Slashdot Mirror

I think the parent is correct in saying that Acid2 is about testing compliance with certain standards, regardless of whether they are related to correctly written code or handling code with errors in it. The GP is correct, however, in arguing that the poster doesn't know what the fsck (s)he's talking about. The Acid2 test is something that I wish all browsers passed, sure, but it is not some sort of W3C validator that determines whether or not your browser complies with each any every W3C standard or not. It tests "features [the W3C] consider[s] most important for the future of the web". So a browser could pass the Acid2 test and still fail at all sorts of other important things related to (X)HTML, CSS, etc.

Developing to standards isn't easy, sure, and it takes some effort to figure out the most accessible, standards-compliant way to do seemingly simple things like having a rollover menu or a multi-column layout, but it's not impossible, it is worth the time invested in that it does produce more understandable, semantic, accessible, forward-compatible code, as has been commented on elsewhere in the comments.

If you are doing your best to produce a semantic, accessible site, and run into a problem that after serious effort you can't seem to resolve in a standards-compliant way, so be it. Send an e-mail to some standards guru or whatever to ask for help, and then go ahead and put a couple invalid lines of code into your pages. If you figure out a standards-compliant alternative later, you can change it. But don't use this as an excuse for laziness or a lack of a real understanding for the reasons behind the movement for standards-compliant design. Sticking a "Valid XHTML 49.3" badge on your web site simply because it runs through the validator OK doesn't mean that you've done everything right, but don't think that the ignorance of some of those people indicates that the whole idea of web standards is flawed.

Greg
---
http://www.gregwestin.com/

Validation not only is not the be-all-end-all, but it also shouldn't be. I say this as someone who strongly supports validating one's web sites. The reason I say this is because validators can only test so much, and so while they might be a useful starting point and/or test along the way, they cannot test everything. Even if something is technically valid, that does not mean that it accomplishes all of the goals of validation, such as being accessible regardless of the user's browser, disability, operating system, etc.

Check out Roger Johansson's series on evaluating web site accessibility for more on this.

You're complaining about 45 cents? A friend of mine was just in London and said that a subway ride there is £3.50 ($6.45 US), whereas in New York City it's $2, and in many other cities it is less (in Boston, which I've heard has the highest cost of living of any city in the United States, a ride is $1.25).

If you're lucky, airfare isn't also over three times as expensive, and you can buy yourself a one-way ticket to the US and live in low-priced luxury. Or you could get a 30 euro flight to Marrakech and live out your days in the even lower-priced luxury of Morocco. Heck, there are no subways here, but £3.50 would get you a taxi ride anywhere you wanted within any metropolitan area, and enough left over for lunch once you get there.

Greg
---
http://www.gregwestin.com/

'b) MacOS doesn't have "windows-style "uninstall" functionality" because uninstalling is trivial.'

I agree with this for the most part, but I have wished that there were a way to uninstall applications more completely on my Macs. For example, applications that install things in the /Library/ApplicationSupport folder, or ones that install fonts, or this amazingly annoying HP printer software that re-adds its icon to my Dock every time I reboot. Most of the stuff that isn't contained in the application bundle doesn't take up much space (e.g. plist files) and doesn't hurt to leave lying around, but it would be nice to be able to wipe some things out a bit more systematically (no pun intended).

For things like this, I like to think of John Rawls's basic argument for how governments should make decisions. He argues that from behind the 'veil of ignorance', where one cannot know who one would be in a given society, one would make the best decisions for society as a whole. So if, for example, you don't know whether or not you'll be born blind, you'll make a reasonable decision about making things handicapped-accessible, as opposed to if you know that you either will or won't be blind. In this case, if one could reasonably argue that people behind the veil of ignorance would want free wi-fi, then it would be a good idea. So even if some people won't use it, it could be very useful in extending access to people who wouldn't otherwise have it, or it might be useful enough for all those residents who want to use their laptops on the beach (perhaps this is 80% of the population) and would not significantly impact the others in a negative way.

In addition, I think the benefits discussed in Damek's comment are significant here: if there are community benefits, as opposed to individual benefits, this is a good reason for the government to get involved.

For a great card game that is both friendly to new players and scales in complexity and craziness as you get more involved, try a game called Killer Bunnies. It has various elements of randomness that ensure that the final outcome of the game is based partially on chance, the most obvious of these being the final determination of the winner, which is based on a randomly ordered deck. However, it is no Sorry! or something in which the game is entirely based on the roll of the die. Also, it has increasingly interesting and complicated elements the more expansion decks you purchase (non-collectible, unlike Magic or something like that), and frankly each of those that we have added seems to have improved the game.

I have no idea how this game has managed to survive to produce something like 7 expansion decks, as it seems like no stores carry it, but it is a game that I have enjoyed playing both with avid game players and with those who are generally not interested in games. It's not a game I want to play every day, after having played it frequently over the past few years, but it continues to be interesting, fun, and I imagine that if you play a lot of computer/console games it might be a refreshing occasional break from that.

Greg

Super Monkey Ball is awesome. I vote for Super Monkey Ball 2, myself, because as another person mentioned it has better multiplayer options. Monkey baseball is always a hit with large groups (taking turns hitting/pitching), and a few of the other games. The single-player mode is fun with one or two people.

Greg
---
http://www.gregwestin.com/

The article was 'unavailable' when I tried to access it directly, but the coralized link works:

http://today.reuters.com.nyud.net:8080/investing/f inanceArticle.aspx?type=bondsNews&storyID=2006-03- 15T174222Z_01_N15403811_RTRIDST_0_CONGRESS-FINANCI AL-GAMBLING.XML

Greg
---
http://www.gregwestin.com/

...is a proxy server set up in Nevada.

Greg
---
http://www.gregwestin.com/

Does this mean that Google also pays Apple for searches made from Safari, Opera for searches from that browser, etc? It would make sense, I would think, as TFA mentions treats this as similar to other 'partner' programs Google has, but I never knew that to be the case. Do you think they would pay a browser's producer if Google is not the default search engine, but an option, and the user selects that option?

Greg
---
http://www.gregwestin.com

This warranted a score of (5, Interesting)???

That is a terrible way to test toxicity of anything. That's like saying, "Go sniff some lead paint in an old, asbestos-filled building, then come back. Still there? OK, you're safe." As was argued elsewhere in this thread, the risk of various forms of mercury, asbestos, etc. may be overblown, but the oh-so-scientific method of assuming that anything that doesn't kill you immediately is safe is just dumb. The risks stated were brain damage and cancer; neither of these is likely to be something that would have dramatic consequences immediately.

Moreover, even if the effects were immediate, they wouldn't necessarily be a foregone conclusion. If there was a 1% chance that something would kill you immediately, would it be a good idea to try it out and then assume it to be perfectly safe when you and ten of your buddies on Slashdot survived?

Finally, even if something killed you immediately *and* had a very high chance of doing so (say 50%), how many dead people read Slashdot? Asking a bunch of obviously living people if they have ever done something with even a very high probability of death is necessarily only going to yield positive responses.

I trust the poster who works with fluorescent lights and has taken measurements of the risks of exposure to broken lights of various sizes, and who knows the difference between different kinds of mercury (post 14235364), but not the guy who'll recommend anything that hasn't killed him yet.

Sheesh, indeed.

Greg
http://www.gregwestin.com

Reading this note made me wonder about setting up WebDAV on my own OS X box, and instead of asking the quesiton, I looked for the answer (!) and I found this helpful page:
http://www.gregwestin.com/webdav_for_ical.php
so I thought I'd post a link to it.