On 07-Jun-01 Ben Rosenberg wrote:
When you get slammed by the WallStreet Journal..you've been slammed...all I can say is DAAAAAAAAAAAMN!
http://public.wsj.com/sn/y/SB991862595554629527.html
Microsoft's Internet Explorer Smart Tags are something new and dangerous. They mean that the company that controls the Web browser is using that power to actually alter others' Web sites to its own advantage. Microsoft has a perfect right to sell services. But by using its dominant software to do so, it will be tilting the playing field and threatening editorial integrity.
I'm a little bit puzzled by this. Does the above (quoted from the
final paragraph of the URL given) mean that someone who uses
Smart Tags when accessing, say, my web page will alter the content
of my file which is on my server for my web page?
Or does it simply mean that the view -- on their own computer --
which that person obtains will be different from the view I
intended them to get (without altering my original file)?
If the latter, this reminds me very much of something which
was going the rounds a few years ago, whose name I've now
forgotten (let's call it "graffiti") which enabled people
to _apparently_ write all over other people's web pages
(or, as it was euphemistically put, "add commentaries".
The principle was, that a user would install the "graffiti"
software. When a web site was apparently accessed, "graffiti"
would in fact access a remote "graffiti" site and look up the
URL in a database. The purported web page would then be
retrieved from the database instead of the true URL. But of
course, by this time the version on the "graffiti" database
had been scribbled all over by other users; and the user
making the access could himself add scribblings to the version
in the "graffiti" database.
In effect, therefore, someone using "graffiti" would not in
fact be accessing my real URL at all, but a modified "copy"
stored on the "graffiti" system. And only users using "graffiti"
would enjoy this privilege: other users would see my original.
There was some concern at the time about misuse for libellous
purposes. For instance, a University might have introductory
pages about its courses for prospective students. "Graffiti" would
allow disgruntled [ex-]students or other malicious persons to
add comments like "this course is crap and Professor So-and-So
who teaches it is incompetent", which is what would first be
seen by prospective students who were also "graffiti" users.
Are we talking about the same sort of thing with Smart Tags?
Ted.
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E-Mail: (Ted Harding)