By John Gruber
WorkOS launches auth.md — an open protocol for agent registration.
Linked List: March 4, 2008
Tuesday, 4 March 2008
- U.S. Treasury Department Shuts Down Foreign-Owned Domain Names ★
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Kevin Drum, regarding this story in today’s Times about an English travel agent whose domain names were shut off by the U.S. Treasury Department:
So that’s that. Register your domain name through a U.S. company and your business goes kaput if the U.S. Treasury Department decides it doesn’t like you. It doesn’t matter if you’re based in Britain, your servers are in the Bahamas, your customers are mostly European, and you’ve broken no laws. No warning. Just kaput.
Solution: make sure your business has as little connection to the U.S. as you possibly can. I’m sure the rest of the world is getting this message loud and clear.
- Microsoft Changes Course Regarding IE8 and Standards Mode ★
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Dean Hachamovitch, general manager for Internet Explorer:
We’ve decided that IE8 will, by default, interpret web content in the most standards compliant way it can. This decision is a change from what we’ve posted previously.
For background, see this link from January and a few below it.
- whocalled.us ★
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A great domain name for a great idea: a public database of Caller-ID-resistant telemarketers. (Via Kevin Copeland.)
- Audiophiles Can’t Tell Difference Between Monster Audio Cables and Coat Hangers ★
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Well, they could probably tell the difference at the cash register.
- Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Official Homepage ★
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Quite a web site for one of the most successful companies in the world. View source to fully enjoy the Adobe PageMill HTML 2.0 love. It’s funny, but I’m not holding it up to mockery. Given Warren Buffet’s homespun keep-it-simple philosophy, somehow this site, ridiculous as it is, seems appropriate.
- Making Book ★
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Regarding the aforelinked TMN 2008 Tournament of Books, my friends at Coudal Partners have created a splendid side project: a wagering pool, with every dollar wagered going to First Book, “a nonprofit organization with a single mission: to give children from low-income families the opportunity to read and own their first new books.”
Even better, your $10 wager is worth up to $90, thanks to nine companies that are each matching up to $1000 worth of wagers (including Daring Fireball).
- The Morning News 2008 Tournament of Books ★
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The Morning News has announced the judges and bracket (PDF) for their fourth annual Tournament of Books.
- Gary Gygax Dies at 69 ★
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Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons and the author of the original AD&D books, died today at age 69. Chicken John Rinaldi writes:
Gary Gygax saved more lives than penicillin. When I was 10, he was 39. He knew he was writing a book for 10 year olds… but never talked down to us. He was the only adult presence in my life from the time I was 10 to the time I was like 15 that didn’t preach, didn’t talk down and didn’t have any parameters.
What made Gygax’s D&D so brilliant — and so appealing, I’m guessing, to many Daring Fireball readers — was that it was both a rich fantasy milieu and a very clever rule-based system.