Google 20 year USENET Archive

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Once again, Dave Winer has provided me with an awesome link. Google has just released their 20 Year Usenet Archive. For those who love Internet history, they have highlighted some great moments from the first posting about AIDs to Linus Torvald's announcement of Linux. Enjoy!

Wired has an article on Google's groups as well. Another fun thing to try if you ever posted is to perform a search on your name. I've found multiple posts regarding questions on databases, viruses, server side programming, photoshop and weightlifting that I posed, comments on HTML copywright, answers to HTML formatting, CGI scripts, Windows 3.1 Winsock (ouch!) and falling victim to a chain thread in the early days. The list goes on and on! I had no idea I posted to USENET so much. By searching for "Michael Glenn" uwo , I found 252 hits. All so far, appear to be mine. Now I know why I receive so much spam.

The Server Side

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The Toronto Java Users Group had Floyd Marinescu present "The design and implementation of TheServerSide.com J2EE Community". Floyd is the architect behind TheServerSide.comand gave a fantastic presentation showing a good framework for building dynamic web sites based on J2EE. I'm going to start implementing some of those features behind my Cocoon sites. Check out his site when you have a chance.

Why I avoid Microsoft programming tools.

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Joel Spolsky's Working on CityDesk, Part Four is a good example of why I refuse to work with Microsoft tools for programming. Let someone else deal with the documentation headaches and lack of source code.

The Microsoft bashing is tiring but my main beef is lack of information. I've worked on two Microsoft ASP based web sites and both times the simplest problems resulted in hours if not days of frustration trying to figure out why certain functions wouldn't work. In all cases a lack of documentation prevented me from obtaining the answer.

Documentation is a pain in the butt to write but it makes things much easier for the programers / user. At least a Java stack trace while not pretty is better than a Microsoft error 9857362. Which BTW, will cost you something to figure out either via Technet or a support phone call.

Articles like Joel's remind me why I should strive to make the user experience better and at least strive for a clear message when developing.

Tim Berners-Lee on Compatibility

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"I have fought since the beginning of the Web for its openness: that anyone can read Web pages with any software running on any hardware. This is what makes the Web itself. This is the environment into which so many people have invested so much energy and creativity. When I see any Web site claim to be only readable using particular hardware or software, I cringe - they are pining for the bad old days when each piece of information need a different program to access it. " - Tim Berners-Lee on Microsoft's Latest Browser Tricks.

In the Name of Religion

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I think it's human nature to seek retribution. Hiding behind a religion makes it that much worse, not justifiable.

Time and again military leaders describe their actions with references to Islam or Christianity. Neither religion approves of the hatred towards your enemies. In fact both practice forgiveness.

You want to wage war against your enemies, fine. But don't hide behind your religion when it advocates a peaceful solution. Religion isn't even what this is about. Referring to "your god" will only polarize the issue.

A Memo to American Muslims
Love Your Enemies