Review of the Presidential Web Sites' HTML

Crispen writes, "My dad, the Rev. Bob 'Bob' Crispen, recently reviewed the presidential candidates' Web sites. He didn't review their style, mind you -- he reviewed their HTML. If you are looking for one of the most revealing (and humorous) commentaries about the current U.S. presidential race, take a look."

Comments

Closing </i> tag missing in this story

[Telcontar]

The entire text below this story (in the front /. page) appears in italics. How ironic, wrong HTML in a story about wrong HTML ;-)

Re:Closing </i> tag missing in this story

[GypC]

What's with peoples' idiotic HTML anyway? <I>?! Whatever happened to <EM>?

HTML is not a style markup language... Is Malda trying to do his best impression of Front-Page?

Re:Closing </i> tag missing in this story

[NMerriam]

Maybe they're not trying to emphasize something, they just want it in italics?...

Re:Closing </i> tag missing in this story

[GerritHoll]

Slashdot:
Validation by http://validator.w3.org: 235 errors

Rob Malda For President!

whoo-hoo Harry Browne has least errors

[kevin805]

Just to make sure no one misses it -- Harry Browne, libertarian, has the least errors reported by validator.w3.org. (Which is pretty surprizing -- it's hard to make a site that ugly validate).

Re:whoo-hoo Harry Browne has least errors

[reality-bytes]

Possibly; the uglier the site, the easier the validation, go figure.....

Re:whoo-hoo Harry Browne has least errors

[drinkypoo]

"it's hard to make a site that ugly validate" This is of course, patently untrue. The uglier the site, the easier the validation. All the cool stuff like CSS and DHTML is what really hoses you up.

So this is what he means by "Open Source" ?

[fusion94]

If this is what he understands as open source then I'm voting for perot.

"Thanks for checking out our source code! I plan to use this space to post
special messages to those who are helping to improve our web site -- by making
our source code the best it can be. The fact that you are peeking behind the
scenes at our site means you can make an important difference to this Internet
effort. I'm grateful for your help and support in this campaign. Now let's
keep working to build the 21st Century of our dreams!

Al Gore"

Re:So this is what he means by "Open Source" ?

[jareds]

Um...the message you quoted doesn't contain the phrase "open source".

Learning from the best

[billybob jr]

It's nice to see the campaign web pages taking a cue from the best porn pages with the pop up windows. George w Bush's popup takes you straight to a secure server for your $$$.

HTML gone wrong

[reality-bytes]

Its an interesting concept; this HTML, are we the only people who go sifting through the source; just for the hell of it?

At the end of the day, if its readable with the browser; thats all it ever needed to be - is there any real need to go nit-picking?
On the other hand it can only ever be good nettiquet to, if you find unworkable HTML, inform the webmaster so he make his page available to everyone.......

If you really want to generate your own unspeakably bad HTML, go to this page and look for information on this little companys' HTML editor, you'll probably (not) be surprised at how much you have to pay for it :)

Please do not check my HTML cos i've already checked it and it is definately cr*p

Re:HTML gone wrong

[Tet]

At the end of the day, if its readable with the browser; thats all it ever needed to be - is there any real need to go nit-picking?

But that's the problem. Buggy HTML means it won't be visible to all browsers. Few people are even aware of any browsers other than Netscape and IE, and so assume that if the page looks OK in those, it must be fine. People using Lynx are shafted, along with those using numerous other browsers that don't implement Netscape/IE extensions.

Re:HTML gone wrong

[Darth Null]

>At the end of the day, if its readable with the browser; thats all it ever needed to be - is there any real need to go nit-picking?

That depends on whether you think that HTML is a piss-poor page layout and description language for Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer or whether its a simple but fairly decent structural markup language.

Yes, it's true that almost every Web site uses a debased and twisted form of HTML that emerged as a result of the browser wars, and yes, probably more than 99.9% of HTML documents fail to validate against any W3C DTD, but that doesn't mean that the practice should be encouraged. It is possible to do lots of interesting and useful things with well-structured HTML documents, and though most indexers, user agents and Web servers don't do most of these things, there's no reason to simply give up on well-structured HTML; on the contrary, if enough HTML was done right by people who understand what they're doing, maybe the tools to support some of these capabilities would become more widespread.

Wouldn't it be nice if you could search Google or AltaVista and return not just the title of a document, but a structured outline of its content as well (and then be able to retrieve only the section of the document that you want instead of having to retrieve the whole thing and pick through it)? Wouldn't it be nice to be able to search for keywords that appear only in titles and headings rather than picking up random words in the body? Wouldn't it be nice to be able to have your browser read a big HTML document and then auto-generate a hyperlinked table of contents for that document, as well as a table of tables, charts, figures and images (all labelled, no less)? Wouldn't it be nice to be able to take a huge HTML document (say an entire book) and automatically split it into, say, chapters based on the structure of the document? Wouldn't it be nice to display a list of all the hyperlinks in a document that lead to other documents without having a list that reads "click here, click here, click here"?

All of these things and a whole lot more are possible with well-structured documents, but with HTML used the way it is, all you can do with it is look at it, and usually only if you have a pair of good eyes and a graphical browser. If you're blind or are trying to access the Web through a text terminal, cell phone or Palm Pilot, you find that you are effectively cut off from a lot of the Web because HTML has been used as a Netscape/IE page description language, resulting in information that is otherwise unusable.

Re:HTML gone wrong

[znu]

I actually have a site that was fully HTML 4.0 compliant and rendered perfectly in Communicator and iCab, but incorrectly in IE5. When I tweaked the code to render correctly in IE, it wasn't compliant anymore, but it displayed correctly in all three browsers.

This is a problem I've had more than once. iCab and Opera are the only browsers that seem to consistently render compliant HTML correctly.

--

Roblimo for President

[intmainvoid]

Looks like Roblimo wants to be considered as a potential president!

Or not...

[seizer]

...at all, if you're running Netscape 4.08 on Solaris. Page fails to render at all. Gotta love it.

--Remove SPAM from my address to mail me

Re:Or not...

[billybob jr]

Ouch. I really hope that web sites that don't allow access with all browsers are just a growing pain and not an indication of the future.

Re:Or not...

[luckykaa]

I've seen a rapid increase in sites that assume that shockwave plugins are available for Lynx. Or that everyone is using Netscape or IE under Windows. It can be very irritating having to load X then load Netscape just to find out a single piece of information.

More Complete Listing of Party/Candidate Websites

[Yardley]

Since some party/candidate websites were left out of the HTML analysis, here's a more complete listing:

Official political party sites

Democratic National Committee

Democratic Socialists of America

Green Parties of North America

Labor Party

Libertarian Party

Natural Law Party

Reform Party

Republican National Committee

Socialist Party USA

Workers Party

Official candidate sites

Gary Bauer

Bill Bradley

Pat Buchanan

George W. Bush

Steve Forbes

Al Gore

Orrin Hatch

Alan Keyes

John McCain

Donald Trump

Btw, not everyone's still running. Get involved in politics. Change the course of history. Can anyone get a candidates position of support or non-support concerning the DeCSS-DVD-MPAA issue? Interesting to see Gore running Linux, and Bradley and him using Apache. And though McCain may not be on MS, he does have some skeletons in the proverbial web-closet: McCain pay-chat a Microsoft affair

Slashdot Code a little scrappy

[Bryan_Crowl]

Looks like slashdot has quite a few errors , Click here to check it out

Re:Slashdot Code a little scrappy

[gruntvald]

Not so, I read through it, and saw many correct tags flagged as incorrect. Your argument fails.

Blood �n Gore

[Dervak]

Yeah, and dont forget that he invented the Internet!

/Dervak

Re:Blood �n Gore

[unitron]

Or else he smoked so much dope that he *thinks* he invented the internet.

Re:He should know. . .

[Money__]

. . .he invented it.

;)
_________________________

Is Lynx still valid

[sstrick]

Everyone always sights that pages don't work with Lynx but i have to ask, does anyone really still use it?

While I believe that ALT tags should be mandatory for other reasons (ie the blind or just when you don't want to wait for images) we are going to hold back advances and slow development time if we keep catering for _very_ old browsers. Especially if this is only for a very small % of users.

Lynx had it's day but do we really have to keep supporting it?

Re:Is Lynx still valid

[mengmeng]

As far as I know, text-to-speech software that blind people use does _not_ work very well with programs like Netscape or IE. Enter Lynx. Not to mention Lynx is not a "_very_ old browser" at all. I still use it for everything unless I absolutely have to use Netscape, simply because I could do without 300K graphics and useless Java/Javascript most of the time.

Re:Is Lynx still valid

[f5426]

Sure it is. I use it often when:
* I connect throught telnet into a host that have inet access from one that doesn't
* I use a X-less linux (quite often)
* I need to solve a chicken/egg problem to get web access (for instance, OmniWeb betas, the OPENSTEP browser come with a limited license. When it expires, you cannot launch it. And the only way to get the updated beta is to use http. :-( )
* I have a sloppy connection and need to get something (often a driver)
* I want to read pages/documentation offline from a terminal
* I'm tired of those animated gifs, those crappy colored background, those stupid text colors. It is amazing the amount of information you can display readabily in text mode on a 132x60 screen.
* I want to browse without spreading cookies everywhere

Cheers,

--fred

Re:Is Lynx still valid

[Tet]

Lynx had it's day but do we really have to keep supporting it?

Absolutely. I use it because it's so much faster than Netscape. At the end of the day, I'm rarely interested in how good the graphics are on a site, I'm after the content. I still have Netscape around, and use it for sites where the graphic content is important, but there's a place for both.

It's also not a case of actively supporting Lynx (or any other browser, for that matter). Any HTML 4.0 compliant page should be easily visible in any browser, including Lynx (yes, few current browsers fully implement HTML 4.0 yet, but they're getting there). What part of Lynx support do you think holds back advances? I'm not advocating support for Mosaic or Chimera, I'm merely hoping for standards compliant web pages. If I choose to use a browser that doesn't implement certain aspects of a page (e.g., images) that should be my choice.

Lynx is also great for those of us that have to do dial in support. When your only connection to the internet is through an 80x24 telnet window, and you *need* to check some details in order to fix a customer's problem, Netscape and IE aren't an option.

Re:Is Lynx still valid

[scumdamn]

I use Lynx because with it I gan curcumvent my company's proxy server. I ssh into my box at home and use Lynx to do research, download cracks, lookup hacking info, and look at ASCII art pr0n. When other techs can't get info from Deja.com because the proxy server is down, I'll look it up for them with Lynx and give them the answer. Funny thing is, I can never get any info from support.microsoft.com.

Re:Is Lynx still valid

[JDax]

Everyone always sights that pages don't work with Lynx but i have to ask, does anyone really still use it?

Sure. &nbsp Alot of folks who manage *BSD servers find that they don't need X, along with others who just prefer the command line, thank you. &nbsp You also have alot of folks out there with older 386/486 machines with small drives or who run the tiny Linux distros on floppies only, and thus may not have the space to install X, but still want to be able to browse the web unhindered.

Because of those who still want/need a text-based browser and because I'm sensitive to that, I support the Campaign for a Non-Browser Specific WWW. &nbsp I really think that this is the way to go, ie., stop making sites that are optimized for one type of browser or can only be read by one browser. &nbsp Give folks the option to NOT have to accept cookies to visit (ie., don't force them - you drive away a whole bevy of customers by doing that).

This browser "campaign" site also points to pages that show you how to design a site that can still be spiffy for graphical browsers while also being READABLE by text-based ones.

Support this movement!

I now step down off my platform. &nbsp Thank you. &nbsp Thank you.

Re:Is Lynx still valid

[derwisch]

...slow development time if we keep catering for _very_ old browsers.

Lynx 2.8.2 dates from June 1999 so it's def'ly newer than Netscape. All other arguments about
"Best viewed with any browser" have been uttered before here.

Re:Is Lynx still valid

[ucblockhead]

* I need to solve a chicken/egg problem to get web access (for instance, OmniWeb betas, the OPENSTEP browser come with a limited license. When it expires, you cannot launch it. And the only way to get the updated beta is to use http. :-( )

This sort of thing always amazes me. I once had to install Microsoft IE on a laptop that didn't have it (don't ask) and discovered that the only way I could do it was to first download Netscape using ftp, and then use that to download IE. Microsoft has an FTP site, but doesn't seem to bother to put newer versions of their software there.

Which is another huge pet-peeve of mine. As someone who does a lot of downloading over a telnet connection, it really ticks me off when people want you to use http to download software. Make a link to an ftp site!

Re:Is Lynx still valid

[Sloppy]

Lynx had it's day but do we really have to keep supporting it?

(I don't use Lynx.) You don't have to "support" it, but if your page looks less than 100% perfect with Lynx, then you probably have some big problems that are going to annoy a lot of people, whether those people use Lynx or not. So it might be a good tool to have around for testing. When you use it, think of it as just another way to find problems, rather than a way to be compatable specifically with Lynx.

we are going to hold back advances and slow development time if we keep catering for _very_ old browsers.

Don't cater to any browsers; cater to HTML spec. The browsers will take care of themselves. As for advances, well, many of the things that are labelled as "advances" (e.g. Shockwave, Javascript, etc) are retro and have held back the web, so it's hard to avoid being skeptical when people talk about advances.

Imagine if Netscape had not ever gotten away with adding typesetting "features" to HTML. Style sheets would be in widespread use by now. Beware "advances"; they can damage the webscape for years.

---

Re:Is Lynx still valid

[Chalst]

Another point is that the blind often use lynx, since it can be joined with software to read out text aloud.

No one should write their pages specifically for lynx: but then they shouldn't for IE or NS either. If you write your web pages in a flexible manner, more people will find the content easy to access (and not just people: also hits bringing web crawlers).

Re:Is Lynx still valid

[jeillah]

"we are going to hold back advances and slow development time if we keep catering for _very_ old browsers" Guess what...the newest browsers have problems with some of these issues. Try using a PalmPilot, Web TV or any of the new 'Internet Appliances' on most web sites. They either don't show or totally hose graphics, don't do scripting or Java and reformat the page you went through so much trouble to make pretty. Viewable with any browser is a myth...

Re:Is Lynx still valid

[Abigail-II]

As far as I know, text-to-speech software that blind people use does _not_ work very well with programs like Netscape or IE.

Wrong. My blind friends prefer IE over Lynx, as navigating with Lynx is much more difficult. Major problems with Lynx: frames and forms, although the latter is difficult on IE as well.

-- Abigail

Re:Is Lynx still valid

[Abigail-II]

Lynx had it's day but do we really have to keep supporting it?

Yes. Not because it's Lynx, but if your webpages are geared towards a specific display (and then you might as well have used a medium other than HTML), your pages won't be useful in many other situations. Text-based browsers are not old technology, nor used by poor people who cannot afford a decent PC (as many people designing commercial websites believe). Handheld devices (like some Nokia phones) and certain cars (some expensive German cars have this option) have web browsing capabilities, without the pictures. And then there's the (UK based) 'www-by-phone' service. And let's not forget the indexers and web-spiders. Scooter and friends are blind.

-- Abigail

Re:Is Lynx still valid

[Abigail-II]

Another point is that the blind often use lynx, since it can be joined with software to read out text aloud.

While it is true that Lynx can be "joined" with software to read out text aloud, it's a myth to believe IE or Netscape can't. There's pretty decent (Windows based) software out there that reads out anything that uses fonts. Including IE.

-- Abigail

Re:Is Lynx still valid

[Chalst]

Quite so. The readers with NS and IE will tend to give dismal results
on just those pages that sighted readers obtain dismal results with
lynx.

I am sorry if I suggested that NS and IE *can't* be used with such
software, though in my limited experience, it is more common to use
leaner browsers such as lynx with these tools.

Re:Is Lynx still valid

[ucblockhead]

Ignorance. Thanks for the pointer.

Re:Is Lynx still valid

[sklein]

Lynx had it's day but do we really have to keep supporting it?

Nope. If you write good HTML, Lynx, search engines, and the deaf will take care of themselves. You can concentrate on supporting graphical browsers by adding stuff on for them.

Yes, i know, HTML isn't perfect (i'm not blaming anyone in particular), and doing so will limit you from some (usually annoying) site designs. If you want to use one of those (usually annoying) site designs....

cheers,
sklein

Re:Is Lynx still valid

[Abigail-II]

I am sorry if I suggested that NS and IE *can't* be used with such software, though in my limited experience, it is more common to use leaner browsers such as lynx with these tools.

I have several close friends that are blind. All of them use IE, and only one sometimes uses Lynx. IE's superior formatting compared to Lynx makes that the blind people I know prefer IE. Frames and forms are the biggest problem.

-- Abigail

Candidate for hire?

[Simon Brooke]

I recently did a similar exercise on UK politicians Web sites (my local representative had just asked me to design one for him) and the results were equally revealing and amusing.

But what gets me is how many of them are in the commercial comain, .com Does that mean you can buy them? 'Hi, I'm Al Gore, and I'm

running this candidacy as a commercial operation...'

Re:Candidate for hire?

[Ravagin]

Does that mean you can buy them?
I think we call that 'Special Interest Groups'... :)

Seriously, isn't a commercial operation? They take in money (fund-raising, bribes, donations, etc.) and spend money (advertising, fund-raisers, etc.). You can even extend it to saying that they promise a return on investment. You 'pay' them with donations, and if you're lucky, you get a good president.
-Ravagin
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is NPR! And that means....it's time for a drum solo!"

Re:Candidate for hire?

[Pentagram]

So what were the results? COuldn't you have posted a URL or something?

Re:Candidate for hire?

[The Mayor]

Where else would you put them?

.net - They aren't network providers.

.mil - They aren't part of the military.

.org - They aren't non-profit or not-for-profit organizations.

.edu - I don't think the politicians can honestly claim that they are educational. This one's out.

.gov - Hmmm. This one makes sense, at least for those that currently hold a position in government.

.us - Yes. This is the most underutilized domain on the 'net. This is where politicians running for national office belong. Furthermore, for state elections, there's always the XX.us domains. Unfortunately, the .us domains are so unknown that it would be internet suicide to use this as your domain.

.com - Well, if you want to be practical, this is the only place left for politicians. Sorry, but this is exactly where they belong...

-dan

Re:Candidate for hire?

[ucblockhead]

.org - They aren't non-profit or not-for-profit organizations.

Actually, I think they are supposed to be non-profit. Though with either Gore or Bush, it is hard to tell.

Re:Candidate for hire?

[paul7e]

They are very specifically NOT treated as non-profits by the government so .org would be inappopriate (as well as bad marketing):

They aren't entitled to non-profit postal rates.

They pay taxes on money they make (not money the raise, money they make, such as interest on money they store in the bank).

And of course, at least since the Nixon era scandals, contributions to Federal candidates aren't tax-deductible.

paul

Lynx Friendly?

[dattaway]

I've seen a rapid increase in sites that assume that shockwave plugins are available for Lynx.

No joke. Often, I like using a simple browser to cut through the fancy schmancy graphics and get down to the text message. Its what humans speak.

Many times I surf the int-r-net from a Wyse-60 terminal under lynx and appreciate getting just the facts. A little formatting is nice and a bit of confusion is expected, but what I saw on georgewbush.com was jibberish that only Ronald Regan could mumble off:

[nav_shadow_rt_mid.gif]
[nav_shadow_left_mid.gif] [ISMAP:nav_youth.gif]-[USEMAP:nav_youth.gif]
[nav_shadow_rt_mid.gif]
[nav_shadow_left_mid.gif]btn_red_2.gif (60 bytes) btn_red_2.gif (60 bytes) btn_red_2.gif (60 bytes)

What is his message? Between all that I can see a secret message in there. He wants money.

Hand written

[Tomahawk]

Hmmm. He seems to like assuming that all HTML on the web is done in some sort of HTML Editor, like FrontPage, Netscape, etc. What about hand written. There is at least one page there that looks very hand written to me, and I would even take it that others (with no DTD) are also hand written. I know I'm constantly leaving out the DTD when I'm writing a page, and I always capitalise my tags, and use indentation.

If anyone would like to review my code, please take a look at the website I manage...

Artane Senior Band web page

T.

Re:Hand written

[GypC]

Not too bad but you really should have a DTD.

You might be interested in studying the HTML 4.01 specs and cascading style sheets to learn how to write clean HTML without ugly hacks like BODY attributes and formatting with line breaks.

Unfortunately, many browsers don't implement CSS very well. IE, Mozilla, and Opera do pretty well and Netscape is so-so, but older versions of all of them will suck... Nevertheless, CSS is the way to go. HTML was never meant as a style markup language, and you should use tags that reflect content rather than presentation (<em> instead of <i>); use CSS for fancy stuff, it really is easier and better once you get into it.

Re:Hand written

[b10m]

I agree on hand writing.
Nothing beats VI *smile*

Especially if you use something like Weblint

What I don't understand is why the hell this HTML stuff is being posted on /. and yeah ... I'm guilty also by posting this message ;-)

--
B10m

Re:Hand written

[Tomahawk]

I have to ask why you believe Frames to be a bad idea? Yes, I know that not all browsers support them, but my 3 test browsers do (Opera, Netscape, IE5), and Lynx semi-supports them. They do look good when used properly, and are very helpful in the design of a page.

Tables are used throughout the site, including on the main page (the one after the front page). Did you actually look at the rest of the site? And remember, a browser cannot display the contents of a table until the full table has loaded. A site can look very bad if a table is too big - especially on slower (modem!) links.

However, thank you for the comments.

T.

Re:Hand written

[revbob]

Actually not, but all of them except the one looked like they'd been done with an HTML editor.

I suppose it's possible that you could generate HTML that looked like that by hand, but I didn't think it was very likely.

Btw, I do think (some) HTML editors are a Good Thing, but for a very minimalist reason. Unlike many of you, I'm sure, I had width and height attributes on < 10% of my img tags when I was doing it by hand. Since leaving those attributes off is a real discourtesy to your guests, I'm glad to have a piece of software that lets me be both courteous and lazy.

"My Plan" by Al Gore

[Al Gore]

To quote Anthrax, "The Devil lives in California".

Californians are evil hypocrites. There are three major populations in California: Homosexuals ("Gays"), Vegans, and Mexicans. Let's discuss each one, and how they contribute to the hypocrisy that is "California".

Homosexuals love California. Hell, it's got "fornicate" right in the name! Well, sort of. Anyway, Californians battle for gay rights, which pretty much means the right to bugger your fellow man, then stick your tongue up his ass and lick out the semen.

Vegans are yuppies that wish they were hippies that wish they had jobs. They fight to keep animals (which eat other animals) from being eaten by an animal, called the human being.

Mexicans come from Mexico, a heathen nation to our south. They are part of a communist plot to take jobs away from good heterosexual, meat-eating Americans.

Now let's talk about the hypocrisy. Vegans are allied with the Gays. Vegans say that people shouldn't eat meat, but also say that Gays should be able to stick their meat wherever they like. Ahem. Gays eat meat on a regular basis, but there are Vegan Gays! It starts to get confusing. It's the hypocrisy, stupid.

I'm not sure where the Mexicans fit in exactly, but I do know that Gay Mexicans fit into each other quite nicely.

When I am elected President, I will hit the Calfornia state line with enough nukes so that the wasteland of Gay Vegan Mexicans breaks off and floats out into the Pacific. We will tow Hawaii over and staple it in California's place. Don't worry, folks; although similar in appearance to a Mexican, the Hawaiian is actually a cross-breed Asian, guaranteed to fuel America's much needed Technical and Convenience Store industries! And as demonstrated by the tradtional "luau", Hawaiians love to eat meat. So it all works out in the end!

Thanks for your time.


God Bless,
Al Gore
Inventor of the Internet

Linux and Gore...

[rootrot]

When will /. be announcing it's endorsement of Al Gore, the only candidate who runs his site on Linux. This would appear to be a foregone conclusion given the general "one-issue" tendencies of the group.

Remember, Al-Gorithms drive the net...perhaps there is more to his claim of creation than meets the eye...

rootrot

Re:Linux and Gore...

[mdvkng]

Gore may be just a keener out for the geek vote. The man who invented\? the InformationSuperHighway seeks to increase his nerd appeal with Apache and Linux.

More telling is McCain and Bradley on Solaris, McCain with Apache and Bradley with Netscape. Both are very solid platforms with Bradley being just a little more Open and McCain being just a little more conservative. Geez! It's like reading tea leaves!

As for George W. I'm not surprised by his tea leaves at all.

-M

Re:Linux and Gore...

[MEK]

Isn't it amazing what people will believe if they hear it repeated by spin-meisters enough times. A little background on the "Gore invents Internet" story, courtesy of the Daily Howler archive (www.dailyhowler.com) for 3-26-99:

[begin quote]

Did Vice President Gore "invent the Internet?" Better yet: Did he say that he did? Here is what the VP said when he chatted with Wolf on March 9:

GORE: During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.

And of course Gore did take the lead, within the Congress, in promoting and advancing the technical developments that have led to our now-beloved Net. Here's what Internet guru Vinton Cerf told the Post's John Schwartz:

SCHWARTZ: Vinton G. Cerf, a senior vice president at MCI Worldcom and the person most often called "the father of the Internet" for his part in designing the network's common computer language, said in an e-mail interview yesterday, "I think it is very fair to say that the Internet would not be where it is in the United States without the strong support given it and related research areas by the vice president in his current role and in his earlier role as senator."

According to Schwartz, Katie Hafner, co-author of a history of the Internet, "agreed" with that assessment:

SCHWARTZ: Hafner said people have been haggling over the true beginnings of the network for decades. "...[T]here are so many people who did at least one pivotal thing in either creating the network, or encouraging the use of the network, or bringing the network to the public--and Gore was one of those people."

William Greider wrote this, in a Rolling Stone profile published before the recent flap:

GREIDER: [Gore] held the first congressional hearings on industry's casual disposal of toxic wastes and on global warming, and he was an early champion of the system we now call the Internet.

Chuck Raasch, of USA Today, quoted University of Pennsylvania professor Dave Farber, whom Schwartz described as "one of the early players in the Internet:"

RAASCH: Dave Farber, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told [The Commercial Appeal of Memphis], "Gore did not technically create the Internet, but without him there is a good chance it would not be where it is today."

Indeed, when Gore made his initial statement March 9, it produced no comments in the press corps. On Wednesday, March 10, and on Thursday, March 11 not a word was written. Even in the Washington Times, a paper which lives for Clinton-Gore scandal, not a single word appeared about what the VP had said.

But to many within this celebrity press corps, it's just not a day without scandal. And as we've often shown you before, the scribes just love being handed spin, and rushing it right into print! And that's exactly how the Great Gore Scandal took the nation on Friday, March 12, as obedient pundits recited spin they'd been handed by historian Richard Armey.

We're not quite sure who invented the fax, but Armey sure knows how to use it. He sends out messages of dubious accuracy, and pundits just type them right up! For the pundits, it's a whole lot simpler than going out and spending their time doing real reporting! And Armey's stuff has pre-packaged panache, the kind that those editors simply love!

And so it was that, starting on Friday, the nation's press was full of experts, spinning remarkably similar tales about how the Net had begun.

[end quote]

To anyone not familiar with Daily Howler, I recommend it highly. It "reviews", in a relatively non-partisan fashion, the press's failings in covering the current campaign. It doesn't provide "answers", so much as it points out what questions the press ought to be asking -- but isn't.

Michael Kerpan

These guys are morons...

[shaldannon]

....FrontPage? FrontPage extensions on a *NIX ? Do these guys want to get defaced or something?

My code in't perfect, but it's all hand-made, and I try really hard to stick to the guidelines. These guys (and their site developers) don't have a clue.

On the other hand, I have to concede that we've come to expect that our politicians will all be incompetent, so it's no surprise that they hire incompetent staff....


Who am I?
Why am here?
Where is the chocolate?

Re:These guys are morons...

[NMerriam]

we've come to expect that our politicians will all be incompetent, so it's no surprise that they hire incompetent staff.

I'm sure they'd be happy to have you volunteer to fix all their problems. It's unlikely that anyone gets paid to work on these sites...

You're missing some stuff

[/]

Your page is missing some stuff. Mostly some type declarations and an alt tag, but there's no reason to be sloppy.

Re:You're missing some stuff

[Tomahawk]

Unfortunately, the ALT tag is not my fault - that image is included by EasySpace, and they didn't specify the ALT tag. Real nuisance - the Javascript that they wrote doesn't work properly under Opera and messes up the targeted links. I mailed them, and Opera, about this, and didn't hear back from either of them.

And yeah, maybe one of these days I'll remember to put in that declaration...

T.

"IMG" tags and "alt"

[luckykaa]

I've never actually seen the point of having the name of the image in the alt tags. Why do some web design tools do this? [nav_shadow_left_mid.gif] isn't really any more descriptive than [IMAGE]

When people use sensible HTML, Lynx is a very impressive web browser.

Re:"IMG" tags and "alt"

[torgo3000]

all spacer gifs and such should be using alt="" anyway. tho alt= tags are also helpful as a page is loading, many browsers display the text as the image comes up.

Re:"IMG" tags and "alt"

[m3000]

The reason they do that is most people name their images after what they look like. It doesn't look too good for navigation bars, but for icons or pictures scattered through out the site, it does work out sometimes.

Get back to work:)

[/]

Your page needs a little help yet.

Re:Screw Validation. IE4 is the only true test.

[GypC]

Please tell me you're joking...

On second thought, you're pretty damn funny either way.

Cool.

[jallen02]

McCains site had perl, know who I am voting for..

Re:Cool.

[jallen02]

scuse me?
"FRAME SRC="http://www.mccain2000.com/cgi-local/main.pl"
Thanks..


JA

Geneva is not a Microsoft font

[pischke]

The only web page editor I can think of that's that horrible is... but wait -- what's this? --

&ltFONT face="verdana,tahoma,geneva,arial" size=1 color="#ffcc66"&gt

All Microsoft fonts. Could this be evidence of a cover-up?

Geneva is not a Microsoft font. It's an Apple font.

Re:Geneva is not a Microsoft font

[revbob]

I know, but it was too good a gag to give up.

And too, there wasn't an X font in the lot. Would it have killed him to have said "Helvetica"?

Re:VA / Slash-dot Giveaway!

[cvincent]

WTF is this?? can you say shameless plug?

Another great reason to vote for a candidate

[dgb2n]

Like his platform? Nope.

Man of strong character? Nope.

Runs his website on Linux? THATS MY MAN

Maybe voters should do what they did last time and vote for the cute guy ;-)

Capitalized tags

[SlydeRule]

...I always capitalise my tags...

For the forward-looking:

The W3C's XHTML 1.0 spec states in part:

4.2 Element and attribute names must be in lower case

XHTML documents must use lower case for all HTML element and attribute names.

Re:VA / Slash-dot Giveaway!

[mwillis]

This is a troll. Somebody obviously does not like VA Linux, and is doing a kind of proxy smear campaign to make it look like they VA is a crass bunch of suits devoid of any clues.

I'm amazed

[Pentagram]

I didn't know that so many candidates were actually standing in the US.

I'm surprised the commies weren't hung, drawn and quatered ;-)

Doesn't it require a lot of cash to stand in a US election? How many votes do the minority parties get?

Re:I'm amazed

[ucblockhead]

It costs almost nothing to stand in a US election. Getting enough cash to get the press to notice you is another thing.

If I recall correctly, "officially" running for president is merely a matter signing up with the FEC. This won't get you on the ballot, though. In that, the restrictions vary wildly by state. In some states, the restrictions are bad enough that only the two major parties get on. In others, pretty much any party who signs up gets on. In my state (California), we tend to have the following parties on the ballot:

• Republican
• Democrat
• Reform
• Libertarian
• "Natural Law" (new agers)
• "Peace and Freedom" (socialists)
• American Independent

When you register to vote, you pick on of these, or you can choose "Independent" (No party. Not to be confused with "American Independent", which is a party) or "Decline to State". Something like 1/3 of the population is independent, up quite a bit recently.

Usually, the total vote for all but the first two parties is somewhere between 5 and 10%. However, the press blackout of minor parties is so bad, that the media typically reports only the totals for the two parties.

As part of an earlier effort at "campaign finance reform", candidates get an extra dollar for every dollar they raise ("matching funds") assuming their party got more the somewhere between 5 and 15% of the vote. (I don't recall which, exactly.) Obviously this boosts the major parties and marginalizes the fringe parties. Also, the American public, for some unknown reason, only regards those candidates that the press annoints. In this election, they've annointed just four, and report as if there are only four men running, despite the fact that the sample ballot for the primary election coming up in California I just received has twenty people listed as running for President.

Anyway, this media blackout of minor candidates is mostly what causes the cash requirement. Unless you spend a fortune advertising, you won't get mentioned on the news.

Finally, in most elections, you actually have the right to vote for anyone who meets the eligibility requirements. A "write-in" candidacy. I could, for example, demand a write in ballot next november and vote for myself for president. (I'll turn 35 in August. Remember that, voters.) Write-ins are rare, but not unheard of. San Francisco had a well-publicized write-in candidacy that succeeded in forcing a run-off last year in its mayors race.

(Oh, and the "American Communist Party" still exists, as far as I know, but is so weak as to be a joke and has been since before WWII.)

Re:I'm amazed

[friedo]

Well, seeing as about 50% of the people who are eligable to vote actually do, and 98% of those have never heard of any parties besides the dumbass-nutball-bible-thumpin republicans and the dumbass-nutball-bleeding-heart democrats, and the remaining 2% don't want to "waste" their vote on minority parties, I think the libertarian and socialist parties got about 17 votes between them.

But that doesn't matter, because in the US, presidents aren't elected by popular vote, anyway.

Re:I'm amazed

[DrMaurer]

"If I recall correctly, "officially" running for president is merely a matter signing up with the FEC."

Of course, that's officially. I'm running for president. :-) All you need is write in votes. I hear Snoopy (from Peanuts) is quite the common choice.

I can't officially run for president, because I'm only 21, but people can still vote for me by writing in.

later

Re:I'm amazed

[DrMaurer]

"IMHO you're only "running" when you can legally hold the office if you win."

Bah! Shows how much you know, I'm running for the 2016 elections! HA!

No, seriously, I understand where you're coming from, but I still think it's funny. I really don't care if my campaign is legitimate. I don't accept donations, either . . .

later

Re:Screw Validation. IE4 is the only true test.

[-brazil-]

To conclude. I know (from market research) that most people who use so-called alternative browser platforms also have access to the IE platform,

Maybe, but do they use IE? Almost 50% of the WWW populace uses Netscape for their daily browsing, and those people are not going to be happy about you telling them that they have to switch browsers to watch your page.

It may be somewhat sound business logic to only really care about IE and Netscape, but only IE is plain stupid.

.com, .org, and .net mean NOTHING

[Smack]

Internic doesn't have any restrictions on these. So it's not even like these candidates are "breaking the rules".

The fact is, a majority of the electorate gets confused when they see an address that ISN'T .com. And the last thing the candidates need is to add more confusion.

tables -- laugh and a half

[BadERA]

And it's followed by what may be the single longest table in captivity. So you sit there for hours (it seems) waiting for anything but a white screen to show up.

Has this guy done a review of Slashdot's scandalous HTML recently? Particularly the tables that put Bush's baby almost-tables under the table?

Re:tables -- laugh and a half

[BadERA]

I have no trouble viewing either page of code, and use IE -- my point, which you seem to have missed entirely, was that Slashdot has humongous, delayed-load tables, just like Bush's campaign site.

FYI

[Anonymous Coward]

While the article was funny, at one point he says something stupid about albore's choice of Raven over mod_ssl.

It's quite simple--Albore lives in the USSA, where RSA is patented and mod_ssl is illegal to use for commercial purposes (such as campaign fund-raising). Raven comes with a commercial RSA license, which you can never buy alone (trust me, I've tried).

What I generally do for normal commercial sites I set up in the USSA is use mod_ssl and have a shiny shrink-wrapped copy of Red Hat's Secure Web Server with it and hope that, if busted, I can claim the RSA license in the RH Server covers the RSA in the mod_ssl (I use RH because it *is* mod_ssl and because it's cheaper ;-).

I wouldn't dream of doing that for a presidential campaign web site though--the bad press if we were charged and lost would be hard to deal with.

Re:FYI

[revbob]

Thanks mate -- I just didn't make the connection between the license and the fact that Gore's site is close enough to commercial that it might be in violation. When I get back home I'll fix the page.

Re:Screw Validation. IE4 is the only true test.

[luckykaa]

I am often accused of joking, or "trolling"

I think Troll was probably a bit harsh. Even if you were, it is an opinion held by a lot of people, but Moderators will moderate.

Lynx does not even display the banner ads

I see your point. And that is a reasonably sound business reason to ignore Lynx. What I find irritating is that a lot of companies selling products have sites that need Shockwave. How much effort do they think I'm willing to go to for a company that doesn't think it should cater to me? A lot of people have to download the latest version of shockwave, and this means they need to stop and resstart their browser (Or is this just under Unix?) Which is also a problem.

All that matters is that 99.7% of our target demographic has access to the de-facto standard - IE4

Including me when I'm at work. It requires me to search through a list of menus for a program that does essentially the same as Netscape just to view a page in which it benefits YOU for me to look at it. If you aren't interested in my custom then I'm not interested in your product.

those that do not are not worth spending my client's money on. Its basic business logic.

But it doesn't cost more to develop a site that works on more browsers. You don't need to create one site per browser. Most of the time all you need to do is load it onto a browser and fix a handful of minor bugs. Anyone who doesn't do this is cutting down the number of visitors for a trivial saving in costs.

Re:VA / Slash-dot Giveaway! NOT!

[Kit Cosper]

This is not an official post from Larry.

There isn't a Slashdot Giveaway

This is a bored individual who enjoys misleading people and generating unnecessary email.

Official VA promotions will always be posted on the VA Linux website.

Sorry for the confusion that has been created.

--Kit

Whatever.

[Mr. Piccolo]

You gotta love how he rips on every candidate that's not using Linux at the bottom of the page.

What a loser.

Anyway,

IGGY POP FOR PRESIDENT! (about as good a choice as any)

Re:Whatever.

[revbob]

What? I left Gore out of the rips? I don't think so.

And I find the loser tag very enjoyable, since it's such a perfect illustration of how badly you missed the point.

Re:Whatever.

[Abigail-II]

You gotta love how he rips on every candidate that's not using Linux at the bottom of the page.

Which makes him a big hypocrite, as the web page has at the top:
META NAME="GENERATOR" Content="Visual Page 2.0 for Windows"

-- Abigail

Libertarian

[Dungeon Dweller]

The simplicity of the Libertarian page is not out of lack of ambition, but it is a metaphorical display of the simplicity of their platform.

WOO! Go Libertarians! 7 Errors! How many do you think that they would make as president? And BSD! At least if Browne starts sleeping around and we have a nice little scandal, we'll know that he's better in bed than those NT candidates ;-)

Re:Why the french are idiots.

[tak amalak]

...Strategic Affairs Delegation (DAS), a french intelligence agency, ...

French intelligence? What an oxymoron...
--

Re:VA / Slash-dot Giveaway!

[thulldud]

Actually, when I saw the notice that entries were going to be received by email with no visible means of verifying their origin, that was clue enough that it was bogus. Even so, I would like to suggest a third prize category: a life-size likeness of JonKatz modeled in hot grits, or a DeCSS T-shirt worn once by Natalie Portman.

Correction...

[CausticPuppy]

Actually it used to, in an earlier iteration of the site (6-12 months ago, if I remember).
At the time, that message said something to the effect of
Thanks for checking out our source code! We believe in community participation in making our HTML code better -- it's OPEN SOURCE -- yadda yadda...

That's very paraphrased, but I did find it funny that the statement really did have "OPEN SOURCE" in all caps, like it was specifically targeted to get the attention of the geek community. Eventually, somebody probably told Gore or his webmaster that the concept of "open source HTML" doesn't make much sense.

Go AL!

[jbarnett]

Al Gore Apache/1.3.9 (Unix) secured_by_Raven/1.4.2 PHP/4.0b3 Linux

Al is the only one using Linux and Apache (SSL/PHP EVEN!)

Also he (or more likely one of this web designers hide some stuff in the html source, now that is just fun for everyone.

Al Gore also invented the Internet, making all this possiable, as for me I am putting my vote on the Gore man. Geek vote counts, vote Al Gore because Al Gore voted Linux (in his choice of web server).

Re:Screw Validation. IE4 is the only true test.

[anonymous cowerd]

Let's presume for the moment, just for laughs, that this entire thread isn't just a completely fraudulent troll.

> Our logging information shows that 81% of attempted connects
> from IP addresses claiming to be running Netscape, re-connect
> later using IE4 or IE5.

Brilliant! So you're willing to throw away 19 percent of one fairly large subset of your employers's potential customers? Who did you say you work for? I'm sure they'd be interested in knowing how you're willing to chase off lots of paying customers simply because you're too sleepy and/or incompetent to add a few lines of HTML to your web pages. A few lines of HTML that my twelve year old daughter could knock out in a text editor, while at the same time talking on the phone and watching TV, in about fifteen seconds flat.

Oh yeah, you're posting as an Anonymous Coward. I can understand why. Unemployment sucks. I wouldn't want to lose my job either.

Actually, as far as you screwing your employers, I'm all for it. I hate capitalism and I hate capitalists and I figure they deserve to get fscked over by lazy slackers like you. If they're going to sequester all the surplus value, why should you work any harder than the minimum you can get away with?

Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net

Minor parties votes in 1996

[anonymous cowerd]

H. Ross Perot, for the Reform Party, got eight million votes, Ralph Nader, for the Green Party, got about two-thirds of a million votes including mine (I just couldn't pull the lever for that worm Clinton a second time), Harry Browne of the Libertarian Party got about a half-million votes, and Earl F. Dodge of the Prohibition Party got 1,298 votes.

See http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/summ.htm for exact figures.

Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net

Al Gores's odd composer

[dpilot]

Didn't you read last Friday's /. interview with Gore's webmaster? According to one of the questions, algore2000 began its life all-Microsoft. It was converted to Linux as a cost saving measure at the same time they were moving their campaign headquarters, also to save costs. He went into some detail about how the ASPs were moved to PHP.

It's probably fair to say that some of this cruft is an artifact of platform conversion, some due to the original composition software, and of course, the author. But they did solicit feedback. Have you sent any?

Re:VA / Slash-dot Giveaway! NOT!

[gleam]

This is the second time, at least, that I've seen this user get a default score of +4.

What gives, rob, the crew? Is this a bug, or a "feature" for Kit Cosper?

Just curious...

-ed fisher.

New standard for user-unfriendliness

[Tim Behrendsen]

Bush lays his use of Front Page out there and says, so what? -- and that who-cares attitude is also reflected in his web page which sets a new standard for user-unfriendliness. Even on a SPARC with the entire page in cache, it still takes over 20 seconds for Netscape to show you anything but a blank white page.

I can't believe the guy has the gall to blame the suckiness of Netscape on the web site. Particularly Netscape under Unix, which is god-awful slow on every web site.

--

xhtml

[grappler]

Looks like Harry Browne's page uses xhtml transitional - with all the lowercase tags. That would make him by far the best, as that's now the official w3c recommendation.

Incidentally, anyone know where a good comprehensive xhtml tutorial would be? Or a good xhtml WYSIWYG editor?

--
grappler

Re:xhtml

[scorpioX]

Looks like Harry Browne's page uses xhtml transitional - with all the lowercase tags.

Sorry, using lowercase tags, does not mean you are using XHTML. Browne's site does not even have a DTD specified, there is no way it can be XHTML compliant.

Incidentally, anyone know where a good comprehensive xhtml tutorial would be? Or a good xhtml WYSIWYG editor?

Well you might want to check out this site to see some actual XHTML. It was mentioned in the "Want to see some good HTML?" post that was moderated off-topic. Don't know why the post was moderated as off topic though, I thought good HTML design was the topic. Also look at the W3's site for more info..

Re:Me for president

[ALIENHANDS]

If you weren't born here, you can be president. Them's is the breaks

Andover has issues also :)

[IanO]

Check this link out:

AndoverNews

This is just too funny.

------
IanO

People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones

[Drewfus]

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fhom e.hiwaay.net%2F%7Ecrispen%2FBob%2Fcandid ates.html

Re:People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones

[revbob]

Obvious. But didn't you suspect that there might have been a reason why the other folks on this thread hadn't already done that? Could it have been because they read the part of that page that talks about that?

Besides, the subject line is all wrong anyway. If you've got big enough stones, it doesn't matter what kind of house you live in.

Chicken, Egg, NT, IE, aieee!!!

[copito]

NT 4.0 comes with IE 2. This version can't access www.microsoft.com. No alternate page, nothing. Just a message like "You don't have permission to list the virtual directory /". In order to download IE, the easiest thing to do is to get Netscape (any old one will do) then go back to the Microsoft website with Netscape, wade through the ActiveXisms and get an IE.

I'm no zealot. I use Linux/Netscape for most things, but I think IE 5 is one of the best graphical browsers for stability and speed on any platform. However, the fact that 2.0 can't access www.microsoft.com suggests some serious issues on both ends.
--

Re:Chicken, Egg, NT, IE, aieee!!!

[lollypop_man]

I Second that aieee!!!

Just had to set up 20 or so NT workstations, all needing IE5. Good job I had my trusty GNU(incase the RMS Police are reading)/Linux machine with me to plug into the lan, fire up X, start Nutscape and dl IE, and all of the other miscellaneous patches that you need to stop it BSODing! Samba kicks ass!

Hmmm, Could have booted up the dos (OpenDOS natch.) partition and used Arachne instead, cut out the boot time considerably :)

Oh no! The dreaded HTML thread!

[revbob]

One thing I hoped I'd made clear in the web page was that this whole exercise was just for giggles.

Shouldn't slashdot be a big enough tent to hold HTML bigots and HTML slackers? ;-)

Rev. Bob "Bob" Crispen

Re:Oh no! The dreaded HTML thread!

[Anonymous Coward]

I figure:

1. HTML bigots follow the spec because that's the Right Thing for the industry
2. HTML slackers know the spec but don't bother to follow it, feeling their documents are essentially unimportant
3. HTML idiots settle for whatever looks |<3W|_ in their bloated trailing-edge crippleware, and probably don't even know there is a spec- their lack of both interest and competence makes them non-nerds

Re:More Complete Listing of Party/Candidate Websit

[jeillah]

"And though McCain may not be on MS, he does have some skeletons in the proverbial web-closet: " That's because he's a tele-com company whore!!!

iCab does this already

[znu]

iCab, a great little alternative browser for Mac OS, already has a built in HTML validator. It displays a little happy or sad face depending on whether the HTML is valid, and face can be clicked for a list of errors. I haven't found a single web page that's actually fully compliment, with the exception of the pages on the iCab site. It's amazing how crappy the HTML on even large commercial sites is. There are several dozen errors on the Yahoo index page, for example.

--

Re:iCab does this already

[nikc]

znu wrote:

I haven't found a single web page that's actually fully compliment, with the exception of the pages on the iCab site.

http://www.freebsd.org/ passes with flying colours. Of course, I did have a hand or two in that. . . :-)

If I get some copious free time in the near future I'm going to whack my slashdot.org hat on and take a look at the Slash code, to see if I can assist on that front.

N
nik@{freebsd,slashdot}.org

Re:iCab does this already

[h2odragon]

"I haven't found a single web page that's actually fully compliment, with the exception of the pages on the iCab site."

...and iCab makes the validator? Hmmm.... How's that latin phrase go, you know, "Quid pro custidiet ipso facto custard" or something like that... Who validates the validators?

Bushes site least secure

[weld]

It is worth noting that the Bush site is the only major canditate running his site on NT. It is also the only site that got defaced. weld@l0pht.com

is shorter than

[cpeterso]

Thus, smaller HTML files! :-)

OS/Server software much more interesting

[CentrX]

Personally, I think that what OS and server software that the candidates are running is much more interesting than how good their HTML is.

Note: George W. Bush, Pat Buchanan, and this "Erik Thompson" are all running IIS on NT4.

Chris Hagar

Browser Crash

[WebMistress]

George W Bush's site crashed Netscape. Although it's not hard to do, he's obviously not too interested in votes from Linux users. We can't even look at his site!

Re:Browser Crash

[treat]

It does the same for me, consistantly. (Netscape hangs, and needs to be kill -9'd)

If I turn Javascript off, it works - but that's the reason I use Netscape, so many pages require Javascript to be usable.

Another Linux Presidential site:

[chandler]

I should think you're all going to vote for Duke (if you don't know, you don't read Doonsebury.) His site runs (at least according to NetCraft):
www.duke2000.com is running Apache/1.3.3 (Unix) (Red Hat/Linux) on Linux
Go duke!


"The romance of Silicon Valley was about money - excuse me, about changing the world, one million dollars at a time."

Bill Bradley's Site....

[MrBowman]

The code, IMHO is good clean code. The site has been kept current and up to date for the past few months, and the numbers for what matters to these guys are good: fundraising. Bradley's site has raised the second largest online contribution base (behind McCain's) and with the idea of selling campaign stuff like bumper stickers and signs before they give it out free in that area is good. Think about it. Resources are committed to Washington this week: you live in Florida and realy want a Bradley sign in your yard. Pay for the sign, help the candidate and keep those freebie where they are needed most: the site of this weeks primary. George W's site is Front Page, and it shows. Then again, he's only raised like $400,000 online. Whens the last time you saw a URL behind Junior during a press briefing or town hall meeting? McCain's Website PR is slick. He mentions the URL in every debate when Internet Taxes are brought up, and that stays in the sound bite. Gore's URL is splashed behind him some (like in NH durring his victory speech) but what Net Savy person gives the "father of the internet" the time of day? What will be interesting to see is what Hillary's site will be like, esp. in the biography section. BTW - if you wanna look at my code, go ahead. http://www.listen.to/9412 http://www.agfamonotype.com http://studio.agfamonotype.com (going thru redesign) Chris J. Popp Webmaster Agfa Monotype Corp.

Re:More Complete Listing of Party/Candidate Websit

[pyarbro69]

for those interested in a fantasy league political experience a la rotisserie baseball leagues check out http://www.fantasyelections.com

Re:Go AL! -- Someone Please Provide Facts

[commbat]

>Al Gore also invented the Internet, making all
>this possiable,

I've seen this so many times and I still don't believe anyone would be stupid enough to make this claim in this manner. So how about some facts... what were his exact words? In what context? Since Arpanet was moved into public space by polititions is this what he was talking about? (ex: "I was instrumental in making the internet what it is today.")

I don't believe he ever said that he invented the internet and I want some facts.

Anybody?

Re:Screw Validation. IE4 is the only true test.

[commbat]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! You're BRILLIANT!

>We have no time for ALT tags, we don't care if
>your platform does not support ShockWave (we
>will use it anyway), and we definately do not
>care at all if you can't browse the page with
>Lynx.

>Lynx does not even display the banner ads, so
>you can see why it is not a priority for us. All
>that matters is that 99.7% of our target
>demographic has access to the de-facto standard
>- IE4

You guys that make these absurd statements and make them sound like your being serious, making the irony increase to epic proportions, really have my respect. My attempts at this sort of advocacy always fail miserably... too many people seem to sense my tounge-in-cheek.

Hats off to this AC and to all of his brilliant brethren.

You, sir, are my kind of people.

Let him fix his own HTML first...

[Abigail-II]

It's cheap to critize other people, but if you do, you should clean up your own act first. Sure, the HTML of Rev. Bob 'Bob' Crispen might validate, but a C program that only compiles doesn't make a good or correct program either.

Some serious problems with Rev. Bob HTML:

• Lack of H? elements. Instead, misuse of the FONT element.
• A BODY tag with only BGCOLOR as attribute. Since that is set to white, people who have their preference set to light text on a dark background won't see anything, or only with great difficulty.
• Use of the I element when he should use the EM element.
• Pointless use of the WIDTH attribute in his table; there's no reason to override the browsers algorithm. The browser knows the limitations of the display, Rev. Bob doesn't.
• Use of CENTER instead of DIV.

Rev. Bob is a big hypocrite, and slashdot shouldn't have lowered itself to publishing a story about it.

-- Abigail

What Al Gore wrote...

[Anonymous Coward]

[Anonymous, because I'm tired of hate mail. :(]

"yeah, right, like he wrote it"

He just might have. Al Gore actually knows how to use a computer; in 1982 he arranged computer training for the House. And he was on the right committee to have funded the creation of the NSFnet, which was the start of the civilian internet; the details are buried in committee minutes which I don't want to spend the time digging into. In the Senate he sponsored the Internet II bill--that I can find on-line.

I think Gore's a real honest-to-god nerd. He has difficulty in public speaking and an interest in technical matters; he seems to be one of the few politicians who actually understands science, and has concerned himself with scientific issues throughout his political career.

It's kind of a shame that his comments about the internet got spun so badly. But then, many nerds I know don't like other nerds very much. :(

We're all gonna die!!!

[fluxrad]

Man, if the geek vote is entirely based on the internet and shit like DeCSS, i'm moving to the Netherlands!!

-FluX
if you reply to this with, "no...it's also about open source" then i'm puting a contract out on your head.


-FluX
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Re:We're all gonna die!!!

[Yardley]

"no...it's also about open source"

But seriously, I raised the question simply to get a better understanding of the candidates. I highly doubt any of them can comment since the issue places them squarely between big business & individual rights. Better to abstain during an election year.

The Internet & shit like DeCSS are very important, though there are thousands of other issues to consider when evaluating a candidate and making one's decision to vote. You know how complex it is. Seeing as we are on a geek board here at /. it would be nice though to get some info specifically relating to candidates' positions on the Internet & shit like DeCSS. Open source in and of itself is not a very big issue (in the political realm), but the auxiliary issues of software patents and over-extended copyright nuisance acting against fair use do make a big impact.

Why not move to the Netherlands?

Re:We're all gonna die!!!

[fluxrad]

Reporter: Gov. Bush - what do you think about the banning of DeCSS reverse engineering publishing in the united states

Gov. Bush: What the people need is a REAL reformer...not some Viet Nam degenerate.

Reporter: But Gov. Bush - do you have any views on DeCSS or the GPL, specifically relating to freedom of speech or software copywrite laws?

Gov. Bush: See, that's what i'm talking about (reveals that shit eating grin of his)...people need a real leader...someone with a RECORD of reform...that's me. I'm your man.

Reporter: So...Mr. Bush, would it be fair to say you're a fucking idiot when it comes to any issue other than reform.

Gov. Bush: Just look what i've done in Texas. It's clear to everyone who the stronger candidate is...who the LEADER is.


-FluX
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Dad! Full Accessibility review here!

[Kalvos]

Hi all,

We released our report on the candidates' sites on December 9. The Associated Press picked it up, but also not Slashdot! We updated it a month later.

For a more comprehensive accessibility report than Dad's, check here: http://orbitaccess.com/presidential/

Dennis

Forbes...

[Squeeze Truck]

Forbes withdrew just a few days ago according to NPR.

Done that before

[kimihia]

How come noone ever listened when I wrote a similiar article about the New Zealand elections?

It was probably because I didn't see that the NZ First party had their server hosted in Australia.

Re:Go AL! -- Someone Please Provide Facts

[jbarnett]

He never actucally said he invented the Internet, he was a strong player in Washington pushing and advocating the Internet and he made claims of his work in this area helped (in some way) the Internet to grow.

He never claimed the entire thing, but a small part (especailly in schools)that he had some part of this (more than most suits in Washington) and this is what he claimed. Some people took the way he "worded" it wrong and over time it morphed into this urban legend of sorts where he said he invented it (not true).

Like if some suit in Washington says "I enjoy my backpain medicine, it helps me sleep at night" over time it would be morph by hear say to "Senator so-so dopes up on morph, he got addicted in WW II when he broken his spinal colum"

The American public hears what they want to hear, and when there is nothing intersting to hear they change it a little to make it more intersting...

Al Gore never claimed that, but it has be like a urban legend going around America (almost like a joke). The above statement I was making in the earlier post wasn't serious, it was a joke, it was intented as a humorous comment.

Peer Review for Dummies

[dpdx]

Let me quote the Reverend Bob:

A word about my qualifications: I haven't got any. My web pages are as guilty as anybody else's of HTML errors -- maybe more so: my web page editor, Symantec's Visual Page, makes some dandy HTML 4.0 transitional, but then it goes and slaps a 3.2 DTD on top of it, so web page validators barf when they come within 10 feet of it. I kept hoping Symantec would fix that bug, but they ended up ditching the product. If only it weren't easier to use than Dreamweaver for what I do....

This would seem to belie the statement that Rev. Bob is a hypocrite.

Peer review doesn't work when people get self-conscious about errors in their own work. If the list of people who could participate in open source projects were limited to those who had never written a logic error, or misplaced a semi-colon, or otherwise erred themselves, there wouldn't be open source software.

So it is with webs - the central fact is that help is better than no help, and heads>=2 is always better than heads<=1.

Whether or not Rev. Bob admits his own fallibilities as a HTML jockey is less important than whether or not he is right about his criticisms. That he does in fact admit that he's not perfect (either) is good enough for most serious web designers.
_____