I spotted this set of Google AdSense ads alongside a blog post talking about everyone’s favorite Web 2.0 activity, tagging. Readers should note that my tags do not come with “free biological support.”

Oh, this is good.

The state [of Texas] sued Sony BMG Music Entertainment on Monday under its new anti-spyware law, saying anti-piracy technology the company slipped into music CDs leaves computers vulnerable to hackers… The Texas spyware law allows the state to recover damages of up to $100,000 in damages for each violation. Abbott said there were thousands of violations…

Sure, it’s a Draconian money grab, but that’s the way these laws are designed. If you act like a spreader of sleazy spyware, you get hit like one.

Over on the Well, in a what-is-this-web-2.0-thing-anyway topic, I posted:

I’ve been thinking about starting a joke social networking/sharing site called “huester” where you can post your favorite colors, tag them, make RSS feeds of them…

Within a couple hours Jeffrey had posted a link to colorcombos.com. It’s a site that lets you post your favorite color combinations, tag them, make RSS feeds of them… The only thing it’s missing is friending.

Half an hour later Laura posted a link to colr.org. Tags, RSS feeds, and Ajax! They get bonus points for Ajax. And for omitting that last vowel.

This post on the 37signals blog validates something I have been saying for years, and have recently been telling my students to watch out for: client requests that hinge on the word “just.”

As in: “Can you just make this webcam grab into a 16x20 print?” Or, “Can you just make our shopping cart work like Amazon.com?”

“Just” means, “I have no idea how this is actually going to be accomplished, but I would like it to be instantaneous.”

Ten years ago today was the public launch of Salon (as salon1999.com, not salon.com). I can’t say that I’m surprised they have lasted, because their work has consistently been excellent.

Through Salon’s connection to the Well I have gotten glimpses of how hard they have worked over the years, and I’m glad that it has continued to pay off in terms of editorial quality and reader respect, if not guaranteed solvency. (I know that predicting the hour of Salon’s demise is a fixation for some – mostly people who read second-hand accounts of SEC filings, as far as I can tell.)

I won’t ask “why?” because I think it’s kind of neat – TrimPath Junction is an unabashed Javascript clone of Ruby on Rails that was released earlier this year. Requires a Javascript interpreter on your server of course. (For bonus points run it on a Javascript web server too.)

I have to admit that until looking at the Junction example code I had never realized that though Javascript has objects, it has no classes. That sent me off reading more about prototype-oriented languages (that Lua just keeps popping up).

A few days ago, Sourceforge got a makeover:

The SourceForge.net Engineering team has completed the implementation of a new look-and-feel for the SourceForge.net site. This is the first major change to the appearance of the SourceForge.net site in more than three years. This work is part of a planned incremental revamp to the SourceForge.net site. Initial focus has been placed on revamp of page header, footer, layout; and specific improvements to the SourceForge.net front page, project summary page, login page, file release page, and download page. Launched 2005-11-14.