Goodies to Go ™
April 8, 2002–Newsletter #175
This newsletter is part of the internet.com network.
http://www.internet.com
Goodies Thoughts – CyberSquatting? Huh?
Have you ever heard of
the terms CyberSquatting or CyberSquatters?
Neither had I until
recently. Apparently, CyberSquatters is a term that refers to those companies
and/or individuals that buy up domain names with the intent of reselling them
later at a highly inflated price or using them to lure viewers under "false
pretenses". I remember this being a very common practice as the internet
revolution began to unfold. I also recall being very frustrated when I went
through variation after variation of a domain name searching for one that hadn’t
already been bought up by some brokerage company that wanted $10,000 for it. I
can only imagine what the people that bought up major company names like "coca-cola.com"
would have tried to extort.
Now that you know what
CyberSquatters are would you believe there is a CyberSquatting Consumer
Protection Act. This act basically applies all existing trademark and copyright
laws to the internet. While this act will likely not stop people from buying up
common generic names like "shoestore.com" or "auction.com" it will protect
companies and individuals from being taken advantage of.
Imagine if you were a
movie star like Tom Cruise and someone bought up the domain name "tomcruise.com".
When you asked them to sign over the domain name they refused and instead
starting posting articles like "Tom was possessed by Demons" and "Tom has an IQ
of 12" on the domain. Obviously, you would would be filing a lawsuit for
slander. But what if they used the domain name to post articles like "Movies Rot
your Brain" and "Movie-goers are more likely to be Under-achievers" which do not
directly slander you? Would you still be able to sue?
Yes you can. An
excellent real-life example of this would be a recent case involving Ernest and
Julio Gallo Winery and Spider Webs. Spider Webs registered the domain name "ernestandjuliogallo.com".
Ernest and Julio Gallo Winery attempted to have the domain transferred over but
Spider Webs refused. So, Ernest and Julio Gallo Winery filed suit to have the
domain transferred. About six months after the suit was filed Spider Webs posted
content on "ernestandjuliogallo.com" about the negatives of alcohol consumption.
That was probably a big mistake because a federal court ruled in favor of Ernest
and Julio Gallo Winery and ordered "ernestandjuliogallo.com" shut down until all
appeals have been exhausted.
What if an anti-smoking
group decided to buy up all variations Marlboro that they could think of in an
effort to make it very difficult to find the brand’s website? Would that be
legal?
No it wouldn’t. In this
case the group wouldn’t be trying to gain a profit from the reserved domains but
would rather be trying to intentionally limit a company’s ability to promote a
product which falls under the same guidelines that protected Ernest and Julio
Gallo Winery from having their name used to promote negative publicity.
Basically, the laws
protect any person or business from having their legitimate claim to a domain
name held for ransom. It also offers protection from situations like Ernest and
Julio Gallo Winery encountered with Spider Webs using misleading means to
promote negative publicity about the company or industry.
As with any new
innovation or revolution such as the internet, there will always be those people
that try to take advantage of the system. I, for one, am glad to know that it
will now be much harder to be taken advantage of.
Thanks for reading!
Quiz Goodies
Let’s say you have a
pop-up window that is displaying an ad for your newest software releases. You
have created links for each product that will launch a new window so that you
don’t lose your pop-up ad. What you would like to do is to move your ad window
to the upper-left corner of the user’s screen so they can still see your other
new products while they read about the one that they clicked on. How would you
move that pop-up ad to the upper-left corner using JavaScript?
Read answer below.
Q & A Goodies
Questions are taken from
submissions to our Community Mentors. You can ask a Mentor a question by going
to
https://www.htmlgoodies.com/mentors/.
Q. I was
wondering how it is possible to put an image right next to the edge of the
webpage? By default it is indented by about 5mm.
A. You can use
Cascading Style Sheets(CSS) to define the margins like this:
<style type="text/css">
body {margin-top: 0px; ; margin-left: 0px}
</style>
Or like this with your HTML <BODY> tag:
<body bgcolor="Blue" leftmargin="0" marginwidth="0" topmargin="0" marginheight="0">
*** This question was submitted to our Mentor Community. The answer was provided
by Jay Hadley, one of our HTML Mentors.
Q. I’ve been
studying the HTML Goodies web site and downloaded some free images from a link
there. Well, this will probably sound really strange, but every time I go to
open up what got downloaded, I get this game called "Elf Bowling" that my
brother downloaded at Christmas time! I am saving the images to "My Documents"
on my computer when I download, and have since deleted the "Elf Bowling" game,
but I still get it every time I download any of those images. I haven’t even
seen any of the images yet because of this game. Do you have any ideas as to why
this would be happening?
A. Your
file association was taken over once ‘Elf Bowling’ was installed. Hold down the
shift key, right click on the file, and go to ‘Open With’. Choose the program
that you would like to use to view your pictures.
*** This question was submitted to our Mentor Community. The answer was provided
by Peter, one of our Web Design Mentors.
Q. This is
driving me nuts!!
Using HTMLGoodies I’ve written the early stages of a family website – I’ve been
very pleased with the results combining HTML with CSS – however, my problem is
that when I initially load up the pages a number of the images are distorted,
but if I switch page and then return (or even if I resize the window by using
F11) – hey presto! – all is well – it is always the first time in…
A.
The distortions are most likely a CSS issue. Try removing the following code:
img{
height : auto;
width : auto;
}
Since you are defining the size of each of your images as most developers do,
the code above is not necessary and is the most likely culprit.
*** This question was submitted to our Mentor Community. The answer was provided
by Alex Newport, one of our HTML Mentors.
News Goodies
Well, it’s official. All of you
Apache lovers out there will be very happy to know that Apache 2.0 has just been
officially released.
Click here to read the article
It would seem that Sun Microsystems
has tired of locking horns with long time rival Microsoft and has decided that
butting heads with IBM could be a whole lot more fun.
Click here to read the article
IBM issued an earnings warning which
sent a shockwave through the stock markets this morning.
Click here to read the article
Quiz Answer
To move your pop-up
window to a better spot for viewing you will probably want to use the
window.moveTo( ) method.
It’s a very
straight-forward method that requires only 2 arguments, x and y with x being the
horizontal position and y being the vertical position. The x and y positions on
the screen correspond with the upper-leftmost point of the window that you are
moving. In other words, whatever x and y points you designate will be where the
upper-left point of the window is positioned. Here’s how you would move
the pop-up window in our problem:
window.moveTo(1,1);
This will move the
window to the upper-left corner of the viewer’s screen. One word of caution,
though. Be sure that you have focus on the correct window before you use
window.moveTo( ) or you could end up moving the wrong window.
And Remember This . . .
It’s spring for us in
the Northern Hemisphere which brings budding trees, green grass, blooming
flowers and allergies. However, some the beauties of Spring don’t outweigh the
watering eyes, sneezing and choruses of "Bless You!". Have you ever wondered
where the tradition of saying "Bless you!" after someone sneezes came from?
Sneezing was first
believed to be loss of your Spirit and even an indicator of impending death
since those lying on their death beds often would fall victim to fits of
sneezing. As such, many people would try to avoid sneezing at almost any cost.
But, if by some chance an inadvertent sneeze did occur it would be followed by
good luck chants in an effort to save the soul.
As time passed the
Romans discovered that sneezing was often the result of something foreign being
trapped in the nasal passage which would often beget a response like
"Congratulations!". However, when the sneeze was associated with a disease it
often foretold the person’s death. In these cases, the Romans would declare
phrases like "Long may you live!" and "May you enjoy good health!"
The current tradition of
saying "God Bless You!" or "Bless You!" is a permutation of the Roman tradition.
In the 6th century as the plague was gripping Europe, it was observed again that
one symptoms of the plague was chronic sneezing. So, in an effort to save
people’s lives and souls Pope Gregory beseeched all healthy people to pray for
the sick. He also proclaimed that the response to a sneeze should be changed to
the much more urgent "God Bless You!" from "Long may you live!". And as the
plague spread across Europe, so did the Pope’s proclamation of "God Bless You!".
It is a tradition that was adopted in several different languages and is still
used today.
Thanks for reading Goodies to Go!