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the best language on earth http://rebol.com

.... he missed the mark.

This is not even a hindsight article as the hindsight is still based on speculation.

Of course as things at Apple have evolved in this vain, We have Automator and its phenomenally (cough) successful.....

Of course Hypercard and Automator are platform specific (mac only) but as a comparison to platform agnostic and network-able relatively easy scripting, there is REBOL and specifically REBOL VIEW (if you want to discuss web browsers). But how successful has REBOL become?

What Automator generates under the hood in teh way of files, when a person creates an automation, is incredibly massive. Especially in comparison to the incredibility small scripts of REBOL.

I'm not promoting either here, just presenting a comparison that is relevant to the speculated hindsight of the WIRED article.

needs REBOL but there are free use version.

the database program can be found here

A language that I have toyed with from time to time, and that is very dynamic, is Relative Expression Based Object Language. Well worth to give it a try.

Okay.

But you've got the problem that Web Browsers (and most "modern" languages like Java) are hideously inefficient for these sort of tasks. CSS/HTML/Javascript are being contorted to do things that they were never really meant to do.

The fact that firing up Firefox to look at my GMail (which is, by all accounts one of the more efficent "Web Apps") consumes considerably more CPU time and RAM than it does to fire up a fairly robust mail client is disturbing to say the least. Let's face it -- the Web is a shitty place to get day-to-day tasks accomplished that involve any sort of interaction.

If this web app idea is to get off the ground, I'd imagine that we'll eventually be using some sort of modern derivative of the X11 protocol to natively display apps, using our screens as true thin clients. Rebol did this a few years back, and it regrettably didn't catch on (probably due to it being proprietary), but I remember checking out the tech demos, and being floored by how fast it was, even on a 56k connection.

HTML's great as an information distribution medium, but the fact that it's even being taken remotely seriously as an application platform is laughable.

Still not short enough for me though. [...] Furthermore, I'm not sure it makes ANY sense to have commands in XML.

I bet you'll find this article at least a little bit interesting; http://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/lisp.html

Actually, the very first thought I had after the first sentence of the summary was that Lisp would be a much better match than XML for something like this. The moment you try to treat code as data, you can be sure Lisp is what you want, although I believe Rebol (http://www.rebol.com/) tries to do something similar.

First of all, let's all have a look at REBOL.

Secondly, what we need is a distributed and declarative programming language running in the 'web' browser. A web page should become a declarative description of a user interface, much like F3.

For example, if I wanted to make a simple login form, the code would be something along this:

let username = ''
let password = ''

let loginForm = page [
title = 'login'
layout = grid 2x3
label [text = 'username:']
textbox [model = username]
label [text = 'password:']
passwordbox [model = password]
button [text = 'submit' click = {close [form = loginForm value = true])}]
button [text = 'exit' click = {close [form = loginForm value = false])}]
]

let ok = do(loginForm)

if ok then
login(username, password)
else
doPage('loginFailed')
end if

function login(username, password)
let loginOk = server.login(username, password)
if loginOk then
doPage('mainScreen')
else
doPage('loginFailed')
end if
end function

In the above example, the UI is built in a declarative manner as a tree of objects, much like HTML. But there are no hardcoded tags: the final output is created by running the code in the page.

Furthermore, the calls to the server are part of the language specification: the language automatically knows how to call server functions, without any need to declare them somewhere.

Finally, the platform shall have lazy downloading, with classes downloaded when they are first instantiated.

Pages which do not have any logic and simply present information could then easily be built by using the declarative user-interface library.

Style mechanisms like CSS and resources would be data retrieved from external servers and applied to the UI.

If the page needs to do more things, for example to display a video, run a calculation, present a menu or a tree, run 3d graphics, etc it would be very easy: since the whole interface would be programmable, there would be no limitation.

The advantages over the current situation are:

1. the whole thing is programmable and there is nothing hardcoded.
2. the problem of distributed communication is solved right at the most fundamental level.
3. security can be applied to the whole of the language, since distributed communication is the foundation of the system.

http://www.rebol.com/

A step in the right direction?

Well, the solution is a new programming platform that allows for declarative programming of user interfaces, client-server models and storage. Something with LISPy principles, but with enhanced syntax that is not scary, and allows for lazy downloading of modules on the client.

REBOL is a good solution...

What language/runtime combination are other PHP users looking to switch to?

Now we're stuck with either mono-platform compiled code or HUGE runtimes that no everyone will have (yes, Java, I'm looking at you)..

...the absence of either: 1) Quirk-compatible implementations of old-school BASIC interpreters for modern machines, or 2) Relevant, currently usable example programs in children's math textbooks.

NOT the absence of "programming for kids".

Though, if you really thinking simple, instant-gratification, learning languages aren't available for young protoprogrammers today, might I suggest looking at StarLogo TNG (and its 2d relative, OpenStarLogo).

Also, a number of less education-focussed languages have many of the features that made BASIC accessible to young learners (an immediate interpreter environment, friendly vocabulary compared to, say, C's intimidating, punctuation-heavy syntax), like REBOL.

I can't see that there is a real problem here in terms of availability of suitable languages for learning.

You want to know the latest trends for Java-based web development? Fewer and fewer people are going to be doing Java-based web development in the future.

Fuck trends. They're wrong. Every day the industry continues to stay with its current ridiculous technologies when vastly superior ones were invented decades ago infuriates me further. If it doesn't infuriate you, you're not paying close enough attention.

My advice: read Lambda the Ultimate and Steve Yegge's blog. Endeavor to learn what the lambda calculus and referential transparency are. If you are sincerely interested in bettering yourself as a programmer and don't go find out who Alonzo Church was then so help me God I will kick you in the balls. Learn about SML and type inference. Learn about Haskell and monads. Learn about process calculi and Erlang. Learn about Lisp and code generation and domain-specific languages. Learn about Scheme and lexical closures and continuations. Learn about Smalltalk and what OO was really supposed to be. Learn about type theory and formalism and the Curry-Howard correspondence. Learn about Forth and Joy and how you can have a powerful, expressive language without even so much as a grammar. Learn about Intercal and Befunge and just how badly your choice of programming language can torture you. Learn about UML and Ruby on Rails and Seaside and agile programming and Java generics and Python generators. Learn about aspect-oriented programming, context-oriented programming and concept programming. Learn about multi-paradigm languages like OCaml or Oz. Learn about weird Lisp dialects with syntax like Rebol or Dylan.

Realize that library design is language design. Realize that asynchronous programming with callbacks and explicit state in a world where lightweight coroutines were around in the days of fucking Simula in the 60s for Christ's sake is cruel and unusual torture. (Sorry, pet programming construct.) Realize that the programming language research community, while considering systems programming a solved problem and generally not interested in talking about human factors, is doing some genuinely promising work. Did you know that there are conc

I guess now I'll start the search for the next beautiful language that can pull itself up above the fray--above the garbage that is the syntax of Ruby, C++, VB and all these other pretenders.

Have you ever seen Rebol? Check out http://www.rebol.com/. I messed with it a bit in the past, and it kind of comes close to what you are talking about, although it has a very different programming syntax!

SixD

Unlike other languages, REBOL was designed from the start for network communications, not just for writing programs.

REBOL is pronounced "reb-ol" (as in "rebel with a cause") and stands for "relative expression based object language". It was first released in 1997 and has been downloaded more than four million times since. REBOL runs on a wide variety of system platforms, including both servers and clients. REBOL was created by Carl Sassenrath, who is best known for bringing multitasking to personal computers with the Commodore Amiga operating system.

The power of REBOL comes from its unique integration of programming language concepts and metadata language concepts. REBOL expresses and symbolizes both algorithms and data equally well, and the flow between those domains is totally fluid.

As a result, REBOL is optimal for X Internet distributed applications. It provides more effective solutions to modern network distributed applications. When compared to traditional languages, REBOL offers greater expressive power with less code. Most applications are typically measured in 10's of KB, not 10's of MB. And, when it comes to software development and support costs, smaller is better.

You can learn more about How REBOL is Different or for a quick introduction to the REBOL Language, read REBOL in a Nutshell.

Unlike other languages, REBOL was designed from the start for network communications, not just for writing programs.

REBOL is pronounced "reb-ol" (as in "rebel with a cause") and stands for "relative expression based object language". It was first released in 1997 and has been downloaded more than four million times since. REBOL runs on a wide variety of system platforms, including both servers and clients. REBOL was created by Carl Sassenrath, who is best known for bringing multitasking to personal computers with the Commodore Amiga operating system.

The power of REBOL comes from its unique integration of programming language concepts and metadata language concepts. REBOL expresses and symbolizes both algorithms and data equally well, and the flow between those domains is totally fluid.

As a result, REBOL is optimal for X Internet distributed applications. It provides more effective solutions to modern network distributed applications. When compared to traditional languages, REBOL offers greater expressive power with less code. Most applications are typically measured in 10's of KB, not 10's of MB. And, when it comes to software development and support costs, smaller is better.

You can learn more about How REBOL is Different or for a quick introduction to the REBOL Language, read REBOL in a Nutshell.

Really Logo wasn't intended to teach programming (though of course it did that). It was intended to teach math, and algorithmic thinking, and thinking in general. And, paired with the right teacher and an interested pupil, it's really great at that. Without realizing it, a child can end up learning not just geometry (through the turtle graphics), but a lot of pre-algebra. I think programming is a far more accessible way to introduce algebra than the traditional techniques; even young children can understand variables in programs, when the declarative variables that are used in mathematics are much more challenging.

It's also a better language than many of "teaching" languages, like Basic. It's an old-school version of Lisp, with a little tweak to avoid the parenthesis. And don't be fooled by things that call themselves Logo when they are just turtle graphics. Turtle graphics are cool, but just a piece of the equation. (Though not-so-coincidentally, Python has built-in turtle graphics).

If you are really interested in programming as education, I might recommend the book Mindstorms, which is a classic about some of the theory behind teaching with Logo. It's not a practical guide, though many of those also exist.

If you are looking for a Logo implementation, on Windows I would recommend Elica, MSWLogo, and UCBLogo, in that order. On Mac or Linux, you can use UCBLogo, Turtle Tracks (a cross-platform Java implementation), or on Mac one of a number of (rather expensive) commercial Logos. If you are a programmer and feel like fiddling alongside your child, you might try my project PyLogo, which is cross-platform and written in Python, but quite rough around the edges. Or if you want something that is Logo, but pretends to be a general-purpose scripting language, look at Rebol. Or for a slightly-lame but functional embedded robot Logo, Cricket Logo. Or for older people, NetLogo is a massively-multitasking implementation to use to play around with autonomous entities (e.g., ant simulations). NetLogo is kind of the successor to StarLogo.

For more information on Logo, you can look at the Logo Foundation, or get in touch with many helpful users in the LogoForum Yahoo Group.

try rebol for internet collaboration.

communicatons on "the net" are not the same as running applications such as accounting, client (business contacts and quoting, etc..) etc... (which can be done without internet connection)..

There is a lot of information within any business that doesn't need to require internet based application rental to access or be held hostage with or made more accessible to corporate espionage (sp?) (theres plenty without it and no need to add more variables to any investigation, hiding, cheating, or busting process...)

To be secure from internet abuses is to simply not connect to the internet with any system containing information you do not want accessed via the internet. either that or provide iron fisted control over all ports by the owner of the system.

Well, if you want apps that are easy to produce and based online, and you have a bit of programming experience, try out Rebol. It's very small, very fast, and the version with the Gui utilities built in is only 550K big! It's got a lot of really nifty data types (money, dates, tags) and it's fast. There are some issues with it presently (mainly dealing with the multi-line text box) that keep me from catagorizing it as perfect, but its damn cool if you have some time to kill. Rebol also has a decent online community with lots of example scripts, and also a good developers website. It's VERY network friendly. Anyone wanting something that they can keep on a website but run locally with no installation should definitely check it out.

My .02..
I like Rebol one of those 'personal' ideas from Carl Sassenrath (the maker of Amiga OS).
In Rebol, code is data, data is code, and usually its only text. Beautifull, refreshing language, try-it for a change.

Last I looked at it, Io wasn't quite ready for the prime time. It looks like it has moved forward some since then, but in the way of being useful, libraries and the like, it still lags behind a lot of the medium- and big-languages.

Beyond Io, what would be the scripting language with a primarily prototype-based OOP system with the most usage and libraries? I know of a handful of similar languages, but not sure which one would make the most sense from the standpoint most potential scripters are coming from.

My favorite is Dialect. It is OSS/FS, but AFAIK, still only on Windows and WinCE. I use it mostly on WinCE, and it is great to use there. Completely source portable between desktop Windows OSes and PocketPC/WinCE. Compiles to an EXE, with everything you need in one file. Unlike some proto-OOP languages, you don't just have prototypes- you have both the structure of a class-based system and the flexibility and power of prototypes, cloning, changing/adding methods or data members on individual objects, etc etc.

Dialect kind of bills itself as a BASIC-like RAD language, but *do not* be scared away by that. It is a lot more like Python than Dialect in its syntax, and I like it a lot more than Python and especially VB myself. It has some really neet functions- one that comes to mind is like tie() in Perl, but even more powerful!- and is incredibly useful. Best way for writing GUI apps on WinCE hands down, and you can write, test, compile, run and deploy as EXE *everything* on the device itself, no need to use a desktop to write your app.

A shame no one has ported it to Linux, etc yet- the source is there. Having spoken with the devs some, it sounds like the Win32 GUI, ADO/ActiveX and other stuff will be bound to Windows, but the rest shouldn't be too hard to port. Would make a great VB-like language for Linux, though now with RealBasic, we finally have that.

Another language that is *really* overlooked is REBOL. It is often overlooked by the OSS community because it is closed source. A darn shame if you ask me, but as a pragmatic programmer (not one driven solely by ideology) I use REBOL and enjoy doing so. At first, it looked kind of gimmicky, a "network" scripting language. But after using it more, I am sometimes caught singing its praises. It is very poweful but the built-in libraries provide a lot of baseline power to programmers and even users. You can write web apps, text console apps or GUI apps- using its own cross-platform GUI toolkit. I have written apps on Mac OS 9 to distribute them to Linux, Windows and OS X and elsewhere to have them run perfectly. I think it is supported on 40-some platforms, though the GUI component- REBOL/View is on fewer, and still lacking on important platforms like WinCE/PPC and Mac OS X.

REBOL rules- it is a lot like Scheme/Lisp, but without parens- in other words, a great language. It has really nice network protocol support, writing an email client can take a handful of lines of script.

But... there is hope! A pretty new and slow going project, R-sharp (but nothing to do with .NET!) was released some time back, the start of an OSS REBOL implementation.

Doesn't REBOL already allow these services that they are working to implement?

REBOL Advanced Language Technology
"REBOL is the first messaging language designed specifically for distributed Internet applications and data exchange across all devices."

"Applications run faster, take less bandwidth, and are easier to create with our unique, dialect-based computing model that rebels against the idea that distributed applications must be built on layers of large, complex, expensive software."
.

Been there, done that... check out the REBOL Internet Operating System!

REBOL www.rebol.com
Free small, cross platform, interpreted scripting language. Whole development setup less than 0.5MB with GUI and command line.
These one-liners give a good taste of what you can do really easily.
oneliners

Complete example code:
; Send an email to someone
send aperson@aserver.com "Hello from REBOL"
; grab an html page from somewhere and display it
print read http://www.google.com
; GUI with a button to send someone an email
view layout [ button "Send email" [ send aperson@aserver.com "Hello from REBOL/View" ] ]
; Run some code directly over the web
do ftp://aserver.adomain.com/script.r

Many built in data types to make it easier for new users
; eg
>> type? 3-may-2003
== date!
>> 3-may-2003 + 1
== 4-May-2003
>> type? $12.99
== money!

Very powerful and extensible language. Hints of basic, lisp, scheme.
Above all, great fun to code in.

REBOL www.rebol.com
Free small, cross platform, interpreted scripting language. Whole development setup less than 0.5MB with GUI and command line.
These one-liners give a good taste of what you can do really easily.
oneliners

Complete example code:
; Send an email to someone
send aperson@aserver.com "Hello from REBOL"
; grab an html page from somewhere and display it
print read http://www.google.com
; GUI with a button to send someone an email
view layout [ button "Send email" [ send aperson@aserver.com "Hello from REBOL/View" ] ]
; Run some code directly over the web
do ftp://aserver.adomain.com/script.r

Many built in data types to make it easier for new users
; eg
>> type? 3-may-2003
== date!
>> 3-may-2003 + 1
== 4-May-2003
>> type? $12.99
== money!

Very powerful and extensible language. Hints of basic, lisp, scheme.
Above all, great fun to code in.

REBOL, by REBOL Technologies.
It's really simple to use/learn, the programs are almost written in English, and beware... it's an addictive language.

Some may say "but it's not free sowftware, it's not GPL, yadayadayada".
Who cares? That's a good start to learn programming. You may choose any programming language you want after that.

True portability is one source code - many OSes and architectures.

you mean like this?

Chris Langreiter has a cute toy to compare Yahoo vs. Google results.
Touch the dots !

It's written in REBOL

didn't see anyone else mention it, so i thought i would.

REBOL is a ridiculously simple and easy-to-learn web-oriented language. so easy, in fact, that i wrote a fully-functional IRC dice bot in under 400 lines, overnight. and if that weren't impressive, then might i add that i was running on ZERO caffeine, learning the language for the first time, learning IRC Client protocol for the first time, and came up with a few unusually witty statements and insults to boot?

now the bad part: REBOL is not open source. poo. (i really was a bit disappointed.) but REBOL/Core is free (for any use, i gather), and the license fees for View and Command seem rather reasonable.

the nice part: it has been ported to and runs on about 43 platforms, last i checked, and is light enough that the executable weighs in at around 250kb for the win32 release. (haven't used the other platforms, so no comment.)

it runs on just about every unix i've heard of, on every relatively common configuration, and works beautifully and seamlessly. and, after a quick glance, i see it runs on serveral major embedded systems, including WinCE, QNX, and Linux, and will even run on my friend's dated Amiga.

I think REBOL would be a good beginning language because you can stick with it for a long time and it'll remain useful.

It doesn't have the stupid limitations of BASIC. It's incredibly easy to parse strings, retrieve data from internet, do stuff with arrays (called blocks in REBOL), TCP/IP etc. It handles user advancement pretty darn well, going all the way to GUI programming.

REBOL for Dummies is a very well-written book, although it's dated by a few versions. I strongly suggest reading it.

You can get REBOL at REBOL.com. It's free and runs on a huge number of platforms.

No, I don't work for them. :-)

Or may be, XQuery mixed with REBOL ?

Carl Sassenrath designed a lot of the core components of the AmigaOS kernel. He used to have a more extensive website there, but there is some information about his past and current projects. Now he's leading the design of a system called REBOL that seems to be a bit interesting.

www.rebol.com. More stable, faster and better supported

I must comment on point 1 and 3.

1. "Morpheus is dead"

Not really. Their new approach is to sell music and we all know how well that goes, so perhaps they will die soon.

3. "Morpheus 2.0, BearShare and LimeWire were all huge resource hogs"

Morpheus 2.0 hasn't even been released yet (although the release date was the beginning of April), so I can't really defend it and I am not even sure if I want to. If you are refering to the current preview edition of Morpheus, I can agree, because it is basically an old version of Gnucleus with banners and bigger buttons.

Morpheus 2.0 will use Rebol IOS (in the same way they used the Fasttrack technology in previous versions) and I even sent a mail to Rebol, to confirm this, and got a reply:

Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2002 15:21:22 -0800
From: Carl Sassenrath
To: Jon Åslund
Subject: Re: Morpheus 2.0

Yes... preview edition was just something they did in order
to deal with the Kazaa problem. It's not 2.0.

Yes, we think so too.

-Carl

At 3/14/02 10:35 PM +0100, you wrote:

>According to this press release:
>
> http://www.rebol.com/news1a31.html
>
>Morpheus will base it's next version (2.0) on REBOL IOS. I was very
>surprised to see the morpheus preview edition to be based on
>gnucleus. Are you still working with Morpheus on this? It would be
>great to see REBOL out on the Internet on a big scale, which clearly
>will happen if Morpheus is to build their new version on REBOL IOS.
>
>--
>___\ Jon Åslund

Although I haven't tested Rebol IOS, Rebol itself is not a resource hog, and it is available for a large number of platforms. I am not sure if it will ever be as popular as the old Fasttrack network was with Kazaa and the old Morpheus, but I am looking forward to the new version. They have a clear policy against spyware, the client may work with other operating systems than Windows (at least the Rebol technology allows it), and oh, did I mention they are going to use Rebol? :)

Well, I'll jump in and add to this brainstorm we call Ask Slashdot. REBOL is not a remote desktop, but an IOS (Internet Operating System.) Now before you start screaming off topic, consider what he wants to do and the best way to do it. Any thoughts?

With the exception of Python (I think...I'm not sure) I know of no commonly used scripting languages that allow for simple and consistent object serialization/deserialization.

iirc, REBOL has these features. Unfortunately, the licensing model for that language for commercial purposes sort of prices it out of the market even though it is a killer language.

This 'Internet Operating System' is exactly what Rebol are aiming at now -- there are documents on their website...

By speeding up development the estimation of time it takes will be easier to get a grip on.

I don't claim to be a programming language creator, instead 3000+
languages in less than 50 or so years should be enough to figure out that
the limitations of programming languages are not going to be solved by
creating another one. But rather in making use of the various languages
where they best fit, thru an action set that enable the creation of
automation of language use.

Comments from the LL1 article

USPTO Article specific reference is here.
Three Primary User Interfaces

The need for speed and language barrier to break:"

What's beyond the language barrier:

What I have found odd about the Virtual Interaction Configuration as I've
attempted to explain it to others over the years, is that there is an
extreamly strong tendancy to preceive in it terms of their individual and
specific mindset focus. i.e. if one is focused into prolog, they preceive
it as a prolog function set, which causes problems in correctly
understanding the actual general action set.

It's possible that communication of the VIC to Carl Sassenrath triggered
off the creation of what is now called REBOL. And it's also very possible
that SHEEP has as well gotten inspiration from the VIC.

Noodle baking...

SHEEP article

Another SHEEP article

but REBOL deserves every bit as much attention on Slashdot as Ruby, Python, Perl, etc.

It's a very elegant and tight language, (which I'm still learning), with oodles of potential...

*get's off podium and lowers head*

You may now mod this blatant plug down...it's tough to be righteous...

REBOL is the best though - I'm just learning it now. It sounds a lot like your description of SNOBOL4. I think of its parsing abilites as 'regular expression strung out into English'!

A mere mortal like myself can write a wee app that can rip info from a web page, for example, really fast.

Check it out, REBOL is under 200k and packs more power for the punch than anything, it's the anti-matter of programing languages!

who cares?
morpheus 2.0 will be rebol-based.

http://rebol.com/news1a31.html

wow. that's a lot in about 2 weeks.

http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=199

rebol announces it wants to directly compete
against microsoft's .net services architecture
with their own "x-internet" vision and platform.

http://rebol.com/news1a31.html

then rebol announces it is teaming up with streamcast networks
(formerly known as musiccity as the announcement says)
to use rebol for the new morpheus 2.0.
it's weird that i could not find either the new streamcast site
or anything about this announcement on musiccity's current site.

and now eff.org announces it will defend musiccity
against the music industry.

interesting chain of events i'd say :)

Yes, actually, they released a press statement yesterday. They will be teaming up with StreamCast (formerly MusicCity) to bring us Morpheus 2.0. The press release is over here.

I've never tried Delphi, can you point me towards the versions for these OS's please...

Amiga V2.x/3.x
Apple OS9
Apple OSX
BeOS R5 (x86 and PPC)
BSDi
Free BSD
NetBSD
OpenBSD
HP-UX
AIX
SCO Open server
IRIX
Solaris

Taken from the platform list for REBOL/View

Their platform has been ported to 44 operating systems so far!

Yeah, you get lotsa platforms if you define e.g. "Amiga 68000" as different from "Amiga 68020+" (when, in fact, it's just a matter of adding a compiler switch). A more realistic number is 25, or less -- go to their platforms page and see for yourself.

check out the Rebol page of existing apps - all pretty small.

They have a desktop/OS app that looks cool but doesnt make much monetary sense to me on a desktop unless you custom design a cheap thin client to run it and only it on.

What does make sense though - is running these little apps on a wireless handheld. Build the Rebol assembler into an ASIC so it runs native code quickly - and let the application server do all the work.

Rebol looks cool but just like most java apps on the desktop are passed over for native code, I dont see this flying. Perhaps if they sought to fill the niche market of weak wireless devices theyd have more success. In either case good luck to them - I havent had the chance to do any cool machine level programming like this since I lost my TI and its various shells.

's funny. A "serious" programming language lets also redefine everything including keywords. This language is called Rebol and I'm so enthousiastic about it, that I'm busy implementing a GPL'ed version of it. (not on the net yet, still got a lot of work to do).

Fed up of letting other people create chaos, I've just knocked together a Java app to sit on port 80 and wait for HTTP requests.

When it gets one, it spawns a thread to open a client socket onto port 80 of the original incoming machine and send back the original request :) Loadsa fun.

It's sitting causing havoc right now. Quite interesting seeing what some of those dodgy requests throw back at you, all sort of corporate espionage potential, and it's all automated; you already know the machines you're attacking are vulnerable cos they're attacking you!

Runs great in Win32, should be fine on Linux too but I ain't tested it.

Anybody else feeling nihilistic who wants it, give me yr email or icq and I'll be happy to oblige.

For extra credit points, re-implement it yourself in Rebol.

In my opinion, the plugin scheme is really a sort of "crummy patch" to a widespread used technology (the browser). I think that these guys understood that and chose the path of a new internet client.

Now it's a conspiracy theory, tommorow it could kill all sorts of products and projects, like the browsers I mentioned. This patent could be bad for internet advancements anyway; it might be very hard to create an alternative scheme flexible enough to work around this patent.