Johnny Monsarrat link round-up
Following up on my earlier posting, some interesting reading on the Johnny Monsarrat lawsuit. The ones in bold are the juiciest.
Category Archives: Internet
Dyn jumps the shark, tries to strong-arm free accounts into paying
I’ve used Dyn, Inc.‘s free dynamic service for many years to maintain a DNS entry for my home internet connection. Their free account allows you to create one or two dynamic DNS entries underneath those domains. They provide software that updates your dynamic DNS record automatically when your IP address changes, usually because your ISP… Read More »
MIT Peeps: Have you heard what JonMon is up to nowadays?
This post is mostly for the benefit of my fellow MIT alumni. Remember Jonathan Monsarrat? If so, then you may have gotten the same impression of him back at the ‘tute that I did, to wit, that he gave off creep vibes. Judging from what has been written about him online since then, he’s done… Read More »
Comics aggregator supports King Features again, sort of
Recently, I wrote about why my comics aggregator stopped supporting comic strips distributed by the King Features Syndicate. In a nutshell, King Features changed how their comics are distributed in a way that (a) makes it much harder for my aggregator to scrape them, and (b) makes it 100% clear that they don’t want people… Read More »
King Features Syndicate comics currently unavailable
The folks at the King Features Syndicate have always made their comics harder to aggregate than those of any of the other syndicates. I had implemented a convoluted workaround involving redirecting requests for images of their comics through the comics aggregator itself, where various special headers were inserted into the request to convince the King… Read More »
CGI script for RSS feed of comments on Hacker News posting
Perhaps I just don’t grok the zen of Hacker News, but I just don’t get why the site doesn’t provide RSS feeds of comments on postings. I also don’t get why nobody has written something to provide this. Or, at least, if it has been written, I couldn’t find it (perhaps my Google mojo just isn’t… Read More »
Using Selenium to monitor your Vonage balance
UPDATE [2013-01-20]: The scripts weren’t reading the username and password from the config file properly. In fact, I had accidentally hard-coded my own Vonage username and password in this script. D’oh! Needless to say, I’ve changed my password, and the updated scripts below are fixed. Also, I updated the cron script to allow the usage… Read More »
xkcd.com added to comics aggregator
I’ve added xkcd.com the comics aggregator. And there was much rejoicing. Alas, because of the architecture of the aggregator, I can’t easily serve up the alt text that Randall attaches to the strips. :-/ As always, feel free to show your appreciation. 🙂
Mass. Sen. Will Brownsberger to co-sponsor social networking privacy bill
I have just been informed by a member of Massachusetts Senator Will Brownsberger’s staff that he “will be co-sponsoring a piece of legislation that will, among other things, prevent employers from asking job applicants for their social networking passwords.” This issue has been raised in previous sessions of the Massachusetts legislature, but it has not… Read More »
Comics added to aggregator
By popular demand, I’ve added Mallard Fillmore, Prickly City, Broom Hilda, Calvin and Hobbes, Beetle Bailey, and The Born Loser to the comics aggregator. As always, feel free to show your appreciation. 🙂