Scripting News -- July 1998
Friday, July 31, 1998
News.com interviews Rob Glaser, who suggests a way to work around file type problems on Windows. Could the problem be solved by keeping another extension for each Windows file, as the Mac OS does? It could keep a file creator code, that would allow the content developer to decide which playback engine works best for a specific bit of content.News.com: 450-MHz PCs to debut next month.
NY Times: New anti-porn law could be constitutional.
The Standard: Reel.com sells for $100 million.
Thursday, July 30, 1998
Edward Felten, a professor at Princeton, found a security hole in Java in pre-4.5 versions of Netscape.NY Times: Software written in C can cause problems?
Reuters: Tool shop workers hit Powerball jackpot.
SJ Merc: Research on female sexuality considered faulty.
MacWEEK: Alder manages FileMaker databases via web.
Survey: If you use Frontier in a prepress environment, which graphics or publishing apps do you use?
SF Chron: Let's have a meeting in Decent.
Matt Daw's XML-RPC mail list is back. Discuss ideas and new projects on the list, please.
Dan Shafer: MSIE is bad news for web developers.
Tish wishes for some dirt to write about.
Wednesday, July 29, 1998
Josh Brauer is looking into how Netscape talks to its keyword server.Richard Brandt in Upside gets a dose of Mac-fanatic flame mail, and over-reacts: "If everyone is targeting Windows first and porting to the Mac as an afterthought, Mac software will never run well, no matter how fast the new processors are." It's not true that everyone is doing that. It never has been true.
Adam Curry's intellectual capital website.
I'm thinking about standardized web user interfaces again.
NY Times: Retired programmers to work on Y2K.
NY Times: Bill Clinton's 29 Months.
Monday, July 27, 1998
Thea's Galleria tells the story of the Sports Illustrated Goodwill Games site.A major milestone. Stewart Allen of WebMethods has an XML-RPC server implemented in their B2B Integration Server.
Jakob Nielsen: Electronic books are a bad idea.
Friday, July 24, 1998
I'm travelling for the next six days. There may be a few items on Scripting News in the interim. The pace will resume late next week.In the meantime, please watch the Frontier 5 home page, where Brent is going to open up a new fast search engine and publish a bunch of HOWTOs.
See you late next week!
PS: Check out Dan Gillmor's piece in today's SJ Merc. The credit goes to the readers of Scripting News. We did something good here. We got the story, quickly, and demonstrated the power of a bunch of smart people connected via email and the web. Thanks!
PPS: The San Diego Source reports a Java server bug that reveals script source code.
Thursday, July 23, 1998
DaveNet: It's Working.Bill Gates: "He saw the power of communication using the Internet very early on and has been very effective in using that medium to have interactive discussions on a wide variety of both technical and human topics."
To Bill, thanks for your support. I wish more software industry leaders used DaveNet as you have. You also understood the power of communication using the Internet very early on.
HOWTO: Move Frontier objects via XML-RPC.
CDA II passes the US Senate. If it becomes law, if you publish web material deemed "harmful" to minors, you could go to jail for six months and be fined $50K per day that the material was available.
The Sports Illustrated photo site. Our first big commercial site.
Broadband Week: Road Runner Details Content Work.
Evoscript is a free, database-enabled web application framework written in Perl.
I downloaded and installed IE5 and had a few questions and problems.
Random House: 100 best English-language novels of the 20th Century.
Why?
Matt Daw has started an XML-RPC mail list. I've already subscribed to it. If you're working on an implementation of XML-RPC, please join the list and keep us posted on your progress, and share your ideas and concerns.
Microsoft XML Notepad enables the rapid building and editing of small sets of XML-based data. You need IE4 Service Pack 1 or IE5 developer release installed to run it, Windows only. Screen shot.
The Atlanta Frontier User's Group meets tonight.
A neat DHTML site.
Ryan Tate notices that Netscape 4.5 is playing a funny game with Yahoo!
TechWeb: Farmers and Y2K.
Upside: The net threatens to upset corporate power in music industry. "There are about 80,000 music sites on the Net--everything from streaming radio stations to fan sites to retailers..."
Wired on the new portal look. Yes, it's boring!
Chris Nolan on black dresses and software advertising.
Wednesday, July 22, 1998
Lenn Pryor wrote how he came to work at Microsoft.Jeffrey Jones wrote a vignette for our times.
Fred Davis wrote a review of Netscape.
Marc Canter wrote a song, from Italy, of all places!
Reuters: CA stock falls 31 percent in one trading day.
Meeks on MSNBC: A hoax unravels, shows Net at its best.
Rob Cummings on Internet keywords.
New newsgroup for XML: comp.text.xml.
Kevin Fong, venture capitalist: "I use DaveNet to keep in touch with the latest trends, e.g. XML-RPC."
Pam Edstrom, public relations exec: "You are one of the first people to see the power and value in the Internet and to use it in a way that gets a ton of people involved. No one else is doing that today in such an interactive way."
Craig Cline, analyst: "...sometimes pissing us off, many other times sending us over the moon."
MacWEEK: LDAP servers from CE Software and OneClick.
This is just plain weird. I don't get it.
Tish kicks us in the nuts. What's going on at Upside? Maybe it's the water?
Hey! A kind word from XML.COM. There's hope!
Rafe Colburn on Netscape's Internet keywords feature.
I'm listening to Irma Thomas this morning. Funky and soulful!
A heads-up, I'll be travelling Friday thru Thursday, so get your fill of Scripting News today and tomorrow.
Tuesday, July 21, 1998
Fortune's Brent Schlender on DaveNet: "He's an articulate guy, and has helped me understand everything from the dynamics of setting Internet standards to the tangled corporate psyche of Microsoft."Bay Area Frontier User's Group meets tomorrow in San Francisco at 7PM. Some people have asked if I will be there, and I think it's best that I not be there. It's a user's group, and I'm the vendor. I think it's important for it to get going, and then if you want to invite me to come, I will happily attend. I think it's great that there's a Bay Area group forming!
NY Times reviews AOL.COM.
TechWeb: XML plays central role in retooling for E-commerce. If you want to know how XML is about money, check this out.
The first XML-RPC piece from February of this year. We've come a long way very fast.
Wired: Ballmer is the new Microsoft president.
Two recent job openings on the Class Ads site. Please use this service if you're looking for a job or have a position to fill, also for announcements that would be of interest to Scripting News readers.
Internet.com: Privacy flaw in Communicator 4.5?
MSNBC: Informix, Oracle will port to Linux.
ZDNet UK: Netscape to ship Linux server.
GCN: Navy 'Smart Ship' dead in the water.
Interactive Week: Road Runner Retools.
Yesterday's Goodwill Games photos.
NY Times: Y2K at home.
TidBITS: Sues spammer and chastizes Symantec for dropping the Mac version of VisualPage.
InfoWorld: Microsoft FrontPage 2000.
Here's a open proposal for an Linux-style open source project. The components would be an HTTP client-server, a simple XML parser, and a routing system that handles plug-ins. (Build it into Apache?)
The format could be our XML-RPC or one that's bridgeable to it. Here's a place where the Linux open source community could shine and lead the rest of the industry in a very visible way. Next step, port to BeOS, Solaris, Mac OS, Windows, the Java VM. Let's end the OS wars, build bridges between environments and across OSes.
Monday, July 20, 1998
DaveNet: Netscape and Generic Names.Jakob Nielsen: "The Scripting News homepage helps fight the Dark Side in the struggle for the soul of the Web."
More interesting mail.
Seattle Times: Adam Engst sues Bull's Eye. Right on!
Results from the How do you get here? survey.
News.com: Communicator 4.5 draws fire.
GNOME is a scripting object model for Unix.
Apple's DiskCopy 6.3 is scriptable.
PC: The power of scripts.
O'Reilly's Open Source Town Meeting. 8/21 in San Jose.
Check out FreeDrive. They're in Chicago.
Wired: The next net name battle. They raise the issue of whether anyone should own a generic name on the Net. A good question. We're not the only ones with a generic name.
Rick Smolan on how he organizes projects: "There's a tool I use, MORE, an ancient Macintosh planning/scheduling program. I put everything into it and use it like a brainstorming machine to prioritize what needs to get done. I even use the tree chart to manage people. I'll die the day it stops working."
News.com: Compaq drops Y2K ad campaign.
NY Times: Broadcast.com faces risks after strong IPO.
Slashdot.org: Study the work of great programmers?
InfoWorld: Scriptics launches, announces TCL Pro, an integrated development environment. "The product will include a debugger, a code checker, and a packaging and distribution tool, and will cost in the region of $1,000 per development seat."
custombrowser.com is working with Microsoft's browser control.
InfoWorld: Nicholas Petreley floats an idea. Is there room for a magazine committed to open source?
Sunday, July 19, 1998
DaveNet: XML-RPC for Geeks.Finally! XML-RPC Specification.
Sports Illustrated photo site for the Goodwill Games. This is the Frontier XML-RPC managed LAN.
The site does editorial photo processing, storing the results in a searchable database. I just looked at yesterday's photos, the opening ceremonies, including Natalie Cole, Ray Charles, Al Gore, Ted Turner, Hootie and the Blowfish. Their whole editorial process for photos is running thru this Frontier LAN, visible to the world. A landmark for electronic publishing.
They're doing something unusual from an economic point of view. All the photos are available for editorial use free of charge. If you work for a newspaper, or run a news site, you can use the Sports Illustrated photos. It's a truly open system.
NY Times coverage of the Goodwill Games.
keyword.com, where sites can register keywords and users can use them for free.
Saturday, July 18, 1998
Dan Gillmor: I like DaveNet best when it infuriates me.Wired: FDIC says banks must keep Y2K rating private.
News.com: Alarmists serious about 2000.
From BPS Software, a list of AOL keywords.
The Goodwill Games start tomorrow in NY, and Frontier is playing a big role! The Sports Illustrated photo site (link coming soon) is running on a LAN with three NT4 machines, and all the photo processing and serving is managed by Frontier, and (get this) all the communication between the machines is XML-RPC. This will be the first real-world high-flow site that's all XML-RPC. Exciting!
Further, this is the first site, that we know of, that's using the COM connection between Frontier and Microsoft's IIS. Thanks to Jason Levine of Sports Illustrated for working so patiently with us!
TechWeb: EFF breaks US Crypto Standard.
XML.COM: Converting SGML DTDs to XML.
Josh Lucas has a great service that delivers Scripting News headlines via email once a day. Lots of people use it. You can too!
If you don't want to store images in Frontier's object database, Phil Suh has the answer.
Friday, July 17, 1998
Wired: Broadcast.com Wows Wall Street.Earlier this week I sent an email to some famous DaveNet readers asking for comments. I'm going to run them, approx one per day. The first one is from John Perry Barlow. Thanks John!
Survey: The top question on the minds of all business-oriented web geeks. Results.
John Delacour is leading a ScriptMeridian group to put together an updated interface from Frontier to the Mac system Finder.
Here are all 18 pictures of Tish.
Another Tish site, this one on GeoCities.
News.com: Community is a buzzword at Lycos.
Apple has posted a list of companies that use WebObjects.
Standard: Microsoft isn't too impressed with Jini.
ZDNet: Is Netscape's browser stealing hits?
MSNBC: Inside the newest Netscape.
Sun's Y2K Testing Guide.
NC.FOCUS: XML Agents.
UnixIntegration: Cross-platform web infrastructures.
Upside's Richard Brandt thinks (differently?) that Steve Jobs is fattening Apple to sell it.
My hero Tish asks all the questions I want to ask. The girl has guts!
Thursday, July 16, 1998
At the end of the day, here's some advice for Netscape.Survey: How do you get here? Results here.
Oh check this out. It is cooool.
TechWeb picks up the Netscape story.
Trevor Zion Bauknight summarizes the Netscape URL redirection arguments.
Lori Fena, chairman of the EFF, likens Netscape's URL redirection to "slamming" in the telephone industry.
Microsoft comments and there's more mail on the subject.
PC WEEK: Netscape releases Communicator 4.5 beta.
Wired: Marimba and Alta Vista make push deal.
MacWEEK: Prefab TextMachine.
News.com: Apple stock at 52-week high.
Jpython is Python running in Java.
Wired: Losing propositions can win big.
Frontier 5.1.2 is released, with important fixes in memory management for more reliable 7-by-24 serverside. A new 5.1.2 trial version is available too.
Tish is saving it for Larry Ellison. Lucky Larry!
Did you know that "Hi-ho! Yow! I'm surfing Arpanet!" is an anagram for "Information Superhighway"? Source: Lynn Siprelle.
Wednesday, July 15, 1998
DaveNet #1: A Y2K-Safe Bank?DaveNet #2: Netscape's Undocumented Geek Feature.
CNET is especially hurt by the new Communicator 4.5 behavior. News, Computers, Builder, Download, Downloads, Shareware, Browsers, and Search are all re-directed.
Wondering if they're redirecting your traffic too? Check out this page on the Netscape website.
I praised Netscape's idea when it was announced in May, but I didn't imagine they would grab existing flow with the feature. I should have considered this possibility.
Press release: Scriptics formed to lead scripting revolution.
MacWEEK: Apple Q3 profits are $101 million.
InfoWorld: Sun explains Jini.
NY Times: Sun's approach to distributed computing.
The Standard: Why did they go ga-ga for Jini?
Borders.com has an excerpt from Burn Rate.
An interesting idea: Outsourcing the job of CTO.
How does Alexa/Netscape figure out what's related to www.scripting.com?
A major pub is doing a story on customers doing real applications with XML. If you're a user, not a developer, doing real stuff with XML, please send me an email and I'll pass it on. Thanks!
Tuesday, July 14, 1998
DaveNet: XML-RPC for Newbies.Red Herring on NewHoo.
NY Times: Jakob Nielsen leaves Sun, sets out on new career. Smart, of course!
WebMonkey walks through DreamWeaver.
Upside: Hollywood meets the Millennium.
Wired: Stock markets test for Y2K. Good idea!
MacWEEK: Vignette to ship StoryServer 4.
Monday, July 13, 1998
DaveNet: InfoWorld on SOAP.Thea's Galleria takes us to a Frontier based authoring system for high school students.
News.com: Motorola buys Starfish. Congratulations to Philippe Kahn!
An email Ken McLeod sent me on how Casbah's doing RPC.
This page on the InfoWorld website collects all their XML-related articles. Impressive!
InfoWorld: Microsoft spearheads protocol push. "We're committed to interoperate as never before," said Vic Gundotra, director of platform marketing at Microsoft.
InfoWorld: Iona COM-to-CORBA.
LA Times: Real Estate via XML.
News.com: W3C proposes HTTP overhaul.
PC WEEK: CommerceNet buys into XML.
Vive la France! A grrreat game.
Friday, July 10, 1998
Serving options for Frontier 5.1. From static pages served in the file system, dynamic sites rendered thru the website framework, to XML-RPC and custom responders. Finally we have a single page that puts it all into perspective.W3C: HTTP-NG. We're going to study this one.
How to write and call an XML-RPC handler in Frontier 5.1.
PC WEEK: Outgoing Tivoli chief wastes no time. He's moving to XML, smart guy!
Wired: NewHoo. Cooo!
DataChannel responds to Wednesday's DaveNet.
Windows Sources reviewed DataChannel's RIO.
Paul Snively kicks off Mail Starting 7/10/98.
InfoWorld: Microsoft's Apple investment, one year later.
Thursday, July 9, 1998
Key feature in 5.1: Rendering thru multiple templates.XML.COM cut me a new rear orifice today. OK I had it coming! I was feeling my Wheaties when I talked to the reporter. I stand properly chastized. Grovel grovel.
Jeff Willden writes: 'Have you looked at the site you pointed to using MSIE 4.0 for Macintosh? The text along the left column is about 8 inches tall! One word takes more screen space than I have. I opened the same page with Netscape and it's fine.'
Yes, I looked at it, and saw the same thing.
Jakob Nielsen explains why the XML.COM font looks odd in some browsers.
USA Today: Net stock frenzy recalls past binges.
Please help burn-in the banner ad feature (coming soon) in 5.1.2 or 3 or... It's quite simple, just a macro in a template served thru the website framework and a CGI to track and redirect the click-thrus.
Matt Dornquast surveyed lots of FTP clients for Windows and likes WebDrive the best. It maps an FTP site onto a virtual hard drive.
It would be cool to have a tool like HTML TIDY running in Frontier.
News.com: IBM lends Sun Java help. This is in the same area as the XML-RPC stuff we've been promoting. I sent an email yesterday to the PR contacts on the IBM-Sun press release pointing them to our page on XML-RPC and asking if we could collaborate to bridge our protocol with theirs. Connections are essential here. If anyone from Sun or IBM is reading this, let's work together.
I'm reading Burn Rate by Michael Wolff. It's hard to read. A babe among the Internet VCs. An exposure of a reality distortion field built of nothing but money.
MacInTouch: Henry Norr's MacWorld Expo report.
SJ Merc: Jodi Mardesich's MacWorld Expo report.
Today's Tish covers the daughter of Microsoft PR powerhouse Pam Edstrom.
Wednesday, July 8, 1998
DaveNet: The Magic of Windows.New HOWTO: Serving a dynamic website in 5.1. Juicy!
Press release: Sun and IBM team up to connect Java RMI over IIOP. Juicy!
Wired: CNN journalists speak out. "We had sufficient sources to put that story on the air." Juicy!
Standard: Netscape share continues to fall. Sobering.
News.com: Board, exec changes at Macromedia. Colligan, Doerr out; Alsop, young Kvamme in.
Wired: Browser battles in scripting.
Here's more competition, price starts at $10K.
MacWEEK surveys the new stuff at MacWorld Expo in NY, which starts today. Let's go Mac!
This is the best marketing I've ever seen. Disney should be taking a huge hit for excluding Mac users from their site. Instead they look like heroes! Gotta love it.
Our new directory page explains the relationship between the sites that UserLand operates.
Changes in Frontier 5.1.1. Fixes & tweaks.
Tuesday, July 7, 1998
The trial version of Frontier 5.1 is ready.InfoWorld interviews DataChannel CEO David Pool. He says WebBroker has no competition. They should know better at InfoWorld (so should Pool). Our XML-RPC protocol is already deployed (it's part of Frontier 5.1). Our WebEdit client/server, also in 5.1, is equivalent to DataChannel's Publish-to-the-Web, but much more powerful.
A bit of philosophy: We like competition. DataChannel should too. It helps define a market. See the next item...
InfoWorld: Raveler smooths Web content flow. They compare it to Frontier.
VivaLaData: How semaphores work in Frontier.
PC World: A flea-market supercomputer.
Earlier today I emailed the first UserLand newsletter to several thousand Frontier users.
Every once in a while I like to ask how we are doing?
Wired: Who's watching your server?
The University of Washington is looking for Director of Radiology who knows Frontier.
I'm hearing that the NTBugTraq mail list and website are really good sources of information about NT servers.
Messaging in Casbah. It would be great if they also supported XML-RPC for compatibility with Frontier.
The Standard: Zapata's portal strategy.
Tish urges us to buy even more Yahoo stock.
Monday, July 6, 1998
Thea's Galleria takes us to a 1000-page site that was converted from frames to templates.Russ Cooper has a gripe with Scripting News.
Steve Poole on client-side Java.
NY Times editorial against government restrictions on encryption technology. Bravo!
SJ Merc: Web ads aren't adding up.
Reuters: Scientists hope to revive mammoths.
UPI: Roy Rogers, the singing cowboy, dead at 86.
Elton John sang a song about Roy Rogers.
Roy Rogers is riding tonight!
Returning to our silver screens
Comic book characters never grow old
Evergreen heroes whose stories were told
Oh the great sequin cowboy
Who sings of the plains
Of roundups and rustlers and home on the range
Turn on the TV, shut out the lights
Roy Rogers is riding tonightSunday, July 5, 1998
Josh Lucas's XML-RPC for Java connects to Frontier 5.1's XML-RPC.InfoWorld: IBM and XML. "One XML vendor noted that while many companies have made XML announcements, such as Lotus, Netscape, and Microsoft, very few vendors have outlined a comprehensive strategy for using the technology and even fewer are actually shipping XML tools today."
NY Times: Microsoft has seen the enemy.
PC World rates OS choices: Mac, Linux, BeOS.
Leland Baker on Server Holes.
Dan Gillmor: Valley gets a dose of its reality.
Michael Wolff: Our own Truman Show.
Saturday, July 4, 1998
Happy Birthday USA!
NY Times: Fireworks gurus
Reuters: Florida ghost town
Friday, July 3, 1998
DaveNet: We're Not Prepared.MSNBC covers the $DATA hole.
Jakob Nielsen comments on trust and security holes.
Hey if you'll be in Silicon Valley on September 30, check out the Sand Hill Challenge. Great use of Flash!
One reader questions whether my PasswordMaker page generates "truly" random passwords as it says it does. Maybe it generates a "pseudo" random password, mathematically speaking? But if you think it thru, since each character in the password is generated from a modulus of the system clock, and since the time any individual loaded the page *is* a random event, then the page generates "truly" random passwords. Hey! That works.
There's a 1993 standard for random password generators.
Here's the scoop on Netscape's Action Sheets.
My project for yesterday was to do a screen shot tour of Frontier 5.1, but the IIS security hole pushed it aside. By the end of the day I didn't have the juice to do new screen shots, so instead...
My favorite gifs are at the end of the slide show, for some random reason. And the best picture, the one that really gives me goosebumps, is the picture of Uncle Sam saying We Won! For two gold stars, do you remember what it was we won?
Thursday, July 2, 1998
DaveNet: Web Servers and File Systems. This is the security alert I posted early this morning. The full scope of the problem wasn't clear at the time.Netscape's been playing with scripting in web pages. Would someone please review this, I'm working on something else. It's been a busy day!
Microsoft's security bulletin.
The Motley Fool solution to the IIS hole.
Wired and InfoWorld have the story now. PC WEEK still has nothing. (What's going on there? Don't their readers run IIS?)
Amazing! Someone just sent me a URL that gets me the password for the frequent flier mileage database of a major US airline. I'm not publishing the URL. But given what I've seen today, security is so poor at major websites, you don't have to wait until Y2K for a likely meltdown. We should all go to school on choosing passwords. Hint hint.
Having trouble coming up with a truly random password?
SoftWing claims to have a fix that closes the hole in IIS. According to Jim Roepcke, the fix works.
Bob Denny, the lead developer of O'Reilly's WebSite checks in on the last round of security holes.
WindowsSources has the story now. (10:21AM)
I'm hearing from well-intentioned people who are able to access credit card information thru this loophole on major e-commerce sites. I'm not posting the URLs. But a heads-up, if I operated a Windows-based web server with script code of any kind, I'd shut it down while I did a complete site audit.
I just got a report that Allaire's Cold Fusion has the hole too. At 8:45AM I sent a private email to ten Microsoft people I work with telling them about the hole. At 9AM you can still access source code at microsoft.com, and there's no security advisory on their site as far as I can see. A security advisory should be the top item on www.microsoft.com right now, in big red letters.
The industry press is asleep at the wheel on this one. Here's a list of the sites I watch. None of them is carrying a security alert. Why?
AspCodeLock might help.
Allaire posted a security advisory on 6/29.
W3C: Security FAQ.
A pricing update for Frontier 5.1 with a new discount for server developers and a discount for orders of five or more licenses.
There was a lot of confusion created by our first customer mailing almost two weeks ago. We're getting a new one ready. We've learned a lot in the last few weeks. And re-learned a lot too! Thanks everyone for your patience and support.
Three new releases in the Frontier community this morning. Josh Lucas released a Java toolkit that allows applet code to talk XML-RPC. John Delacour's Mimi suite connects Frontier systems via email. And Alan Baer's TableLogic suite enhances Frontier's ability to generate HTML tables.
On a lighter note, another company bites the bullet and assumes the 'portal look'. There's gold in them thar hills?
Wednesday, July 1, 1998
DaveNet: Security Hole in Windows Web Servers.Coool! The print version of the MacWEEK article about Frontier 5.1 includes this neat flow diagram showing how XML-RPC works. Nice!
The next Frontier 5.1 HOWTO, creating a new website in the object database.
Don't forget! Your ads are wanted. Let's make something interesting happen here.
PerlBuilder is an IDE for Perl.
TechWeb: Netscape cancels Javagator.
InfoWorld: Sun buys Netdynamics.
Another security problem for Windows-based servers?
Microsoft closed the hole in IIS in February 1997, and sent an email to IIS users pointing them to a fact sheet and a patch to download. (The links no longer work.)
Standard: How Steve Case bought a browser. Fascinating story.
Back issues...
Check out Scripting News -- June 1998.
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