Web, Internet, Computing
« Previous EntriesDoes the New York Times paywall misuse HTTP?
Thursday, December 1st, 2011Many people have commented on the pros and cons of the New York Times paywall. Most of these comments debate the effectiveness of the paywall in meeting the Times’ financial goals, discuss ways in which users will circumvent the paywall, etc. Here I’d like to explore a different issue: it seems to me that the [...]
Detecting ISPs that violate network neutrality
Sunday, August 21st, 2011Dan Kaminsky has a really interesting talk at Chaos Communication Camp 2011 showing how to quite reliably detect ISPs that artificially delay traffic to particular sites (video of Dan’s talk). Note that the first 2/3 of the talk is a very interesting exploration of the security characteristics of Bitcoin, also showing how the Bitcoin database [...]
Documents in applications
Tuesday, March 8th, 2011It has become fashionable to divide Web resources into two broad categories: each resource is either a document, rendered primarily in HTML, or an AJAX-style Web application that uses Javascript to facilitate very dynamic interaction, navigation and information retrieval. My purpose here is to argue that we need to be more careful, that many AJAX [...]
Jeni Tennison appointed to the TAG
Monday, March 7th, 2011When I said all those nice things about Jeni Tennison yesterday I was not yet aware that she had been appointed to join our W3C Technical Architecture Group. Well, now she has been. Terrific news for us and for the Web!
Jeni’s terrific post on #!
Monday, March 7th, 2011There are excellent introductions to the !# controversy available from Tim Bray (Broken links) and Mike Davies (Breaking the Web with hasb-bangs), but Jeni Tennison last night posted a truly remarkable, detailed and insightful analysis. Very, very highly recommended. I confess that I’m not entirely comfortable with her conclusion that “hash-bang URIs are an important [...]
Some interesting readings in Computer Science
Friday, January 21st, 2011I’ve just posted on the main Arcane Domain Web site a short bibliography of Computer Science papers that I have found to be particularly worthwhile. There’s no attempt here to be comprehensive or balanced. Rather, it’s a list of papers that I think are interesting, well written, of unusual historical significance, or just under-appreciated. A [...]
The Web is 20 Years Old Today
Saturday, December 25th, 2010Twenty years ago today, on December 25th, 1990, Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau first successfully connected a browser to a Web server — the Web as an operational system is 20 years old today.
Norm Walsh on XML and JSON
Wednesday, November 17th, 2010There’s been a lot of fuss lately about the widespread adoption of JSON for Web APIs, and a sense in some quarters that this represents a failure for XML. Norm Walsh has a new post summarizing the pros and cons of JSON vs. XML, and as usual, Norm has it exactly right: (somewhat rearranging Norm’s [...]
Doug Crockford: Go slow on HTML5 until security concerns are addressed
Wednesday, September 29th, 2010There’s a very interesting article in the Web Security Journal quoting Javascript expert Doug Crockford on HTML 5 and security. Doug’s point is basically: we had bad security problems with HTML and the Web before HTML5 was proposed. What should have been done was to focus on getting a good, clean, secure architecture for core [...]
James Gosling Interview
Tuesday, September 28th, 2010There’s a transcript of a terrific interview with James Gosling available at http://www.basementcoders.com/transcripts/James_Gosling_Transcript.html. Lots of irreverent, insightful comments on Java, Oracle, open source, Google and the Android suit, etc.
Type too fast, melt your processor?
Saturday, September 25th, 2010Not really, of course, but there’s a nice ASPLOS XV paper from Mesa-Martínez et. al. titled Characterizing Processor Thermal Behavior which explains, among other things: “…each [Emacs] keystroke generates around 1◦ C thermal spike…” Who knew? In their tests, the startup phase of Emacs raised the processor temperature in the area being measured (simulated) by [...]
Interesting History of Java & thoughts on the Oracle/Google Android lawsuit
Wednesday, August 18th, 2010Charles Nutter has an interesting post titled My Thoughts on Oracle v. Google. It gives a quite detailed history of the Java platform, and some thoughts on the recent lawsuit by Oracle against Google. I’m not in a position to comment on the accuracy of all the details, but I found it to be thought-provoking, [...]
Excellent “What’s new in HTML5?” cheat sheet
Wednesday, August 18th, 2010From Mark Pilgrim by way of DaveO: HTML5 Peeks, Pokes and Pointers, an excellent quick guide to new syntax and Javascript APIs in HTML5. See also Mark’s Dive into HTML5.
Worldwide celebration of Dan Connolly’s contributions to the Web
Monday, July 12th, 2010Few people have contributed more to the development of the World Wide Web than my good friend Dan Connolly. After many years at the W3C, Dan is moving on the University of Kansas Medical Center. To thank Dan for his unique contributions to the Web, Tim Berners-Lee has organized a worldwide celebration for this Wed, [...]
Sanjiva on 10 Years of SOAP
Thursday, June 24th, 2010I just noticed that in April, Sanjiva Weerawarana posted his own thoughts on 10 years of SOAP, with a somewhat more positive perspective than mine. I also see that his posting predates mine, so it seems we each noted the anniversary independently. For those who don’t know, Sanjiva has been one of the most important [...]
« Previous Entries