3 Coins in the Fountain
It seems the mighty triumvirate, Google, Firefox and Opensource is gaining in power and influence every day. New converts to the cause are being recruited not only from the ranks of the online savvy, but popularity among just plain folks is also on the rise.
One reason could be that the democratic model for development and commerce on the Web espoused by the three groups makes it truly easy for any prospective net-trepreneur to get started:
“Not so long ago, anyone wanting to put up a decent commercial Web site had to spend thousands of dollars. But today, because of the availability of free blog and CMS scripts, truly anyone can have a great looking, great functioning Web site in minutes, for nothing.
Free blog scripts like Wordpress and free CMS scripts like Joomla power some of the Web’s most highly trafficked sites. I could write many paragraphs telling you how great these scripts are and how easy they make it for even one person to operate a Web site, or many Web sites. But suffice it to say that they are as good as anything you once had to mortgage the house to build.
The Old Thinking
Now, to properly understand how this is possible, you have to let go of the idea that to get something good you have to spend a lot of money. You also have to break from the belief that free stuff sucks or comes with a catch. I know, it sounds unbelievable, even as I type the words. But it’s true. I’ll explain.
I run Windows XP Pro on my desktops. For the most part, I am satisfied with it. It cannot escape my notice, however, that Windows software is expensive. Nor can it escape my attention that the software I buy from Microsoft reflects the ultimate ideas of just a few people in control… more
Google Adsense Tracking Script
If you’re looking for a way to monitor adsense, then you have come to the right place. Here you’ll find the popular adsense monitoring script that notifies you by email, pager or phone with adsense updates. You will also find a number of tools, such as adsense preview, also known as the adsense sandbox.
Free Ad Tracking script – w email updates!
I created this adsense tracking script because I wanted a way to automatically monitor my contextual ads. My current contextual advertiser is Google’s AdSense program, so the utility is designed around AdSense…more
DOWNLOAD ADSENSE TRACKING SCRIPT 5.0
To GIF, not to GIF
There are no GIFs on the GNU web site because of the patents (Unisys and IBM) covering the LZW compression algorithm which is used in making GIF files. These patents make it impossible to have free software to generate proper GIFs. They also apply to the compress program, which is why GNU does not use it or its format.
Unisys and IBM both applied for patents in 1983. Unisys (and perhaps IBM) applied for these patents in a number of countries. Of the places whose patent databases we were able to search, the latest expiration date seems to be Friday 11 August 2006 1. Until then, anyone who releases a free program for making GIF files is likely to be sued. We don’t know any reason to think that the patent owners would lose these lawsuits.
If we released such a program, Unisys and IBM might think it wiser (for public relations reasons) not to sue a charity like the FSF. They could instead sue the users of the program, including the companies who redistribute GNU software. We feel it would not be responsible behavior for us to set up this situation…more
Wordpress 2.0
WordPress was born out of a desire for an elegant, well-architectured personal publishing system built on PHP and MySQL and licensed under the GPL. It is the official successor of b2/cafelog. WordPress is fresh software, but its roots and development go back to 2001. It is a mature and stable product. We hope by focusing on user experience and web standard we can create a tool different from anything else out there…more
TextPattern Blog Script
A free, flexible, elegant, easy-to-use content management system for all kinds of websites, even weblogs.
When it comes to publishing on the internet, beginners and experts alike are met with a bothersome paradox: word processors and graphics applications allow anyone to do a pretty good job of managing text and images on a personal computer, but to make these available to the worldwide web, a seemingly similar environment of documents and destinations, ease of use vanishes behind sudden requirements for multilingual programming skills, proficiency in computer-based graphic design, and, ultimately, the patience of a saint…more
Spyware is a "virus"
Now that many of the activist-hackers of the early 90’s have grown up and discovered it’s even cooler to have a 9,000 square foot home and a Ferrari than “changing the world” with CODED MESSAGES ever was, we’re in a position to understand the recent harmful innovations in MARKETING that now plague all our machines as the intelligent evolution of Virus Craft in a less (intentionally) destructive direction, towards good-old-fashion make-a-buck-in-any-way-you-can-get-away-with Entrepreneurialsm.
What do YOU think—should spyware distributors fall subject to the same (morally-supported) penalties as traditional Bug Makers?
The approriate law to address the issue here does NOT YET exist, which is among the reasons I wanted to go through this exercise.
We’re facing activities here that are (I think we all agree on this point) crossing lines beyond which the law SHOULD get involved.
What I have discovered by reading the posts in this thread is that many of you ARE distracted enough by the technical differences between Viruses and Spyware to be UNABLE to consider the comparison I intended—based on effect, not infection vector.
The reason I posed the question as I did is not because I don’t understand the difference between the different types of programs—I do, as well as any of you, I assure you.
The reason I framed the comparison as such is simply because in the case of “Viruses”, we (all of us, as prospective plaintiffs) can immediately benefit from the fact that the law has both precedent of action and scope of inclusion, across a broad range of cases. So that if and when we decide we’ve had enough of what Spyware distributors are doing (and getting away with in the guise of e-marketing), we can rely on the understanding of DENIAL OF SERVICE we have achieved via the pursuit and prosecution of Hackers and e-Virologists. But, to do that, we have to begin to separate the method from the effects…more
Affiliate Patent
A company, BTG, has acquired a "patent they claim" is the basis of all affiliate programs on the eb. "The patents cover the transmission of the URL (web address) of one site to another. When a user clicks an external link on one site in order to navigate to another, the address of the original site is sent as part of the request so that the next site can use it to determine which site the user came from. This information is used to allow the user to return to the old site, or to pay the owners of the old site a referral fee.
This is simply ridiculous. The Internet itself is arguably infringing on this patent:
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a unified system for capturing and tracking a co-marketing source which directed a new subscriber to an on-line service. It is a further object of the present invention to provide a system for capturing and tracking information identifying a co-marketing source which directed a new subscriber to an on-line service, which requires no participation or intervention from the new subscriber. It is a still further object of the present invention to provide a system for attaching navigational history information to a user traversing the world wide web so that a current web site could determine electronically at least the previous world wide web site visited by the user. It is a still further object of the present invention to provide a system which could be used in conjunction with relative universal resource locator addressing, which permitted a user in a particular directory at a web site to move up a directory tree. These and other objects of the invention will become apparent from the description of the invention which follows.
This is even broader than Bezos’ unenforceable patent attempt. It seems to focus no more sharply than "continuity of data association"—Forget about it.
Tim O’Reilly said it well in 2000. I think it still sounds good today:
"I also want to say that a patent [like this] is a slap in the face of
Tim Berners-Lee and all of the other pioneers who created the opportunity that
Amazon has done such a good job of exploiting. Amazon wouldn’t have existed
without the generosity of people like Tim, who made legitimate, far-reaching
inventions, and put them out into the public domain for all to build upon. Anyone
who puts a small gloss on this fundamental technology, calls it proprietary,
and then tries to keep others from building further on it, is a thief. The gift
was given to all of us, and anyone who tries to make it their own is stealing
our patrimony. Patents like this are also incredibly short-sighted! The web
has exploded because it was an open platform that sparked countless innovations
by users. Fence in that platform, and who knows what opportunities will never
come to light? I urge Amazon to give up on this patent. I am confident that
it will eventually be overturned in any case… more
The Web has been developed under a certain set of informal groundrules, where imitation was the sincerest form of flattery. Those rules are under attack, as companies decide the Web is "good enough" and now they are going to change the rules under which it developed, and stop others from copying them. We have to strike now, before exclusionary and proprietary approaches become accepted practice. At the end of the day, a culture is ruled not just by its laws but by its social norms. The social norms of the Internet and of the Open Source community, which have proven so productive in the development of the Web, need to be recognized, honored, and upheld. The public relations cost of violating those norms needs to be high…more
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