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A New Approach to Web Applications

Ajax is shorthand for Asynchronous JavaScript + XML.  It's a combination of widespread web technologies like XHTML and CSS and the esoteric XMLHttpRequest object which enables web clients to retrieve XML data in the background.  When cleverly tied together with JavaScript, the results can be impessive. 

Jesse James Garrett has a great article on Ajax here.  (His company, Adaptive Path is taking credit for coining the term.)

You can see Ajax at work at two new Google sites – Google Suggest and Google Maps.

Good Pain & Bad Pain

"There is good pain and bad pain. You want the kind of pain you get from going running, not the kind you get from stepping on a nail."

Paul Graham  - Essayist, programmer, and programming language designer.  (Yes, that's two quotes by Paul Graham on my blog - if you're not reading his stuff by now, I highly recommend it.)

Life's Top 10 Greatest Inventions

NewScientist.com has an interesting article about life's top 10 greatest inventions.  Death as an evolutionary strategy made number seven.  Now that's something that I haven't thought about...

Paul Graham on Style

"When you're forced to be simple, you're forced to face the real problem. When you can't deliver ornament, you have to deliver substance."

Paul Graham  - Essayist, programmer, and programming language designer.

ACLU Genius

I don't know if it is because those at the ACLU don't understand technology, of if they're just trying to make headlines, but I just don’t get it.  Why are they fighting so hard to make material inappropriate for children so easily accessible?

Once again America has the classic fight on its hands.  On one side you have the ultra-conservatives who want to completely ban all materials that they deem indecent.  On the other, you have the ACLU who fights against all categorization of such materials.

Adult book/video stores have to identify themselves on the outside of the building and they are not allowed to let children under 18 in.  Why is the ACLU so adamantly against a similar model for web sites?  It would be ridiculously easy to setup without sophisticated and unreliable filtering software.

We have the .com domain names.  Let's setup new top-level domain for adult-oriented sites.  If you put up indecent material on a site without this domain, you get fined.  Any library or home providing internet access to children can simply block those sites - without having to rely upon sophisticated and unreliable software filters.

And if you have a site, but feel your liberties are being stomped-on because the government-sponsored internet requires an adult domain - you have two options.  Take them to court and have a judge decide if your material is indecent, or setup your own internet.

I think adult content should be freely available to any adult who wants it, but parents should have the same freedom to protect their children.  The ACLU fights for some things I believe in, but in this case, they are redefining idiocy.