Simon Willison’s Weblog

Subscribe

Tuesday, 17th February 2004

End user license agreements hit a new low

So apparently there’s an unpleasant worm going around AOL Instant Messenger at the moment. Only it’s not a worm—it’s a semi-legitimate piece of adware which asks you for permission to “modify the instant messenger software, deliver additional content such as advertisements and promotional messages” and announces that “In addition, the software will interoperate with your current instant messaging client so as to permit the automatic sending of advertising messages originating from your computer to your contact or ’buddy’ list regarding content offered by PSD Tools or its suppliers.”

[... 126 words]

What’s New in Python 2.4. An early look at Python 2.4’s new proposed features. # 2:21 am

Hacking the political system

Danny O’Brien has a fascinating post up about the nature of hacking and how to game entrenched political systems. It’s all worth reading, but the part about how Fax Your MP was created as a deliberate political hack in particular caught my attention. I’ve long been a fan of Fax Your MP and it’s really interesting to see some of the ideas behind the system explained:

[... 380 words]

EtherPEG (via) Watch GIFs and JPEGs loaded on your local network # 2:10 am

Automatic line ending conversions in IE

I’ve just updated my SitePoint blog with a tale of Javascript debugging woe. To cut a long story short, Internet Explorer for both Mac and Windows automatically converts sane line endings in to the platform specific alternatives whenever you assign a Javascript string to the value attribute of a text area. It’s the kind of quirk that can take up a whole morning’s worth of debugging.

[... 71 words]

2004 » February

MTWTFSS
      1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829