Simon Willison’s Weblog

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I've been in this web standards game for five years now and probably have over 100 standards-based sites under my belt. I can count the number of times I've be involved in a redesign where no changes were made to the markup on one finger.

Jeff Croft

# 11th August 2007, 9:37 am / markup, html, css, jeff-croft

In an effort to improve all Google services, we will no longer offer the ability to buy or rent videos for download from Google Video [...] After August 15, 2007, you will no longer be able to view your purchased or rented videos.

Google Video e-mail

# 11th August 2007, 8:33 am / google, drm, dontbeevil, google-video

Erlang fits all the characteristics of an OO system, even though sequential Erlang is a functional language, not an OO language

Ralph Johnson

# 8th August 2007, 7:47 pm / erlang, programming, java, object-oriented-programming

Inline images are stored as data URI:s in the intermediate format (and usually also in the source documents), but since not all browsers support this format, the renderer replaces the data URI:s with HTTP pointers to an image cache directory.

Fredrik Lundh

# 7th August 2007, 10:52 am / django, datauri, http, fredrik-lundh

The recent announcement that Mozilla's next JavaScript engine, Tamarin, will also be a container for functionality written in Python and Ruby (and, one assumes, beyond) is proof that JavaScript is the new Parrot.

Aaron Straup Cope

# 29th July 2007, 9:17 pm / javascript, aaron-straup-cope, mozilla, python, ruby, tamarin, parrot

E-Trade financial tried using a RSA fob as a second factor of authentication, but as of their 11/07/06 financial report their fraud losses continue to increase. That said, they considered this program a success because users indicated they feel safer and are more likely to provide assets.

Usable Security

# 20th July 2007, 10:31 am / usablesecurity, etrade, rsa, rsafob, security, usability, securitytheatre

Every mashup attempts to expand until it can do social networking. Those that can't are replaced by those that can.

John Panzer

# 19th July 2007, 8:26 am / john-panzer, mashups, social-networking, jwz

Does the idea of redefining the role of the Internet browser appeal to you? Do the terms HTTP, RSS, Microformats, and OpenID, excite you? If so, then this just might be the opportunity for you.

IE Team Job Ad

# 18th July 2007, 7:43 am / http, rss, openid, microformats, microsoft, internet-explorer

I heard that Foxconn - the place that makes the iPods and iPhones - consumes 3,000 pigs a day.

Bunnie Huang

# 14th July 2007, 12:59 pm / ipod, iphone, china, bunnie-huang, apple, pigs

An OpenID provider should catalogue the sites that a user logs into and automatically construct a homepage for them. That way, not only do the users have the convenience of having their favourite websites automatically bookmarked and readily available, but (with a little help from the consumers), they don't have to log into the individual sites at all.

Bogtha

# 13th July 2007, 7:26 am / openid, ideas, reddit

Could someone please send, to whomever the hell teaches communication skills/techniques at Microsoft, a copy of the Chicago Manual, and perhaps a sixth - grade grammar text? I swear, there's almost no one from that company who can write a proper English sentence.

John C. Welch

# 12th July 2007, 6:23 pm / microsoft, john-c-welch, writing, english

You don't need business development people. If you're successful, companies will come to you. The deals will still be distractions and not worth doing, but at least you're not spending any effort trying to get them.

Mark Fletcher

# 12th July 2007, 5:50 pm / businessdevelopment, deals, mark-fletcher, startups

... if you're in an email conversation with one other person and you're both using Gmail, don't bother quoting at all.

Charles Miller

# 12th July 2007, 5:18 pm / email, charles-miller

It's easier for our software to compete with Linux when there's piracy than when there's not. Are you kidding? You can get the real thing, and you get the same price.

Bill Gates

# 11th July 2007, 3:09 pm / linux, china, bill-gates, piracy, salon

MooTools is not compatible with any other javascript framework. If you "definitely need to work with prototype" (which you don't, since the frameworks each provide all the functionality you need to use only one or the other) then learn how to do what you want to do in prototype. Otherwise, learn to use MooTools to do all the things you want to do. They simply do not work together, and I promise they never will.

Tom Occhino

# 8th July 2007, 7:29 am / libraries, mootools, javascript, prototype-js

WS-* is North Korea and REST is South Korea. While REST will go on to become an economic powerhouse with steadily increasing standards of living for all its citizens, WS-* is doomed to sixty years of starvation, poverty, tyranny, and defections until it eventually collapses from its own fundamental inadequacies and is absorbed into the more sensible policies of its neighbor to the South.

Elliotte Rusty Harold

# 7th July 2007, 9:40 am / rest, web-services, ws-star, korea, northkorea, southkorea, elliotte-rusty-harold

The music companies are in a dying business, and they know it. Sure, they act all cool because they hang around with rock stars. But beneath all the glamour these guys are actually operating two very low-tech businesses. One is a form of loan-sharking: they put up money to make records, then force recording artists to pay the money back with exorbitant interest. The other business is distribution.

Fake Steve Jobs

# 5th July 2007, 12:03 pm / music, riaa, apple, fakestevejobs, loansharks

There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things

Phil Karlton

# 5th July 2007, 12:46 am / caching, computer-science, phil-karlton, tim-bray, naming-things

I can't say enough good things about Django. Professionally, it was one of the best technical decisions that I got to make early on at Tabblo.

Antonio Rodriguez

# 3rd July 2007, 1:38 am / tabblo, django, antonio-rodriguez

There is a problem of managing identity across the internet, so when I say Darren Waters I mean this person and all of the manifestations and representations and personas of that person. The ability to knit those together is a huge challenge and opportunity for us as an industry.

Bradley Horowitz

# 1st July 2007, 8:54 am / bradley-horowitz, bbc, openid, identity

Once people see that a pretty good phone can be a pretty good mobile computer, they won’t settle for less anymore; and mobile networks will be pried open.

Ed Felten

# 29th June 2007, 4:58 pm / ed-felten, iphone, mobile

[...] Silverlight has full access to the browser DOM and you can make calls from Javascript into silverlight code and from Silverlight into Javascript. This means that you can already write the presentation layer of a client side web app in Javascript and implement your business logic in IronPython.

Michael Foord

# 16th June 2007, 12:25 am / ironpython, javascript, silverlight, fuzzyman, michael-foord

If you write a spec, write a validator alongside. How much pain could have been spared with early versions of RSS if we'd had a common, agreed upon validator. In short, it's the test suite that ultimately decides the spec.

Joe Heck

# 30th May 2007, 1:48 am / rss, validator, joe-heck, tim-bray, specifications

Now if WS-* technologies wants to own the niche of one proprietary platform technology talking to another in a homogeneous, closed environment...who cares? Good riddance I say. Just keep that shit off the Web.

Dare Obasanjo

# 26th May 2007, 10:23 pm / ws-star, dare-obasanjo, web-services

Lacking a Strunk and White Elements of Style for URI namespace, we've made a mess of it. It's long past time to grow up and recognize the serious importance of principled design in this infinitely large namespace.

Jon Udell

# 24th May 2007, 4:38 pm / urls, urldesign, jon-udell, strunkandwhite

The web can eat toolchain bait like this for breakfast.

Mike Shaver

# 11th May 2007, 3:43 pm / mike-shaver, apollo, flash, silverlight, mozilla

I'd like to ask readers of this site which you're more interested in, Sun's JavaFX or signing up for TissueWorld 2008, the Premiere Exhibition and Conference for the International Tissue Industry.

Stuart Langridge

# 9th May 2007, 7:46 pm / stuart-langridge, sun, java, javafx, tissueworld, funny

Just because Java was once aimed at a set-top box OS that didn't support multiple address spaces, and just because process creation in Windows used to be slow as a dog, doesn't mean that multiple processes (with judicious use of IPC) aren't a much better approach to writing apps for multi-CPU boxes than threads.

Guido van Rossum

# 8th May 2007, 9:21 pm / guido-van-rossum, threads, python, ipc, java, windows

... Facebook has roughly 200 dedicated memcached servers in its production environment, plus a small number of others for development and so on. A few of those 200 are hot spares. They are all 16GB 4-core AMD64 boxes, just because that's where the price/performance sweet spot is for us right now.

Steve Grimm

# 3rd May 2007, 10:36 pm / memcached, facebook, scaling, steve-grimm

People don't recognize how important URIs are. The notion that you have a huge, world-scale, information space, and that everything in it has an name and they're all just short strings that you can paint on the side of a bus; that's a new thing and a good thing.

Tim Bray

# 2nd May 2007, 8:23 pm / tim-bray, rest, urls, uris