An alternative to .Net
Sure, Microsoft wants to turn the Internet into Net. But there are other proposals to turn the Internet into the world's largest middleware layer.
The goal of Piper is to develop ways to turn 'Net services and applications into objects, which could then be connected into even more powerful applications through something as simple as drawing lines between them on a client-side GUI.
Only the graphical representation of an object resides on a local workstation. Compute-intensive programs and large data sets can reside remotely on high-performance, high-capacity computers.Joining nodes across the Internet can also be used to form world-wide collaboratives ... and provide an almost limitless collection of objects for the user.
They've already got some software and documentation for you to download and play with.
But does it get soggy in milk?
The Crunch Browser is a version of Internet Explorer 5 with a Cap'n Crunch theme (Windows 95, 98 and NT only).
It's cooler in theory than in practice. When you install it, you get a yellowish toolbar with outlines of little cap'n's hats, and your default home page changes to www.capncrunch.com. And that's it (first spotted by Mr. Barrett).
10/11/00
Ranking the domain registrars
It was inevitable. There are so many domain registrars out there now, somebody was bound to get the idea to do a site to rank them.
DomainNameBuyersGuide.com ranks the registrars by price and by the terms of their registration agreements (there's also an overall ranking that combines the two). Registrars with potential problems get a big flashing Consumer Alert. The site also has an FAQ on selecting a registrar (thanks to Weblogging Considered Harmful for spotting this one).
Bzzzt!
Wolf-Garten, a German garden-equipment maker, has developed a riding mower that comes with wireless Internet access. It also uses a laser beam to cut the grass instead of a blade. Progress marches on. You can see pictures of the beast and read more about it here.
10/11/00
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Either way you look at it Microsoft Data Center management did not follow standards or best practices in this failure. In which case it makes me wonder more about the outsourcing of corporate data much less personal data.
- mburton325
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