From CNN

NEW YORK (AP) — Thirty-five years after computer scientists at UCLA linked two bulky computers using a 15-foot gray cable, testing a new way to exchange data over networks, what would ultimately become the Internet remains a work in progress.
…
Stephen Crocker and Vinton Cerf were among the graduate students who joined UCLA professor Len Kleinrock in an engineering lab on September 2, 1969, as bits of meaningless test data flowed silently between the two computers. By January, three other “nodes” joined the fledgling network.

Then came e-mail a few years later, a core communications protocol called TCP/IP in the late 1970s, the domain name system in the 1980s and the World Wide Web — now the second most popular application behind e-mail — in 1990. The Internet expanded beyond its initial military and educational domain into businesses and homes around the world.

I’m finally listed in the Google directory (basically a mirror of dmoz) under
- Computers/Internet/On_the_Web/Weblogs/Technology/

joatblog had an interesting link to an anti-IP hijacking site. Complete with an IP Hijacking Q&A and a list of known IP blocks which have been hijacked.

Now this is an interesting concept…if only I went out.

Or, had friends who were hip with this text messaging thing.

Does anyone know of an app that will convert XML files to CSV?

And no, I do not have access to the latest version of Microsoft Office. And Open Office could do it, but I’d be forced to create a filter by hand.

I just got a few and I headed over to Gmail4Troops.com to donate some invites to soldiers serving overseas.

Nothing like taking a quick check at site stats to discover that someone from a .mil IP address with a Baghdad Time (BT) timestamp was looking at your picture.

I wish I had seen this WP plugin for Update Linkroll earlier.

The plugin is used in WP 1.2 to update the linkroll. For some reason in 1.2 the one line of PHP used to update the linkroll had not been included in the index.php template.

// Uncomment the next line if you want to track blog updates from weblogs.com
//include_once(ABSPATH.WPINC.’/links-update-xml.php’);

Anyway, my linkroll should be updating now. We’ll see.

Update: I hadn’t realized that weblogs.com/changes.xml isn’t working anymore so I’m trying to use the blo.gs updating service http://blo.gs/changes10.xml.

does not mean we all have to follow.

In other words, on my blog, the words Internet, Web and Net will still be capitalized in postings. Those nouns, to me, do not represent a mere publishing system, but they denote places. Places where I exist. Places where I have existed for the last decade. And in proper English place names are capitalized.

However, I will note that isn’t it interesting that a Web magazine is declaring that the Internet, Web and Net are “another medium for delivering and receiving information”. Well duh…for Wired is the electronic version vastly different than the paper version? Not really — for Wired, it’s all about delivering content to consumers.

From NY Times

Earlier this month, Warner became the first major record label to ask MP3 blogs to play its music. The blogs - which are relatively new but increasingly popular - are personal Web sites that offer music criticism right next to the actual music, in the form of downloadable MP3 files.
But as is sometimes the case when marketers try to insinuate themselves into online communities, the company’s approach did not go as planned. Warner… ran into a culture clash with the small world of MP3 blogs, annoying some of the very people it wanted to win over, especially after one or more people at Warner apparently posted anonymous messages to make it appear that ordinary music fans were defending the label.
…
In the week after the song was posted on Music for Robots, a message board on the site attracted some thoughtful commentary on Warner’s move. But a few comments, posted under several different names, stood out because they looked like something one might read on a teen-pop fan site.
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A check of site records by Mr. Willett revealed that all four of the suspect comments had been posted from the same Internet Protocol address, indicating that they came from the same computer or from a computer within the same company. That address was also the source of two e-mail messages that Ms. Bechtel sent to a reporter, as well as the original messages sent to the bloggers.
The entertainment industry has for some years been going into chat rooms and message boards to promote its products. But Ms. Bechtel said this kind of activity was not part of the Secret Machines campaign. She said the comments could have been posted independently by fans of the band who worked at the company.
…
Mr. Willett said that it was obvious the favorable comments on his site had not been left by “real people,” and that they had soured his opinion of Warner Brothers’ Internet efforts. “I know we’re dealing in relatively uncharted territory here, but I’d expect a slightly different level of participation,” he said. “We’re not an AOL chat room.”

Hehe. The article summary could be written as “Music blogger pays attention to site stats, exposes amateurish attempts of BigMusicCo to gain blogger cred.” It’s nice to know that I’m not the only one who looks at site stats. After a bit of googling, I have found the Music for Robots Sells Out post for your edification and intellectual curiosity.

(One would think that the NY Times would maybe perhaps link the darn post they’re discussing, but apparently the idea of “contextual hyperlinking on the Web” hasn’t reached their online editors yet. )

Stupid comment spammer left a comment in an old story that attempted to appear somewhat legit but the one URL he used went to a site for pain meds. Interesting user agent.

Host: 61.30.47.21 Url: /index.php?s= Http Code : 200

Date: Aug 13 21:44:03 Http Version: HTTP/1.0″ Size in Bytes: 41677

Referer: - Agent: libwww-perl/5.800

From CNET

Few remember or have ever even heard of the Web retailer, but on Aug. 11, 1994, the college grads that founded NetMarket in Nashua, N.H., claimed they had conducted the very first secure retail transaction on the Web.
They said the first item purchased via a Web site protected by commercially available data encryption technology was the CD “Ten Summoner’s Tales” by Sting, according to former NetMarket founder Daniel Kohn.
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Web retailing began to flourish the following year, when Netscape (now a division of Time Warner) came out with a version of its Web browser that incorporated the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) security protocol, Kohn said. SSL creates a connection between a desktop computer, or client, and a server, over which data can be sent securely. The most recognizable sign of SSL at work are Web addresses that begin with “https:” rather than the more familiar “http:” designation.
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While 10 years of fine-tuning the technology have made e-commerce easier, data security remains a concern for online shoppers and merchants. Though SSL is nearly impossible to break, hackers have found other ways to attack, using computer viruses, “phishing” and other tricks.
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Despite the threats, most people are more comfortable than ever with shopping online, said Darin Sennett, director of design and technology, at Powell’s City of Books. The Portland, Oregon, book store has been taking orders online for nearly 10 years and has been largely unaffected by such attacks, he said.