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Looks like I’m banned in China, as is my employer. Interesting project: Documentation of Internet Filtering Worldwide.

This is a big part of what bothers me about filtering software. If it can be used to protect children from sites they shouldn’t see, a laudable and necessary goal, what’s to prevent a government from “protecting” citizens from sites that it doesn’t want them to see?

Well, that and filtering doesn’t work: it blocks sites it shouldn’t and fails to block sites that it probably should, thus doing harm to educational opportunity.

MacASP 1.0 is now available. For €299.

Why? I mean, what on earth does this do for us? I suppose it might be helpful to those still running OS 8 or 9, but for far less than €299 you could upgrade to OS X and run Apaceh and PHP. If you have old hardware that can’t support OS X, you can run Linux.

OK, so maybe running a Linux server makes no sense for the “home users and low profit organizations” that are apparently the target market. Too, I suppose MacASP could be useful for those ASP junkies who for some reason are forced to run on old Mac hardware and want the comfort of a familiar environment. Even that doesn’t make much sense, since “MacASP language is NOT compatible with Microsoft ASP”.

I don’t know. I imagine that there’s a small market penetration to be made. I am wholly unfamiliar with the pre-OS X Mac web server market. But heck, even small non-profits running Macs could do better than this.

On ZDNet, “Has Apache peaked?” discusses the slow adoption of Apache 2.0, suggesting that the intended performance benefits in Apache 2.0 just aren’t there, pushing many either to other web servers or to remain on Apache 1.3.x.

It’s tempting to think that Apache 2.0 missed the boat. The vast majority of Web sites running it are hosted brochureware. The improvements in 2.0 are meaningless to them. Sites with higher-end needs are more likely to be running a higher-performance Apache alternative like IIS or Zeus already. And if an Apache site actually needs the performance improvements they would do well to treat the current version like a beta. This is how we all should think of it for now.

I have a different story. I’ve been keeping a close eye on Apache 2.0 and am anxious to use some of its new features, but we haven’t switched at work because mod_perl and PHP are not yet stable on Apache 2. It’s that simple. I suspect that this is why the “vast majority of Web sites running it are hosted brochureware” — not that Apache isn’t ready, but that third-party modules commonly used on complex sites aren’t ready for production. Until then, Apache 1.3.27 makes me quite happy, thankyouverymuch.

Introduction to the JavaScript Debugger — a.k.a. Venkman, one of the many reasons to use Mozilla. If you’re used to dealing with debuggers, you probably don’t need this. If you aren’t (like me, I’m ashamed to admit), then it’s worth a read.

I do so wish that I were at the Mac OS X conference going on right now. Here’s a rundown of the Mac OS X OpenOffice porting project: where it’s been, the issues they’ve had to consider, and so on. Interesting. Much of this is stuff that I haven’t considered, probably because I’ve never developed a GUI app for Unix, and don’t have a clear idea of what it takes to port Unix apps to OS X.

And I am so dang excited: sounds like a public beta of the X11 release of OpenOffice for OS X 10.2 will be released soon, like next week. And at the conference, the speaker unveiled an Aqua version of OpenOffice, called NeoOffice. <drool>

Based on Scott’s recommendation I bought Peter Gabriel’s new album, and he’s right: it’s great. I hardly ever listen to music anymore, something I’ve been thinking I should change, so this is a treat.

I knew I’d made the right decision when the very next day I saw the cover for Doris Lessing’s Sweetest Dream.

The hard part for me when I buy new music is that I am not a lyrics man. Hell, I’m hardly a music man. I can watch a movie and not even notice that there’s music — except when it’s conspicuously absent, as in the masterful final duel scene in Rob Roy. My musician friends, on the other hand (my friends always turn out to be musicians, it’s kind of eerie), walk out of a movie talking about nothing but the music. And there’s little ol’ me, wondering, “there was music?”

Even when I am deliberately listening to music, though, I am oblivious to lyrics. I can listen to a song over and over again, having no idea what the words are. So please don’t ask me for a favorite track on Up, because I just don’t know.

Damn fine album, though. Yessir.

The next version of Microsoft Word will include support for XML. What’s explained in this article sounds interesting but it’s too soon to be clear what it really means. It does not seem that XML will be the native file format, as is true with OpenOffice/StarOffice, which is a damn shame. That’s one of the many reasons I’m fond of OpenOffice, because it means that I can use those docs in all sorts of different ways.

Still, if Word content is in any way exportable or accessible using XML, this is a Good Thing. I’m sure that Microsoft will find a way to keep everything in the family, making it really easy to use with other Microsoft products but a pain in the ass to use anything else. We shall see.

Tim O’Reilly writes: “The reason I don’t want to see legislators mandating open source is simple: if legislators can be persuaded to mandate open source, they can equally well be persuaded to mandate against it, and once that battle is joined, I’m pretty clear who will win.”

Sun has released StarOffice 6.0. Nifty. I so wish that there were a version for the Mac. I was going to install the OpenOffice 1.0 developer build for OS X but decided it looked too unstable to mess with. If I were working on the project, that’d be one thing. But I’m not, I’m just looking for an office suite for K.

The real trick would be switching to StarOffice or OpenOffice at work. Fat chance.

LAX Internet Flight Tracking System, AirportMonitor. Follow the “LAX AirportMonitor™ – Internet Flight Tracking System” link.

Once you’ve read the background information and color key, you might want the direct link to AirportMonitor.

Java required.