Die Web 2.0!

In the “Technically Speaking” article of October 2006’s IEEE Spectrum Magazine, Paul McFedries speaks of a new term surfacing to counter the whole “Web 2.0” crap that’s going around. Web 2.0 always smacked of marketing to me - a way to get investors to put money into some kind of upgrade to the Internet. “Oh, we’re doing TWO-POINT-OH stuff here, none of that Web 1.0 stuff.” Of course, as my readers know, the whole point behind Web 2.0 is the blog/AJAX/flickr/etc interface where the users create and modify each others’ content. McFedries reports a few good Geeks who have responded by rebranding “Web 2.0” as “chmod 777 web”. All of my Linux/Unix readers will get this instantly and start cracking up. For the rest of you, this is the way, in *nix, where you say that a file or folder can now be read, modified, and executed by the owner of the file, everyone in his group, and everyone else. Basically, you’ve just made it into a Windows-style file.

Enjoy, and may “Web 2.0” die a quick death!