Andrew Hagen

This concerns the common goal of setting up a wireless home network that resists hacking attempts. At present this can be a somewhat difficult undertaking.
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The software that runs this web log, Wordpress, is hosted by the site at wordpress dot org. It was revealed today that that site is infested with spam intended to secretly enrich advertisers through manipulating search engine results. Slashdot has the story. (*) There is no excuse for this disgraceful behavior by the parties responsible.

I had no idea this was going on until today. The Wordpress leadership team can no longer be trusted. I will migrate this site away from Wordpress and to another system as soon as possible.

In the meantime, I have removed all hyperlinks to Wordpress dot org.

While andrewhagen.com has never intentionally participated in any spam campaign, I wish to now take all necessary steps to completely disassociate myself and this site from Wordpress.

I encourage all bloggers using Wordpress to abandon that software permanently.

Update: 2007.03.02. Long ago, the person stopped the practice. (†) Since then, Wordpress has not been in a position of intentionally spamming.

Is the e-mail address about to become the universal “identity card” on the Internet? I say it is.
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Feces Flinging Monkey is one of the latest converts to Firefox. (*) Firefox is a web browser, just like Internet Explorer, except a lot better. We are talking the modern era versus the Stone Age here. As FFM is finding, if you think the Internet is limited to what that little blue “e” can do, you’re going to miss a lot.
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The winter months have wearied of their sovereignty over our humble land, and a sense of change awakens us, dreadful and florid.

Recently I was working on the design of this site. I wanted to implement a certain combination of features. Eventually, I would learn, such a web site cannot exist. It is impossible with current standards. This impossible combination of (X)HTML and CSS requires:

• a three column layout with header, each column stretching all the way to the bottom;
• a footer always at the bottom covering the full width of the page, no matter which of the three columns is the longest on any one page;
• no use of Javascript;
• no CSS hacks
• no use of tables for laying out the columns;
• and the columns appearing in any order in the (X)HTML. For example, if the columns were numbered from left to right as 1, 2, and 3, the columns must be able to appear in the (X)HTML in the order of 2, 1, 3, or in any other order without affecting the look of the site. This is important for accessibility. A “skip to content” link is an undesirable kludge.

Only if you subtract a feature might you create such a thing. Someday the Internet powers that be may see fit to bless us with an enhanced set of standards that allows this humble design, and then at long last the web browsers will support it. Storm clouds will then disperse, birds will chirp cheerfully, flowers will radiate vibrant colors, and cries of “Huzzah” will fill the sweet spring air. Until then compromise will substitute for joy.

A company called Northgate Computer Systems made a line of popular keyboards. It went bankrupt several years ago. Recently I was using one of the keyboards and ran into a problem. The keys were remapped, preventing touch typing. The solution turned out to be easy. There is not much on this problem in the search engines.
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Slashdot has a story with discussion on the problem of web pages that disappear. (*) This is especially troubling for academic disciplines, because references to web pages stop working.

Here is a solution. (more…)

What if the Internet were to go down? What would you do? (*)