Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the British computer scientist credited with creating the World Wide Web in 1989, doesn't seem like a man who has many regrets. But he admitted earlier this month at a symposium in Washington that his decision to include those annoying forward slashes in http addresses was made on a whim. If he could change one thing about the Internet now, he says, he would slash the slashes, which are completely unnecessary.
The Wrong Place at the Wrong Time
The BBC is undoubtedly one of the best broadcasters in the world, with a proud history and popular website. But even the "Beeb" isn't immune to screwing up once in a while. Consider the case of its "Internet expert" Guy Goma, who participated in a studio discussion in 2006 regarding music downloads and Apple Computer's victory at the London High Court against Apple Corps, the record label for the Beatles. None of the producers noticed anything funny about Goma until he responded to one of the questions by saying, "I don't know. I'm not at all sure what I'm doing here." Turns out that Goma thought he was going to be interviewed for an IT job at the BBC, not interviewed on air.
A producer, however, thought that Goma was actually the bona-fide Internet expert Guy Kewney after the receptionist mistakenly pointed Goma in his direction. And to make matters worse, Goma didn't get the job he was after either.
An Apple Premier
Two years ago, Apple posted for sale on iTunes what it thought was the season premiere of the sci-fi TV show Stargate Atlantis. The episode happened to be the show's fourth installment, however, which hadn't yet aired. The accidental leak occurred because of a mix-up over the episode production numbers and broadcast numbers. Apple removed the episode 24 hours later, but by that point, peer-to-peer networks were offering it to their users for free. To make amends, Apple gave customers who mistakenly bought the episode an iTunes credit of $2.
Google Gets Spammed
Google's spam-fighting system is apparently too good. A couple of years ago, Google accidentally mistook the company's own Custom Search Blog as spam. The Google blogging team in charge of updating the website didn't notice the warning messages indicating that the blog would be deleted if the user didn't clarify that it wasn't spam. When the blog was automatically deleted, another web user took over the domain name for the site. The Google bloggers initially suspected an external hack job, but then they realized what had gone wrong. They got the domain name back — and then presumably blogged about the whole ordeal.
Game Over
The box for Capcom's Killer7 video game said it all: "Action-packed thriller." Anyone who went to the game's official website, listed on the box as www.killer7.com, would have found a totally different kind of thriller, though. That URL belonged to a hardcore porn site. The game's site should have been listed as www.killer-7.com.
Never Use Your Name As a Password
Choosing a strong password is a challenge for many of us. Who out there hasn't used (or thought about using) 'password' or '1234' at one point in their lives? A staffer working for the state of Nevada proved abysmally bad at selecting a username and password two years ago when step-by-step instructions were accidentally posted on the state's official website giving instructions on how aides should send out the governor's weekly e-mail updates. In the instructions, the Outlook username was given as "governor" and the password as "kennyc." The former governor's name? Kenny C. Guinn.
Via-comedy
The media behemoth Viacom has engaged in numerous battles with YouTube over copyright infringement over the years. But two years ago, Viacom ended up in the embarrassing position of mistakenly bringing to light the fact that it had committed some copyright infringement of its own. When Viacom demanded that YouTube remove a clip of a North Carolina politician's campaign commercial from a VH1 program called Web Junk 2.0, it emerged that VH1 hadn't obtained permission to use the clip in the first place. The politician, Christopher Knight, was clearly miffed, summing up the situation thusly: "Folks, this is, as we say down here in the South, 'bass-ackwards.'" Thankfully for Knight, Viacom backed down and YouTube reinstated the video.
You've Got (More Than) M@il!
In 2006, AOL voluntarily released the search data of 650,000 of its users over a three-month period — some 20 million web queries in total. Although the AOL username had been changed to a random ID number, one could analyze all of the searches conducted by a single user and deduce who the person was. Understandably, the online community was outraged and AOL acted swiftly, removing the data and issuing apologetic press releases.
"This was a screw up, and we're angry and upset about it," spokesman Andrew Weinstein said in one rather honest missive.
Doing the Worm
On Nov. 2, 1988, Robert Morris, a Cornell computer science graduate student, wrote an experimental program that he injected into the Internet. It would become the computer world's first "worm." Although the student's intentions were not necessarily nefarious — he was testing out how large the Internet actually was — the worm wreaked havoc online, rendering about 600,000 computers unusable. Morris was convicted of violating the computer Fraud and Abuse Act and sentenced to three years of probation, 400 hours of community service and a fine of $10,000. He now works for MIT.
In the Dark
Earlier this week, about a million Swedish Internet sites went down for an hour when routine maintenance caused disruption to every single .se address (the country's domain). The problem was caused by an "incorrectly configured script" in an update of the .se domain. Imagine if this would have happened to the .com domain, taking down tens of millions of websites around the world? It probably wouldn't have stopped the world from turning on its axis, but it may have come pretty close.
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