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Offline web applications is part of the HTML5 specification: http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/offline.html

ICANN has really dropped the ball on new TLDs. Folks like Tim Berners-Lee were explicitly against new top level domains. The W3 even wrote a position paper New Top Level Domains Considered Harmful. They used the examples of .xxx and .mobi, but the reasoning applied to all new TLDs.

ICANN hand-picked economists to examine the costs and benefits, and their own experts could not come up with anything close to definitive as to whether the benefits exceeded the costs. ICANN is supposed to act in the public interest, and only approve policies where the net benefit (i.e. benefits MINUS costs) are positive. ICANN doesn't even know the *sign* (i.e. positive or negative) of this policy change's impact, let alone know the magnitude. Their pathetic reports didn't even attempt to put a monetary figure on the costs vs. the benefits, i.e. are we talking about millions of dollars of benefits, billions, etc? However, many individuals and companies commented in each of the relevant comment periods pointing out how there would be grave consequences, as there would be huge costs associated with such a change. As is typical, ICANN ignored these concerns, attempting to win a war of attrition, to "tire out" opponents.

Fortunately, the US Department of Commerce / NTIA may not renew its contract with ICANN. There is a pending Notice of Inquiry regarding the renewal. I would encourage people to send comments, to voice their concerns about the bad policymaking from ICANN.

ICANN is also about to renew the .NET agreement with VeriSign despite numerous comments in opposition. VeriSign will be allowed to continue to raise prices by 10% per year, despite falling technology costs, and without facing a competitive tender process (which would certainly result in much lower prices for consumers). The US Department of Justice should investigate both ICANN and VeriSign for anti-trust violations, as consumers are being harmed by these no-bid contracts. Toll-free numbers costs less than $1.50 per year at the wholesale level, yet .com/net/org fees are above $7/yr, due to lack of regular competitive tender processes.

Why has ICANN been consistently making decisions against the public interest? The reason is obvious -- it has been captured by the registries and registrars, who only care about selling more and more domain names, even if they are not needed (i.e. "defensive registrations"). They don't care about confusing users or making it harder to navigate the internet.

Microsoft supports CSS 3D instead. Seriously Microsoft is right about security flaws in OpenCL and WebGL as skeptical as I am.

I read stories here on slashdot with computer scientist publishing articles saying how bad OpenCL is from a security stand point. No user priveldges at all in using the GPU.

If only drivers did not contain scripts, trusted, and untrusted code in a demonic bastion could we trust them. Check this out, when a null hits a texture load api? A simple Javascript could root the system easily using webGL and read your ram just like that example above printed out the contents of the users VRam as a texture.

Another example of hardware acceleration with security gone wrong is flash. It seems the new flaws of security are graphics related. We need a new graphics API, frankly Intel, Nvidia, and ATI have shitty and horrible drivers no matter what the platform is. Even my ATI 5750 can not render the stupid aquarium right with Firefox 4 in Windows 7. I admit I am not a hardware expert but it seems the driver model in itself is flawed.

Take a look at Web Workers. I needed to synchronize multiple browsers to a common clock. Used ajax push engine as a message bus to send sync event timecodes, and a web worker on each client to run a timer in a separate thread from the main UI code. Works pretty good under Chrome.

The W3C, despite what some people think, is not a kind of "web government" that sits above browser makers, website designers etc. and tells them what to do.

Since when? Remember XHTML? Or XForms? They were so far ahead of the curve that they took years to notice the rest of the community had turned off somewhere way back. Of course, that's back when Microsoft believed that packaging IE with Windows meant they didn't need to fix bugs or add features to it anymore.

Sure, some of their more out there stuff sparked some ideas, but a good chunk of it went unimplemented. That's why the WHATWG got started - the W3C was going its own route, and the industry finally got tired of dealing with them.

The W3C, despite what some people think, is not a kind of "web government" that sits above browser makers, website designers etc. and tells them what to do.

Since when? Remember XHTML? Or XForms? They were so far ahead of the curve that they took years to notice the rest of the community had turned off somewhere way back. Of course, that's back when Microsoft believed that packaging IE with Windows meant they didn't need to fix bugs or add features to it anymore.

Sure, some of their more out there stuff sparked some ideas, but a good chunk of it went unimplemented. That's why the WHATWG got started - the W3C was going its own route, and the industry finally got tired of dealing with them.

It was NOT designed to handle complex layouts: for that, you used tables.

Tables weren't designed to handle complex layouts either.

Never said that it was, nor that table are a great tool for that. My point is: CSS wasn't born as a layout tool, but as a /styling/ tool. Hence the name.

And then the semantic folks arrived and told everyone using tables was baaaadddd for their main purpose was to present tabular data, not to layout things. And they were right, of course. But they made the wrong choice, deciding to extend CSS rather than crafting a new standard, specifically designed for the task.

The concept of separating semantics and presentation was around well before CSS. CSS was designed for this. They weren't "extending" CSS, that's what it's for.

My point (which you seem to miss entirely) was that CSS hasn't been designed as a layout tool. It was, of course, designed to separate semantics and presentation. But back then, presentation mostly meant: "which color should I use for this title ?" or "would this yellow text look better on a black or on a blue background ?". CSS was a great tool for such decisions. It simply wasn't adapted to the growing complexity of layouts, and still isn't.

I'm not saying that separating semantics and presentation is a bad goal. It isn't. I just feel that the emphasis should be put more on design features, and less on semantic-web-2.0-blah-blah.

Even CSS 2 isn't supported properly by some browsers.

Neither are tables. The question is, which browsers? The only mainstream browser that doesn't support CSS 2 is Internet Explorer 7, which people are already dropping support for.

I think perhaps, if some of the richest companies in the world haven't been able to implement this standard properly in, say, 10 years of continued effort

"Some of" isn't true. One of is. And that one has a vested interest in incompatibility, that they have explicitly stated in internal memos.

Here's another data point - iCab, before it switched to WebKit, supported CSS 2. It was built by a single developer. If a single developer can do it, it's not "overly complex".

Well, we obviously don't have the same definition of "mainstream". I still see quite a lot of IE7 and even IE6 requests in my logs.

And while most non-Microsoft browsers now have a decent support for CSS3, we musn't forget how much time it took for them to get it right. I didn't try iCab, so I can't say how great it CSS 2 was, but even the W3C hasn't been able to implement all of CSS2 into its own browser.

CSS3 must be close to having two independent implementations by now...?

Dream on. There's not even one complete implementation of CSS 2.1, much less of CSS 3. And CSS 3 is a moving target and large parts are still underspecified, so it's currently impossible to implement completely.

two full independent implementations

Which ones would that be? According to quirksmode no mainstream browser has 100% CSS 2.1 support. According to the W3C test suite results, the most complete implementation is Mozilla Gecko with 99.84% coverage and 97.07% tests passed.

There is a difference between which standards has 'Recommendation' level, and which ones are recommended to use. CSS 2.1 has been recommended for a long time, it is just not a 'Recommendation'. Just like RFC standards doesn't actually want your comments.

For which CSS specifications that are recommended. Check out CSS Snapshot 2007 , and don't worry about the 2007 name, the latest version is from May 2011.

There is: http://code.google.com/p/ecss/

The thing I dislike about these CSS extensions is that they all have different syntax and require a specific language/method
It would be great if one of these would run as an apache module, php/perl/python/ruby script, javascript, java/C# library, etc.

W3C does a great job, but they seem to go for semantical perfection instead of practical use.

Pet peeve: http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-color/#css2-system was deprecated in favour of http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-ui/#appearance. Nothing wrong with "appearance", but neither can do what the other can. If I want a HTML element to have the appearance of a button, I'll make it a button element. If I want to make a tri-state checkbox with the look and feel of the OS, I can't. Why not have both?

There is: http://code.google.com/p/ecss/

The thing I dislike about these CSS extensions is that they all have different syntax and require a specific language/method
It would be great if one of these would run as an apache module, php/perl/python/ruby script, javascript, java/C# library, etc.

W3C does a great job, but they seem to go for semantical perfection instead of practical use.

Pet peeve: http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-color/#css2-system was deprecated in favour of http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-ui/#appearance. Nothing wrong with "appearance", but neither can do what the other can. If I want a HTML element to have the appearance of a button, I'll make it a button element. If I want to make a tri-state checkbox with the look and feel of the OS, I can't. Why not have both?

The latter implies the former. I say go right back to XHTML 1.0 Strict (the last standard that didn't have a broken DTD) and concentrate on finally getting all the browsers to better implement SGML. For example, all of the itemprop, itemscope, and itemtype crap could be done better with processing instructions (say, pop an <?itemscope ?> tag thing and poof, done), without fucking up the markup. schema.org is trying (among other things, I guess) to help search engines better understand the page,* and PIs were made to tell applications how to process data, so it's a matter of getting them to play The Dating Game and meet.

Stop making HTML harder to validate and process, and start making browsers better conform--and developers more completely use--the many existing features in it and its underlying SGML or XML. That's Allstat^Wgame kid's stand.

*"However, the HTML tag doesn't give any information about what that text string means—"Avatar" could refer to the a hugely successful 3D movie, or it could refer to a type of profile picture—and this can make it more difficult for search engines to intelligently display relevant content to a user."

So they're breaking HTML by following the HTML5 specification?

Wow, the people who developed the standard use it, that's life changing knowledge!

Instead, let's look at some of the W3C's "Mission" statements:

Web for All - The social value of the Web is that it enables human communication, commerce, and opportunities to share knowledge. One of W3C's primary goals is to make these benefits available to all people, whatever their hardware, software, network infrastructure, native language, culture, geographical location, or physical or mental ability

Web on Everything - The number of different kinds of devices that can access the Web has grown immensely. Mobile phones, smart phones, personal digital assistants, interactive television systems, voice response systems, kiosks and even certain domestic appliances can all access the Web

This is just one of the groups that I'd have expected to have IPv6 addresses by now. Facebook and Amazon don't either..

This is a standards effort coordinated between the IETF and W3C; see:
    http://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/rtcweb/charter/
    http://www.w3.org/2010/12/webrtc-charter.html

While Google is certainly involved, it's a lot more than them, with folks from many companies (including Skype, at least pre-MSFT) participating; see:
    http://rtc-web.alvestrand.com/home/participants

This is the HTML5 spec.

Can't you read? W3C Working Draft 25 May 2011. Not a final spec.

And there is a big red warning at the bottom that suggest to read potentially a more up-to-date document : http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html

This is the HTML5 spec.

Can't you read? W3C Working Draft 25 May 2011. Not a final spec.

And there is a big red warning at the bottom that suggest to read potentially a more up-to-date document : http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html

others that have more reasonable standards, e.g. IE7+, Firefox 3.5+, Chrome 9+

That word doesn't mean what you think it means. Here's what it means.
Grandparent has half a clue:

you could point at HTML $NUMBER and say, "that's it, that's the standard."

$NUMBER = 5
This is the HTML5 spec. What the link in the summary points to is not the HTML5 spec but Mr Hickson's private scratchpad, and he doesn't even call that HTML5. HTML5 is in Last Call, which means that most of it is pretty stable now, and will be rock solid in 2014. So that's it, that's the standard. If you don't like it, use HTML 3 or 4 or XHTML 1.

Oblig. http://validator.w3.org/

It's just next to impossible to use the law as it is.

To me however it is very simple: A website can trivially obtain permission from the user for the site's own cookies.

Or, you can pre-opt out of ever website on the planet by sending the DNT: 1 (do not track: enabled) HTTP Header in every request for web resources.

The current version of Firefox4 supports this header, as well as NoScript for previous versions of FF. MS has stated that IE9 will support this header option too. Google (and the MPAA) have expressed concerns with allowing users to automatically opt out of every tracking service by simply stating their wishes to not be tracked... Therefore, Chrome will not support the feature, (I created a patch for Chromium -- IMHO, No one should use Chrome since there is a clean open source version available as Chromium).

An advertiser needs to get opt-in consent before sending a cookie as it is unfeasible to obtain permission as you go.

Enable DNT:1 header. The FIRST thing the advertiser sees in your request for a resource they host (which normally allows them to set a cookie if your browser has them enabled) is the DNT:1 header -- This allows you to inform them ahead of time that you do not want to be tracked.

I agree that the proposed Cookie Guidelines are not the needed legislation. I don't think that sites need my permission before they send "SET-COOKIE: somekey=somevalue" to me -- We all can use cookie blocking software (and/or the browser itself) to disable the acceptance of these cookies. I do agree that sites should tell me what they will track about me, and exactly which companies they will share such info with if I agree to allow them to track me. Use the "we can update these policies at any time" mumbo-jumbo in order to provide an up to date list of who's got access to privacy related data...

Basically this can be done in a simple way: [...]

Indeed, it's already been done, now we just need the Advertisers to respect our pre-opt-out wishes... Legislation will be required, unfortunately, this law is not it.

To riff on your post - there are firefox addons that significantly reduce, if not outright kill, these cookie-less tracking techniques. Given your knowledge of the problem, I think you are aware of the addons, but for anyone else reading along who wants to start to take control back themselves rather than rely on the political process to come up with a "compromise":

noscript - http://noscript.net/

Yes, Noscript is very useful -- In fact, it implements the very "DNT:1" HTTP header that I mentioned -- Firefox4 does (my build does, not sure if all Firefox4 versions do, but the current trunk & nightly builds do. Microsoft has said that IE9 will support the anti-tracking header. Google chrome of course will not -- and that my friend's is why I don't use chrome (I have an ugly Chromium patch that adds this feature though!)

Here's a PDF if you would like to read more about the DNT:1 header.

ghostery - http://www.ghostery.com/ Ghostery specifically blocks when one page pulls in javascript and other "bugs" from those tracking sites. It will even give you a quick list of the trackers on each page when it loads.

I use noscript with most, but not quite all, javascript blocked in conjunction with ghostery to keep guys like facebook and doubleclick/google from tracking me. Of course I block all cookies and do other things too, those two are just the most pertinent to the discussion.

Of course, this doesn't keep the partners of Facebook and Google/doubleclick from tracking you. Imagine if slashdot and othe sites you visit were paid a small fee per line of their server logs -- No sort of client side solution will stop them from tracking you this way short of not using the web. (What if they partner with your ISP!?)

Unfortunately legislation is the only answer -- Without any monetary penalties for ignoring our privacy demands, these companies will continue do just that.

The DNT:1 header tells Slashdot and any 3rd party hosts that your user information should not be saved -- This nips the problem in the bud, as evidenced by the outcry of some of the largest web-tracking companies.... If it wouldn't work, they wouldn't care!

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.playstation.com&charset=(detect+automatically)&doctype=Inline&group=0&user-agent=W3C_Validator%2F1.2

"62 errors, 28 warnings."

Yep, that site's more exploitable than FurAffinity, which in itself is a major accomplishment.

A very interesting move is the integration between Silverlight and XNA: this will allow (I am developing such a game right now!) web-based 3D accelerated games

Is it really a web-based game, or is it merely a web-delivered game? Because I see Flash and Silverlight developers confuse these all the time. Is the game based on the fundamental technologies of the web - e.g. are you delivering human-readable code, or are objects in the game discrete resources served via HTTP, or are levels addressable via URI, or is the environment represented by a DOM? In short, does it look anything like this? If not, you aren't basing your game on the web, you are delivering the game via the web. Just because you can get a chunk of non-human-readable code to execute and display something in a browser window by use of a plugin, it doesn't make it "web based". The only thing you are doing is streamlining the obtain->install->run cycle for a non-web-based game.

Read the fine spec. It distinguishes between taking and recording of an image to file:
http://www.w3.org/2003/12/exif/

dateTimeOriginal
Label: DateTimeOriginal
Comment: The date and time when the original image data was generated. For a DSC the date and time the picture was taken are recorded.

dateTimeDigitized
Label: DateTimeDigitized
Comment: The date and time when the image was stored as digital data. If, for example, an image was captured by DSC and at the same time the file was recorded, then the DateTimeOriginal and DateTimeDigitized will have the same contents.

He also founded the W3C. He's much more the inventor of the world-wide web and a widespread hyper-linking technology that anybody else can claim to be. By one hell of a long distance.

That's a good point.

On a different note, I wish he had come up with a better acronym. "The World Wide Web is the only thing I know of whose shortened form takes three times longer to say than what it's short for" (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web)

I hate it when I see the phrase "inventor of the web", etc.

Well, in terms of coining the phrase "World Wide Web", and actually creating http, he certainly had an impact.

Prior to him doing this, we had gopher, and ftp, and telnet, and usenet and what have you ... I suspect if you measure the total amount of traffic sent over this "rather sucky" protocol, it likely dwarfs most of the rest of the traffic on the internet by several orders of magnitude. It's hard to ignore how ubiquitous http is.

NCSA Mosaic changed the way everyone saw the internet almost within a year or two -- it went from being the "Internet" to being the WWW very quickly, and suddenly everybody knew what it was. I remember trying to describe the "internet" to people one month, and then having me tell me about the "web" the next (well, not literally, but damned close).

He also founded the W3C. He's much more the inventor of the world-wide web and a widespread hyper-linking technology that anybody else can claim to be. By one hell of a long distance.

You can hardly blame W3C for the lack of support for existing standards by the mainstream desktop browsers.

http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html scroll down to section 14.16, Content-Range. Most servers I've encountered support that header. For clients, wget has the --continue option (that works for both ftp and http as long as the server supports it).

I dunno man, I kind of like being to re-start aborted transfers, too. I wish the W3C would tack that onto HTTP.

What do you think the range header does ( http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html#sec14.35.2 )

Er, do I understand correctly that this "maquetta" is a closed version of the open, W3C-compliant Amaya software that exists since 1996?
http://www.w3.org/Amaya/

only for people who want to restrict their website to Chrome users.

Well, uh, not necessarily.

HTML standard itself has never required specific scripting language. That's why it's a requirement to specify the language used. That's why you also have monstrosities as VBScript used on the web.

Also, the same source already cites Tcl as a possible language, with even the corresponding content type. So it's a recognized possibility for some time. It only happens that nobody used it before google.

Last but not least, unlike VBScript, Tcl is not proprietary, is well documented and has an opensource implementation and no known patent limitation, so it's freely usable by anyone. Thus if this thing catches on, it could be used by most browsers (except maybe by Microsoft Internet Explorer which, as usual, would probably lag behind in implementing open standards).

What will stop adoption is not the language itself. It's the fact that, for 99.9% people out there, Javascript is more than enough.
Python would probably have a better chance of ever being used - and even it doesn't stand much a chance against the js establishment.

I really wish this wasn't an article about "sage commons" but one for Life Sciences & the semantic web - http://www.w3.org/blog/hcls

Some job is being done to fix that http://dev.w3.org/html5/workers/

The actual Vericode post says it's both the iPhone and Android versions. I'm not sure why the article linked in the summary [and thus the summary] only mentions the Android version.

I wonder then, does the web browser interface do something similar, minus the GPS info of course? What about the Pandora One desktop app?

There are specs for getting geolocation information via JavaScript, so possibly. However, your browseri s supposed to ask your permission prior. This also doesn't preclude other Pandora components, such as Flash, which may have their own API.

That said, am I the only one who just doesn't care? This company is providing bandwidth and fronting music industry negotiations in order to deliver a useful and valuable service to me for free. As per the implicit (and explicit) contract with almost every modern free service, it's a willing exchange of information, and I'm perfectly willing to trade my phone ID and location for this service (for now).

It would be nice, though, if there was an Android requirement that each application disclosed exactly what data it was collecting, and for what purpose, in order to be included in the Marketplace.

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fbeta.fcc.gov%2F&charset=(detect+automatically)&doctype=Inline&group=0
but also
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fslashdot.org%2F&charset=(detect+automatically)&doctype=Inline&group=0&user-agent=W3C_Validator%2F1.2

I just don't understand why. Can anybody explain?

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fbeta.fcc.gov%2F&charset=(detect+automatically)&doctype=Inline&group=0
but also
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fslashdot.org%2F&charset=(detect+automatically)&doctype=Inline&group=0&user-agent=W3C_Validator%2F1.2

I just don't understand why. Can anybody explain?

Wow, way to rewrite history dude.

Netscape was much worse at standards conformance than Microsoft. Part of that was that there weren't very many standards at that time. In fact, the W3C was basically useless, taking years to move forward on standards for an industry that measured progress in months. There basically was no HTML 3, at least not standardized.. HTML 3 was whatever browser makers gave us. Finally, the W3C standardized HTML 3.2.

And its even worse today. We haven't had a new version of HTML since 1998. Yes, 13 years. After the debacle that was xhtml, we're back to html 5 now, which isn't scheduled for ratification for another couple of years (2014 last i heard).

You should read A history of HTML , it's pretty informitive.

I'm currently working on a couple of government projects that must adhere to the latest accessibility standards, and they include this little doozy: no javascript.

Completely, and utterly false. WCAG 2.0 (i.e., the latest accessibility standard for Web technologies) does enlist Javascript as a supported technology, and provides several techniques to successfully meet the criteria.

I'm currently working on a couple of government projects that must adhere to the latest accessibility standards, and they include this little doozy: no javascript.

Completely, and utterly false. WCAG 2.0 (i.e., the latest accessibility standard for Web technologies) does enlist Javascript as a supported technology, and provides several techniques to successfully meet the criteria.

Google Docs has partially implemented WAI-ARIA roles. Google Reader has full support for it. I'm not blind, but as a curious web developer I have tested them with JAWS. I don't see where the problem seems to be. Modern screen readers work really well with modern browsers and web apps developed with the ARIA specification.

This is another instalment of the long-awaited crunch as the Web's refreshing informality and common sense collides with the institutionalized imbecility of the law. Tim Berners-Lee made his views unmistakably clear nearly 20 years ago: see http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkMyths.html. The basic principle is that, if you don't like the way the Web works, you should just ignore it. No one forces anyone to publish a Web site; but, if they do, it is an implicit invitation to anyone else anywhere to read it - and link to it.

However, it was only a few years later (probably about 1998) that the vast mass of money-grubbing freeloaders (sorry, the "business community") discovered the huge untapped mother-lode represented by the Web. "Hey!" they cried jubilantly, "Just look at this immense opportunity to make stacks of money that some stupid sucker has just given us - completely free of charge, too". Those were the same guys who soon began complaining that the Web's design was not optimized to help them make as much money as possible with no effort.

It was around 1998, too, that I stumbled across a law company's Web site somewhere in the USA that laid down strict legal principles for creating Web sites. One of these rules was that every single hyperlink required a separate legal agreement - negotiated by a reputable law firm, naturally.

The worst of the matter is that the reptiles (sorry, lawyers and politicians) can always change the law in any way they like. It's their game and their ball, and they are apparently absolutely unaccountable to anyone sane or educated.

... but for XHTML you would need to namespace it since it would be outside the HTML (default) namespace.

But I guess XHTML is dead now.

First off, it's not XHTML. It's just using the existing tags syntax, but with arbitrary tag names, and styling via css and manipulation via javascript.

Second, yes, happily XHTML has been dead for almost 2 years, according to the W3C - and they would know - they're the ones who killed it .

2009-07-02: XHTML 2 Working Group Expected to Stop Work End of 2009, W3C to Increase Resources on HTML 5. Today the Director announces that when the XHTML 2 Working Group charter expires as scheduled at the end of 2009, the charter will not be renewed. By doing so, and by increasing resources in the HTML Working Group, W3C hopes to accelerate the progress of HTML 5 and clarify W3C's position regarding the future of HTML.

The only people who cared are the XML nazis.

So you're basically saying that SVG is a spec that is expected to take roughly 10 years to implement.

Chrome is up over 90%. Heck, according to this report, in 2008 BitFlash had only 5 partials and 3 fails:

http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/1.2/Tiny/ImpReport.html

I understand that BitFlash isn't writing SVG, but it's a text-based format, it can't be incredibly difficult to write the markup out.

the goal of each W3C Working Group is to produce a Recommendation that is not only technically sound, but that can be implemented according to the W3C Royalty-Free License requirements.

That page does go on to allow exceptions in some cases (such as overwhelming community consensus for a royalty-ed standard), but W3C does very strongly reccommend against royalty-requiring components of standards

I strongly suggest continuing to work with HTML 4.01 Strict

What is the appropriate, widely implemented counterpart to the value= attribute of the <li> element, which was deprecated in HTML 4.01 and removed from HTML 4.01 Strict? It's one of the few things keeping my HTML 4 projects on the transitional DTD. I imagine that you're likely to recommend CSS counters, but these have two major problems. First, user agents have been slow to implement them. Second, the fact that the first track of Korn's 1998 album Follow the Leader is numbered 13, the fact that Nine Inch Nails' 1992 album Broken has track 6 followed by track 98, the fact that the four freedoms from the Free Software Foundation's definition of free software are customarily numbered with zero-based numbering, and the fact that a top ten list's items are customarily read in descending order are part of the meaning of a document, not the presentation, dammit! Even W3C realized that the element was mistakenly deprecated and restored it in HTML5.

And if I do HTML well enough to do the above, maybe I'm not a rookie at it. But I will use <em> instead of <i> from now on, even if it's not the way we did it back in the 50's.

Italics work just fine. Perhaps you should stop using the deprecated <i> tag, and start using the <em> tag that replaced it.

So this <i>Homo sapiens</i> will have to use the wrong markup next time we're discussing zoology?

The i element in HTML5.

I'm not asking you to provide citations, I'm asking you to state what parts of my claims you actually disagree with so I can back them up. I don't want to write a full and expansive term paper on every last detail of my position.

You want a citation? OK, here's a citation. You're the one trying to use the minority definition of what "open standard" means.

Let's take a look at all those definitions.

Definition explicitly allowing royalties:

1. ITU-T definition: "IPRs essential to implement the standard to be licensed to all applicants on a worldwide, non-discriminatory basis, either (1) for free and under other reasonable terms and conditions or (2) on reasonable terms and conditions (which may include monetary compensation). Negotiations are left to the parties concerned and are performed outside the SDO."

Definition where royalty-free implementation might be an implied requirement:

1. Venezuelan law definition: "available to everybody for their implementation in free software" (I'd check the cited sources if they were in English)

Organization that doesn't define "open standard" at all (instead defining "open process"):

1. IETF: "the IETF has not adopted a specific definition of 'open standard'" (Though this is worth mentioning: "The IETF IPR policy desires a royalty free model, but is flexible")

Definitions where royalty-free implementation and use is an explicit part of the definition, though degrees of openness are also recognized, so a compromise might be accepted if no standard is available that fully matches the definition:

• South African Government definition: "The intellectual rights required to implement the standard (e.g.essential patent claims) are irrevocably available, without any royalties attached."
• New Zealand official interoperability framework definition: "accessible to everyone free of charge: no discrimination between users, and no payment or other considerations should be required as a condition to use the standard"

Definitions explicitly requiring royalty-free implementation:

• European Union definition: "The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis"
• Danish government definition: "An open standard is accessible to everyone free of charge (i.e. there is no discrimination between users, and no payment or other considerations are required as a condition of use of the standard)"
• French law definition: "any interoperable data format whose specifications are public and without any restriction in their access or implementation"
• Spanish law definition: "its use is not subject to the payment of any intellectual [copyright] or industrial [patents and trademarks] property right"
• Bruce Perens' definition: "No Royalty: Open Standards are free for all to implement, with no royalty or fee."
• Microsoft's definition: "Let's look at what an open standard means: 'open' refers to it being royalty-free, while 'standard' means a technology approved by formalised committees that are open to participation by all interested parties and operate on a consensus basis."
• Open Source Initiative's definition: "Patents: All patents essential to implementation of the standard MUST: be licensed under royalty-free terms for unrestricted use, or be covered by a promise of non-assertion when practiced by open source software"
• World Wide Web Consortium's definition: "clear IPR rules for implementation, allowing open source development in the case of Internet/Web technologies" Also, "The W3C Patent Policy is designed to [...] Promote the widespread implementation of those Recommendations on a Royalty-Free (RF) basis" (link)
• Digital Standards Organization definition: "The patent

I will forsake my moderations done so far in this article to respond to this. There are multiple patents in the patent pools covering HTML, XML, CSS, JavaScript and similar open standards. The main difference is that W3C licenses its patents royalty free. See for example: http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Patent-Policy/ and http://www.w3.org/2001/05/23/SMIL-IPR-statements