RE: [AP] David L. Smith arrested for writing Melissa

Gavin Thomas Nicol (gtn@eps.inso.com)
Fri, 2 Apr 1999 16:41:10 -0500

> While I'm being curmudgeonly, I'll also grumble about those
> who would add 'active content' to text/html without attention to the
> appropriate security considerations, thus leading to the
> problems we saw with JavaScript invoked file upload of user's
> personal files.

Sure. The whole DHTML shebang is based on self-modifying code, and
that is the basis of a whole lot of AI *and* virus work.

Personally, I think JavaScript has done more to harm the WWW than
anything else... it renders pages basically impossible to edit
(very difficult to edit the "live" page in a WYSIWYG mode), and
renders pages unintelligible to many computer processors.

I like what it does, but hate the way it does it.