Håkon Wium Lie (CTO of Opera):
In the area of web browsers, Opera Software has proposed a specific kind of remedy - that Microsoft only be allowed to distribute standards-compliant browsers. Microsoft’s IE is bug-ridden and the company, despite its vast resources, has shown little interest in fixing problems that cost web designers time and sleep. IE dominates the web due to its being bundled with Windows. This forces web designers to prioritize coding for IE. Coding for standards-compliant browsers becomes a secondary consideration.
Microsoft is keenly aware of this and therefore has little interest in improving their support for standards. They will never become standards compliant unless forced by someone in a position to demand a change, something that users and customers are not. Requiring standard compliance would greatly lessen Microsoft’s monopolistic stranglehold in the web browser market, would delight web developers everywhere and would, ironically, make IE a better product.
He’s a fan of Microsoft’s latest proposals in conjunction with IE8…
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Found this tongue-in-cheek look at what a web designers/developers time is spent doing on a project… Funny, but scarily realistic!
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Don’t the ISP’s already have a revenue stream?!? I mean I do pay for my internet connection, why on earth would they think that i’d like adverts shoved down my throat as well! O2/Be - you better not be looking into this…
TechDirt has an interesting article about a UK-based company that is trying to work with ISPs to make use of user surfing data to serve targeted ads. “Late last year, we heard about a company that was trying to work with ISPs to make use of that data themselves to insert their own ads based on your surfing history — and now we’ve got the first report of some big ISPs moving into this realm. Over in the UK three big ISPs, BT, Carphone Warehouse and Virgin Media have announced plans to use your clickstream data to insert relevant ads as you surf through a new startup called Phorm.”
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Finally, a common sense response to all of these MacBook Air bashing articles. I admit - I don’t want one, i’d rather have a ‘regular’ MacBook or a MacBook Pro, but there are people out there that would want something like this…
Direct from the Canadian Ministry of Silly Punditry we learn that the MacBook Air may increase risk of laptop loss (tip o’ the antlers to Colin Morton).
Indeed. The only way to ensure your laptop won’t get stolen is to buy big fat honkin’ ugly ones.
But, clearly, neither of those beats this gem from PC World’s Mike Barton:
MacBook Air Amiss: Time to License Mac OS X?
Good question! Like “I Have Stubbed My Toe And Find It Painful: Time to Commit Suicide?”
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Although I do have to admit to liking MS Office (and indeed MS Office 2007 is good), I have to agree with this recommendation. There is pretty much nothing MS Office could do that OpenOffice could not do for you in a school setting - so why shell out all that money for Office licenses and force the kids parents to as well (or resort to dodgy copies) when free software is good enough. And as for Vista… Linux has my vote for schools every time.
Britain Advises Against Vista, Office 2007 for Schools: “An anonymous reader writes ‘The British government’s educational IT authority has issued a report advising schools in the country not to upgrade their classroom or office systems to Windows Vista or Office 2007. According to this InformationWeek story, the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency says costs for Vista and Office 2007 ‘are significant and the benefits remain unclear.’ Instead, Becta is advising British schools to take a long look at Linux and open source suites like OpenOffice.org.”
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Just read this post on Slashdot:
“I registered a descriptive domain name (something like “thesimpledog.com”) and started a blog on it. About a month later I get a threatening letter from a link farmer who owns “simpledog.com” The owner of simpledog.com is claiming that he owns the trademark to the words simpledog even though he has no real business or rights by that name other than a static page with some text and Adsense slapped on it. There is no product, service or brand whatsoever. Does simply registering a two or three word domain give you instant trademark rights to those words even though you’ve never done anything with them? Should I give up my domain to a link farmer who is trying to bully me, or does he have a valid right to any phrase he registers that isn’t already trademarked?”
My opinion - tell him where to go. I thought the idea of a trademark was that you had to actively be using that name in a trade? He has no brand, no real business using that name (you can’t claim a static page full of AdSense links is a real business), and no product. He doesn’t have any sort of case, he’s just trying to bully the guy into give over his domain name… I hate stuff like this, when I was looking for a new domain name, every decent name I thought of was home to some troll like this. 
original article
