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New user? Monday, February 7, 2000
have browser, will travel
In response to my little piece about freed software, John "St. Nick" Nicholas shares his experience with a proprietary software company.
have browser, will travel
I received this e-mail from FreeMac today: (this is just a snippet)
Unfortunately, Apple Computer had a change of heart and decided not to allow us to purchase Apple iMacs from them at wholesale prices.
Frankly, we were surprised by Apple's decision, but we were not discouraged. We advised them that we would still be willing to acquire iMacs by paying FULL RETAIL PRICE! And Apple Computer still said no. They did more than say no. They prohibited their major retail accounts from selling us iMacs -- even at regular retail prices! And so we've reached a point where we have to deliver what I know is some very disappointing news to many of you. We simply aren't being allowed to purchase the iMac computers to distribute to you. Apple Computer has left us no choice here.
I'm not an economist, I'm not even good with money. Could somebody PLEASE EXPLAIN to me why Apple wouldn't want to sell a million iMacs to this company?
have browser, will travel
In case you haven't seen it, here's the silly security advisory from CERT.
This has been an issue since the beginning of web time - it's amusing that it's coming to the front now.
Dvorak believes CERT is now Microsoft's mouthpiece to help them revive the old proprietary MSN. I was a subscriber on MSN in '95 when Win95 came out. I actually liked that service. (ducking)
When I first read the CERT advisory, the first thing I thought was, "That's funny, WebObjects apps are immune to this problem!"
WebObjects' "WOString" element, which is used to output a string to a web page, has a property called "escapeHTML". It's set to YES (true) by default. To make a WO app vulnerable to "Cross-site scripting" holes, you'd have to set that property (manually) to NO (false).
Of course, there are times (not many, depending on your app) you need to set escapeHTML to NO, but when you do that, you need to be smart.
New Apple TechInfo Library Article: WebObjects and Dynamic Content. (Found at Stepwise)
Saturday, February 5, 2000
have browser, will travel
Late night opinion: Why I like freed software -- this article might be good for anyone who considers themself an "open source fence-sitter".
have browser, will travel
My thought for the day: I'm really really thankful to be a young webhead right now. Really thankful.
More personal reflection.... I collected comic books as a teenager. I had a LOT of comics. Like, over 2600 of them. I loved them, and at the time (the week before graduating from high-school), it killed me to sell my collection.
But, in hindsight, it was the smartest significant thing I had done up to that point! With the money, I bought my first "real" computer, a Mac LCII.
With that computer, I became re-obsessed with BBSs (my first obsession was on a C=64 with a 300bps modem card), and learned about and became obsessed with the Internet.
That led to the sysop of my favourite BBS convincing me to apply for the Computer Science co-op program at UVic instead of Civil Engineering at Camosun College. Which led to the career I have today, and my being very thankful for being a young webhead in 2000.
Thursday, February 3, 2000
have browser, will travel
Via HTPP: A new plan for Fizzilla, Mozilla for MacOS X. I almost thought Mike Pinkerton was cool, until:
Why not base Mozilla on Cocoa (Yellow Box)?
No one wants to write in objective-C.
That's not a cool thing to say.
Yes, I like Objective-C... developing with Cocoa and WebObjects in Obj-C is like butter! 
A more truthful answer would have been "there's no point in not using the Carbon code for the front-end, since it works."
Unfortunately, Fizzilla is now tied to PPC hardware. When MacOS X for Intel comes out <cough> it won't be a straight port, unless they bring Carbon to OS X Intel.
I'm hoping now that the GNUstep people will create a GNUstep FE to Mozilla that could be used on MacOS X. Yes, I'm a dreamer!
have browser, will travel
I just noticed this site is not on CamWorld's "Sites I read Often" list anymore... oh well. I was going to wish him good luck with his new job but he won't be reading this anyway.. I'll e-mail him instead.
Update: HBWT is back on Cam's list again. Cam assumed HBWT was dead, since I haven't been posting here much this year.
Still, the quality of HBWT pales in comparison to most of the sites on his list. If you're looking for new reading material, stop by any of the sites on his list you haven't been to yet, or recently.
