Basic explanation of AJAX and XMLHttpRequest

This article is a good introductory explanation of how to get XMLHttpRequest to retrieve data in an AJAX-style setting:

http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/05/19/xmlhttprequest.html

It covers both Mozilla/Firefox and IE, and describes the steps involved in creating a simple browser-side app that uses XMLHttpRequest.

Outlook can be comical sometimes...

...as evidenced by this (far too often true) comic:

http://www.fatalexception.org/action_item.html

As a side node, the Good Morning Silicon Valley blog is a great source of both information and humour (such as this comic).

History is Cyclical

Oh Microsoft, will you never learn?

http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=10728

Once again, a simple hex edit will give you an operating system upgrade. In the mid-nineties, Microsoft sent out NT 4.0 120-day demo CDs - if you copied off a file from this CD and hex-edited it to change a few bytes, you could turn your trial into the full version. It seems that Microsoft has a short memory when it comes to these kinds of things.