My view,for you

history of microsoft

2008-03-26T22:00:00.000-07:00

1975–1985: Founding

Following the launch of the Altair 8800, Bill Gates called the creators of the new microcomputer, Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), offering to demonstrate an implementation of the BASIC programming language for the system. After the demonstration, MITS agreed to distribute Altair BASIC.^[26] Gates left Harvard University, moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico where MITS was located, and founded Microsoft there. The company's first international office was founded on November 1, 1978, in Japan, entitled "ASCII Microsoft" (now called "Microsoft Japan").^[26] On January 1, 1979, the company moved from Albuquerque to a new home in Bellevue, Washington.^[26] Steve Ballmer joined the company on June 11, 1980, and later succeeded Bill Gates as CEO.^[26]

DOS (Disk Operating System) was the operating system that brought the company its first real success. On August 12, 1981, after negotiations with Digital Research failed, IBM awarded a contract to Microsoft to provide a version of the CP/M operating system, which was set to be used in the upcoming IBM Personal Computer (PC). For this deal, Microsoft purchased a CP/M clone called 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products, which IBM renamed to PC-DOS. Later, the market saw a flood of IBM PC clones after Columbia Data Products successfully cloned the IBM BIOS, and by aggressively marketing MS-DOS to manufacturers of IBM-PC clones, Microsoft rose from a small player to one of the major software vendors in the home computer industry.^[27]^[28]^[29]^[30]^[31]^[32]^[33] The company expanded into new markets with the release of the Microsoft Mouse in 1983, as well as a publishing division named Microsoft Press.^[26]

1985–1995: OS/2 and Windows

In August 1985, Microsoft and IBM partnered in the development of a different operating system called OS/2.^[34] On November 20, 1985, Microsoft released its first retail version of Microsoft Windows, originally a graphical extension for its MS-DOS operating system.^[26] On March 13, 1986 the company went public with an IPO, with a starting initial offering price of $21.00 and ending at the first day of trading as at US $28.00. In 1987, Microsoft eventually released their first version of OS/2 to OEMs.^[35]

The sign at a main entrance to the Microsoft corporate campus. The Redmond Microsoft campus today includes more than 8 million square feet (approx. 750,000 m²) and over 30,000 employees.^[36]

In 1989, Microsoft introduced its flagship office suite, Microsoft Office. This was a bundle of separate office productivity applications, such as Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel.^[26] On May 22, 1990 Microsoft launched Windows 3.0.^[37] The new version of Microsoft's operating system boasted such new features as streamlined user interface graphics and improved protected mode capability for the Intel 386 processor; it sold over 100,000 copies in two weeks.^[38] Windows at the time generated more revenue for Microsoft than OS/2, and the company decided to move more resources from OS/2 to Windows.^[39] In the ensuing years, the popularity of OS/2 declined, and Windows quickly became the favored PC platform.

During the transition from MS-DOS to Windows, the success of Microsoft's product Microsoft Office allowed the company to gain ground on application-software competitors, such as WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3.^[40]^[41] According to The Register, Novell, an owner of WordPerfect for a time, alleged that Microsoft used its inside knowledge of the DOS and Windows kernels and of undocumented Application Programming Interface features to make Office perform better than its competitors.^[42] Eventually, Microsoft Office became the dominant business suite, with a market share far exceeding that of its competitors.^[43]

In 1993, Microsoft released Windows NT 3.1, a business operating system with the Windows 3.1 user interface but an entirely different kernel.^[40] In 1995, Microsoft released Windows 95, a new version of the company's flagship operating system which featured a completely new user interface, including a novel start button; more than a million copies of Microsoft Windows 95 were sold in the first four days after its release.^[40] The company also released its web browser, Internet Explorer, with the Windows 95 Plus! Pack in August 1995 and subsequent Windows versions.^[44]

1995–2005: Internet and legal issues

In the mid-90s, Microsoft began to expand its product line into computer networking and the World Wide Web. On August 24, 1995, it launched a major online service, MSN (Microsoft Network), as a direct competitor to AOL. MSN became an umbrella service for Microsoft's online services.^[26]^[40]^[45] The company continued to branch out into new markets in 1996, starting with a joint venture with NBC to create a new 24/7 cable news station, MSNBC.^[40]^[46] Microsoft entered the personal digital assistant (PDA) market in November with Windows CE 1.0, a new built-from-scratch version of their flagship operating system, specifically designed to run on low-memory, low-performance machines, such as handhelds and other small computers.^[47] Later in 1997, Internet Explorer 4.0 was released for both Mac OS and Windows, marking the beginning of the takeover of the browser market from rival Netscape. In October, the Justice Department filed a motion in the Federal District Court in which they stated that Microsoft had violated an agreement signed in 1994, and asked the court to stop the bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows.^[26]

The year 1998 was significant in Microsoft's history, with Bill Gates appointing Steve Ballmer as president of Microsoft but remaining as Chair and CEO himself.^[26] The company released Windows 98, an update to Windows 95 that incorporated a number of Internet-focused features and support for new types of devices.^[26] On April 3, 2000, a judgement was handed down in the case of United States v. Microsoft,^[22] calling the company an "abusive monopoly"^[13] and forcing the company to split into two separate units. Part of this ruling was later overturned by a federal appeals court, and eventually settled with the U.S. Department of Justice in 2001.

In 2001, Microsoft released Windows XP, the first version that encompassed the features of both its business and home product lines. Before XP was released, Microsoft had to maintain both the NT and the 9x codebase. XP introduced a new graphical user interface, the first such change since Windows 95.^[26]^[48] Later, with the release of the Xbox Microsoft entered the multi-billion-dollar game console market dominated by Sony and Nintendo.^[26] Microsoft encountered more turmoil in March 2004 when antitrust legal action was brought against it by the European Union for abusing its current dominance with the Windows operating system (see European Union Microsoft antitrust case), eventually resulting in a judgement to produce new versions of its Windows XP platform—called Windows XP Home Edition N and Windows XP Professional N—that did not include its Windows Media Player.^[49]^[50]

2006–present: Vista and other transitions

In 2006, Bill Gates announced a two year transition period from his role as Chief Software Architect, which would be taken by Ray Ozzie, and planned to remain the company's chairman, head of the Board of Directors and act as an adviser on key projects.^[51] As of December 2007, Windows Vista, released in January 2007, is Microsoft's latest operating system. Microsoft Office 2007 was released at the same time; its "Ribbon" user interface is a significant departure from its predecessors. On 1st February, 2008, Microsoft made an unsolicited bid to purchase the fully diluted outstanding shares of Yahoo for up to $44.6 billion,^[52] though this offer was later rejected on February 10. Microsoft is not privately haggling with Yahoo over the software maker's rejected $31-per-share buyout offer for the Internet pioneer, Bill Gates said on February 19, 2008.^[53]Microsoft Corp. told on February 21, 2008 it will share more information about its products and technology. The company wants to make it easier for developers to create software that works with its products.^[54]

Product divisions

To be more precise in tracking performance of each unit and delegating responsibility, Microsoft reorganized into seven core business groups—each an independent financial entity—in April 2002. Later, on September 20, 2005, Microsoft announced a rationalization of its original seven business groups into the three core divisions that exist today: the Windows Client, MSN and Server and Tool groups were merged into the Microsoft Platform Products and Services Division; the Information Worker and Microsoft Business Solutions groups were merged into the Microsoft Business Division; and the Mobile and Embedded Devices and Home and Entertainment groups were merged into the Microsoft Entertainment and Devices Division.^[55]^[56]

Platform Products and Services Division

The current logo of Microsoft Windows, one of the company's best-known products.

This division produces Microsoft's flagship product, the Windows operating system. It has been produced in many versions, including Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP and Windows Vista. Almost all IBM compatible personal computers come with Windows preinstalled. The current desktop version of Windows is Windows Vista. The online service MSN, the cable television station MSNBC and the Microsoft online magazine Slate are all part of this division. (Slate was acquired by The Washington Post on December 21, 2004.) At the end of 1997, Microsoft acquired Hotmail, the most popular webmail service, which it rebranded as "MSN Hotmail". In 1999, Microsoft introduced MSN Messenger, an instant messaging client, to compete with the popular AOL Instant Messenger. Along with Windows Vista, MSN Messenger became Windows Live Messenger.^[10]

Microsoft Visual Studio is the company's set of programming tools and compilers. The software product is GUI-oriented and links easily with the Windows APIs, but must be specially configured if used with non-Microsoft libraries. The current version is Visual Studio 2008. The previous version, Visual Studio 2005 was a major improvement over its predecessor, Visual Studio.Net 2003, named after the .NET initiative, a Microsoft marketing initiative covering a number of technologies. Microsoft's definition of .NET continues to evolve. As of 2004, .NET aims to ease the development of Microsoft Windows-based applications that use the Internet, by deploying a new Microsoft communications system, Indigo (now renamed Windows Communication Foundation). This is intended to address some issues previously introduced by Microsoft's DLL design, which made it difficult, even impossible in some situations, to manage, install multiple versions of complex software packages on the same system (see DLL-hell), and provide a more consistent development platform for all Windows applications (see Common Language Infrastructure). In addition, the Company established a set of certification programs to recognize individuals who have expertise in its software and solutions. Similar to offerings from Cisco, Sun Microsystems, Novell, IBM, and Oracle Corporation, these tests are designed to identify a minimal set of proficiencies in a specific role; this includes developers ("Microsoft Certified Solution Developer"), system/network analysts ("Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer"), trainers ("Microsoft Certified Trainers") and administrators ("Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator" and "Microsoft Certified Database Administrator").^[10]

Microsoft offers a suite of server software, entitled Windows Server System. Windows Server 2003, an operating system for network servers, is the core of the Windows Server System line. Another server product, Systems Management Server, is a collection of tools providing remote-control abilities, patch management, software distribution and a hardware/software inventory. Other server products include:

Microsoft SQL Server, a relational database management system;
Microsoft Exchange Server, for certain business-oriented e-mail features;
Small Business Server, for messaging and other small business-oriented features; and
Microsoft BizTalk Server, for employee integration assistance and other functions.^[10]

Business Division

Front entrance to building 17 on the main campus of the company's Redmond campus.

The Microsoft Business Division produces Microsoft Office, which is the company's line of office software. The software product includes Word (a word processor), Access (a personal relational database application), Excel (a spreadsheet program), Outlook (Windows-only groupware, frequently used with Exchange Server), PowerPoint (presentation software), and Publisher (desktop publishing software). A number of other products were added later with the release of Office 2003 including Visio, Project, MapPoint, InfoPath and OneNote.^[10]

The division focuses on developing financial and business management software for companies. These products include products formerly produced by the Business Solutions Group, which was created in April 2001 with the acquisition of Great Plains. Subsequently, Navision was acquired to provide a similar entry into the European market, resulting in the planned release of Microsoft Dynamics NAV in 2006. The group markets Axapta and Solomon, catering to similar markets, which is scheduled to be combined with the Navision and Great Plains lines into a common platform called Microsoft Dynamics.^[10]

Entertainment and Devices Division

The Xbox 360, Microsoft's second system in the gaming console market.

Microsoft has attempted to expand the Windows brand into many other markets, with products such as Windows CE for PDAs and its "Windows-powered" Smartphone products. Microsoft initially entered the mobile market through Windows CE for handheld devices, which today has developed into Windows Mobile 6. The focus of the operating system is on devices where the OS may not directly be visible to the end user, in particular, appliances and cars. The company produces MSN TV, formerly WebTV, a television-based Internet appliance. Microsoft used to sell a set-top Digital Video Recorder (DVR) called the UltimateTV, which allowed users to record up to 35 hours of television programming from a direct-to-home satellite television provider DirecTV. This was the main competition in the UK for British Sky Broadcasting's (BSkyB) SKY + service, owned by Rupert Murdoch. UltimateTV has since been discontinued, with DirecTV instead opting to market DVRs from TiVo Inc. before later switching to their own DVR brand.^[10]

Microsoft sells computer games that run on Windows PCs, including titles such as Age of Empires, Halo and the Microsoft Flight Simulator series. It produces a line of reference works that include encyclopedias and atlases, under the name Encarta. Microsoft Zone hosts free premium and retail games where players can compete against each other and in tournaments. Microsoft entered the multi-billion-dollar game console market dominated by Sony and Nintendo in late 2001,^[57] with the release of the Xbox. The company develops and publishes its own video games for this console, with the help of its Microsoft Game Studios subsidiary, in addition to third-party Xbox video game publishers such as Electronic Arts and Activision, who pay a license fee to publish games for the system. The Xbox also has a successor in the Xbox 360, released on 2005-11-22 in North America and other countries.^[58]^[59] With the Xbox 360, Microsoft hopes to compensate for the losses incurred with the original Xbox. However, Microsoft made some decisions considered controversial in the video gaming community, such as releasing the console with high failure rates, selling two different versions of the system, one without the HDD and providing limited backward compatibility with only particular Xbox titles.^[60]^[61] . In addition to the Xbox line of products, Microsoft also markets a number of other computing-related hardware products as well, including mice, keyboards, joysticks, and gamepads, along with other game controllers, the production of which is outsourced in most cases. As of 15 November 2007, Microsoft announced the purchase of Musiwave, Openwave's mobile phone music sales business.^[62]

Business culture

Photo of Microsoft's RedWest campus.

Landscaping at Microsoft's RedWest campus

Microsoft has often been described as having a developer-centric business culture. A great deal of time and money is spent each year on recruiting young university-trained software developers and on keeping them in the company. For example, while many software companies often place an entry-level software developer in a cubicle desk within a large office space filled with other cubicles, Microsoft assigns a private or semiprivate closed office to every developer or pair of developers. In addition, key decision makers at every level are either developers or former developers. In a sense, the software developers at Microsoft are considered the "stars" of the company in the same way that the sales staff at IBM are considered the "stars" of their company.^[24]

Within Microsoft the expression "eating our own dog food" is used to describe the policy of using the latest Microsoft products inside the company in an effort to test them in "real-world" situations. Only prerelease and beta versions of products are considered dog food.^[63] This is usually shortened to just "dogfood" and is used as noun, verb, and adjective. The company is also known for their hiring process, dubbed the "Microsoft interview", which is notorious for off-the-wall questions such as "Why is a manhole cover round?" and is a process often mimicked in other organizations, although these types of questions are rarer now than they were in the past.^[64] For fun, Microsoft also hosts the Microsoft Puzzle Hunt, an annual puzzle hunt (a live puzzle game where teams compete to solve a series of puzzles) held at the Redmond campus.

As of 2006, Microsoft employees, not including Bill Gates, have given over $2.5 billion dollars to non-profit organizations worldwide, making Microsoft the worldwide top company in per-employee donations.^[65] In January 2007, the Harris Interactive/The Wall Street Journal Reputation Quotient survey concluded that Microsoft had the world's best corporate reputation, citing strong financial performance, vision & leadership, workplace environment rankings, and the charitable deeds of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.^[66]

User culture

Technical reference for developers and articles for various Microsoft magazines such as Microsoft Systems Journal (or MSJ) are available through the Microsoft Developer Network, often called MSDN. MSDN also offers subscriptions for companies and individuals, and the more expensive subscriptions usually offer access to pre-release beta versions of Microsoft software.^[67]^[68] In recent years, Microsoft launched a community site for developers and users, entitled Channel9, which provides many modern features such as a wiki and an Internet forum.^[69] Another community site that provides daily videocasts and other services, On10.net, launched on March 3, 2006.^[70]

Most free technical support available through Microsoft is provided through online Usenet newsgroups (in the early days it was also provided on CompuServe). There are several of these newsgroups for nearly every product Microsoft provides, and often they are monitored by Microsoft employees. People who are helpful on the newsgroups can be elected by other peers or Microsoft employees for Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) status, which entitles people to a sort of special social status, in addition to possibilities for awards and other benefits.^[21]

By 2005, the city of Seattle in the state of Washington had 2,500 users who owned smartphone and desktop computer versions of the JamBayes Traffic Forecasting Service, developed by researchers at Microsoft and the University of Washington.^[71] Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Sequoia Capital, Skymoon Ventures, Crescendo Ventures, ZenShin Capital Partners, Artis Capital, Gold Hill Capital, and several individuals gave Dash USD$45 million for Dash Express which Wired News says "learns from its users". "If a Dash owner is moving 5 miles per hour in a 45 mph (72 km/h) zone, Dash servers will realize he's in traffic and warn other Dash drivers to choose faster routes".^[72]

Corporate affairs

Corporate structure

The company is run by a Board of Directors consisting of ten people, made up of mostly company outsiders (as is customary for publicly traded companies). Current members of the board of directors are: Steve Ballmer, James Cash, Jr., Dina Dublon, Bill Gates, Raymond Gilmartin, Reed Hastings, David Marquardt, Charles Noski, Helmut Panke, and Jon Shirley.^[73] The ten board members are elected every year at the annual shareholders' meeting, and those who do not get a majority of votes must submit a resignation to the board, which will subsequently choose whether or not to accept the resignation. There are five committees within the board which oversee more specific matters. These committees include the Audit Committee, which handles accounting issues with the company including auditing and reporting; the Compensation Committee, which approves compensation for the CEO and other employees of the company; the Finance Committee, which handles financial matters such as proposing mergers and acquisitions; the Governance and Nominating Committee, which handles various corporate matters including nomination of the board; and the Antitrust Compliance Committee, which attempts to prevent company practices from violating antitrust laws.^[74]^[75]

There are several other aspects to the corporate structure of Microsoft. For worldwide matters there is the Executive Team, made up of sixteen company officers across the globe, which is charged with various duties including making sure employees understand Microsoft's culture of business. The sixteen officers of the Executive Team include the Chairman and Chief Software Architect, the CEO, the General Counsel and Secretary, the CFO, senior and group vice presidents from the business units, the CEO of the Europe, the Middle East and Africa regions; and the heads of Worldwide Sales, Marketing and Services; Human Resources; and Corporate Marketing. In addition to the Executive Team there is also the Corporate Staff Council, which handles all major staff functions of the company, including approving corporate policies. The Corporate Staff Council is made up of employees from the Law and Corporate Affairs, Finance, Human Resources, Corporate Marketing, and Advanced Strategy and Policy groups at Microsoft. Other Executive Officers include the Presidents and Vice Presidents of the various product divisions, leaders of the marketing section, and the CTO, among others.^[76]^[10]

Stock

When the company debuted its IPO in March 13, 1986, the stock price was US $21.^[77]^[78] By the close of the first trading day, the stock had closed at $28, equivalent to 9.7 cents when adjusted for the company's first nine splits.^[78] The initial close and ensuing rise in subsequent years made several Microsoft employees millions.^[20] The stock price peaked in 1999 at around US $119 (US $60.928 adjusting for splits).^[78] While the company has had nine stock splits, the first of which was in September 18, 1987, the company did not start offering a dividend until January 16, 2003.^[78]^[79] The dividend for the 2003 fiscal year was eight cents per share, followed by a dividend of sixteen cents per share the subsequent year.^[79] The company switched from yearly to quarterly dividends in 2005, for eight cents a share per quarter with a special one-time payout of three dollars per share for the second quarter of the fiscal year.^[79]

Around 2003 the stock price began a slow descent. Despite the company's ninth split on February 2, 2003 and subsequent increases in dividend payouts, the price of Microsoft's stock continued to fall for the next several years.^[79]^[80]

Diversity

In 2005, Microsoft received a 100% rating in the Corporate Equality Index from the Human Rights Campaign, a ranking of companies by how progressive the organization deems their policies concerning LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual) employees. Partly through the work of the Gay and Lesbian Employees at Microsoft (GLEAM) group, Microsoft added gender expression to its anti-discrimination policies in April 2005, and the Human Rights Campaign upgraded Microsoft's Corporate Equality Index from its 86% rating in 2004 to its current 100% rating.^[81]^[82]

In April 2005, Microsoft received wide criticism for withdrawing support from Washington state's H.B. 1515 bill that would have extended the state's current anti-discrimination laws to people with alternate sexual orientations.^[83] Microsoft was accused of bowing to pressure from local evangelical pastor Ken Hutcherson who met with a senior Microsoft executive and threatened a national boycott of Microsoft's products. ^[84] Microsoft also revealed they were paying evangelical conservative Ralph Reed's company Century Strategies a $20,000 monthly fee.^[85] Over 2,000 employees signed a petition asking Microsoft to reinstate support for the bill. ^[86] Under harsh criticism from both outside and inside the company's walls, Microsoft decided to support the bill again in May 2005.^[87]^[86]

Microsoft hires many foreign workers as well as domestic ones, and is an outspoken opponent of the cap on H1B visas, which allow companies in the United States to employ certain foreign workers. Bill Gates claims the cap on H1B visas make it difficult to hire employees for the company, stating "I'd certainly get rid of the H1B cap."^[88]

Logos and slogans

In 1987, Microsoft adopted its current logo, the so-called "Pacman Logo" designed by Scott Baker. According to the March 1987 Computer Reseller News Magazine, "The new logo, in Helvetica italic typeface, has a slash between the o and s to emphasize the "soft" part of the name and convey motion and speed." Dave Norris, a Microsoft employee, ran an internal joke campaign to save the old logo, which was green, in all uppercase, and featured a fanciful letter O, nicknamed the blibbet, but it was discarded.^[89]

Microsoft's logo with the "Your potential. Our passion." tagline below the main corporate name, is based on the slogan Microsoft had as of 2008. In 2002, the company started using the logo in the United States and eventually started a TV campaign with the slogan, changed from the previous tagline of "Where do you want to go today?."^[90]^[91]^[92]

Microsoft "blibbet" logo, used until 1987.

Microsoft "Pacman" logo, designed by Scott Baker and used since 1987, with the 1994–2002 slogan "Where do you want to go today?"^[90]^[91]

Microsoft logo as of 2008, with the current slogan "Your potential. Our passion."

INTEL

2008-03-22T00:57:00.001-07:00

Intel Corporation

Type	Public (NASDAQ: INTC, SEHK: 4335)
Founded	1968 ¹
Headquarters	Santa Clara, California United States
Key people	Paul S. Otellini, CEO Craig Barrett, Chairman
Industry	Semiconductors
Products	Microprocessors Flash memory Motherboard Chipsets Network Interface Card Bluetooth Chipsets
Revenue	▲ $38.3 billion USD (2007)^[1]^[2]
Operating income	▲ $8.2 billion USD (2007)
Net income	▲ $7.0 billion USD (2007)
Employees	86,300 (2007)^[3]
Slogan	Leap Ahead
Website	www.intel.com

MICROSOFT

2008-03-21T21:06:00.001-07:00


Type	Public (NASDAQ: MSFT)
Founded	Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA (April 4, 1975)^[1]
Headquarters	Redmond, Washington, United States
Key people	Bill Gates, Co-founder and Executive Chairman;^[2] Paul Allen, Co-founder; Steve Ballmer, CEO; Ray Ozzie, Chief Software Architect
Industry	Computer software Publishing Research and development Computer hardware Video games
Products	Microsoft Windows Microsoft Office Microsoft Servers Developer Tools Business Solutions Games^[3] & Xbox^[4] Windows Live^[5] Windows Mobile Zune^[6]
Revenue	▲ US $51.12 billion (2007)^[7]
Operating income	▲ US $18.52 billion (2007)^[7]
Net income	▲ US $14.06 billion (2007)^[7]
Employees	79,000 (2007)^[8]
Slogan	Your potential. Our passion.
Website	www.microsoft.

The Art Of Scripting HTTP Requests Using Curl

2008-03-21T04:58:00.000-07:00

Here I assume that you're familiar with HTML and general
networking.

The possibility to write scripts is essential to make a good computer
system. Unix' capability to be extended by shell scripts and various tools to
run various automated commands and scripts is one reason why it has succeeded
so well.

The increasing amount of applications moving to the web has made "HTTP
Scripting" more frequently requested and wanted. To be able to automatically
extract information from the web, to fake users, to post or upload data to
web servers are all important tasks today.

Curl is a command line tool for doing all sorts of URL manipulations and
transfers, but this particular document will focus on how to use it when
doing HTTP requests for fun and profit. I'll assume that you know how to
invoke 'curl --help' or 'curl --manual' to get basic information about it.

Curl is not written to do everything for you. It makes the requests, it gets
the data, it sends data and it retrieves the information. You probably need
to glue everything together using some kind of script language or repeated
manual invokes.

1. The HTTP Protocol

HTTP is the protocol used to fetch data from web servers. It is a very simple
protocol that is built upon TCP/IP. The protocol also allows information to
get sent to the server from the client using a few different methods, as will
be shown here.

HTTP is plain ASCII text lines being sent by the client to a server to
request a particular action, and then the server replies a few text lines
before the actual requested content is sent to the client.

Using curl's option -v will display what kind of commands curl sends to the
server, as well as a few other informational texts. -v is the single most
useful option when it comes to debug or even understand the curl<->server
interaction.

2. URL

The Uniform Resource Locator format is how you specify the address of a
particular resource on the Internet. You know these, you've seen URLs like
http://curl.haxx.se or https://yourbank.com a million times.

3. GET a page

The simplest and most common request/operation made using HTTP is to get a
URL. The URL could itself refer to a web page, an image or a file. The client
issues a GET request to the server and receives the document it asked for.
If you issue the command line

curl http://php.net

you get a web page returned in your terminal window. The entire HTML document
that that URL holds.

All HTTP replies contain a set of headers that are normally hidden, use
curl's -i option to display them as well as the rest of the document. You can
also ask the remote server for ONLY the headers by using the -I option (which
will make curl issue a HEAD request).

4. Forms

Forms are the general way a web site can present a HTML page with fields for
the user to enter data in, and then press some kind of 'OK' or 'submit'
button to get that data sent to the server. The server then typically uses
the posted data to decide how to act. Like using the entered words to search
in a database, or to add the info in a bug track system, display the entered
address on a map or using the info as a login-prompt verifying that the user
is allowed to see what it is about to see.

Of course there has to be some kind of program in the server end to receive
the data you send. You cannot just invent something out of the air.

4.1 GET

A GET-form uses the method GET, as specified in HTML like:

In your favorite browser, this form will appear with a text box to fill in
and a press-button labeled "OK". If you fill in '1905' and press the OK
button, your browser will then create a new URL to get for you. The URL will
get "junk.cgi?birthyear=1905&press=OK" appended to the path part of the
previous URL.

If the original form was seen on the page "www.hotmail.com/when/birth.html",
the second page you'll get will become
"www.hotmail.com/when/junk.cgi?birthyear=1905&press=OK".

Most search engines work this way.

To make curl do the GET form post for you, just enter the expected created
URL:

curl "www.hotmail.com/when/junk.cgi?birthyear=1905&press=OK"

4.2 POST

The GET method makes all input field names get displayed in the URL field of
your browser. That's generally a good thing when you want to be able to
bookmark that page with your given data, but it is an obvious disadvantage
if you entered secret information in one of the fields or if there are a
large amount of fields creating a very long and unreadable URL.

The HTTP protocol then offers the POST method. This way the client sends the
data separated from the URL and thus you won't see any of it in the URL
address field.

The form would look very similar to the previous one:

And to use curl to post this form with the same data filled in as before, we
could do it like:

curl -d "birthyear=1905&press=%20OK%20" www.hotmail.com/when/junk.cgi

This kind of POST will use the Content-Type
application/x-www-form-urlencoded and is the most widely used POST kind.

The data you send to the server MUST already be properly encoded, curl will
not do that for you. For example, if you want the data to contain a space,
you need to replace that space with %20 etc. Failing to comply with this
will most likely cause your data to be received wrongly and messed up.

4.3 File Upload POST

Back in late 1995 they defined an additional way to post data over HTTP. It
is documented in the RFC 1867, why this method sometimes is referred to as
RFC1867-posting.

This method is mainly designed to better support file uploads. A form that
allows a user to upload a file could be written like this in HTML:

This clearly shows that the Content-Type about to be sent is
multipart/form-data.

To post to a form like this with curl, you enter a command line like:

curl -F upload=@localfilename -F press=OK [URL]

4.4 Hidden Fields

A very common way for HTML based application to pass state information
between pages is to add hidden fields to the forms. Hidden fields are
already filled in, they aren't displayed to the user and they get passed
along just as all the other fields.

A similar example form with one visible field, one hidden field and one
submit button could look like:

To post this with curl, you won't have to think about if the fields are
hidden or not. To curl they're all the same:

curl -d "birthyear=1905&press=OK&person=daniel" [URL]

4.5 Figure Out What A POST Looks Like

When you're about fill in a form and send to a server by using curl instead
of a browser, you're of course very interested in sending a POST exactly the
way your browser does.

An easy way to get to see this, is to save the HTML page with the form on
your local disk, modify the 'method' to a GET, and press the submit button
(you could also change the action URL if you want to).

You will then clearly see the data get appended to the URL, separated with a
'?'-letter as GET forms are supposed to.

5. PUT

The perhaps best way to upload data to a HTTP server is to use PUT. Then
again, this of course requires that someone put a program or script on the
server end that knows how to receive a HTTP PUT stream.

Put a file to a HTTP server with curl:

curl -T uploadfile www.uploadhttp.com/receive.cgi

6. Authentication

Authentication is the ability to tell the server your username and password
so that it can verify that you're allowed to do the request you're doing. The
Basic authentication used in HTTP (which is the type curl uses by default) is
*plain* *text* based, which means it sends username and password only
slightly obfuscated, but still fully readable by anyone that sniffs on the
network between you and the remote server.

To tell curl to use a user and password for authentication:

curl -u name:password www.secrets.com

The site might require a different authentication method (check the headers
returned by the server), and then --ntlm, --digest, --negotiate or even
--anyauth might be options that suit you.
Sometimes your HTTP access is only available through the use of a HTTP
proxy. This seems to be especially common at various companies. A HTTP proxy
may require its own user and password to allow the client to get through to
the Internet. To specify those with curl, run something like:

curl -U proxyuser:proxypassword php.net

If your proxy requires the authentication to be done using the NTLM method,
use --proxy-ntlm, if it requires Digest use --proxy-digest.

If you use any one these user+password options but leave out the password
part, curl will prompt for the password interactively.

Do note that when a program is run, its parameters might be possible to see
when listing the running processes of the system. Thus, other users may be
able to watch your passwords if you pass them as plain command line
options. There are ways to circumvent this.

7. Referer

A HTTP request may include a 'referer' field (yes it is misspelled), which
can be used to tell from which URL the client got to this particular
resource. Some programs/scripts check the referer field of requests to verify
that this wasn't arriving from an external site or an unknown page. While
this is a stupid way to check something so easily forged, many scripts still
do it. Using curl, you can put anything you want in the referer-field and
thus more easily be able to fool the server into serving your request.

Use curl to set the referer field with:

curl -e http://curl.php.net ramesh.php.net

8. User Agent

Very similar to the referer field, all HTTP requests may set the User-Agent
field. It names what user agent (client) that is being used. Many
applications use this information to decide how to display pages. Silly web
programmers try to make different pages for users of different browsers to
make them look the best possible for their particular browsers. They usually
also do different kinds of javascript, vbscript etc.

At times, you will see that getting a page with curl will not return the same
page that you see when getting the page with your browser. Then you know it
is time to set the User Agent field to fool the server into thinking you're
one of those browsers.

To make curl look like Internet Explorer on a Windows 2000 box:

curl -A "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows NT 5.0)" [URL]

Or why not look like you're using Netscape 4.73 on a Linux (PIII) box:

curl -A "Mozilla/4.73 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.2.15 i686)" [URL]

9. Redirects

When a resource is requested from a server, the reply from the server may
include a hint about where the browser should go next to find this page, or a
new page keeping newly generated output. The header that tells the browser
to redirect is Location:.

Curl does not follow Location: headers by default, but will simply display
such pages in the same manner it display all HTTP replies. It does however
feature an option that will make it attempt to follow the Location: pointers.

To tell curl to follow a Location:
curl -L www.sitethatredirects.com

If you use curl to POST to a site that immediately redirects you to another
page, you can safely use -L and -d/-F together. Curl will only use POST in
the first request, and then revert to GET in the following operations.

10. Cookies

The way the web browsers do "client side state control" is by using
cookies. Cookies are just names with associated contents. The cookies are
sent to the client by the server. The server tells the client for what path
and host name it wants the cookie sent back, and it also sends an expiration
date and a few more properties.

When a client communicates with a server with a name and path as previously
specified in a received cookie, the client sends back the cookies and their
contents to the server, unless of course they are expired.

Many applications and servers use this method to connect a series of requests
into a single logical session. To be able to use curl in such occasions, we
must be able to record and send back cookies the way the web application
expects them. The same way browsers deal with them.

The simplest way to send a few cookies to the server when getting a page with
curl is to add them on the command line like:

curl -b "name=Daniel" www.cookiesite.com

Cookies are sent as common HTTP headers. This is practical as it allows curl
to record cookies simply by recording headers. Record cookies with curl by
using the -D option like:

curl -D headers_and_cookies www.cookiesite.com

(Take note that the -c option described below is a better way to store
cookies.)

Curl has a full blown cookie parsing engine built-in that comes to use if you
want to reconnect to a server and use cookies that were stored from a
previous connection (or handicrafted manually to fool the server into
believing you had a previous connection). To use previously stored cookies,
you run curl like:

curl -b stored_cookies_in_file www.cookiesite.com

Curl's "cookie engine" gets enabled when you use the -b option. If you only
want curl to understand received cookies, use -b with a file that doesn't
exist. Example, if you want to let curl understand cookies from a page and
follow a location (and thus possibly send back cookies it received), you can
invoke it like:

curl -b nada -L www.cookiesite.com

Curl has the ability to read and write cookie files that use the same file
format that Netscape and Mozilla do. It is a convenient way to share cookies
between browsers and automatic scripts. The -b switch automatically detects
if a given file is such a cookie file and parses it, and by using the
-c/--cookie-jar option you'll make curl write a new cookie file at the end of
an operation:

curl -b cookies.txt -c newcookies.txt www.cookiesite.com

11. HTTPS

There are a few ways to do secure HTTP transfers. The by far most common
protocol for doing this is what is generally known as HTTPS, HTTP over
SSL. SSL encrypts all the data that is sent and received over the network and
thus makes it harder for attackers to spy on sensitive information.

SSL (or TLS as the latest version of the standard is called) offers a
truckload of advanced features to allow all those encryptions and key
infrastructure mechanisms encrypted HTTP requires.

Curl supports encrypted fetches thanks to the freely available OpenSSL
libraries. To get a page from a HTTPS server, simply run curl like:

curl https://that.secure.server.com

11.1 Certificates

In the HTTPS world, you use certificates to validate that you are the one
you you claim to be, as an addition to normal passwords. Curl supports
client-side certificates. All certificates are locked with a pass phrase,
which you need to enter before the certificate can be used by curl. The pass
phrase can be specified on the command line or if not, entered interactively
when curl queries for it. Use a certificate with curl on a HTTPS server
like:

curl -E mycert.pem https://that.secure.server.com

curl also tries to verify that the server is who it claims to be, by
verifying the server's certificate against a locally stored CA cert
bundle. Failing the verification will cause curl to deny the connection. You
must then use -k in case you want to tell curl to ignore that the server
can't be verified.

More about server certificate verification and ca cert bundles can be read
in the SSLCERTS document, available online here:

http://example.net/docs/sslcerts.html

12. Custom Request Elements

Doing fancy stuff, you may need to add or change elements of a single curl
request.

For example, you can change the POST request to a PROPFIND and send the data
as "Content-Type: text/xml" (instead of the default Content-Type) like this:

curl -d "" -H "Content-Type: text/xml" -X PROPFIND url.com

You can delete a default header by providing one without content. Like you
can ruin the request by chopping off the Host: header:

curl -H "Host:" http://mysite.com

You can add headers the same way. Your server may want a "Destination:"
header, and you can add it:

curl -H "Destination: http://moo.com/nowhere" http://url.com

13. Debug

Many times when you run curl on a site, you'll notice that the site doesn't
seem to respond the same way to your curl requests as it does to your
browser's.

Then you need to start making your curl requests more similar to your
browser's requests:

* Use the --trace-ascii option to store fully detailed logs of the requests
for easier analyzing and better understanding

* Make sure you check for and use cookies when needed (both reading with -b
and writing with -c)

* Set user-agent to one like a recent popular browser does

* Set referer like it is set by the browser

* If you use POST, make sure you send all the fields and in the same order as
the browser does it. (See chapter 4.5 above)

A very good helper to make sure you do this right, is the LiveHTTPHeader tool
that lets you view all headers you send and receive with Mozilla/Firefox
(even when using HTTPS).

A more raw approach is to capture the HTTP traffic on the network with tools
such as ethereal or tcpdump and check what headers that were sent and
received by the browser. (HTTPS makes this technique inefficient.)

Unconditional Love - A motivating story

2008-03-18T22:24:00.000-07:00

A story is told about a soldier who was finally coming home after having fought in Vietnam. He called his parents from San Francisco.

"Mom and Dad, I'm coming home, but I've a favor to ask. I have a friend I'd like to bring home with me."

"Sure," they replied, "we'd love to meet him."

"There's something you should know the son continued, "he was hurt pretty badly in the fighting. He stepped on a land mind and lost an arm and a leg. He has nowhere else to go, and I want him to come live with us."

"I'm sorry to hear that, son. Maybe we can help him find somewhere to live."

"No, Mom and Dad, I want him to live with us."

"Son," said the father, "you don't know what you're asking. Someone with such a handicap would be a terrible burden on us. We have our own lives to live, and we can't let something like this interfere with our lives. I think you should just come home and forget about this guy. He'll find a way to live on his own."

At that point, the son hung up the phone. The parents heard nothing more from him. A few days later, however, they received a call from the San Francisco police. Their son had died after falling from a building, they were told. The police believed it was suicide. The grief-stricken parents flew to San Francisco and were taken to the city morgue to identify the body of their son. They recognized him, but to their horror they also discovered something they didn't know, their son had only one arm and one leg.

The parents in this story are like many of us. We find it easy to love those who are good-looking or fun to have around, but we don't like people who inconvenience us or make us feel uncomfortable. We would rather stay away from people who aren't as healthy, beautiful, or smart as we are. Thankfully, there's someone who won't treat us that way. Someone who loves us with an unconditional love that welcomes us into the forever family, regardless of how messed up we are.

Tonight, before you tuck yourself in for the night, say a little prayer that God will give you the strength you need to accept people as they are, and to help us all be more understanding of those who are different from us!!!

There's a miracle called Friendship That dwells in the heart You don't know how it happens Or when it gets started But you know the special lift It always brings And you realize that Friendship Is God's most precious gift!

Friends are a very rare jewel, indeed. They make you smile and encourage you to succeed They lend an ear, they share a word of praise, and they always want to open their hearts to us

Why parents have gray hair

2008-03-17T22:25:00.000-07:00

A father passing by his son's bedroom was astonished to see the bed nicely made up and everything neat and tidy.

Then he saw an envelope propped up prominently on the pillow. It was addressed, "Dad". With the worst premonition, he opened the envelope and read the letter with trembling hands:

Dear Dad,

It is with great regret and sorrow that I'm writing you. I had to elope with my new girlfriend because I wanted to avoid a scene with you and Mom.

I've been finding real passion with Joan and she is so nice. I knew you would not approve of her because of all her piercings, tattoos, her tight motorcycle clothes and because she is so much older than I am but it's not only the passion, Dad, she's pregnant.

Joan says that we are going to be very happy. She owns a trailer in the woods and has a stack of firewood, enough for the whole winter. We share a dream of having many more children.

Joan has opened my eyes to the fact that marijuana doesn't really hurt anyone. We'll be growing it and trading it with the other people in the commune for all the cocaine and ecstasy we want.

In the meantime, we'll pray that science will find a cure for AIDS so Joan can get better; she sure deserves it!

Don't worry Dad, I'm 15 years old now and I know how to take care of myself. Someday, I'm sure we'll be back to visit so you can get to know your grandchildren.

Your son, Chad

P.S. Dad, none of the above is true. I'm over at Tommy's house. I just wanted to remind you that there are worse things in life than the report card that's in my desk drawer.

I love you! Call when it is safe for me to come home!

You think you have seen everything?!?!

2008-03-17T22:17:00.000-07:00