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The page fails W3C validation http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww .comm.utoronto.ca%2F~eckford%2F

DOH! http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww .comm.utoronto.ca%2F%7Eeckford%2F
 
  Result: Failed validation, 7 errors

As a small added bonus, PNG was the first W3C Recommendation (in 1996) (see the REC). It came well before their HTML 4.0 (1998). But I guess Slashdotters already knows such things... ;)

As a small added bonus, PNG was the first W3C Recommendation (in 1996) (see the REC). It came well before their HTML 4.0 (1998). But I guess Slashdotters already knows such things... ;)

As a small added bonus, PNG was the first W3C Recommendation (in 1996) (see the REC). It came well before their HTML 4.0 (1998). But I guess Slashdotters already knows such things... ;)

css. make a personal stylesheet and tell your browser to use it and to let your personal styles override site styles, then turn it off when you don't want it.

Perhaps if you made your HTML http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Frel igiousfreaks.com%2F&charset=(detect+automatically) &doctype=Inline and CSS http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator?uri=h ttp%3A%2F%2Freligiousfreaks.com%2F&usermedium=all valid it might work better..

Perhaps if you made your HTML http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Frel igiousfreaks.com%2F&charset=(detect+automatically) &doctype=Inline and CSS http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator?uri=h ttp%3A%2F%2Freligiousfreaks.com%2F&usermedium=all valid it might work better..

But it is covert, in the sense that it is obscured by legalisms. Perhaps not so much as the various EULAs out there. The fact that 50% of the time when someone posts something about the GPL they've misunderstood its implications in a legal sense means that the requirements of the licensee are obfuscated in such a way that they may easily catch a new developer unaware.

Legalisms are the language in which such things are written. This is a in a way a sad situation, because legalese is not understood by common mortals. But carefully crafted legalese is the only way to function in this context.

I object to the use of "virus" or "covert" because those words imply the wrong intent. Any good specification out there is obscured by the technical analogue of legalisms, yet you would not call,say, XML Schema Part 1 a "covert" spec---and you will agreee, upon inspection of that spec, that common mortals cannot understand that thing.

For instance, I still can't figure out whether, if I were to use a piece of GPL code in the creation of a public domain program, what would the legality and my responsibilities under the law be? Would I be prevented from placing _any_ section of my code into the public domain? Or just the stuff that directly interacts with the GPL part? Or just the GPL part?

That depends on whether the program you intend to release to the public domain is a derived work or not. Of course, this prompts the question "what is a derived work?"---well, that one is a hard one, and its difficulty is completely unrelated to the GPL.

If I did such a thing, could I be required by law to go after someone who violated the license that I have given them to use my sections of the code? For instance, I take program X, crop out a function, stick it in my code and inform the reader that that particular function falls under GPL even if the rest of the code is public domain. Then, if someone uses my entire program in a way that isn't permitted by the GPL, am I required to sue them, or does it fall to the original author of that GPL segment?

The GPL requires no one to sue no one. It is a grant of distribution rights from the copyright owner to the licensee.

The real problem with the GPL is that basically it is a construct of legalisms, not a construct of technology. The plethora of licenses out there and the requirement of programmers to evaluate licenses means that a programmer must have an exceptional understanding of the law to even safely consider using ANY of this code thats out there. Legally, there is no problem with that - you can put any license on your stuff that you want within the broad limitations of copyright law.

It cannot be anything but a construct of legalisms, since it deals with the economic issue of rights of distribution. While sometimes one may wish technical solutions would solve socioeconomic issues, that is never, ever the case.

But the real question we have to ask is - does this go against the original intent of the GPL? This may not be historically accurate, but the way I see it, the idea was to get people writing source code and exchanging it for eachother's use, with its ultimate ideal being 'all code is out there in some form or another and we can all learn from eachother's work'. The GPL was created as something which would spread by applying a certain avenue of force (copyright law) and create large groups of people where the code was shared.

I am quote convinced theoriginal intent of the GPL was not perverted. We should ask the original drafters, though. The provisions that have been termed "viral" are instrumental to that sharing of code: they ensure that no one can take advantage of the others, thus eliminating the fear of being taken advantage of.

The problem as I see it however is that the GPL can neve

http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/TLD Looks like the man was more right than I ever realised before.

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww -128.ibm.com%2Fdeveloperworks%2Fjava%2Flibrary%2Fj -aopwork11%2Findex.html%3Fca%3Ddgr-lnxw01AOPtestin g

Validator.w3.org reports 33 bugs.

There is nothing wrong with using JavaScript and XML and even using browser features like the HTTP posting facilities in common browsers. It's just that you have to take special efforts to make it accessible, and there's no specification for doing so, and it's not a defined standard, so people will have to muck about trying to come up with stuff that works.

When non-technical people hear about AJAX, they think that they're going get something like GMail or Microsoft's promised Web Office and it's going to be as easy as making a web page in HTML, but it's not.

I see you agree with me that the those pages, while they may be snazzy, are not accessible because the back-end framework that created them wasn't designed to make it so. My point is that if you code to standards such as XHTML and XForms, you can still get dynamic page stuff, but you need no JavaScript, and you don't have to blaze your own trail to define ways to do it. The W3C is an industry consortium, and the members define the standards, and implement them.

SVG and CSS are two great examples of W3C standards that are moving forward in both standards and implementation CSS 2.1 is a refinement of technologies that are used for both snazzy look and feel and for accessibility, and if you use CSS in your web pages, you will find that they are almost automatically more accessible, becuase it's designed that way. The same is true with XForms -- it's a specification designed by industry, through the W3C, and is implemented in a variety of web browsers, web plugins, and non-web products.

I've had nothing (at least so far ;-) to do with writing any of the software I've mentioned. (OK, I do admit filing the occasional bug report against Firefox if that counts.) I just happen to have read about them as products for filling the gap between the new standards and today's browsers.

My point about AJAX vs web standards is that the web standards are designed to fit device independence and accessibility needs AND provide the features that people need for dynamic pages and good graphic design, without using libraries of JavaScript which either aren't accessible, aren't portable across devices, or which require a lot of design work on the part of the page authors to figure out how to make them so. With XHTML, XForms, and CSS, you know you are going down a path that leads to accesibility and device independence.

As for my having been an editor of the XForms 1.0 Recommendation, it's true, I was. I use my real name and a real home page to post on Slashdot, because I want to, and certainly have never hidden it.

In any case, when you choose web technologies, please consider features such as device independence and accessibility, and plan for how you're going to implement them, if they should be necessary. As I said in my original post (days ago), if you're going to provide your software to US government agencies or contractors (think NASA) you need it to be accessible.

One good option I see today is writing your web applications on the server side generate XHTML+XForms and then transcoding that into plain HTML for accessibility, or DHTML/AJAX for dynamic pages, and I think this is much better than writing JavaScript by hand and then trying to go figure out how to separate the presentation from the data. Some packages for doing AJAX may offer you this separation and an easy route to Sec. 508 compliance and WAI approval; some, as the parent poster points out, might offer enhancements that can degrade seamlessly and whose absence won't be missed (including Google Suggest), but others won't (including Google Maps, apparently). I mentioned some software packages that I think can help in this goal, and an approach for doing so. There may be other approaches, but please do your own due diligence and plan ahead when adopting these technologies for dynamic pages.

Leigh.

Your proposal is a little bit like how Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P) works. You tell your web browser what your privacy preferences are and when you go to a site it compares your prefs with the P3P spec at the site. If they match, cool; if not (or if the site doesn't have a P3P spec), it warns you. Netscape 7 and IE 6 both have some P3P support. See the P3P implementations page for details and other implementations.

Your proposal is a little bit like how Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P) works. You tell your web browser what your privacy preferences are and when you go to a site it compares your prefs with the P3P spec at the site. If they match, cool; if not (or if the site doesn't have a P3P spec), it warns you. Netscape 7 and IE 6 both have some P3P support. See the P3P implementations page for details and other implementations.

CSS [...] omits the most useful part of the <table> element, arranging rows and columns of arbitrary elements

There are a lot of benefits of having a document that is manipulated by script, rather than a program you just run. For instance, good luck writing a Greasemonkey script to manipulate a Java applet. Or opening two different parts of an application in different tabs.

This is more accurately described as the Principle of Least Power. Don't use a program where a document can do the job.

What's worse is they either are lying intentionally, or don't know what they're talking about:

Farris: AJAX enables advanced features like drag 'n drop, dropdown menus
...
Before AJAX, Web apps would have to work around the lack of something like drag 'n drop w

1. Nobody's ever needed AJAX to do drop-down menus.
2. Drag-n-drop is part of the W3C DOM level 2 spec - 5 years old this month. Again, you don't have to use AJAX to do drag-n-drop. Just look around for an old javascript solitaire game. No AJAX.

So, when can we have an "Ask Slashdot - How do I get slashdot to pimp MY business?" Because that's all this article is.

• FormFaces A pure AJAX library that runs in today's browsers. It's stunning to see how simply this works.
• Chiba A server-side engine in Java that integrates with TomCat or other Apache web server technologies to produce HTML that works in today's browsers. Plus, the plain-old-HTML output of Chiba is accessible right now, in addition to the XHTML+XForms file itself. (Caveat: Full AJAX implementation is in development, according to the mailing list.)
• Orbeon Ops, like Chiba, Orbeon converts to HTML for today's browsers in its Java back end, but rather than integrating into your TomCat or Coccoon framework, it comes with its own framework that helps you separate presentation from content and write your applications.

• Mozilla XForms for Mozilla and FireFox, an XPI that's available for recent betas and nightlies, this one-click install adds native XForms support to these browsers. Still in Beta, but with plenty of developers, it should be a full implementation.
• FormsPlayer for Windows provides full support for XForms in Internet Explorer via a plug-in. Plug-ins are not everyone's cup of tea, but then neither is Mozilla ;-). You can get the AJAX benefits of dynamic page updating and yet still retain accessibility with any of the server-side or JavaScript engines above, but if your target deployment is Internet Explorer, you can gain tremendous access to advanced features inside IE with this plug-in. (Plus it has some neat Konfabulator-like tools such as SideWinder.)
  

BTW, the inventor of the web disagrees with you about what the web and the net are.

Here, let me fix that for you (though I really don't understand the relevance):

BTW, the inventor of the web disagrees with you about what the web and the net are.

Too bad the default settings in Mozilla don't allow more than 2 concurrent connections to the same server.

That would be, "Too bad the HTTP 1.1 standard strongly discourages more than two concurrent connections to the same server":

Clients that use persistent connections SHOULD limit the number of simultaneous connections that they maintain to a given server. A single-user client SHOULD NOT maintain more than 2 connections with any server or proxy.

Why can't you use "courier"? Why can't people use font tags correctly? Stop specifying exact fonts!

Don't use {font-family: "Courier New"}, instead use {font-family: "Courier New", "Courier", "monospace"}. No matter how common the font, never NEVER assume that the user has it.

Please see http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS1#font-family

Snicker. You're such a troll, you are actually funny. I forgot the first cardinal rule: Don't feed the trolls.

BTW, the inventor of the web disagrees with you about what the web and the net are.

of Tim Berners-Lee's web page, I think somebody should really get that n00blet a copy of Dreamweaver.

It's possible I misunderstood you, but I think the problem may be that the SVG image itself is specifying the size. Look at the element and see if the width/height are being specified. Ideally, the <svg> element should state width="100%" and height="100%". Then this should allow the user agent to properly scale the SVG image inside an <object> tag by specifying the <object>'s width/height. However if the <svg> element specifies width="400px", then maybe you're stuck because the author of the SVG has stated the width is 400 pixels, end of story.

I can't remember what the behavior of the SVG or HTML spec say with respect to this when conflicts occur... Specs like CDF will help to clarify some of these issues.

Yeah, I checked the page with OmniWeb, and I got the same thing. Not that I'd ever, ever use the product, but I still want to know what they're doing... Even more amusing to me is the fact that they went to the trouble of adding an XHTML DOCTYPE, but it fails validation miserably.

Somehow, I have a feeling that Office Live might turn out to be more useful (and practical) than Windows Live. I mean, isn't the whole point of the World Wide Web that your computer's operating system doesn't matter? What features of Windows (other than the crashing, the viruses, the spyware, the buffer overflows...) would be useful via a Web browser instead of the actual operating system? And if there are useful features, wouldn't it make more sense to make these new "Live" services completely platform-independent, in order to lure back those who've been using alternative platforms?

Office Live, on the other hand, could definitely be useful, assuming it's done right. It would make it easier (and possibly cheaper, though that would really depend on caveats below) for people on non-Microsoft systems to have access to Office's features and file formats, making cross-platform document sharing easier for all platforms, not just Windows and Macintosh. (Seeing how Office for Mac OS X is one of Microsoft's biggest cash cows right now...)

However, I see a couple of problems with this whole "Live" concept, as Microsoft is approaching it:

(1) Based on my attempted preview of the pages, the services seem to be Windows-only, at least for now. Why the hell should anyone already using Windows pay for an additional "Windows Live" service? Likewise for Office. Additionally, unless they intend to change the purpose and capabilities of Windows, I'm starting to realize that a Web-based operating system seems like a complete oxymoron, and probably a solution in search of a problem.

(2) Unlike Google, which would use their rumored OO.o-based service as a means towards getting advertising revenue, Microsoft is almost certainly approaching these products from the perspective of simply edging out competitors and maintaining their stranglehold on the OS and productivity suite markets, and also to boost their revenues by suckering people into subscription-based services. This means that once again, they're probably going to be working on pushing out a product that's "just good enough" (c.f. Internet Explorer) in order to rake in the cash and lock people into their own proprietary system.

(3) Ownership of data. With the hypothetical Google service and OO.o's use of the OpenDocument standard, the very nature of open source and open standards makes it crystal clear that the user owns the documents that would be created/edited/shared/published via the service. Naturally, by contrast, Microsoft will be seeking to limit the exporting functions, ensuring that once you create a document with their service, you'll have to send them perpetual payments in order to maintain access to that document -- i.e. they own your document.

"Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny!"

Seems that the Best Practices .mobi intends to follow are W3C's Mobile Web Best Practices.

This seems to be the first Working draft, and the W3C is looking for comments on those, to be sent to
public-bpwg@w3.org

From a quick read, it appears that these BPs should be applicable to any domain, not just .mobi. Overall, this seems like important work, and I'll certainly read the draft, and send comments - would encourage others to do the same

Seems that the Best Practices .mobi intends to follow are W3C's Mobile Web Best Practices.

This seems to be the first Working draft, and the W3C is looking for comments on those, to be sent to
public-bpwg@w3.org

From a quick read, it appears that these BPs should be applicable to any domain, not just .mobi. Overall, this seems like important work, and I'll certainly read the draft, and send comments - would encourage others to do the same

I hope they don't just enforce it and say "it's bad, feck off", but rather enrich and show the webmasters how to create valid content. Not only valid, but accessible and practicle for smaller devices (2 things which aren't touched upon enough in specs). For instance: "Mobile Web Best Practices" has some really good information.

It is my view, as well as that of the W3C, that the .mobi TLD is a rather flawed concept to begin with. There is absolutely no need to cordon off a part of the web for a specific audience (users of small-screen mobile devices in this case). TLDs traditionally refer to the nature of the content provider, not the abilities of the user! If we would stick to accessibility standards there would be no need for domains such as .mobi. Imagine telling blind users that they should only access .blind domains and that those with really big monitors should access .large domains!

Tim Berners-Lee has written an excellent piece outlining his own gripes with this issue: http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/TLD

Rotan Hanrahan has another: http://www.w3.org/2004/07/dotmobi_diwg.html

It is my view, as well as that of the W3C, that the .mobi TLD is a rather flawed concept to begin with. There is absolutely no need to cordon off a part of the web for a specific audience (users of small-screen mobile devices in this case). TLDs traditionally refer to the nature of the content provider, not the abilities of the user! If we would stick to accessibility standards there would be no need for domains such as .mobi. Imagine telling blind users that they should only access .blind domains and that those with really big monitors should access .large domains!

Tim Berners-Lee has written an excellent piece outlining his own gripes with this issue: http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/TLD

Rotan Hanrahan has another: http://www.w3.org/2004/07/dotmobi_diwg.html

http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=https% 3A//www.mtldinfo.com/

fails to validate. Lets hope their .mobi site is a little better.

This page is not Valid (no Doctype found)! http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww .speaker.gov%2Fjournal%2Findex.shtml http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator?uri=h ttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.speaker.gov%2Fjournal%2Findex.shtm l&usermedium=all Old man shoud know better

This page is not Valid (no Doctype found)! http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww .speaker.gov%2Fjournal%2Findex.shtml http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator?uri=h ttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.speaker.gov%2Fjournal%2Findex.shtm l&usermedium=all Old man shoud know better

Actually, it adds markup capabilities to a Unicode text stream, something that previous markup/structured data representation technologies had troubles to do in a robust and standardized manner (even XML 1.0 itself has issues with that).

Of course they were, they are respectively the most important Physicist and Biologist ever.

Someday, maybe a physicist will create a portable way of sharing text and graphical information on computers via a network. Hmm.

Look at some of these screenshots: http://www.seweso.com.nyud.net:8090/blog/

Specifically, the second one down, where it says "Attributes are name-value pairs that describe your item" and gives examples like "Author: Ernest Hemmingway and Area: 400 Square km".

Does this remind anybody of the Resource Description Framework? Maybe they're trying to start creating the Semantic Web, perhaps? Long talked about, but not, thus far, actually done? Maybe using something clever like OWL to search it and otherwise organize this metadata of all sorts of submitted things?

Just a theory, of course.

There is no version and authoring information in the WWW model...

"Why can't HTML include a tag, with an "HREF" argument, that points at any object at any URL?"

It has, since 1997.
http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/objects.html#h-1 3.3

Every major and many minor browsers implement it properly, with the one single exception of Internet Explorer that treats it like a drooling leper. Ergo, no one uses it.

HyperText Markup Language?

Why can't HTML include a <OBJ> tag, with an "HREF" argument, that points at any object at any URL? Like a text object that is maintained by the server, not necessarily the one maintaining the document in which the document is embedded. To do so now, I have to use IFRAMEs, which have all kinds of quirks and cross-platform differences.

Actually, the <object> element, which the W3C says is for "generic inclusion" has been around for a number of years (since HTML 4.0). I believe it does what you want. From what I understand, the <iframe> element has been deprecated in recent versions of XHTML. My apologies if you are merely being facetious and know this already.

anyone seen RDF lurking around?

What is really interesting about their web site is that it does NOT use XML. If you were the company that owned the patent to XML, wouldn't you want your public web site (your face to the world!) to be built using the technology you patented?

Instead of using well formed XHTML (including an XML prologue for browsers equipped to handle it - like mine) the site uses invalid HTML.

Hard to believe that this is the company that could have patented XML if the are incapable of presenting information to the public using it. Talk about bush league...

But I love my country, and this is something we made. No foreign bureaucrat has the right to decide it's not ours anymore.

Dodgy logic. Tim Berners-Lee is British. He invented the Web while working at CERN (that's in Europe by the way). Can we have our web back then please?

• The original proposal of the WWW
• HTTP, HTML and URLs
• History of the WWW

Therefore, following the logic shown by the above author when saying We *did* invent the damned thing... it is ours, there's no good reason to give it away! CERN should not have 'given away' control over WWW right?
Perhaps they ought to have patented the whole thing and prevent others from using it freely?

What about telephone? Who maintains world-wide numbering?

I am actually curious to see what yet another narrow-minded, self-serving isolationism will do to further the widening drift between the world and a certain country.

• The original proposal of the WWW
• HTTP, HTML and URLs
• History of the WWW

Therefore, following the logic shown by the above author when saying We *did* invent the damned thing... it is ours, there's no good reason to give it away! CERN should not have 'given away' control over WWW right?
Perhaps they ought to have patented the whole thing and prevent others from using it freely?

What about telephone? Who maintains world-wide numbering?

I am actually curious to see what yet another narrow-minded, self-serving isolationism will do to further the widening drift between the world and a certain country.

OK, so let's follow your logic this way:

• you (?) invented the DNS, so you keep control over it.
• somebody else invented the Web elsewhere, so you'll have NO control over it.

It seems that we have a deal.

It isn't you. Their "HTML" isn't HTML at all. It's dog shit.

As you say, how can I take "IT experts" who can't even produce actual HTML seriously?

-Peter

Maybe the editors of the XML specification and the 10 years of work that happened prior to the patent application might take exception.
The spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml
The Editors of the Spec
Tim Bray, Textuality and Netscape
Jean Paoli, Microsoft
C. M. Sperberg-McQueen, W3C
Eve Maler, Sun Microsystems, Inc. - Second Edition
François Yergeau - Third Edition

I dont know the situations of th eother editors, I am thakfull for their work and contributions and for Mr. Bray recent comments regarding this blatent thenft attempt of IP.
I'd like to see these folks comment other than Tim who already has.

--
Is IP theft via patent a crime? or just socially stupid?

Read 35 U.S.C. 102 very carefully, and in its entirety. Their filing date was January 28, 1997. The first XML 1.0 recommendation didn't come out until February 1998. The first draft XML came out in November 1996, but that's less than a year before the filing date, so 102(b) doesn't apply. There's still 102(a) to contend with, but if they can prove their data scheme covers XML and they invented it before November 1996, this might not die so easily. There's obviousness to consider in 35 U.S.C. 103, and they didn't mention SGML in any of their prior art disclosures. Still, don't dismiss this out of hand.