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"crappy mainstreamed business journals"
Started in the mid 70's and originally called "Dr. Dobb's Journal of Computer Calisthenics and Orthodontia" subtitled "Running Light without OverByte" it's one of the best and longest running technical computer journals out there. Here's a link to help further your education.
http://webreview.com/ddj/history.htm

CSS 1? What about CSS 2? Positioning?

Compatibility Advertised

CSS (tested) Compatibility Chart

So I should limit myself to design in the areas that are supported by all of those browsers only? Or should I design using the latest standards, and screw users of older software?

That leaves me with bold, color, line-through, left and right text align, and text indent; while not one of the positioning style directives work in all browsers, so I am still going to have to use tables for layout.

I don't know how many users you talk through procedures on the phone, but "scroll-bar" is not in their vocabulary. I'd say that fully half of those casual mom-and-pop run-of-the-mill NON-geek (and some self-proclaimed geek) users on the internet miss half of every web-page they visit because they don't know that scroll-bars exist in web-browsers.

How many times have you upgraded your browser? Did you know that most users don't even know that there is such a thing as a browser? Let alone that you could upgrade it.

I didn't say that it was impossible, I said that it wasn't easy...

CSS 1? What about CSS 2? Positioning?

Compatibility Advertised

CSS (tested) Compatibility Chart

So I should limit myself to design in the areas that are supported by all of those browsers only? Or should I design using the latest standards, and screw users of older software?

That leaves me with bold, color, line-through, left and right text align, and text indent; while not one of the positioning style directives work in all browsers, so I am still going to have to use tables for layout.

I don't know how many users you talk through procedures on the phone, but "scroll-bar" is not in their vocabulary. I'd say that fully half of those casual mom-and-pop run-of-the-mill NON-geek (and some self-proclaimed geek) users on the internet miss half of every web-page they visit because they don't know that scroll-bars exist in web-browsers.

How many times have you upgraded your browser? Did you know that most users don't even know that there is such a thing as a browser? Let alone that you could upgrade it.

I didn't say that it was impossible, I said that it wasn't easy...

It's funny that you mention standards, and then deride the Macintosh version of Internet Explorer, which is a far more W3C-standards-compliant (here's a breakdown of CSS capabilities for most modern browsers) than IE 5, 5.x, and 6 for Windows. Netscape 6/Mozilla's even better.

I thought I'd take some time to address the claim of Windows Internet Explorer dominance (even if off-topic), since I see it often.

It's been my experience that Microsoft's Macintosh projects are far better than their Windows counterparts.

CSS1 is NOT fully implemented in IE5.5. See http://www.webreview.com/style/css1/charts/masterg rid.shtml for the comparisons.

• Good. I like a role model who has the sense to use the best tool for the job, and who doesn't waste his time with inferior tools.

Best has a context associated with it. RMS believes that best is always free as in GPL'd. Anything else, to him, is inferior.

Linus himself was quoted as saying "Making Linux GPL'd was definitely the best thing I ever did. "

I'm concerned about what I see as extreme pragmatism on Linus' part. Surely, better software, in terms of features and useability, isn't the only criteria for determining it's selection. Price is obviously a major criterion with such internet-developed projects as the Linux Kernel.

As far as I can tell, the BitKeeper license doesn't insure that future versions, perhaps even versions necessary to run on future OS releases, will still be free of charge and without source, we can't be sure that we could make it work on those releases.

Maybe this is just paranoia and there's really nothing to worry about, or maybe not.

RMS is insistent and consistent. Somebody has to be.

I like Barry Goldwater's statement "I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." To RMS this is about liberty and he doesn't compromise.

It seems to me that there are two choices: The GPL is adopted for purely pragmatic reasons because we can outcompete closed source development. The other is that the GPL is adopted as a principled position.

If we take the first position, then will we stop using Linux the moment something better comes along in terms of features, useability and stability? After all, the existence of BitKeeper proves that, at least in some contexts, that closed source development is superior to Open Source Development models. Doesn't it?

Let me ask you. Should we adopt MicroSoft software if it offers better features and useability? Or... are there other concerns than the narrow "best tool for the job" consideration?

You refer to Linus' recent remarks on the kernel dev mailing list. These comments were made in the context of a discussion about whether or not the kernel HOWTO should quote the FSF.

Here are some more Linus quotes, all from http://www.webreview.com/1998/04_10/developers/04_ 10_98_4.shtml:

--

Making Linux GPL'd was definitely the best thing I ever did.

--

I'm generally a very pragmatic person: that which works, works. When it comes to software, I much prefer free software, because I have very seldom seen a program that has worked well enough for my needs, and having sources available can be a life-saver.

So in that sense I am an avid promoter of free software, and GPL'd stuff in particular (because once it's GPL'd I know it's going to stay free, so I don't have to worry about future releases).

However, that doesn't mean that I'm opposed to commercial software. Commercial software development has some advantages too -- the money-making aspects introduces some new incentives that aren't there for most free software. And those incentives often make for a more polished product.

--

The impression I get from all of this is that Linus prefers the GPL for pragmatic reasons, not ideological reasons. I can't speak for Linus, but I don't get the impression that he has an axe to grind w.r. RMS. RMS created the GPL, for ideological reasons. Linus uses the GPL for practical reasons. It's a win-win: good for RMS and good for Linus.

So I basically agree with the sentiments of the original poster here, but I would take exception with this statement:

There is very little need for evangelism

You may know RMS's story, but others still don't. I think it's fine that Linus doesn't want to walk this road. But that doesn't obviate the need for idealists. You don't have to agree with them. You don't even have to listen. But some people do listen - like Linus many years ago. And we are better off because of it.

RMS used to be a coder. Now he is largely a politician. There's a place for code. There is also a place for politics.

Who afraid of big bad RMS? Who's afraid of people who want other people to be silent?

IE for Mac and IE for Windows don't begin to have identical feature sets, even where HTML tags and CSS support are concerned. The same actually goes for MS Office on the Mac, which also doesn't use the same names as Office for Windows.

The reason for this is because Microsoft's Mac products are produced by an entirely different division of the company, which focuses on Mac-specific interfaces and features as well as maximum compatibility with Windows-made files. It's also partly because most of the whiz-bang features for IE-Win (and Office-Win) are specific to the Windows OS, nearly impossible to reproduce on the Mac even if Mac users wanted them. Microsoft's Mac and Windows products may have the same name, but invariably that's where the similarity ends.

Mozilla and Netscape Navigator have used a common code base for all platforms, so identical version numbers were meaningful there. Microsoft does not. Comparing IE-Mac and IE-Win by version numbers is an exercise in futility.

And as an unrelated aside: is IE6 for Windows really all that different from IE5? I sure don't see any major differences in my day-to-day browsing.

Look who's trolling now. What the hell is Netscape 4.9? The last version of Netscape Navigator in the 4 series was 4.08. Don't believe me? Then do a help - about navigator. You are confusing the browser with the full blown package (aka Communicator).

Second, CSS and JavaScript support in the 4 series is abysmal. Mozilla, the 6 series and even IE blow it out of the water. You can see how bad it is Here

Maybe you don't have enough experience coding html then. I know most /.ers are c gurus, so I'm guessing that's you... 8)

I have seen PLENTY of pages TOO MANY pages that NS won't render properly. And yes, SOME that it won't render AT ALL. It's a documented fact that it's css support sucks. Yes, CSS may be broken in the latest IE, but at least it worked properly before, and it's still less broken than NS.

In case you don't know the history, NS invented the font tag, and all the formating tags. Initially html was supposed to use a style language like css, but NS jumped the gun on the _emerging_ standard and created _their_ own standard (ie: ecma script, javascript, potato potahhto, right guys?). They resisted css once it was adopted as a standard and included only 1/2 hearted support for it. I'm sorry, but IE is a great browser. I hate Bill too, but IE just works better. I know it's not a popular opinion here because it's MS and _everything_ they do _must_ be evil and suck, but it's true. You want to know what will work and won't in each browser and SEE how broken NS 4 is?

In the olden days, IE 3 sucked, NS 3 ruled. But that was the OLDEN days. Even NS 6 has some broken stuff in it that the released despite developers PLEAING for them not to since fixes had been sent to them MONTHS before (that article was posted here, so search for it yourself.) :)

Just Because Bill is evil doesn't mean his browser sucks.

Poor CSS support

This is simply not true. It supports all of CSS1 according to the specifications, and a lot of CSS2.

Check out this chart to compare the CSS implementation of different browsers and browser versions.

Making Linux GPL'd was definitely the best thing I ever did.

What's funny is that I hardly even follow this stuff but I remembered this quote and found it on my first google search. Despite that, the responses so far to the above comment have been either agreement that Linus should more openly thank the GPL, or that he shouldn't because it wasn't helpful. No one even suggested that he already did thank the GPL!

Peace, all.

I have to say, it's very difficult to trust a review written by someone who actually likes Word 6 for Mac. It is widely considered one of the worst kludgy ports ever made, and was a key factor in the creation of the independent Mac business unit within Microsoft.

To bring this back on topic ... I really want to see Mozilla succeed, and I'm glad it's about equally compliant as IE 5 for Mac (which is what IE 6 is based on). But so far the XUL interface is way too slow and too buggy.

Damn damn damn. I thought I'd fixed it for IE 5 Win, but I was wrong. Thanks for catching that. The best fix (IMO) would be to put .text after createRange()

I usually use the most compatible browser around, so I sometimes fail to catch the annoying quirks in IE 5 Win. For example, IE 5 Mac supports the Netscape-style getSelection() instead of Microsoft's object stuff, and supports navigator.plugins instead of the equivalent goop in VBScript.

As I understand it, IE for MAC shares almost no code with IE for Windows. If one looks at (say) CSS support, objective tests put the big 4 in the order: IE/Mac, Opera, Mozilla, IE/Win.

"The Master List is the mother of all CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) charts, listing every aspect of the CSS spec and identifying how well it is supported by Netscape 4.x and Internet Explorer 3.x, 4.x, and 5.x for both Macintosh and Windows 95, and Opera 3.6 for Windows."

very soon, things like SMTP will be obsolete

Even Netscape ... can't keep up, via open source, with expensive protocols like XSL

companies are happy to except vanilla products like Apache and qmail, which do something simple, but do it efficiently

Apache is neither vanilla nor particularly efficient. It has more plugins, Apache Group, and third-party, than you can shake a stick at. It's way more variegated than Netscape or IIS, which I assume are your comparisons. And qmail certainly does one simple thing efficiently (deliver and receive via SMTP), but it does a lot more than that. QMTP again comes to mind; also it's built in forwarding mechanisms, available to admin and common user, and many others.

CSS2, unlike CSS1, is a huge standard. Full compliance is hard. Mozilla is almost there, followed by Opera, and IE not far behind. Even if most of CSS2 is implemented, the parts that are not are enough to make a web designer's job more difficult.

CSS level 3 is slated to be even huger, but at least it has the decency to be modularized, and you don't have to implement all modules.

CSS Mobile Profile breaks rank from the modularization in making a CSS2 light. The working draft is a clean subset of CSS2, if you support CSS2, you support this draft (as CSS level 1 and 2 were made with handheld devices in mind too). All it does is to say that it is OK for a handheld device not to support this and this and this CSS property.

This is a bit of a non-event really, the title "Mobile Profile" makes you think that this is related to CC/PP capability negotiation, while in practice it is CSS2 with the hard bits left out.

Geek reason to buy the iBook:

I have a second-rev tangerine iBook with extra RAM and a third-party 12GB drive so I can run both MacOS and Yellow Dog Linux. It's proven to be my favourite Python development machine, thanks to some great software (MacPython and BBEdit), the AirPort and great battery life. The improvements in features and price make it even nicer.

Even geekier reason to buy the iBook:

This cartoon goes out to the guy whose .sig reads "Asking a girl out is like trying to figure out sqrt(pi) using Roman numerals."

I am completely convinced that by version 8 or so, Perl will

• make "$", "%", and "@" optional

• Status: Withdrawn

• will have a decent object-oriented system

• It already has a decent object-oriented system i.e. an optional one (and what it lacks in syntactic sugar can easily be procured from CPAN). Personally, I hardly ever write non OO Perl (and, yes, I'd like to see it graduate from 'decent' to best-of-breed), but there's a bunch of areas - quick'n'dirty CGI, sysadmin scripts, optimizations and general gluing and mucking about - where OO is overkill. Don't forget Perl is a great Unix tool amongst many other things. You can munge the hell out of text with little more than a commandline salvo.

• will have useful threading

• Try version 6.

• will have a secure sandbox ala Java

• Er, you mean like Safe, which is as old as Java, offers vastly more control than the Java sandbox (it operates at the opcode level), and which, to my knowledge, has never met a script kiddie yet it couldn't politely but firmly kick to the kerb.

Perl has many fine and dandy features because it promiscuously and 'diagonally' soaks up good ideas (Larry has even been spotted flirting with C# of late). You don't have to be a hypocritical hobgoblin to want to make it finer and dandier: just another perl hacker.

Microsoft doesn't support the CSS standard correctly, just like they didn't support Java correctly.

While more 'complete' than Netscape's CSS implementation, it's inconsistant, not only internally, but also across Mac and Windows platforms running the same version of IE. Regardless of other browsers, standards don't do the developer any good unless they are actually standard.

Supporting evidence can be found here and here.

Kevin Fox

Microsoft doesn't support the CSS standard correctly, just like they didn't support Java correctly.

While more 'complete' than Netscape's CSS implementation, it's inconsistant, not only internally, but also across Mac and Windows platforms running the same version of IE. Regardless of other browsers, standards don't do the developer any good unless they are actually standard.

Supporting evidence can be found here and here.

Kevin Fox

The exponential spread of requests opens up the most likely source of disruption: denial-of-service attacks caused by flooding the system with requests. The developers have no solution at present, but suggest that clients keep track of the frequency of requests so that they can recognize bursts and refuse further contact with offending nodes.

Furthermore, the time-to-live imposes a horizon on each user. I may repeatedly search a few hundred sites near me, but I will never find files stored a step beyond my horizon. In practice, information may still get around. After all, Europeans in the Middle Ages enjoyed spices from China even though they knew nothing except the vaguest myths about China. All they had to know was some sites in Asia Minor, who traded with sites in Central Asia, who traded with China.

Some relevant material from the article The Value of Gnutella and Freenet:

The spread of MP3 files, and their centrality to Napster, skew the debate over free and copyrighted content. Lots of people are willing to download free music files from strangers, because if they find out that the sampling quality is lousy or the song breaks off halfway through, nothing has been lost. They can go back to Napster and try another site.

Matters would be entirely different if you tried to get free software from strangers, especially in binary form. You'd never know whether a Trojan Horse was introduced that, two years later, would wipe your hard disk clean and send a photo of a naked child to the local police chief. (And you thought UCITA's self--help provision was as bad as it could get!)

Promises, Promises, Promises

Promises, Promises, Promises--A Closer Look at P3P

Promises, Promises, Promises

Promises, Promises, Promises--A Closer Look at P3P

sorry, the links on their page doesn't seem to work. Try these for the referenced items

Download the Screen Fonts

The Georgia and Verdana Fonts

Matthew Carter, Font Designer

sorry, the links on their page doesn't seem to work. Try these for the referenced items

Download the Screen Fonts

The Georgia and Verdana Fonts

Matthew Carter, Font Designer

sorry, the links on their page doesn't seem to work. Try these for the referenced items

Download the Screen Fonts

The Georgia and Verdana Fonts

Matthew Carter, Font Designer

Georgia and Verdana are two typefaces designed for optimal use online.

see Typefaces Designed For The Screen

Before you jump to sign up for membership, read this article in Web Review by Andy Oram. Entitled "Would I join this Club if it would have me as a Member?", the article outlines some of the good reasons NOT to join ICANN as a member-at-large, as tempting as it may seem.

Here are some quotes from an article about JPEG2000:

Since August of 1998, a team within the Digital Imaging Group (DIG) has been developing a rich file format for JPEG 2000

It surely took a long time to develop it. I hope it's worth it.

Image authors will also have the option of saving the picture in lossless format for archival storage

This is great! It means I no longer need to keep all of these uncomressed BMP files lying around.

Wavelet technology also provides for a continuous download stream of data that allows the user to control the amount of image resolution desired

This is also great. If I understand it correctly, it will allow you to download 30% of the image and get 30% of the quality, download %50 and get 50% quality or download it all and get full quality. But I might be mistaken.

Another innovation is that a new standard, "sRGB" will be the default colorspace for this format. In the current JPEG standard, there is no notion of default colorspace. This lack of precision contributes to inconsistent JPEG color rendering

This is a Good Thing, too. Great for printing.

The JPEG 2000 standard for metadata also provides for extensibility of the metadata properties. In other words, new functionality can be added without having to rewrite the standard. And speaking of adding information, the metadata catalog can be modified without having to rewrite the entire image file. These abilities make for a very nimble, adaptable image file format

Well, we don't seem to need this (using different formats is easier). If the format is too extensible, it can lead to the "get-the-latest-viewer-you-moron!" syndrome, like all the problems with the HTML that we have now.

If all goes as planned, the official schedule for implementation will be released in January 2000

Other good links:

JPEG2000 Requirements and profiles document, V.6.0
SEMINAR ON IMAGING SECURITY AND JPEG2000 - this is an interesting collection of documents about digital image security and watermarking. These gyus take security seriously!
JPEG2000 bitstreams - actual .j2k files for your viewing pleasure (I wish a had a viewer :-)
JPEG2000 Decoder (Version 2.3.1) - written in Java, the source is not available yet (it will be)

Not being able to check out the Linux version, I can only speak for the windows version 3.61. That some pages are looking butchered is not actually Opera Software's fault, since their emphasis is on supporting standards. No support for Netscape and Micro$ofts proprietary tags is promised. Thus Operas support for CSS Level 1 is the best around. So if a page looks weird in Opera, the webmaster should be blamed, not the browser.

Probably because while BSD is derived from GNU/Linux

What Linuxmonkey told you THAT? Try HERE for a _little_ more accurate, and very easy to read history of BSD.

Having one big window just makes it harder to click quickly to other programs. The taskbar in Windows or the Mac's Finder menu help, but don't make up for the waste of screen real-estate by non-essential backing store.

The biggest problem with Opera is that it doesn't to table background colours (not even with stylesheets).

Don't overlook XML-RPC, which builds on the XML spec to provide a way of serving data over the web to remote clients.

Then there's RSS, which is a way of serving up a news channel or other changing data. These applications are here and in use. Together, these XML-based technologies will someday provide the data layer for the software agents of the future. Read lately about that new "price-checker" technology? Imagine being the one business that doesn't serve up your product list and pricing to that agent.

An interface from XML to these "hidden" databases is only a matter of time. We're just caught right now at a moment between technologies: the authoring tools don't really exist.
----

Long before the invention of the IMG tag, universal access was a vital part of the HTML spec -- the spec didn't actually define the presentation of content, just its semantic structuring. Presentation and syntax are supposed to be separate, and the loss of handicapped access is only one of the punishments inflicted on the public by intermingling the two. (There's a very good discussion of these issues in David Siegel's article stumping for the adoption of CSS.)

There are two questions that have to be asked here:

1. Is access to AOL an important part of public life?

This is debatable only to the extent that you focus specifically on AOL's terrible, spammy services; if you use AOL as a stand-in for internet access in general you have to answer yes. Nobody would argue today (especially not on slashdot) that access to internet resources is not significant.

2. Are there reasonable steps that AOL could be taking to make it easier for handicapped users to access their services?

This is a little touchier, because it focuses on the question of what is reasonable design. AOL will probably argue that it needs to rely on an image-heavy layout in order to stay competitive, but that's a hard thing to actually prove. (When you add images, how many users do you add because they're impressed by the flashiness, and how many users do you lose because they're annoyed with the long download time? Both numbers are hard to measure.) And yet, the extent to which blind users lose access to AOL's sites as a result are generally much easier to substantiate: I think it'd be pretty easy for a lawyer to demonstrate how AOL sites are completely unusable for the blind.

I'm all for this lawsuit. Not simply because it's another thorn in AOL's butt (though it is), or because I think we should do what we can to make life a little easier for blind people (though we should). But because I love spare, trimmed-down HTML, and I long for the day when 40-something marketing directors stop treating the Web like it was TV or a magazine. If this suit is successful, it'll get us one day closer to the day when the user, not the producer, controls the presentation -- and that will benefit everybody, blind and sighted alike.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, but if you're taking legal advice from some guy bullshitting on some web site, you deserve what you get.

Francis Hwang

Good point. I'd forgotten Google and of course this is one of those instances where Google's algorithms (counting inbound links) works where webcrawlers simply cannot.

There's an article at http://webreview.com/pub/97/04 /11/feature/part2.html about web design in general; chiefly why pervasive format-based markup is a bad thing (use CSS ASAP), but also about the problems of search engines finding their way through database and script driven sites.

The banner ad can set cookies using JavaScript. That's what happens when you visit webreview.com

Well Netscape's rendering of CSS has always been lacking, hopefully the Mozilla engines change this, if it ever gets finished. And of course there is no native XML support in Netscape. Not sure about Opera, don't use it.

Microsoft's rendering of CSS is, well, quite loose. It doesn't reject invalid CSS, but instead tries a best guess attempt. This tends to make you think your CSS sheets are perfect, when they're not.

IE 5's rendering of XML works pretty well when I've used it. The DOM is a little off, but then that wasn't standardised when IE5 was released. I used IE5 from the first non-public beta, mainly using the XML parser for server side rendering, and they were *quick* about fixing bugs/inconsistancies. How long did it take Nitscrape to pull together any sort of decent CSS rendering? Oh it's not there yet, lets all hold our breath for mozilla.

For details of what browsers support which CSS attributes take a look here. For a weighted scoreboard try here which marks Opera as the winner, IE5 as second place, and Netscape way at the bottom.

Well Netscape's rendering of CSS has always been lacking, hopefully the Mozilla engines change this, if it ever gets finished. And of course there is no native XML support in Netscape. Not sure about Opera, don't use it.

Microsoft's rendering of CSS is, well, quite loose. It doesn't reject invalid CSS, but instead tries a best guess attempt. This tends to make you think your CSS sheets are perfect, when they're not.

IE 5's rendering of XML works pretty well when I've used it. The DOM is a little off, but then that wasn't standardised when IE5 was released. I used IE5 from the first non-public beta, mainly using the XML parser for server side rendering, and they were *quick* about fixing bugs/inconsistancies. How long did it take Nitscrape to pull together any sort of decent CSS rendering? Oh it's not there yet, lets all hold our breath for mozilla.

For details of what browsers support which CSS attributes take a look here. For a weighted scoreboard try here which marks Opera as the winner, IE5 as second place, and Netscape way at the bottom.

Yes I work at NASA, that wasn't the point. I used an example from work to counter his sweeping suggestion. No, you cannot code a more efficient C++ solution with the example I gave. We have tried for 8 years!). Java has a generic lightweight windowing solution for all platforms: Swing. Hand coding examples of windows in C++ for various OS's is not my cup of tea, jolt, or an other substance you can throw at me. I can have my solution up and running in nearly 1/10th of the time in Java than in C++. (IN THE EXAMPLE I GAVE!)
Also my example was about saying *always*. It wasn't to say that C++ is never faster than Java. I just pointed out a solution that broke the stereotype. Want another? Try a really simple approach

BTW, Coding C++ for 6 years now. Working with Java because I want to. Nothing against C++, just trying to break some myths about Java.

I think it's great that The GIMP is getting recognition from web design sites like Web Review and Webmonkey. Still, it's time to come up with a new title for these articles; "Bring out the GIMP" is getting stale. After all, once Wired does something, it's no longer cool (if it ever was in the first place). Dammit, isn't there at least some line from The Usual Suspects that would make a decent title?

ACTION:

MS Product and Corporate Questions: Waggener Edstrom at (503) 245-0905
MS email contact info is at http://register.microsoft.com/regwiz/regwiz.asp

The USPTO phone number is 800.786.9199 (800.PTO.9199). They say they are "not yet equipped to handle general email correspondence". What a shock.

US Asst. Attorney General for Antitrust: Joel Klein.
* "If your comments relate specifically to the Antitrust Division's suit against Microsoft Corporation, please direct your correspondence to Microsoft.atr@usdoj.gov". Seems like this qualifies, eh?
* Other DOJ email contact info is at http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/contact/emails.htm
* DOJ Antitrust phone contact info: http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/contact/phoneworks.htm

Vice President Al Gore (cheerleader for hi-tech and, um, less distracted than others at the White House)
http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/Mail/html/Mail_Vice_P resident.html
Or email direct at vice.president@whitehouse.gov

US Senate Commerce, Science, And Transportation Committee
John McCain, chairman: John_McCain@McCain.senate.gov
http://www.senate.gov/~commerce/
508 Dirksen Senate Office Bldg
Washington, DC 20510-6125
(202) 224-5115
http://www.senate.gov/committees/committee_detail. cfm?COMMITTEE_ID=419 -- lists all members, with links to their homepages.

The House Committee on Commerce
2125 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-2927
Commerce@mail.house.gov

House Committee on Science
2320 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20515
(202) 225-6371

Bogus Patent petition:
http://ethepeople.com/affiliates/national/fullview .cfm?ETPID=0&PETID=98938 &ETPDIR=affiliates/national

INFO:

W3C copyright terms: http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/ipr-notice

W3C software license: http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/copyright-softw are.html

"Microsoft Awarded Style Sheet Patent"
Reprinted from The Bulletin: Seybold News & Views on Electronic Publishing, Vol. 4, No. 19, February 4, 1999
http://webreview.com/wr/pub/1999/02/05/style/index .html
This article apparently broke the story.

Wired News: "MS Wins Patent for Web Standard" by Chris Oakes
2:05 p.m. 4.Feb.99.PST
http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/17 741.html

WEB STANDARDS PROJECT CALLS FOR CLARIFICATION OF WHETHER PATENT GIVES MICROSOFT CONTROL OVER TWO KEY WEB STANDARDS
(press release: Feb. 4, 1999)
http://www.webstandards.org/patent.txt
(Also discussed at http://webreview.com/wr/pub/1999/02/05/style/index 2.html)

At this writing (11:30pm PST Feb. 5), nothing on this story has appeared in/on:
* C|Net
* ZD Net and all related publications/sites
* CNN
* NY Times, et al.
* Seattle Times (www.seattletimes.com)

ACTION:

MS Product and Corporate Questions: Waggener Edstrom at (503) 245-0905
MS email contact info is at http://register.microsoft.com/regwiz/regwiz.asp

The USPTO phone number is 800.786.9199 (800.PTO.9199). They say they are "not yet equipped to handle general email correspondence". What a shock.

US Asst. Attorney General for Antitrust: Joel Klein.
* "If your comments relate specifically to the Antitrust Division's suit against Microsoft Corporation, please direct your correspondence to Microsoft.atr@usdoj.gov". Seems like this qualifies, eh?
* Other DOJ email contact info is at http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/contact/emails.htm
* DOJ Antitrust phone contact info: http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/contact/phoneworks.htm

Vice President Al Gore (cheerleader for hi-tech and, um, less distracted than others at the White House)
http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/Mail/html/Mail_Vice_P resident.html
Or email direct at vice.president@whitehouse.gov

US Senate Commerce, Science, And Transportation Committee
John McCain, chairman: John_McCain@McCain.senate.gov
http://www.senate.gov/~commerce/
508 Dirksen Senate Office Bldg
Washington, DC 20510-6125
(202) 224-5115
http://www.senate.gov/committees/committee_detail. cfm?COMMITTEE_ID=419 -- lists all members, with links to their homepages.

The House Committee on Commerce
2125 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-2927
Commerce@mail.house.gov

House Committee on Science
2320 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20515
(202) 225-6371

Bogus Patent petition:
http://ethepeople.com/affiliates/national/fullview .cfm?ETPID=0&PETID=98938 &ETPDIR=affiliates/national

INFO:

W3C copyright terms: http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/ipr-notice

W3C software license: http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/copyright-softw are.html

"Microsoft Awarded Style Sheet Patent"
Reprinted from The Bulletin: Seybold News & Views on Electronic Publishing, Vol. 4, No. 19, February 4, 1999
http://webreview.com/wr/pub/1999/02/05/style/index .html
This article apparently broke the story.

Wired News: "MS Wins Patent for Web Standard" by Chris Oakes
2:05 p.m. 4.Feb.99.PST
http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/17 741.html

WEB STANDARDS PROJECT CALLS FOR CLARIFICATION OF WHETHER PATENT GIVES MICROSOFT CONTROL OVER TWO KEY WEB STANDARDS
(press release: Feb. 4, 1999)
http://www.webstandards.org/patent.txt
(Also discussed at http://webreview.com/wr/pub/1999/02/05/style/index 2.html)

At this writing (11:30pm PST Feb. 5), nothing on this story has appeared in/on:
* C|Net
* ZD Net and all related publications/sites
* CNN
* NY Times, et al.
* Seattle Times (www.seattletimes.com)