brentashley

I recently had a remote scripting support question about Netscape to which I responded:

You don’t say what version of Netscape. If it’s 4.x, I don’t even have it
loaded any more, so I can’t debug it at all. It’s time to let it break and
force people to wake up and get a decent browser.

The response I received said (edited for clarity):

The version I use is 4.79. The application has to be compatible with every browser.

No it does NOT have to be compatible with EVERY browser. Are you making it work with Lynx? Are you making it work with Spyglass Mosaic 1.0? Are you making it work with Cello? Are you making it work with Netscape 2.0? Of course not. They’re all irrelevant to web applications. So too is NS4.x but it won’t ever lay down and die as long as people keep propping it up with superhuman hacks.

I was describing Netscape Communicator 4.x today in a BlogChat discussion with Albert Delgado, who runs the Whittier School site and is a very active guy in education and technology.

10:08:35 brent: Netscape 4.x is DEFINITELY not up to the task.
10:08:51 brent: it’s a horse and buggy.
10:09:10 brent: or rather it’s hoarse and buggy.
10:09:12 brent: heh heh

Tim Aiello has noticed that big publishing is realizing there is some value in the internet. Go read what Tim has to say.

I worked closely with Tim on the QuikkTutor product – a remarkably advanced live internet collaboration tool that works entirely within the browser.

Wired News reports that the Dallas Morning News has a daft, impossible to enforce Terms of Service page forbidding deep linking on their site. You MUST link only to their main page, they say, as they contend that by using their site you have entered into a legal agreement to be bound by these terms that are behind an unobtrusive link at the bottom of their page that you’re not forced to view.

Of course, they do nothing at all to enforce this via the web server. Anybody with even the remotest clue of running a web server could enforce single-point entry. But NOOOO, they’d rather fritter away their lives in petty litigation about linking than simply stop it from being possible.

It makes you wonder whether their web services people must be in collusion with the guys they get to do their cease and desist letters.

Able Baker Charlie Delta Echo Foxtrot… in some places it’s pretty easy to spell things over the phone, because they use a spoken-letter convention – military, aviation, medical.

I like having fun with them by substituting some of my own:

A as in “aesthetic”
C as in “cite”
K as in “knight”
M as in “mnemonic”
O as in “Oedipus”
P as in “ptarmigan”

I’ve decided to extend the BlogChat beta period at least through the summer to give us time to thoroughly investigate some things. So, everyone can continue to yak away unfettered. Send comments and new beta participation requests as usual to beta@blogchat.com.

I wanted to generate some reasonable passwords but make them rememberable. I looked into pronounceable passwords, but they relied on dictionaries or other support files, so I came up with a new approach – the Sport Score password. These passwords are designed to be remembered as a College sport score, for instance: Password KY5MA9 is remembered as Kentucky 5, Massachusetts 9.

50 states x 50 states x 10 x 10 = 250,000 unique passwords, good enough for many needs.

Here’s the PHP code…
Read the rest of this entry ?

When I lived in the UK in the early 80’s, I had the pleasure of living in a small village near Maidstone, Kent, called Platt’s Heath. Quite a different way of life, each village has a real identity. Various members of my wife’s family live in small villages and hamlets in the northeast of England, so I’ve had occasion to sample the village life there as well. Up until recently, I was a fully paid member of the Seghill Workingmen’s Club in Seghill, Northumberland, near Newcastle upon Tyne.

Simon Warrick has built a really neat website at villages.co.uk where villages can register their websites and become part of a larger village life community.

What a great place to go to take a virtual trip through the countryside and plan what would surely be a memorable holiday.

I became aware of the site because Simon uses my JSRS library to fill dropdown lists from the server without refreshing the page.