Cox Crow

The HTTP specification defines the method of a request in section 5.1.1. This definition dates to 1992.

The Method token indicates the method to be performed on the resource identified by the Request-URI. The method is case-sensitive.

Various cookbooks for constructing a request refer to POST as POST, and nothing but POST.

And, yet, we get requests like this. Addresses and URIs have been obscured to protect the victim.

10.0.0.1 - - [21/Aug/2007:08:32:44 -0700] “Post /myEndpoint HTTP/1.1″ 200 254 “-” “libwww-perl/5.76″

HTTP 1.0 was published as informational RFC 1945 in 1996. That’s more than enough time for HTTP user agent developers to read the short sentence requiring case-sensitivity. Even if you come from the copy-and-paste school of programming, there’s no excuse. What are you going to say? Oops, Microsoft Word automatically proper-cased that for me?

Actually, yes, it did. In the requirements for the application interface.

I’ve started linking outbound in my sidebar again. There’s not much point in simply including a list of subscriptions, since I haven’t updated mine, or read much of it, in ages. Instead, if I’ve talked to you recently, where “talk” includes written communications, AND I know what your address is, I’ll link.

Back in May I was elected to the board of directors of the Dalton Farm Homeowners Association, and became co-chair of the grounds committee. What that means is that I’m responsible for ensuring that the grounds are maintained — that the lawn is cut, the weeds pulled, the trees trimmed, the light-bulbs changed — and improved. And then there was the family of skunks. Most of the work is administrative in nature, such as planning, seeking bids, handling contracts, and addressing complaints.

But it’s a wonderful feeling to reach out and touch something you did. Because the results are physical, the work seems so much more real than what I do for a living. I can see the results of my efforts.

Congress.org, a “facilitator” of civic participation, sends out an e-mail update each week which includes a simplified issue and a simpler survey question. Here’s an example from today’s mail.

Performance Pay for Teachers

In a recent speech, Congressman George Miller, Chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, proposed “performance pay” for teachers as part of the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Law. What do you think?

• I support performance pay for teachers.
• I oppose performance pay for teachers.

I think Congress should mind their own business, but that’s not the question asked.

The troubling fact is that taking a lot of exercise and then eating a bit more food is not good for the global atmosphere. Eating less and driving to save energy would be better.

Or so says Chris Goodall, Green Party parliamentary candidate for Oxford West & Abingdon, as quoted in The (London) Times [via Eugene Volokh (via David Sucher) and John Massengale].

The troubling fact is that living is not good for the global atmosphere. Dying would be better.

One oddity of visiting my family in Virginia is that there’s little to no cellular phone coverage in Highland County. This is partially due to the landscape, and partially to the lack of antennae, though some claim it is because of the proximity to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia and another listening post in Sugar Grove. Normally, this is not such a problem, as most residences in the county do have landlines, thanks to the Universal Service Fund. It is a problem if, for example, you’re late to meet your sister three mountains and 30 minutes away just to exchange kids, but then your dad will pass the meeting point at the time you originally planned. But since there’s no cellular coverage, you can’t call to ask him to stop, so you’ll make what would be a duplicate trip.

Robert Jensen, in The Digital Provide: Information (Technology), Market Performance, and Welfare in the South Indian Fisheries Sector (Quarterly Journal of Economics, August 2007) [via The Economist], notes that a significant limitation to fish marketing is that while at sea, fishermen are unable to observe prices at any of the numerous markets spread out along the coast. Further, fishermen can typically visit only one market per day because of high transportation costs and the limited duration of the market. As a result, fishermen sell their catch almost exclusively in their local market. This led to inconsistent supplies along the coast. Some markets would have an abundance of fish, while others none at all. That all changed after the introduction of cell phones. Now the fishermen call ahead to find the most profitable market before they head to shore, and can make course corrections in transit. Supply meets demand, and everyone’s happy.

Food doesn’t get any more local than this. My younger sister’s family found they had a hive between the floor joists.