it easy to link Frontier websites to Amazon.com. Thanks to Dave Polaschek!
In the NY Times Chris Tacy explains web energy. Right on! One more tip -- check out Microserfs.
News.com: Borland is booming. Right on!
CNET: Quake II could be a web browser. Think about it.
Yay! Another free browser. Don't forget Opera.
Here's something else to be paranoid about. If you run a grocery store.
AfterLife
is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to archive
Web sites after their authors die and can no longer support them.
ZDNet: Gates to DOJ: Drop Dead!
In today's piece, I implied that Sun hadn't tried to work out their differences with Microsoft before filing the lawsuit. Christian Jacobsen, an engineer at JavaSoft, says they worked with Microsoft until they reached an impasse.
John Dodge in PC WEEK: Microsoft deserves this slap.
Chicago Tribune: Does most online journalism stink?
"I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've always worked for me." -- Hunter S. Thompson.
SJ Merc: Case will define Internet future.
Jesse Berst says Microsoft is losing its most important battle.
Microsoft Q&A on the DoJ action.
Roger Sessions: What Microsoft Thinks of Java.
Department of Justice press release.
Microsoft's response.
Links to DOJ antitrust filings against Microsoft.
DOJ/Microsoft reports: Reuters, CNN, Infoworld, News.com, AP, SJ Merc, USA Today, Wired, PC WEEK.
DaveNet: Microsoft Under DOJ Action.
You can buy audiotapes of the New Orleans sessions. $10 each.
CNN on El Niño: Economic winners and losers.
Jeff Veen in WebMonkey: What Happened to Java?
Rube Goldberg tries to write a letter on a piece of flypaper and while struggling to release himself, finds an idea for a self-opening umbrella.
Professor Butts tries to fix a leak in the boiler. When he is rescued from drowning, he coughs up an idea for an outboard motor that requires no fuel.
United Media: Rube Goldberg biography.
Last week Chris Nolan, the SJ Merc gossip columnist,
plugged DaveNet. Thanks Chris!
Frontier 5/Win32 is *not* available for download yet. What I used today was quite glitchy and would also be confusing for a new user, but it worked. Coming sooon!
A Frontier 5 graphic from Brian Kelley, bkelly@cloud9.net. He says "This was done in Bryce 2 by Metatools. Currently I can't find a 3D model of a cow skull, let alone a guy on a horse. If you'd like to see anything special in it (different lighting, another object) let me know."
Welcome Back! Mac OS Rumors. The Oracle-UMAX-Motorola story is still there. Something to chew on.
This is exciting! Another clean-room Java.
Dave Polaschek's recommended reading page was done with a neat Frontier macro that you can download from his fat page farm. (It's called ISBN.)
From a reader who doesn't want to use his name: 'The NT Internals website just disappeared one day. A few days later it came back, looking almost identical except that a few pages that had really really accurate info were gone.'
InfoWorld: Sun hands off Java testing to outside lab.
Non-Sun-licensed Javas: Roaster is a commercial clean-room implementation and JOLT is a freeware project.
News.com interview with Dan Bricklin, the lead developer of VisiCalc and other wonders.
7/23/97: Trellix.
Philip Suh's fat pages troubleshooting page.
When a publication shuts down under mysterious circumstances, we have to ask why. If MacInsider had a legal dispute with Apple, it should be in the open, and subject to outside examination. There are technology issues and free speech issues here that are important and must not be swept under.
Another question: Mac OS Rumors, a site that we used to enjoy, is off the air, switching ISPs. Why are they switching ISPs at this moment?
Behind the scenes at ftp.apple.com.
Eric Dorland adds style sheets to Frontier.
Jedd Haas gets the last word on New Orleans. "This is the Third World. Once you accept that, no problem."
More New Orleans and Java stuff on Mail Starting 10/17/97.
The Frontier 5 process continues. 5.0a5/Mac is released. Check out the release notes and the download page.
Opera Software makes a lean and fast web browser for Windows and has a fascinating proposal for Mac, Linux and OS/2 users.
On Webintosh, Todd Stauffer has an interesting point of view on Steve Jobs and Apple. I agree that Ellen Hancock would have made a good CEO, but today the company is led by people Jobs put in place, so if someone else were to be the CEO , there would certainly be yet another reorg (a polite word for the firing of execs), and probably more projects would be killed. Apple's precarious business can't take too much more of this. They need a hot product and a clear mission for its employees, developers and users.
Java Lobby: Differences between MS SDK 2.0 for Java and JDK 1.1.
Oooops! There was a typo on the Open Mike URLs page from the New Orleans conference. To everyone who was in New Orleans, I had a great time! We gotta do it again sooooon.
News.com: Lawyers look at the Sun lawsuit. Says Jack Russo of Russo & Hale, "It's really over who is the leader and who's the follower. Sun wants to be the leader and pope of the Java religion. It says, 'If you want to participate in the religion, you have to give us some homage. Microsoft in the name of doing its own innovations, is saying, 'We want to help define this religion; we are as sacred as Sun in this respect.'"
After reviewing the contract and the software, we see it the same way. The obvious solution is for Microsoft to cede to Sun the exclusive right of defining Java. It would be reasonable for Microsoft to, as a quid pro quo, to not distribute Java and Sun's classes with Windows 98 and MSIE. But Microsoft has the largest and most powerful software distribution system in the business, and to deny that distribution to Java would cripple it. Bottom line: Sun may have shot Java in a vital organ with this lawsuit.
Disclaimer: Russo & Hale is UserLand's lawfirm and Jack Russo is a personal friend for many years.
"When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir pelcgb." Thanks to Dave Polaschek.
We're working on a new Java story. Stay tuned.
We've had a number of disturbing complaints from users who have had trouble getting thru to scripting.com. Apparently there's a battle going on between ISPs. You and I are caught in the middle. If these other ISPs want our business, could we hear from them directly? Interfering with the smooth flow of packets is not a good way to build customer confidence, or to woo your competitor's customers.
I asked Antonio Salerno, the CEO of Conxion, our ISP, to comment.
Yahoo's page on consumer opinion about AGIS.
From New Orleans: Open Mike URLs.
Dan Gillmor of the SJ Merc visits with his niece using the Internet. Beautiful piece. Beautiful niece!
NetLingo -- The Internet Language Dictionary.
I read Jim Carlton's new Apple book and hated it. It rehashes the ridiculous point of view that the egos and petty BS of Apple execs and engineers mattered. What matters to me is what Mac users and developers were doing. No one has written this book yet. He's right about egos ruling the internal machinations at Apple. That, and Carlton's forced writing style, makes this a boring and frustrating book. This point of view has been reported over and over. Who cares?
I'm reading Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner and am loving it. Beautifully written, a history of greed and small-picture thinking that's shaped millions of lives, including mine!
Is Yale going to switch to Wintel?
Microsoft Q&A about the Sun contract.
Sun/Microsoft license agreement is posted on the Sun website.
Paul Andrews in the Seattle Times: Squabbling opponents.
Joseph Palmer writes about what's going on (or not) at Apple.
How CNET manages the workflow process.
I'm off to Houston and then to New Orleans to participate in CNET's Web Builder conference.
In the meantime, check out the Guestbook page. All those grrreat Frontier sites! Visit them all and...
See you on Thursday!
The Frontier 5 process continues. 5.0a4/Mac is released. Check out the release notes and the download page.
In NC World, Nicholas Petreley doesn't try to be objective about Java. Or does he?
Heard on TV last night: "Hello, Bitter party, your table is ready. Bitter, party of one."
By popular demand, here's a Mac SimCity with $492 million in the bank, it generates $452K per year, and has approx 11 million citizens.
SJ Merc: Microsoft is public's top-rated company.
Microsoft's James Plamondon Comes Back at Me! One-point-oh!
Another Bill Gates Meets Satan Story.
From Cameron Barrett, an AIFF rendition of Marcia Marcia Marcia.
A tour of DaveNets about Java, in reverse-chronologic order.
5/21/96: Java Java Java. It's more true today than it was then.
SJ Merc: interview with Steve Ballmer, Microsoft heavyweight.
Wired News also has an interview with Ballmer.
I wrote a piece suggesting that Netscape Hire Steve Ballmer.
And one of the first DaveNets was written to him.
Screen shot of Frontier 5/Win, with display bugs! 
Microsoft FAQ on the Sun lawsuit.
Microsoft VP Brad Chase posted a letter to customers about the Sun lawsuit and Java support in MSIE 4.0.
I got an email from a Java consultant who looked into Microsoft's Java implementation in MSIE 4.0. His report provides new information, but is inconclusive.
Super-important point -- none of this can make any sense until we see the license agreement. Either Sun or Microsoft could make it public.
SunWorld: Choosing a scripting language.
Seen in an email signature.
A Frontier site from the UK.
Someone leaked a Scott McNealy memo Wired News.
Computer Book Cafe -- Where the computer book industry meets.
Next week in New Orleans, the CNET Web Builder conference. I'm leading the opening sessions, at the beginning of each of the three days, for the "Dreams" track. Dan Shafer picked some topics to start the discussions, but we're going anywhere the people want to go.
Scripting News will not be updated between Sat and Wed.
SJ Merc: Rainy season starts. It's going to be a big winter. El Niño!
Also in the Merc, Chris Nolan
reports that the SF Chronicle is starting a gossip column,
written by Tom Abate. Welcome!
I find much that I agree with in Jesse Berst's analysis of the Sun-Microsoft broo-ha-ha over Java.
The Frontier 5 process continues. 5.0a3/Mac is released. Check out the release notes and the download page.
Two great Frontier sites: Workbook, Activemail.
Click on each of these links: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5. You just helped us test Frontier 5 running on a server. Thanks!
News.com reports on a bug in Mac OS 8 that can trash hard drives. We reported it on 10/2/97, and Apple has since posted a utility that fixes it. (Scroll to the bottom of that page.)
If you're running Frontier 4 on a fast Mac you may experience the "freeze at startup" problem. We shipped a fix for that in September. I also added a link to this on the main Frontier page.
Leonard Rosenthol: OSA Menu 1.1b6 released today.
Check this out! A bandwidth breakthru? Data is transferred over electricity power lines into the home at speeds of over one megabit per second - up to ten times faster than ISDN.
An email I sent to Apple CEO Steve Jobs on 9/9/97, at his request, briefly outlining the opportunity around Mac-based web software, including my own product, Frontier; and BBEdit and WebSTAR. As far as I know, he never responded to this email (sometimes messages get lost in my inbox). I wanted people to see this, in case there was any doubt that we keep trying to open the door to communication with Apple.
E&P: News-search sites proliferate.
Palo Alto Weekly: 200 computers stolen from local lawfirm.
DaveNet: Three Years of DaveNet.
Three years ago today: Marc Canter Sings Again! The first one!
Two years ago: Welcome Back Jean-Louis.
One year ago: Cast-A-Net.
Check out this special birthday page from Evan Williams at O'Reilly Assoc. Leave this page up for a while. They found some amazing quotes! ROTFL!
Apple: Sample code for Java. Shows how to send and receive interapplication messages to and from Java. Could be useful!
From PGP's chief scientist: More on PGP from PGP.
Humor! In-A-Gadda-Da-Oswald. It's one-point-oh!
Ralph Nader's letter to Bill Gates.
Sun: We're suing Microsoft.
Microsoft: Sun's claims are outrageous.
Birthday pages from Seth Dillingham, Emmanuel Decarie, Chris Gulker, Brian Buck, Daniel Berlinger.
Two celebratory graphics from Cameron Barrett: #1 and #2.
451 pieces. 2.2MB of text. How do I know?
You are invited to subscribe to DaveNet via email.
DaveNet is a web thing, so if you want to celebrate, please put up a web page and send me a pointer. What does DaveNet mean to you? Be creative!
To the writer who asked what I'm doing up at 3AM, I'm writing today's piece.
I saw a brief demo of mBED Interactor 1.1 at the Last Saturday's party last Wednesday. Like DreamWeaver, it generates Dynamic HTML for either MSIE or Netscape.
MacAddict: Apple's discovered scripting. Not a moment too early!
PC WEEK: Sun to report on IE 4.0's Java compatibility tomorrow.
There's been an expression of interest on MacroMedia's DreamWeaver newsgroup on having it work well with Frontier. Cooool! Here's a page describing the protocol that's currently supported by BBEdit and Frontier. It's the protocol that we would like any and all wizzy HTML editors to support.
News.com: Dell says Apple should close shop.
Interesting! Wired News reports on a faceoff between east and west coast website designers.
According to this article, you can run Mac OS 8 on IBM PowerPC hardware. If true, CHRP isn't dead. Truly bizarre.
An official statement from PGP, Inc. on Message Recovery.
A Unique View of Java. Pro-Microsoft, pro-Mac.
Wired News on XML confusion. It's true, XML was 1/2 of the buzz at Seybold, but what is XML? We took a look over the weekend to see if we could do some stuff with it, but it's pretty clear that it's only half-complete, and no one seems to know what it's for. Hello?
We thought about using RDF, a variant of XML, in the same places we're doing fat pages but it's too incomplete to consider at this time. Also, our format is simpler, easier to parse, both for human beings and computers.
CNET interview with Microsoft CEO Bill Gates.
Macromedia ships public beta of DreamWeaver. What do you think?
To the DreamWeaver product manager. Is either version (Mac or Windows) scriptable? Can you send it a message to get the text of the frontmost window? We'd like to integrate a wizzy editor into our site management suite, and so far neither Symantec or Claris or Adobe has added the hooks. You could be first. Maybe you are?
WebMonkey discusses the mysteries of Dynamic HTML.
AnchorDesk: What makes women click?
SJ Merc: Why are so many people leaving Silicon Valley? They're moving to Seattle, Portland and Reno.
Michael Markman's 2¢ about Apple's advertising grammar.
A screen shot of the Frontier 5 site being edited in 5.0a2.
Fortune: Sun's Scott McNealy is JavaMan!
Lots of newly registered sites in the Guestbook. Visit them all!
A free idea for Steve Jobs's NC-Mac. I can search the web much more powerfully than I can search my own private documents. Every night at 2AM I'd like to be able to run a script that indexes all the new or modified files on my hard disk. A web browser interface for searching, just like Excite or Infoseek. Our desktops are far behind the Internet in this area. Bill Gates can have this idea too.
The NY Times reports on the new PGP. "The new version includes some of the most advanced mechanisms for 'key recovery,' a technology for surveillance that has been the focus of a major debate between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and many software companies and Internet users. The PGP software allows the corporation's management to enforce policies that may be as stringent as banning all e-mail that the management can't read."
Oooops! Maybe PGP isn't our friend after all...
What about the NY Times? They were slow to come out against the CDA last year, and in this piece they put the FBI at odds with users and software companies, not with the US Constitution and free speech. I grew up with The Times, and I thought they were purists on free speech. (They taught me about free speech dammit!) I'm so disappointed with my old hometown paper.
New Media News: RealVideo interview with Steve Wozniak.
Red Herring: New cash, old clash for Marimba.
Robert X. Cringely on the PBS website: The Saga of ActiveX.
Salon: Clicking for Godot. A story from the Digital Storytelling Festival.
Check this out: RDF -- the Resource Description Framework.
PC WEEK: No crypto is too tough to crack.
TechWeb: Sun's Top Scientist Attacks Key Recovery.
PC WEEK: It's nearing high noon for encryption technologies.
JavaWorld: Microsoft responds to the Java Lobby.
The Atlantic Monthly is a Frontier site.
Their object database is 34MB and growing.
Ours is 28MB.
This evening I sent an email to Bill Gates.
I also sent an email to Steve Case.
Frontier 5.0a2/Mac Upgrader released. Lots of fixes and tweaks.
If you're actively using 4.2.3, check out the intro notes for the 5.0 alpha process.
A fresh start for the Scripting News guestbook. If you're running a Frontier-managed website, please add a link. We're working on more comprehensive registration software, this will help us get us focused on what's important.
Wired News: PGP moves towards corporate applications.
GoMac -- Program bar and start menu for Mac OS 8.
PC WEEK: Jobs asks publishers to trust him.
Oh those boys at Microsoft! Not one-point-oh.
Hot tip. If you have one of Apple's new 6500s, your hard disk may get trashed unless you turn
virtual memory off. Apple's suggested workaround
is to sleep instead of shutting down. Some people at Apple know this solution, but it hasn't been broadcast to users yet.
A new slogan: I'm cruisin for some schmoozin! That's what I was doin today.
PC WEEK: Java Lobby takes on IE 4.0.
A new Mac website. It's twisted!
Got RealAudio? Listen to last night's DaveNet session. They lost the first half-hour but it's cool. I'm listening to it now. Here's a web page you can look at while you're listening.
The live session last night was great!
Back issues...
Check out Scripting News -- September 1997.
See the directory site for a list of important pages on this server
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