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US Copyright Office Considering MSIE-only website
wikinerd writes "The United States Copyright Office asks whether you would have any problem if you were required to use Microsoft Internet Explorer in order to pre-register a work via their website. The Norwegian government recently said no to proprietary formats, but it seems that the US government sites should be informed about the existence of non-Microsoft Web browsers, such as Firefox, Konqueror, Opera, and Safari. I have written a letter about this issue, which is posted on my blog for everyone to copy and base on it their own response. If they see how many people use alternative browsers, they'll probably reconsider and stay within the W3C standards."
It took all of 30s
...how should I learn to care about copyrights of others when I can't access this site?
The United States Copyright Office asks whether you would have any problem if you were required to use Microsoft Internet Explorer in order to pre-register a work via their website.
The link only works with Internet Explorer!
PS - First Patent!!!
If the USPTO are allowed to make such a mistake as this, it might reinforce the notion that the USPTO is no-longer doing anyone any good and maybe, by proxy, calls for patent reform may be answered.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
They should know that there are other browsers and OSes in existence ...
m$ is hogging all the patents anyways... so we might as well use their browser!
From TFA:
"Support for Netscape 7.2, Firefox 1.0.3, and Mozilla 1.7.7 is planned but will not be available when preregistration goes into effect."
So support for other browsers is already planned. I imagine that if enough people complain about it starting out as only IE, they will just postpone this preregistration plan until they have the other browser support ready. All that does is make people who want to use IE wait longer.
Stupid.
Hahaha, I kid, I kid.
I find it extremely interesting that the government in the past has brought an anti-trust suit against Microsoft for being a monopoly, however they themselves would help to propagate this by using their software. Not to mention allowing ONLY their software, they are ensuring that any user who wants to visit their site also must "pay" Microsoft, thus even further contributing to the "monopoly".
I would have thought that if the government was under the impression that Microsoft was a monopoly (true or not), they would have taken steps to help prevent adding to that situation, and support a different browser for their site, or *gasp* don't require *ANY* browser, but rather just design it to be functionally usable by any W3C compliant browser. Add in the 508 compliance for web accessbility, and you can't go wrong.
Government, make up your mind.
And they said zombies weren't real!
It's just the same news posted by a different /. editor!
Just stick to the standards, then all browsers will be able to access it.
Haha aHahaHaha HahaHaha
HahaHahaHa
haHahaHahaHahaHah
aHahaHahaHahaHahaHahaHahaHaha
etc.
Get the EULA T-shirt
Browsers should support HTML. Websites should be written in HTML.
These are not fundamentally architecturally different pieces of equipment. If you can't create a website that works adeqautely with all browsers, then you don't deserve to be employed as a web designer.
I have a big problem with "protest form letters". On the surface it seems like a pretty good idea. Get a lot of people mobilized using an easy to duplicate form and get your collective voice heard by those in power. However, the reality is more likely to favor individually written letters that express original sentiment, or at the very least an original statement of a widely-held sentiment.
Yes, it's bad that the copyright office wants to make the website IE-only. But look at their reasons, try to address their reasons without sounding condescending and elitist or like a victim of some huge crime. Better yet, get involved in your local politics and make a real difference in your government.
There are many ways to make political hay. Sending form letters to your representatives is, in my opinion, one of the least productive methods of making your voice heard.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
Serves me right for not RingTFA - must be a slow-brain day for me ;)
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
Worked just fine in my firefox browser....
"The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft agley..." - ROBERT BURNS
How about patenting the process of "publishing" duplicate submissions to web sites?
It'd be easier to respond to their question if they posted an estimated date for when other browsers will be supported.
If you actually read the article, you would see that they do know about Mozilla, Firefox etc because they will be writing stuff to allow these browsers at a later date.
This is just 'in the first instance'.
No sharp objects, I'm a programmer!
In *addition to* writing a letter (as requested on the site, I'd suggest calling them too:
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: David O. Carson, General Counsel, or Charlotte Douglass, Principal Legal Advisor, P.O. Box 70400, Washington, DC 20024-0400, Telephone (202) 707-8380.
Do you think that Microsoft have given them some sort of incentive for this new rule, or is it just a case of a bureaucratic organisation randomly generating rules just for the hell of it?
1729 = 9^3 + 10^3 = 1^3 + 12^3
If they use a webboard, set the scrollbar to be the same color as the background of the board - ie, impossible to see for a lot of people. This stylesheet command is *ignored* by Firefox, but is rendered by MSIE - don't tell me that isn't harassment of MSIE users. So it goes both ways.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Tune in tomorrow when the professor sets the world straight on genetically modified organisms, the unified theory of matter and the one true God.
First, this is the Copyright Office, not the Patent Office.
Second, they're not looking for, nor will they likely accept, arguments along the lines of "single-standards are dangerous". And they claim that Firefox and Safari standards are planned for the future. So you need to give them a good reason, now, not to do this.
What are such good reasons?
Well, for one, preregistration is for copyrighted works that "have a history of pre-release infringement". And, as a publisher in such a field, there's no way in hell you're going to expose that information to known security risks, such as MSIE. It's like starting an antitheft service for cars likely to be stolen, then requiring the owners to leave the cars in an unguarded lot with the keys in the ignition.
Likewise, you can argue that no ultra-secure, enterprise-critical information, such as copyright pre-registration data, resides on any machine capable of running MSIE. Again, it's an issue of security. Denying this service to all but MSIE users effectively removes it from all except those who really need it.
Now all you need is someone willing to fire off a letter in sextuplicate.
ID Number: G00125170, "Design Web Applications for Standards, Not for Browsers", (2 March 2005)
Tomorrow's News: The W3C, the otherwise friendly organization, is in the process of creating a Firefox-only website in retaliation of the USPTO's consideration of making an IE-only website.
In addition to being a dupe and a rather obvious attempt to self-promote, it's also a non-story.
E -only+OK/2100-1038_3-5827627.html)
"In its request for comments, the office made clear that it plans to support other browsers in the future. In an interview, an attorney with the office said that the sticking point was Siebel software that guaranteed compatibility with only selected browsers--including both IE and Netscape 7.02, a browser with negligible market share--in the current Siebel 7.7 software.
The Copyright Office said it planned to upgrade to Siebel 7.8, which supports Netscape 7.2, Firefox 1.0.3 and Mozilla 1.7.7, but not in time for the Oct. 24 launch."
(http://news.com.com/U.S.+Copyright+Office+poll+I
Assuming they're sincere about their intent to support other browsers in the future it's better to have a limited site now rather than no site at all. (Demographically IE does still cater to the largest audience)
It would also be a pointless waste of tax dollars to come up with an interim solution for other browsers when it's already slated to happen for the next revision anyway.
Nice idea.
Shame about losing 85% of your viewers/cutomers/income.
Couldn't that be considered government subsidy, isn't that also how corrupt third world governments work? By requiring a specific company's products you are driving business their way.
By requiring Word doc format, they are requiring that you purchase Microsoft Word, requiring that you use Internet Explorer they are requiring that you use Microsoft Windows.
Wonder what the WTO would have to say.
Deleted
Perhaps the Copyright Office doesn't have enough cash to pay a competent Web developer to create its site?
Linux/Open Source/Anti Microsoft News
"Process for posting again a submission that has already been posted with little to no chanes"
There is no way this can fly, as it will more than likely mean less accessibility, and thus less adhearence to 508. While that isn't a big deal in the corporate world, it is in the government. Certain things are exempt (maps in an IMS, for instance), but I can't imagine this sort of thing, which is more than likely just a simple form with f'ed up javascript, gaining an exemption.
The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe.
It appears that email isn't an option; and that hardcopies have to be submitted in sextuplicate(!). Even more confusing to me: That's from the last paragraph at http://www.copyright.gov/fedreg/2005/70fr44878.ht
WTF?!?
Apologies in advance if I've overlooked the obvious.
.nosig
Umm, the Copyright Office isn't the same thing as the Patent and Trademark Office. They're not even in the same state ...
"If hand delivered by a private party, an original and five copies of any comment should be brought to Room LM-401 of the James Madison Memorial Building between 8:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. and the envelope should be addressed as follows: Office of the General Counsel, U.S. Copyright Office, James Madison Memorial Building, Room LM-401, 101 Independence Avenue, SE., Washington, DC 20559-6000. If hand delivered by a commercial courier, an original and five copies of any comment must be delivered to the Congressional Courier Acceptance Site located at Second and D Streets, NE., Washington, DC, between 8:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. The envelope should be addressed as follows: Copyright Office General Counsel, Room LM-403, James Madison Memorial Building, 101 Independence Avenue, SE., Washington, DC. If sent by mail, an original and five copies of any comment should be addressed to: Copyright GC/ I&R, P.O. Box 70400, Southwest Station, Washington, DC 20024-0400. Comments may not be delivered by means of overnight delivery services such as Federal Express, United Parcel Service, etc., due to delays in processing receipt of such deliveries."
..."
Which is French for...
"But Mr Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months."
"Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them had you? I mean like actually telling anybody or anything."
"But the plans were on display
"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."
"That's the display department."
"With a torch."
"Ah, well the lights had probably gone."
"So had the stairs."
"But look, you found the notice didn't you?"
"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard."
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
There is more to it than that.
It is ok saying 'code to standards' but what if browsers don't do that? We as designers have to create something that works most of the time - even if it does mean working to buggy browser specs.
Look at the list of compliancy issues in Firefox, IE, Safari or in fact any browser.
Also, who actually codes their site in HTML now? Most use XHTML and then most don't have static sites - instead having dynamic sites that do wonderous things...
Safari, Firefox, Opera, and Maxthon.
Frontend for IE core that can also use the Gecko engine for rendering. I don't know too much about how these things work, but I'm a heavy web browser who's used Firefox extensively and I prefer Maxthon. Much faster UI response, doesn't crash/freeze for [me and group] as much as FF, and comes with all the basic important extensions built in. I hate proselytizing, so this is hard for me -- I just want to make people aware of it. Reject it at your leisure.
You should use a browser that does precisely what you want, and ignore all else. If Maxthon's not it, don't use it. But it does what I want, and I figure what I want isn't different from a lot of people.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
A reasonable number to shun, a sizeable chunk being American. Regardless, I'm increasingly seeing browser/OS statistics that look more and more like this site's. On my own site Firefox useage is twice that of MSIE. Linux useage has grown a great amount in the last year and our audience is largely comprised artists, those perhaps interested in registering a copyrighted work.
Don't they have a webserver log to have a peek at the browser statistics? For my site, it's 16.5% Mozilla and growing. It wouldn't be fair if any government service excluded such a significant fraction of visitors.
17779 eligible voters in a district, 17779 'vote' as one. This is Russia.
Shame about losing 85% of your viewers/cutomers/income.
I don't buy that. There's nothing about well-written HTML that excludes IE people. Besides, I somehow don't think the US Copyright Office is worried about losing "viewers/customers/income" as they sort of have a local monopoly on their given subject...
Would that be MSIE as of some freeze-date? Or does the USCO mean to hitch its wagon to Microsoft's development path, so that, e.g., playwrights and composers must also master the art of frequent software-upgrading?
Seeing bad movies only encourages them. Watch responsibly
You are thinking in the past. CSS, XHTML etc is constantly evolving. Therefore so are the browsers - IE in a non standards compliant way, Firefox the opposite.
HTML is a bad way of creating websites - FONT, TABLE etc...
It is obvious that you have no experience of website design...
claim 1. A way and method of registering a patent via HTTP.
claim 2. The method of claim 1, where the preferred HTTP access method is using Internet Explorer, version 6, or any later version
claim 3. The method of claim 2, where the submitted document holding the patent application is in the patented Adobe document format.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
I love XHTML and CSS The formats in which sites go best Your site has tables? IMG tag lacks ALT labels? Keep it away from me With Mozilla Firefox I want to be free.
If you can't create a website that works adeqautely with all browsers, then you don't deserve to be employed as a web designer.
Absolutely right.
It's not as if the site in question needs pixel-perfect layout or complicated Javascript (if any).
Why is it web designers aren't expected to achieve the same level of competency as any other professional? All I ever hear is how hard it would be to make a site cross compatible.
Well, you know what? Tough shit. Life's hard all around. Let me tell you some day about the vpn solution I had to implement across a dialup link. Oh yeah, and it had to support a full sql application. Any other professional is expected to show, you know, *professionalism* in their field.
Not web designers tho. They expect to be coddled, and allowed to half ass it.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
To take their business elsewhere, that way cutting the income of USPTO by so much, that they would not be able to keep providing their services. To prevent that from happening, they came to the conclusion that it is best for everybody, including those people using non standard named browsers (The standard names being: IE, Internet Exlorer). Luckily MS is not a monopoly, so it is just about keeping the internal revenue stream at a sufficient level by providing the services to the companies which desperately need this to be able to be competitive in nowadays america and the big bad global market filled with (software) pirates.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
- Submit the web-form direct to redmond.
- Submit the form with the assignemnt changed to a random Microsoft employeee of the day
This way we can rip you off and patent your invention without resorting to bankrupting you via legal fees.Microsft cares for you too
I've written my thoughts and mailed them out. It takes five minutes to write a short but sweet letter, so take five minutes and get your reasoned thoughts out to the right people.
Show them what open standards are all about!
?giS
I have yet to encounter one of these "broken sites" The only one I've seen not function first hand in firefox is lotus notes webmail. Maybe I don't even notice what I'm missing...
useless sig advice - Read Nabokov.
"This site looks ugly in Firefox because the layout is b0rked"
"This site won't work in Firefox because of browser detection scripts that disable it on purpose"
"This site won't work in Firefox because it uses IE-only JavaScript objects"
"This site won't work in Firefox because it depends on an ActiveX object"
So I wonder which it is... I can accept #1 with some grumbling about shoddy design, since it's really not that hard to lay out a site in a compatible way, but I can deal with it. The others are less excusable, IMO. I guess one would expect 508 compliance, since it's a government website... so my guess is it'll be usable, but ugly.
Lynx time.
perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'
There is a metric ton of bureaucracy to get through, and in the end nobody who matters will ever see the six letters and dozen hoops you have to jump through.
Instead, call your congresscritter. If just a dozen out of the over 500 Senators and Congresspeople call the copyright office this nonsense will stop.
The well-written arguments produced with writing flair and subtlety may help if you're writing in support of the already favored side (good quote fodder), but unless your argument offers evidence of major influence (in newspaper pages, campaign contributions, or whatever) even elegant, well-reasoned prose will just result in a simple tally mark on the intern's scratch pad.
Still, those tally marks are important and one of the closest things we have to a voice of the people left in this country. Please add yours to the Anti-Microsoft side. (and check out the groklaw article, since it mentioned some additional submission requirements I didn't see here).
Yes, browsers change faster than the archived information. I'm tired of playing this "cat and mouse" game with browser updates causing one to reedit html files. The US Copyright Office should consider adopting html standards. If MS doesn't want to play along then they can't go screw themselves. Here's the standard I think they should use:
For reference:
XHTML 1.0 The Extensible HyperText Markup Language (Second Edition)
XHTML
If you can't create a website that works adeqautely with all browsers, then you don't deserve to be employed as a web designer.
If you understand how to correctly use html and css then your site should work with all properly written browsers. The parent is bang on the mark.
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST
... and probably version 6 at that. I saw someone else's post that "MSIE runs on OSX." Sure it does, but generally when people are doing browser detection or just putting in IE-only stuff, it's WINDOWS IE they're doing that for. OSX MSIE hasn't been updated in a long time, AFAICT, and even when it was 'current' it wasn't compatible with many "IE only" sites.
When people go the trouble of specifying "IE only" they almost alwasy mean "Windows IE only".
creation science book
I don't see where support for Safari is planned. I think it's worth asking them to support that browser, since it's been the default browser on Mac OS X for years. It also has 1-2% usage share, comparable to Mozilla and Netscape, both of which they're also planning on supporting. Not supporting Safari encourages the use of IE for Mac, which used to be the default browser on the Mac and has several serious unpatched security holes.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
FONT, TABLE etc...
You can still use CSS. That's part of the XHTML spec.
Broswers should be backward compatible.
As covered on Groklaw, this is due to the fact that the Copyright Office is using an old version of Seibel CRM.
Opinion:
Of course, why they'd use some substandard MS-only piece of garbage is beyond me, but it's not because they were actively looking to cut out non-MS people...just someone suggested a crappy product and standardized on it.
Nothing new.
The president has far more power these days than was ever intended.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
You're telling people to copy stuff! Freely! With no DRM. I thought copying was illegal in the U.S. The fact that billions of cells in your body are duplicated every day only means that humans are illegal, unless grown in Government (=Corporate) vats.
Woe upon you for misleading our young and incriminating yourself further.
I Slashdot. Therefore... Uh... Yeah.
Okay. But workarounds for bugs is one thing. Targetting at specific bug and non-compliance is another thing entirely.
~
I love XHTML and CSS
The standards that make webpages best
I use and
and AJAX modules from CPAN
I'm the King of the web
I flow and you ebb.
Your website's whack
Its compliance in lack
A layout with tables?
tags without ALT= labels?
It's not 1996 get out of here,
You won't get any trackbacks from this blogosphere.
-- #teens4christ
I have an old Pentium with Win95, running IE5. There is no mention on the site about the IE version required, nor the plugins (acrobat? flash? ).
IF they mean "the latest version of MSIE", that will also require Windows XP/Vista.
Also, their "future plans" should be stated more precisely - when? which versions?.
Without constant feedback from their constituencies legislators are operating in a vacuum, with only their own interests and opinions to guide them. Do you trust a politician to operate honorably in that condition? Making yourself personally heard is important if only to remind politicians that you are listening.
On the other hand, this particular letter sucks. Not only are there a number of innacuracies (IE ONLY runs on Windows? Then how is it possible that I've used it on a Mac?) but his tack is all wrong. The argument for an "open" patent office site has nothing to do with Linux users. It has everything to do with competition, standards, choice in the marketplace, and remaining consistant the government's anti-trust stance with MegaSloth.
useless sig advice - Read Nabokov.
Uhm... Doesn't Section 508 HTML/design standard make it ILLEGAL for a government web site to not follow the standard?
Section 508 has all sorts of stuff that goes beyond W3C to include formatting, layout, table naming, etc. to ensure that a web site is easily browsable by non-sighted users' browser tools. (i.e. Lynx-like)
They can't do what they are saying they want to do without breaking the law.
(It's not that hard to make a compliant web site, you just need to work it in the process from the beginning.)
you own a ford. but as the ONLY webmaster for my company I kind of understand.
How can one guy target all browsers when the major player (MS) does not follow standards?
I struggled with that decision as well, if you code against standards, I.E. won't render correctly, because 99% of YOUR company's target audience use I.E. so you sit home 3AM making the decision.
Should you cater to the masses or cater to 1% that probably wouldn't use your product anyway.
Trust me the USPTO probably only has 1 guy doing all the HTML coding and he/she is probably using notepad. But as a government site it SHOULD not make that restriction, its like saying you can't enter the immigration building to get information on getting naturalize, unless you can read US english.
Here, for you parent.
in my book[*], web designers are what you describe, web developers are the ones who show professionalism in their field. i like to think of myself as a web developer because i follow standards, i follow best practice, and i dont expect to be coddled or be allowed to 'half arse it'.
i hate web *designers*.
[*] my metaphorical book
Not really. We just have a lot of management people who don't care. If your boss said he didn't care if the sql app worked or not, you would not have spent a lot of time getting it to work, would you?
Where I work I had to fight just to have the right to have Firefox installed (I'm a web app programmer who does some design work). Our main designer does not have Firefox installed because she doesn't want to get yelled at by IT staff.
Don't blame the designers *all* the time, because if part of their job was to get it working cross browser they would already do it that way.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
Wow, well considering that every single post you have ever made here on slashdot has been -1, and the only moderation you have ever received is to be marked as "Troll" or "Flamebait", this makes me wonder about the "content and audience" of visitors to YOUR website and how this could be related to the 94% MSIE use you claim.
How about posting a link to your site so we can see this obviously fashionable, mainstream and representative site for ourselves?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
> I leave with excellent karma
Oh, that means "alot"!
> and having frequently moderated.
Holy cannoli, Batman! A moderator?! Wow, are you going to put that on your resume?
> All the same, moderation and meta-moderation have just stopped working here,
No they haven't. They work the same now (albeit the "tweaks" that Taco and Co 'implemented' in-between their Gin and Juices) as they always have. That is, they only pump up the collective SlashBOT groupthink---no matter how asinine or baseless---and punish any dissent, no matter how intelligent or reasoned.
> and the editing is nil.
Where the hell have you been? :: Amoeba:Human
Slashdot Editors:Real Editors
- Most web designers aren't programmers or even that techincal. They can see that there is a problem if they test with other browsers, but have no idea how to fix it.
- This is because fiding out how different elements behave in different browsers is incredibly difficult.
- As an example, I found after many hours of frustration that when using nested tables, IE will only size properly when each row element is sized where as netscape will enforce the widest size
- I looked and looked for examples or explanations and found nothing but I was determined to make sure the site worked cross browser.
- So I get it all done, test it in Opera, and guess what, the fucking fonts are not taking styles. Great.
- This leads me to stating that people who write browsers interpret the standards in different ways, making life difficult for web site designers.
- I have stopped sending webmasters emails pointing out that I won't visit thier IE only site and I point out the problems and I eithger get ignored or flamed. I haven't sent in a complaint in years and won't.
- I can tell you from a corporate point of view that as long as people don't complain about non-compliance, the PHBs assume that as long as there are no complaints, then all is well.
- Many of the books and other resources on HTML and web design blather on about non-essential issues and many of the browser compatablity charts are woefully out of date. Yet adding yet another chart or tutorial is pointless because you won't find it in the morass of bad information.
So I can't completely beleive that all web designers are inept. And to be frank, it's eaiser and more cost effective to design for one browser than all of them. Now don't tell me about how great standards are, I am a believer, but I also know that having a deep knowledege of IE and ActiveX will allow designers to do more, easily.Why is any comment which speaks bad of Firefox modded as troll and any comment that speaks bad of Microsoft modded "Informative" ??
Clearly, Google is the next Microsoft.
And they should. Why release something half-@$$ed that works in some browsers and not others? It means they'll make their page in Frontpage and then change things until it works in other browsers- it's a hack job.
Please- Planned means nothing. It means it might be months out when it makes no sense. I can understand Google Toolbar coming out late for Firefix (it's a whole new program), but this is HTML that should display in all browsers.
And a large part of patents is (supposed to be) fairness to all parties. I shouldn't have to go find a Windows machine with IE to hog for a few hours and transfer all my documents over to paste into their Web form. It's something I should be able to do right away. If I can't do it, nobody should be able to (in this case). Otherwise it gives some people *cough* M$ *cough* an advantage on Patents.
Though I'm not a fan of that guy's letter. He touts lists of acronyms like CSS, XHTML, IE, OSX, etc that the developers would know but the _managers_ won't. A simple:
"Internet Explorer, while being used by the majority of Web users, is not used by all Web users. This is in favour of countless browsers (some of which are listed below) which offer considerable advantages to non-Windows users (Mac, Linux) as well as Windows users who are looking for superior alternates to Microsoft's Web browser. Statistics on the number of users utilizing each browser are available at http://..../ Please do not underestimate the 10% of hundreds of millions of US and foreign Web users who choose to utilize alternate technologies. It is unfair to provide an advantage to Windows/Internet Explorer users over others, when it is entirely unnecessary. All Web browsers support standards, such as those set by w3c (http://www.w3c.org/ which your developers should build their Web site to conform to rather than utilize proprietary methods exclusive to IE.
Simple, to the point, doesn't tout acronyms and explains most of them when it does. References a statistic, and really emphasizes the number of people affected and how common they are.
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
To whom it may concern,
m l
At the URL:
http://www.copyright.gov/fedreg/2005/70fr44878.ht
I read a proposed policy with title "Preregistration of Certain Unpublished Copyright Claims" which asks me as a member of the public to inform your office if I would have any problem if I were required to use the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser for preregistering a work.
Below you can read my personal opinion and feedback on this issue.
I have no access to Microsoft Internet Explorer because I chose to prevent access to it (for security reasons) on all my personal computers and use the Mozilla Firefox browser instead. Whilst my job provides me with access to Internet Explorer, I would be unwilling to submit personal copyright claims through my employer's systems for a variety of reasons related to privacy, intellectual property, and ethical standards.
Microsoft Internet Explorer uses proprietary technology, such as ActiveX, which other Web browsers usually do not support. It also fails to correctly implement a number of crucial Web standards which are critical to interoperability of HTML web pages across different browsers. As a result, I regularly have difficulty navigating websites that are designed exclusively for Internet Explorer, but which are often otherwise compliant with international standards.
As an IT professional with considerable experience in web development for multiple browsers, I know that it is possible to design a website accessible with any modern Web browser, by using Web standards such as XHTML and CSS, and - whenever interactivity is needed - JavaScript and Java applets (which can run on most operating systems).
Requiring users to use a particular Web browser causes disruption, especially for Apple Macintosh and GNU/Linux or BSD operating systems users, who often have no access to Microsoft Windows and may have never used Microsoft Internet Explorer before. When a user community such as yours extends across (potentially) many millions of users, excluding these groups potentially disenfranchises them altogether, and at the very least can cost them significant time and effort (and potentially money) to access a service such as yours that forms one of the underpinnings of the copyright system. This can only be a bad thing.
Please consider the difficulties of non-Microsoft operating system users, as well as those who choose not to use Microsoft's Internet Explorer on their Windows PC's, and try to provide a standards-oriented Web design, which would make their life (and ultimately your IT staff's life) much easier.
Yours
your name goes here!
LOL you got modded "Redundant"! Back when I was a kid you would get modded "Informative" for posting THE ACTUAL ARTICLE (despite being labeled as a "karma whore"). But I guess nowadays on slashdot, the article itself really is Redundant...sign of the times my friend.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
If you can't create a website that works adequately with all browsers, then you don't deserve to be employed as a web designer.
You sir are a genius.
From personal, experience, even the most piss poor web developers (and lazy ones at that) can put together a redirect to two different versions of html based off the Browser type to make the page compatible (although that's not technically what you are supposed to do, but if you can't even do that then well... you are just a horrid web developer and need to take up something else in life).
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Most of our customers think we are nuts when we suggest spending more time (their money) so we can get those 2-5% chunks of the browser market, each of which behaves a bit differently. Like it or not ie is the "standard-defying standard."
Point out to your customer that I.E. is not static... If they want their investment to still be paying off when I.E. 7 and 8 come out, they need to code to the standards of the web, not to the quirks of I.E.
Sites that were coded for I.E. only can expect to spend more than their initial technology investment to maintain the site across it's lifetime as new versions of I.E. are released.Ultimately it's much cheaper to code a website once that will work in all browsers, rather than to attempt to make it work for each individual version of I.E.
The ______ Agenda
The problem is that, thanks to MS, your perfectly designed site won't work properly with the most used browser. Remember - MS does NOT support CSS (or html) correctly to standards. They're not going to even try to pass the acid test.
You can say that's MS's problem but it isn't - if your site doesn't render correctly for 90% of the population, then for all practical purposes you're wrong. You may be morally/ethically/ideologically right, but users don't care and neither does your employer.
I guarantee, if you don't support MSIE, and you have a job as a web designer, and you're not working for FSF or someone similar...you'll hear from your boss. If you refuse to support MSIE, you'll get fired.
Does that suck? Yes. Unfortunately, it's also the real world, and the people paying your bills don't give a shit. Specifically, ideology doesn't make money.
What?
We design to the standard. Test primarily in Firefox, then also in Safari. Opera tends to work perfectly with anything that looks good in both Firefox and Safari. We then have to tweak things a bit here and there to get it to look okay in IE, but it's hardly unusable!
In particular, I wish people would stop with this obsession that websites must attract my attention. If I'm at a website, it has my attention, now it should provide what I want, quickly. A terribly designed (bright clashing colours, crazy numbers of frames, the entire page rendered in PRE tags) will tend to make me go find somewhere else that's easier to read, but equally some Flash abomination that I have to wrestle with to get what I want, will drive me to another site.
In other news, Microsoft filed a patent today for an "Interface for accessing an online database of patents".
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
First, they launch an IE-only site.
Next, they record the percentage of visitors using IE--some of whom already heard about the site being IE-only before visiting.
And finally, they use the percentage to justify canceling planned support for other browsers in order to save taxpayer money.
Remember, you heard it here first.
Proud member of the American Non Sequitur Society. We might not make much sense, but boy do we love pizza!
Here's roughly the letter I'm sending, please adapt it and use it as you see fit. Note that you need to send a total of six copies.
% 20MSIE%20Requirement%20-%20Generic.sxw
m l
t =%22using+a+different+web+browser%22) is a strong argument against another government office requiring its use.
This is on a personal home server over broadband, please be nice.
http://www.mynamehere.com/dave/Copyright%20Office
Text follows in case the server chokes...
August 15, 2005
Full Name
Street Address
City, State, ZIP
Copyright GC/ I&R
P.O. Box 70400
Southwest Station, Washington, DC 20024-0400
Subject: Proposed MSIE requirement for online filing of copyright preregistrations
RE: The open letter published at http://www.copyright.gov/fedreg/2005/70fr44878.ht
To whom it may concern;
As a governmental body, I feel the copyright office should give accessibility to citizens a very high priority. This accessibility is best met with the use of tools that function on a broad range of browsers and operating systems by adhering to open and well-documented standards, such as those of the World Wide Web consortium (W3C).
Introducing a requirement for a proprietary browser supplied by a single party goes against this ideal, especially when that party has a history of illegal behaviors that include anti-competitive practices.
Support for open standards is clearly possible, as the open letter states that support for various open and non-Microsoft browsers is planned. It seems a waste of effort to develop a MSIE-only version followed by an open standards version when the open standards version can work with MSIE to begin with.
There is certainly an argument to be made to ensure that the browser used by the majority of Internet users is well-supported, but it is a fallacy to believe that this support must come at the expense of support for browsers unable to support proprietary features.
It will be further troubling if the reason for the lack of support for open browsers is an ActiveX requirement. ActiveX technology has been dogged by security problems for years, and its use cannot be justified given the availability of secure, open alternatives. The suitability of alternatives is demonstrated by the planned support of non-MSIE browsers.
While any complex web browser is subject to security problems, the fact that the US-CERT has repeatedly recommended using a non-Microsoft web browser (http://search.cert.org/query.html?col=vulnotes&q
A requirement for businesses and individuals to use MSIE to make submissions to the copyright office is an onerous burden in terms of time, money, and security for those relying on non-Microsoft solutions in their affairs.
Sincerely,
Full Name
Hello?!? This *IS* Slashdot... :)
(or more likely its because there really aren't a "great number of sites that break with it" (firefox) as the parent had claimed.)
I've been using Firefox/Mozilla for several years because my platform of choise doesn't come with IE. I can't even recall the last time I ran into a site that just plain won't work.
obvious, eh? it's obvious that you don't know me, cowardly anonymous troll. There is a fair subsection of CSS, XHTML, etc that you can use and be assured of it working properly under both IE and Firefox, as well as the others. I'd venture that there is little outside this area of overlap that is absolutely ESSENTIAL to a website, and that there aren't workarounds, including HTML. It's not elegant, but it is typical of most things in reality that there have to be things which are not elegant, and often even jury-rigged.
Any web designer worth his salt (which a large organization like the US Copyright Office should certainly be hiring) is going to take the time to do it right so that it works well regardless of the browser, instead of being lazy and making an IE-only site or just insisting that these standards should work, and that it's IE's fault. To borrow from Rummy, you design for the internet we have, not the internet we wish we had.
Anyone else agree with me when people should be codeing for these other browsers not ie. ie is unstable and buggy at best, many evil coders take full advantage of it
Half the world is composed of idiots the other half are people just smart enough to take indecent advantage of them
And equal rights for non-IE-browser-users NOW!
^^
I keep reading about sites that are IE-only, yet I rarely run into a site that doesn't render in Mozilla. The only exception I can think of is a gaming site whose patch downloader will only work with IE, and Microsoft's own update site.
Maybe if I were visiting more home-brewed sites instead of commercial/large sites I'd have more problems.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Slight problem in your argument:
Statement #1:
You assume that your letter is actually read.
Statement #2:
The well-written arguments produced with writing flair and subtlety may help
These are sort of mutually exclusive. What difference does a well written letter makes, if no one reads it? Or if no one reads it, how can they tell if it's well written or not?
I know you're just an AC, and I shouldn't expect more, but this was actually kinda funny.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
But how many of you have ever registered a copyright? If you haven't, isn't it a little disingenuous to write to the Copyright Office complaining?
I'm seeing a lot of comments demanding plain-jane HTML, and denying that it costs anything to support multiple browsers, because you just check for "standards compliance". I used to think this. It's completely wrong today. Many web applications today have rich interfaces approaching desktop apps. Getting them to work cross-browser is damn hard. It is definitely worth doing for a mass-market thing like gmail, but for a niche site used by a handful of attorneys? Hard to justify.
Of course, the rich interface is probably not needed or justified in this governmental site.
The problem is not solvable by standards compliance, at least in the automatable sense. You can have CSS that passes validation, looks fine in IE, and piles things on top of each other in other browsers.
Dude that's hilarious.
Perhaps my memory is failing me but wasn't it a year ago last month that the DHS recommended not using IE for security reasons? Perhaps we should remind the USPTO of this fact.
IE on Mac OS X is not the same program as IE on Windows. If anything, it shares the name and that's about it. I dropped that abortion of a web browser into my trash can after trying it out on my company's web mail (Outlook Web Access). The Windows version of IE gives you all the little features that make OWA usable. The Mac version of IE gives me the same vanilla interface to OWA that you get when using Safari or Firefox (Firefox on Windows or Mac).
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Perhaps I am missing something, but I gather that the proposed web site will be a simple form allowing you to enter details of copyrighted works. That sounds much simpler than my bank's online banking system and that works just fine on Firefox, Konqueror and Opera. In summary, the whole exercise seems entirely pointless.
However, why stop here? Other people are in great need of help after receiving a harsh sentence. So I suggest the USPTO should use the financial services of the Gambino family to handle the trademark registration payments on their web sites. After all, if they give business to one federally-convicted firm, why not support another?
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
All government web sites are supposed to be section 508 compliant, which includes being usable by a text reader.
What could possibly be on this website that requires IE? IE might be required for a site that uses ActiveX, but if you have to support text readers you have to be writing normal basic HTML.
I believe that government websites should be written to work as per the standards. If a particular web browser supports the standard it works fine, if not then it's their fault.
Perhaps this might help microsoft with their decision to not support the standards.
Ward
. Silence! Be thankful thy species is unpalatable! .
Not really. We just have a lot of management people who don't care. If your boss said he didn't care if the sql app worked or not, you would not have spent a lot of time getting it to work, would you?
Yes. Would I be wasting my time? Maybe, maybe not. Given the number of times people have given me one set of specs then expected everything on top of it has taught me to go the extra mile and do everything in my power to do what they want, not necessarily what they tell me.
In my book, this is professionalism. Anticipating, to the best of my ability, all the situations and planning for it. I can't tell you how often that has saved my ass, or made me look really really good in front of my bosses.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Ah, but did your vpn support VOIP, with QoS guarantees? Why not? Because it wasn't part of the requirement, right?
Web developers work within finite time and resource to hit specific requirements. When fancy bells and whistles are part of the requirement, and cross-browser support is not, off-brand browsers will suffer. Speaking only for the web developers I've worked with, they are quite capable of making sites cross-browser, and in fact usually advocate this to their employer/customer.
When you are writing the checks, the web developers will do what you say.
Yeah, before MS saw there are no consequences for graft-based vendor lock-in and decided to discontinue it.
...and anyone who is happy to introduce themselves as a webMASTER. Wanker.
I read the notice, and, seeing they didn't have an official email address or Webmail site to submit comments, called them.
./, and that she now understood why I'd said that if they had an email address for comments, their server would have crashed....
I then spoke to one of the lawyers.
She tells me that
- this spring, Congress mandated that they set up to do this "preregistration" business online by late October;
- that they're funded mostly by registration fees, unlike the patent office, and so do not have a huge budge;
- they're, ahhh, somewhat behind the curve on technology (quote from nice person: "I won't say neanderthal, but..."), and
- the department that's implementing this (direct quote) "will guarantee that the forms will work with IE, but won't guarantee that it will work with other browsers."
I explained how, though I am very much not a Macaholic, most of the artists I have read of or know personally use Macs, which would preclude them from using this system. I also pointed out that not a single Website that takes your credit card requires IE.
She and I had a nice conversation, and she requested that I send the letter w/ five copies. So, folks, send the letters, ASAP.
mark
PS I told her, at the end, that I'd heard of this on slashdot, and her response indicated that she may have heard of
If you can't create a website that works adeqautely with all browsers, then you don't deserve to be employed as a web designer.
Nice idea. Shame about losing 85% of your viewers/cutomers/income.
I don't see how your reply was relevant. I agree with the parent and fail to see how creating a website that works with all browsers would cause you to lose 85% of your customers.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
Both matter. Individual letters get more weight, but a form letter than 1000 people send in is (particularly when you get a lawyer to write the letter so it is good) more likely to be read by the politician, because the staff can pass it on with a note: 10000 copies of this letter arrived. Not as powerful as 10000 individually written letters (even though they are of less quality), but still it is a powerful statement.
As a writer with work already registred with Library of Congress I've lodged a formal complaint with them stating that only open standards can be accepted.
I will pursue other registration possibilities in order to protect my copyright under the Berne Convention should this not be the case.
I would like to ask other writers in any field to do the same.
One really good example of sites that don't render in Mozilla is "Xanga" layouts. A friend of mine asked me to test out his layout and I told him that it sucked because it wouldn't render in Firefox or Opera. I ran it through the W3C validation for CSS and HTML and it came up with an assload of problems. Not only that, I checked the Javascript console in Firefox and there were an assload of errors it ran into there. I checked the code and there were these blatant coding errors that should've stopped the code from working but it didn't in IE.
Even if they wait to launch when they support non-proprietary browsers, they've come at the problem the wrong way round. It's far simpler to start with a standards-based site, then add all the kludgy hacks IE requires.
This is one time that I say "Thank _____ for snail-mail!"
The person who posted the parent to this has raised a valid point. What would have happened had they provided an E-mail server?
My guess is that there might have been 50 or so well-reasoned posts with clever and plausible arguments indicating why they shouldn't go with the proposed policy... unfortunately, scattered amongst the 50,000 robot-driven "Microsoft Sucks!" E-mails that would have brought their server to its knobby little knees.
And which E-mails would have been seen as the majority opinion?
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
"IF they mean "the latest version of MSIE", that will also require Windows XP/Vista."
Vista? Why? That's not even scheduled for release until the end of next year. If it doesn't slip further.
" I have a big problem with 'protest form letters'. On the surface it seems like a pretty good idea......Sending form letters to your representatives is, in my opinion, one of the least productive methods of making your voice heard."
Sum1 with mod points left, troll this (expletive deleted) like he deserves, I humbly request.
OK, so, like a true troll, you call down people's point of view, and 'inform' them as to how they are wasting their time getting involved in politics.
For shame. The parent, and anyone who gets in on his mass-mail idea is in the right. Maybe they haven't grabbed Michael's flaming sword and begun a crusade, but they are doing their part. I personally don't have any voice to your bureaucracy's officials, but I do get involved in our own. And do you know what can really swing a cause? When there is a gathering/meeting of the suits, and one can stand up on an issue and say "this many of our people tell me that they feel we should do Plan B." That's getting our voice heard.
Don't give me that 'There are better ways' line unless you happen to be sharing a realistic way to get better involved. I'm sure many of the people copying the parent's letter verbatim and submitting it to the same place would love to do more. However, this is not a course in political science. The general population first of all does not know how, and secondly cannot afford to 'get involved' and 'make a real difference' as you succinctly condemned all non-crusaders. Guess what I am doing when my legslative bodies are 'in House'? Working to feed my family. Non-violent protest? That takes far more time--and far more friends of friends than I can round up--to be appropriately effective.
Coming down on anyone for getting involved is a rude combination of ignorance and arrogance. You think you know better? Do better. I do not see any evidence whatsoever that even suggests you have a better track record than I or anyone else at affecting the way our political leaders run the world, our continent and respective countries. And as for 'without sounding condescending', I think you should practice what you preach, brother.
--end rant
Getting involved at any level is what is necessary. In this web-based world we've cooked ourselves into (I love it, all problems included, indisputably), people seem to have forgotten that saying things need to change in an online forum does not a force for change make. A letter to your Neighbourhood, city, state/province, etc representative goes a **Hell** of a lot further towards making a change than shooting calls at those who do so.
A couple fans told me that my last journal entry was mint; give it a shot. Hope you like.
Indeed, but more to the point, note this from the request for comments:In other words, unless you can tell the Copyright office (1) that you plan to preregister a copyright, and (2) why you can't use IE, your comment will probably be ignored... So if you do plan to comment, tell how you will directly be affected if they adopt IE-only preregistration. I haven't seen a single proposed comment posted here that meets this standard.
If it's Siebel powered, the site will probably be Windows-only even when it supports more browsers. Last time I encountered Siebel, it used an ActiveX control in the browser. That is really a bigger story than what browsers they support this week.
hum..... its fun to wake up on the morning and smell the nice scent of bribes.
If you look like your passport photo, you're too ill to travel. - Will Kommen
After reading TFA, its clear to me that the Office is not interested in whether you prefer using a different browser, or is seeking justifications for using open formats. They are asking if anybody would have a technical difficulty using Internet Explorer, and if so, why.
Their assumption is, I guess, that Internet Explorer its ubiquitous, a de facto standard, and so everybody should have access to it and be able to use it, if it becomes a requirement.
From TFA:This makes the arguments in favor of openness and non-proprietary formats moot, and takes out of the discussion any presumptions of choice.
Carol vs. Ghost
...and that is that there's no real special needs for MSIE tchotchkes in patent reviews and filing. Never mind the top of the line standards, basic HTML 3.2 and before will more than convey any amount of data for the USPTO and its customers. There's no need for any high-end database connectivity that wasn't being done with CGI years ago. If they are going to do anything that requires MSIE most proprietary and non-standard things, then they are asking for trouble from a security standpoint.
That being said, most corporations are Windows/IE houses and since it comes with Windows, they will use it by default. As another poster mentioned, better than 90% of end-users are Windows users with MSIE and a lot of Mac users are still out there who use the Mac version of IE often but won't admit to it to avoid opprobrium from the anti-MS zealots in the Mac camp.
To the USPTO this will look like a tinfoil hat FUD paranoia fest in a teacup. To the corporations filing patents with abandon, they won't notice and won't care. To the people having to handle security for the USPTO IT systems, it will no doubt come back to haunt them.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
Your attitude makes you part of the problem, so please kindly fuck off and die!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
It should be illegal for any government office to do this kind of thing. I see this more and more, with documents in proprietary formats (like Word, Realplayer) and formats intended to be non-copyable (like streaming media). Any government website or document should be in the format that is best suited for automated access (for example, for gathering information for an FOIA request), from the broadest possible range of clients (browsers, etc).
The government can't plead expense for new services at least, because there are plenty of good, cheap-or-free engines available for just about anything they need to do.
At the very least, the existence of an adequate free alternative should be an absolute bar to creating new documents or websites in a proprietary format or accessible only to prorietary tools.
It may even be unconstitutional, under similar arguments to those used to prevent the copyrighting of typefaces.
calm down. webdev's can call themselves what they like, i was just saying what makes me call somebody a webdeveloper or a webdesigner.
Okay, this is flame bait. I read the article when it was posted on another web site-- LAST WEEK. *ahem* And it turns out that they are using some software to publish their data that is a revision old. When they update it, it will work just fine in all major browsers. They suggested that they would lauch as IE only for *official* support, but would upgrade by the end fo the year.
So, really, this isn't an issue of USPTO deciding to design a web site that only works with IE-- it's a case of the USPTO choosing backend software that isn't up to date. And that, my friends, it's par for the governmental course. There's nothing sinister going on here.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
Huh?! is good! How else are you going to display tabular information?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Amen!
This test could ultimately prove that the USPTO is not properly assessing prior art, if the patent application is smartly worded!
By the way, Slashdot could patent dupes as well. Slashdot could then sue Reuters, AFP, CNN or Bloomberg if they come up with a dupe themselves!!!
I'm one guy too and I have designed my sites to be 100% compatible with all browsers. It doesn't require too much work. For example, MSIE has problems with some CSS in the body HTML element. My solution? I put the whole page inside a DIV and I used the CSS in the CSS, so MSIE rendered it correctly. Just one example.
Pretend there are no such things as computers. Pretend we are back in the Middle Ages, and if you want to register your copyright on a work, you have to submit it, in writing, at the Copyright Office.
Now, if the Copyright Office insisted for you to use a particular make of pen to write out your manuscript, would that be fair?
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
If it Doesnt display correctly in IE then its not the standard - Gates
-- I Dont Deserve A Sig I Have Bad Karma
From long standing experience trying to deal with other government agencies (most notably the Naval Historical Center, http://www.history.navy.mil/) I can attest that many agencies really do not want to deal with any form of electronic communication and will be far more responsive to written communication delivered via snail mail. They will also pay far more attention to your letter if you write it yourself IN YOUR OWN WORDS as whenever they get another copy of a standardized letter it just goes on the pile with the thought "oh, here's another one of these". I'm writing; you should to!
If their website will require MSIE, it will require the 5.1 version. they say it in their announcement
I'm sorry but this seems childish. The Article states that other browser support is coming. So why are we whining about it? Is it because IE gets it first? Look if I was selling a product, I would try to get as many customers to buy the product as I could. If this means that 90% of the people I'm trying to sell to use currency "A" and the other 10% use currency "B"...I would try to take both currencies...but you better believe I would start with A and B would come later. It just makes sense to start with IE from a business point of view. Just my 2 Cents.
Didn't the Department of Homeland Security recommend people stop using Internet Explorer?
Gabriel Ricard
- the standard wasn't well-defined enough, or
- they left it open-ended on purpose.
I'm willing to bet it's the latter.That's absolutely absurd. The easiest and most cost-effective way to design a website is to use plain old semantic XHTML markup, and let the user render it however he wants. Let your website be information, not entertainment or advertisement. That's not what it's for."[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Like it or not ie is the "standard-defying standard."
If you are taking technical advice from your customers, then perhaps you are in the wrong line of work. Customers don't understand all the implications. You know as well as I do that there are (or will be) a gazillion web-browsing devices out there all running different browsers. For example, my Nokia has a version of Opera on it which works great, and it's really annoying when I hit a site that does browser-checking and locks me out for no real reason other than "they don't like how their site will look on a non-approved browser". I don't really care in that case, I just want the functionality/content. This was the promise of HTML standards to begin with.
Incidentally the charge arrangement I usually do see is a bit different from what you mention- the higher figure usually includes Windows IE compatibility, the numerous problems of which are well-documented. The fact that Microsoft is even referring to that site to fix the next version of IE says a lot.
I might have a bit of a grudge as I was hired to work on a web/DB app that "only works in Windows IE". My boss says "they couldn't include cross-browser testing in the budget" when in my opinion it shouldn't have even been posed as a question to begin with. I'm really tired of that mentality.
What would it cost to either a)delay launch until the site is standards compliant, b)rush production time to meet the launch date or c)just go IE and screw the rest?
It's great to try to be all things to all people, but it's inefficient and costs money. Money, I might add, that comes out of my pocket. Are you willing to pay a few dollars more a year for broad based standards support? How about a few hundred? Seriously, where is the line here? How much are you willing to spend to ensure standards support?
I'd rather see that money go to feed poor children, heal the sick, prevent disease or, God forbid, go into my own friggin' wallet.
Let's look at it another way: Should the government be required to make all documentation available in Esperanto; It is standards-based after all.
Ultimately, this should be about what it costs to get the job done in the most efficient manner possible. If the office hit's 90%+ of the target audience and the other 10% or so could EASILY use an IE browser to hit the site, then I'm all for launching now and improving efficiency.
Seems antithetical to require 508 compliance but only support one goddamned browser, doesn't it?
SNACKS ARE AWESOME
Ah, but did your vpn support VOIP, with QoS guarantees?
Actually, it did. Given the bandwidth, people would have been foolish to use it, but it did support it.
It's called "Professionalism".
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Lets not waste taxpayer money by forcing multiple versions of an application that will shortly become cross-browser compatible anyhow. This crowd is unbelievable. http://www.inaniloquent.com/PermaLink.aspx?guid=84 e78f4e-60e6-4e9f-9233-9457dbe196b8
My sites look great and are quite usable in most any browser. I suppose it takes REAL web developers to make a site that is 'hardly usable' in 85% of the browsers on the Internet. If you're a serious web developer you will look at your market and design accordingly. Same with anything.
CAIS(Cereberal Anal Insertion Syndrom) is a component is this problem. First one hand (the gov office) doesn't know what the other hand (another gov office) is recommending. First you have an office charge with document protection. They get their function largely undercut by the Berlin Treaty, then they fall totally unaware of the recomendations of Homeland Security to NOT use IE.
... this violates a number of other laws related to accessability as well. But in the interest of big business first. Seig Heil.
Cert
The worst part is
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
> but I also know that having a deep knowledege of IE and ActiveX will allow designers to do more, easily. especially how to build trojans and crappy windows-only sites. for you: just start seeing the w3c-standards as the *one browser* you're supporting and then become happy that it works in so many different ones. i will soon include a yellow bar on the top of my page, that looks like IE's popup/plugin-warning page and will say something like "browser deprecated. microsoft recommends to install a w3c-compilant browser like firefox [upgrade]"
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Actually, isn't it illegal?
I thought the federal government was required to present all materials on the WWW to be capable of being rendered by a text-to-speech engine for the blind.. has nobody pointed that out to the Copyright Office?
they are a government entity. they, above all others, know they must comply with the ADA. inform them that complying with XHTML and CSS2.x standards will ensure that they are making their website accessible to all americans, not just those who have normal sensory faculties.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
makes me laugh how non-ie users whine like this.
instead of bleating on about it why don't you ask firefox\x\y\z browser authors to actually sort out their browsers so they can render IE-designed pages perfectly. Instead of moaning about your shortcomings.
if you cannot reach the bar don't ask for the bar to be dropped down to you.
code your browsers to render IE-HTML then pair off and do your HTML version and your features and stop throwing your toys out of the pram!
The argument for an "open" patent office site has nothing to do with Linux users.
Read Nabokov.
A good bit of advice. When you're done with old Vlad, how about reading the page title? This article is about the Copyright Office, not the USPTO.
The most effective way to get them to listen to you is to 'donate' to them. Those people get listened to a lot more than anyone else.
The real reason this kind of stuff happens is that the IT critters (more likely, IT contractors) are all Windoze-certified and haven't a clue how to build a W3-compliant website, and/or they're only familiar with Microsoft site-building tools that encourage (require?) the use of insecure, proprietary junk like ActiveX. The IT staff just flat out LIES to management, saying things like "there's no way you can get the features you want without ActiveX" and "it'll be more expensive to support non-IE browsers", and management is too uninformed to realize they're being lied to. The short-term solution is to fire any IT staff who says things like that and hire people who have a clue. The long-term solution is to pass a law requiring clued-in IT staff. Once a significant chunk of web-site-building contractors realize they won't be able to do any more business with the government with their Frontpage staff, they'll be forced to train them properly.
Well, at least realplayer is available on Linux!! Try that with Quicktime or the Windows Media Player. Sure, you can resort to some 3rd party hacks like mplayer, but realplayer is the only commercial player available for Linux where the company actually has anything to do with the codec.
With word files, yes, I agree. We should see more PDFs (Adobe controls the format but it is almost free - free (like beer) specifications to write your own vewiers plus there is a good viewer from Adobe for Linux).
What really sucks is pages like the US Patent office where you need Quicktime or something to view the fucking pictures. Are they not competent enough to us png for pictures?
My recommendation to the US government, as it is to the Norwegian government, would be to make it mandatory for Government and public sector to design their web-sites and applications to work with standards based browsers, and don't add functionality to sites to make Microsoft quirks work. This will force everyone who deals with Government to install a standards based web-browser on their system if not Internet Explorer is able to render the site properly.
This should not create a problem, because such standards compliant browsers are available for just about any operating system out there, and most of them are free to download and install. Such a measure would contribute to speed up the adaption of standards browsers much faster.
I have translated parts of the Norwegian Government's hearing documents on how to use open source and standards documents in public sector, and you can see from the documents how the working commitee wants to politically reduce the market dominance of Microsoft, rather than continue to let the population of the country depend on that company.
More on the whole issue, including the translated documents in my blog at http://www.andwest.com/blojsom/blog/tatle/agenda/
The future is in beta
Clearly, many of you have never registered a copyright before. Almost everything you would ever want to register for copyright requires you to file a HARDCOPY with the US Copyright Office.
SO, the most common (and efficient) way to copyright a work is to fill out a form (available by mail with a simple phone call), take your document (or disk, or whatever), stuff them in an envelope along with your money order, and drop it in the mailbox. I know it all sounds very technical, but it is a tried and true system that has been in place for decades, does not discriminate between various brands of mailboxes and is quite user friendly.
Really, you should try it.
Get some fresh air.
hmm surely a vpn over the open internet can't properly support QOS
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
well I had to switch our company's accountant onto firefox, as he insists on going to the seedier side of the internets.
all the financial type sites he goes to render mostly okay, but printing rarely works properly.
http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/standards.htm#S ubpart_b
1194.23 Telecommunications products, paragraph j:
-------------------
(j) Products that transmit or conduct information or communication, shall pass through cross-manufacturer, non-proprietary, industry-standard codes, translation protocols, formats or other information necessary to provide the information or communication in a usable format. Technologies which use encoding, signal compression, format transformation, or similar techniques shall not remove information needed for access or shall restore it upon delivery.
--------------------
Sounds like IE to me!! I think this means the gov should avoid products that transmit things in an encoded format just to lock out competitors, but using a nonstandard technology might be applicable.
FYI, I am totally NAL.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
In israel, every government or municipal website requires IE - some don't even let you in if you run something else, others just don't work. You can't pay a bill or file a form with any other browser.
.doc format! Same goes for all our major portals, news sites, and online communities, not to mention e-commerce sites...
This is not just the government, IE is actually considered a proper standard here. One of our biggest universities, Tel Aviv university, where I go to school, uses an online course system for bulletin boards and knowledge bases that you can't login to without IE, and sends students messages in word
Well, at least realplayer is available on Linux!! Try that with Quicktime or the Windows Media Player.
:-(
Oh, I wasn't meaning to exclude other players by naming just one.
I was thinking of "MPEG4 using open codecs", actually. If they ALSO want to provide Realplayer or WMP or QT or Flash, OK, but an open format should also be available at a minimum.
For documents, plain text should be the required format where possible, with compliant HTML at the fallback. Things like PDF that often require screen scrapers because characters get thrown down in more or less arbitrary order should come after text or rich text.
Are they not competent enough to us png for pictures?
PNG is the poster boy for lost opportunities.
The US gov't has made its very first mistake.
I can control QoS up to my link out on either side. Beyond that, you are right, it's up to the internet in general.
However, I did everything I could. Which is the important thing here.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Aren't they saving enough money by granting patents without providing decent vetting?
Patents? This is a copyright pre-registration system. Not a patent system. Developing 2 versions for such a short period of time is a waste since cross-browser compatibility will be available shortly anyhow.
.. that they are granted to the one who is first to patent office, and that close submissions of the same concept don't even count as showing that the invention was "obvious" to those working in the field:e r/LaserPatentWars
http://www.virtualschool.edu/mon/ElectronicFronti
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
Do you have any actual evidence to support this opinion, or are you just guessing? Do you honestly believe that any bureaucrat actually reads the letters he's sent?
In reality, letter-sending is probably (yes, I'm making an informed guess here) handled the same way phone calling is handled: some peon in the administration tallies up "yea" letters and "nay" letters and gives the bureaucrat for whom he works a number. In all likelihood, no one who can make decisions ever actually reads the letters involved or even knows that they're form letters.
Jeremy
Looking for a Python IRC bot?
Do not send in a letter that is cut and pasted from someone else's work.. even if you paraphrase it. Most government offices that are used to handling mail (such as for elected officials) will spot a cut'n'paste campaign quickly and then start grouping all similar messages together. You might still get a response, but the official you are trying to reach (or a staffer) will just write one form letter and send it out a thousand times, rather than paying attention to the letters individually. Of course, they'll lump them together because of content even if they are not just duplicates, but in general most organizations (private and public) follow the same guideline, "if you don't care enough to put it in your own words, than you don't care enough to complain if we ignore you."
As a side note, I'm sure some whoever stated on their website and over the phone that they'll eventually support other browsers has good intentions, but consider this... if it's too expensive for them to make a website that is off-the-bat compatible with most browsers, it is probably not because of the cost of testing but because they are using a lot of IE-only features or components that cannot be readily reproduced on other browsers without just re-writing those sections of the website completely. Put yourself in the shoes of the person in charge of this project. When you've completed the initial phase of the project:
1. It works fine for +/- 9x% of the people out there, and they're happy. A few mac users complain, but they find a way to access the site after a few months using Virtual PC or someone elses PC.
2. You'll probably be continually refining the site and doing bug fixes for at least a few months of it's existence.
3. You've already used most of your budget.
OK, so now, you're at a point where most of the three things above are true and you decide "OK, it's worked fine for a few months, let's do a major overhaul of our site design to match web-standards, and let's code from scratch (for example) that IE-based CC-authorization system we bought online for $200 bucks a server." This most likely will not happen... once it's complete they'll probably leave it as is for at least a year or so. Remember, this is a government agency. Maybe we'll be lucky and they won't be using IE-specific components... but if that were the case, why the fuss about not supporting other browsers? It's not that hard to test, nor does it really take that much more time... UNLESS you are taking coding shortcuts or buying components that will only work on IE. Whatever the case, it's unlikely they'll spend more money later on to fix something that technically already works.
Comeon guys, your slipping. Ars had an article on this on the 11th. But, anyway, just because they PLAN to support other browsers down the road, doesn't mean that plan won't change....
Dear Sir or Madam,
I saw on the US copyright office website that you may be forcing users who wish to preregister a work to use Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser. This would cause me a good deal of trouble, as I use the operating systems FreeBSD and Ubuntu Linux, for which the browser is not available. I use the browser Mozilla Firefox regularly - it's compatible with most W3C standards, which you can read about at www.w3.org. It's quite possible to create a website with most of the capability of ActiveX using Javascript and CSS.
Mozilla Firefox does not implement ActiveX because it requires running native code - something that generates a very high risk of security issues.
If you take into account Linux, BSD, and Macintosh users (none of whom can run Internet Explorer), you would be denying the full use of the Copyright Office website to at least 10% of your previous users - possibly more, as Macintosh is used more often by artists and writers, who would be more likely to use the Copyright Office website.
You can save a large number of people a lot of trouble by using web standards such as HTML 4.01 Transitional and CSS2.
Thank you,
Eric Stein
The copyright office is going to moderate this -1, Redundant. At least I hope so.
I pretend to know more than I really do by mooching off google and wikipedia.
There's a simple way to make sure ALL browsers are always supported:
- Implement your website using nothing but HTML, HTML Forms, and CGI. No Javascript, no CSS, no fancy plugins, and as little graphics as you can get away with.
- This may not result in the prettiest website ever, but it'll WORK with all browsers.
- Use this basecode to add Javascript, CSS and graphics, etc. Enable this version by default for tested browsers, but ALWAYS allow the visitor to switch between either version REGARDLESS of their user agent string.
- When making changes, always implement and test first in the vanilla version, then port the changes to the fancier version(s).
OMGWTF!!! U = N00BS!!!1 F1r3f0x pwns IE.
K BYE..
gg
Your Name.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
The cool thing with Vista is Palladium. Once everything has to be signed by MSFT, this will actually work in favor of the Copyright Office. Control. Security (or at least, far more security than right now).
And there's no way in hell MSFT is going to sign Firefox or Mozilla or Gecko or Epiphany or Opera. So, you see, this is just a lead up to conforming to Palladium standards.
You might very well not want Palladium on your desktop at home. I understand that, and I feel the exact same way. But you sure as hell should be wanting Palladium (if some form of MSFT Windows has to be used) on your bank's computers, your physician's computers, the CIA's computers, the NSA's computers, the Social Security Administration's computers, NASA's computers.
You obviously don't know how the process works. Representatives don't actually read the letters - they just count how many they get on each side of an issue. Form letter, or handwritten, still counts as one. As long as it's signed, that is...
Please excuse my ignorance, but what the hell are you talking about "cross-browser compatibility"?
Yes, but the statement "IE only runs on Windows" is still plain wrong, regardless of which features IE on Mac supports. I don't even know why you bothered to type that reply, since it doesn't change the grandparent's point in any way.
Comment of the year
Tom Hanrahan, OSDL
Here's more information about the proposal and the process for making public comments.
SUMMARY:
The Copyright Office is supplementing its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on preregistration of copyright claims, issued July 22, 2005. That notice proposed procedures to preregister any unpublished work being prepared for commercial distribution that is in a class of works determined by the Register of Copyrights to have had a history of pre-release infringement. Today's notice seeks information as to whether persons filing the electronic-only preregistration form prescribed by the Copyright Office will experience difficulties if it is necessary to use Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser in order to preregister a work.
DATES:
Comments are due no later than August 22, 2005. Reply comments are due no later than September 7, 2005.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:
David O. Carson, General Counsel, or Charlotte Douglass, Principal Legal Advisor, P.O. Box 70400, Washington, DC 20024-0400, Telephone (202) 707-8380. Telefax: (202) 707-8366.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
In accordance with the Artists' Rights and Theft Prevention Act of 2005 (the ART Act), Title I of the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act, Pub. L. No. 109-9, 119 Stat. 218, the Copyright Office recently proposed implementing regulations for preregistration of eligible copyright claims. 70 FR 42286 (July 22, 2005). To be eligible for preregistration, a work must be unpublished, in the process of being prepared for commercial distribution, and in a class of works that the Register of Copyrights determines has had a history of copyright infringement.
Section 104 of the ART Act directs that preregistration procedures must be in place by October 24, 2005. 17 U.S.C. 408(f)(1). To comply with this time frame and to facilitate efficient processing of preregistration claims, inter alia, the proposed rule calls for filing such claims by electronic means only. At this point in the process of
[[Page 44879]]
developing the Copyright Office's system for online preregistration, it is not entirely clear whether the system will be compatible with web browsers other than Microsoft Internet Explorer versions 5.1 and higher. Filers of preregistration applications will be able to employ these Internet Explorer browsers successfully. Support for Netscape 7.2, Firefox 1.0.3, and Mozilla 1.7.7 is planned but will not be available when preregistration goes into effect. Present users of these browsers may experience problems when filing claims.
In order to ensure that preregistration can be implemented in a smoothly functioning and timely manner, the Office now seeks comments that will assist it in determining whether any eligible parties will be prevented from preregistering a claim due to browser requirements of the preregistration system. Therefore, this notice seeks information whether any potential preregistration filers would have difficulties using Internet Explorer (version 5.1 or higher) to file preregistration claims, and if so, why. More generally, in the interest of achieving support for browsers in the Office's preregistration processing environment, this notice inquires whether (and why) an eligible party who anticipates preregistering a claim on the electronic-only form will not be able to use Internet Explorer to do so, or will choose not to preregister if it is necessary to use Internet Explorer.
The Office requests that responses to this supplemental notice of inquiry be made part of the responders' comments on the July 22nd Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. Whether or not accompanied by comments on the proposed rule, the response to this notice of inquiry should be submitted by the due dates for comment on the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, i.e., no later than August 22, 2005, with reply comments due no later than September 7, 2005.
I just talked to the copyright office. You need to submit WRITTEN letters as stated from the link at slashdot.com. Do NOT use e-mail. e-mails will be re-jected
This is sensationalist reporting as usual. According to TFA linked in the post:
They are not being poopie-heads by denying the existence of alterative browsers: instead, they were fully well-aware of their existence and the importance of them. It is just that a deadline is coming up and they haven't quite finished implementing their solutions for everyone yet, and they are asking the public whether they should ask of an extension on the deadline so they can finish the development.Look, game/software companies do this all the time: release something for just MS Windows first because they have the largest consumer pool and later on finish development for other platforms.
Of course, the fact the website will function for an unspecified period in only IE is not cool, and I plan to write in about that. But do get your facts straight before you send in that letter to the Copyright Office.
Engineers also speak PDE, only in a different dialect.
I'd want to find out why they even suggested this. I'd be looking at the source of the request and trying to determine the reasons/motives for this question.
If their office can't write a submission web site that accomodates other browsers, then there's a question of competence. If there's a problem with the competence of the staff at that office, let's get the real problem fixed.
Best regards.
Is an e-mail an acceptable form of contacting them regarding this issue? Technically the document stipulates the acceptable forms of submitting comments, and these do not include e-mail.
...with the further stipulation that it must be mailed USPS (i.e. no FedEx, UPS, etc.)
Would it perhaps be better to encourage people to print and mail in letters?
It says, if sent by mail to send the original and FIVE COPIES (wtf?) to:
Copyright GC/ I&R
P.O. Box 70400
Southwest Station, Washington, DC 20024-0400
Perhaps you are unaware; there are application called 'screen readers' that take all the textual information (supplied by the web browser/user agent from the source code or in the application widgets/window titles/etc.) and speak it via the soundcard.
If the web page is coded correctly, the blind/visually impaired users can get the information. The proper coding also enables keyboard access only, such as needed by people with mobility (e.g., palsy, missing limbs, joystick key selection) issues.
This is usually under the guidelines of Section 508.
You ask whether persons filing the electronic-only preregistration form prescribed by the Copyright Office would experience difficulties if it were necessary to use Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser. I would absolutely experience difficulties: not only do I not use Microsoft Internet Explorer on my computers; that browser is not available for my computers at all. If it were necessary to use Microsoft Internet Explorer in order to preregister a work, I simply would not be able to preregister a work, period.
The Internet was founded on the principle of interoperability, meaning that its protocols are all vendor-neutral and users are supposed to be able to successfully communicate regardless of the different kinds of hardware and software their computer systems might be useing. No website or other component of the Internet should ever mandate that one particular piece of software from one particular vendor be used. This dictum is especially important when the website in question is one operated by the U.S. government, which must perforce be accessible by all citizens. (I am all too aware that the dictum is widely flouted, but that sad precedent should not be allowed to invalidate the principle.)
Your notice additionally states: "Support for Netscape 7.2, Firefox 1.0.3, and Mozilla 1.7.7 is planned but will not be available when preregistration goes into effect", suggesting that the programmers implementing the registration system are attempting to but are experiencing difficulty in designing a cross-platform website. If I might offer some unsolicited advice: those programmers need some additional education, or, if they work for a firm under contract to the Copyright Office, the Office should seriously consider terminating that firm for incompetence. They may claim that there is some specific technical reason why they need to tie their implementation so closely to the vagaries and foibles of individual browsers, meaning that support for each additional browser would require additional work, but if that is the claim, it proves that the design of the website is faulty.
Approached correctly, the task of creating a cross-platform website is straightforward; in fact one generally has to go out of one's way to devise artificial and unnecessary constraints which seem to mandate the use of one particular browser. Approached correctly, a properly-designed website is automatically accessible via all standards-conforming browsers: one does not even need to provide a short list of four browsers which are or will be supported, let alone an unacceptably degenerate list of one.
Analogies are always risky, but to help understand why a requirement to use Internet Explorer is unacceptable, and indeed to understand why the question shouldn't even arise, imagine that a contract has been let to provide an access-control system for a new parking garage, and that the vendor is warning that as initially deployed, only Ford automobiles will be able to park successfully. Drivers of Chevrolets, Toyotas, and Nissans may experience difficulties, while drivers of Deloreans and Yugos will not be able to park at all. When asked for an explanation, the vendor explains that their sophisticated new vehicle-recognition system, necessary in order to know how high to raise the gate so that the current vehicle can enter, currently knows only how to recognize Ford automobiles. The programming to recognize Chevrolets, Toyotas, and Nissans is not complete, and support for Deloreans and Yugos would not be cost-effective so is not planned at all.
The analogy seems ludicrous, because obviously no "sophisticated vehicle-recognition system" is required in the first place: wouldn't it make more sense to always raise the gate all the way, so that any vehicle -- or at least any vehicle meeting DOT standards for passenger vehicle dimensions -- could enter? But when we look carefully at websites which support only the "mainstream" browser, or which support only some prespecif
If you do write to the Copyright Office (and you should), it might be a good idea to send a copy of your letter to your Representative in Congress as well, asking them to use their influence to get the Copyright Office to behave fairly towards non-IE users who want to be able to use the system.
Congresspeople tend to be more sensitive to the desires of their constituents than bureaucrats within the executive branch, and they know how to get results from the bureaucracy when needed.
You can find your Representative here:
http://www.house.gov/writerep/
As an older citizen I like many others have found that my just don't focus well on close objects, like computer displays; Also I've found that the ability of non-IE browsers to change displayed font sizes to be very helpfull. Additionly I've found the the X-windows systems ability to change screen resolutions to be helpful as well.
Anything that's "designed or best viewed with IE" also tends to include a bunch of things that make accessability challenging. IE just dosn't display fonts sizes the same, lacks CSS compatability making it more difficult for persons to customize the browser to display pages that are easier to view in short if the page doesn't display well in lynx or w3m things go downhill quickly.
Of course they are not designing a IE only site, but rather a tested in IE first site, so this could easily turn out to be a tempest in a teapot rather than a real issue; yet it is disturbing. I imagine that issues like the American's with disabilities act, and equal protection clauses are easily applicable.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Good lord, xanga layouts are the WORST. The epitome of tacky CSS.
Just try telling one of those little self proclaimed CSS experts their skills suck though, you'll likely get an angst fireball the likes of which you've never seen.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
The "planned status" isn't in their control. The copyright office isn't the one doing the back end for their web site that has this requirement, and actually, I'm not sure it's the requirement that people are making it to be.
I don't think people are actually reading this in detail, or perhaps this particular article (TPFA?) doesn't contain the specifics, but the problem here is that the copyright office uses Siebel, which only certifies their current system for use with IE and Netscape 7.02.
This news.com article talks about that more, complete with a quote from someone at Siebel:
(Currently the copyright office uses Siebel 7.7. They've indicated 7.8 won't be tested with Safari or Opera, of course.) Contacting the copyright office, politely, is a good idea. But I think perhaps Ms. Schneider needs to be contacted, too; ultimately, it's her company that's the problem child.
I don't blame the copyright office for making this choice initially; the chances are checking on Siebel's web server implementation wasn't in their initial requirements for a CRM. The problem is that Siebel knows how difficult it is for their customers to move to another system, so they feel they can get away with half-assed "do it our way or the highway" implementations like this. It'd be great if the copyright office was willing to say, "This must be fixed by [insert deadline here] or we'll migrate to something else," but following through on that would be an extremely non-trivial undertaking.
Personally, I find it interesting that so many people view our system as a single entity like it's some form of a hive mind. It reminds me of being a child and viewing my mother as some sort of a god who has a huge plan which encompasses everything she does and says. Human civilizations aren't exactly ant colonies. There really isn't one conscious being called "The Government". There's bound to be a LOT of confusion in anything we try and do as one entity because Mother Nature didn't design us to work that way. That's why we have one group of people fighting to adopt open standards and another group not even thinking about it when all they want to do is make a web app and reach the largest percentage of the population with minimal amount of work and development time. Sure, it's easily recognized as short sighted to those of us that value interoperability, but it's not exactly like they woke up and decided to endorse crack. To the development team at the Copyright Office, choosing to test the one browser that has a 90% market share makes the most amount of sense from a ROI standpoint. It's not like "The Government" sat at a round table with Bush at the helm deciding that the US Copyright Office will support only Microsoft because Microsoft secretly controls all parts of the American government and are working towards an ultimate plot to make us eat Soylent Green and use more oil.
-Lucas
But how many of you have ever registered a copyright? If you haven't, isn't it a little disingenuous to write to the Copyright Office complaining?
If you don't own a gun or have never been a direct victim of a crime committed with a gun, you have no right to participate in a dicussion about gun laws.
If you don't own a car you cannot participate in discussions about photo radar.
If you don't own or have never worked on or with a nuclear weapon you would be disingenuous to paticipate in a debate about nuclear weapon limits or treaties.
If you don't drink you cannot discuss drinking laws.
If you don't have kids in public schools you would be wrong to attend a school board meeting.
Should I continue with the absurd rules based on the rule in the parent comment or do you get the point now?
Is it that fucking hard to find a web developer that doesn't suck?
Honestly, I see many eye pleasing web sites in proper (X)HTML and CSS.
I don't know why we play this IE first and everyone else later game.
If you design the website properly, it'll work correctly in most browsers except IE which you throw in a few hacks to make it work. NOT the otherway around where you design the site using IE and propertiary code and then create a mess trying to make it work in other browsers if at all.
You, sir, just made my friends list.
The reason they're going to web at all is to save labor costs. If you want to pre-register and don't want to use IE, use paper. Suck their budget down to zero. And tell them it's because your browser won't work. They'll fix it.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
The spirit of the argument still holds...IE on Mac is not the same program as the Windows version and will not give you the same results. The fact that they have the same name and both come from Microsoft is marketing speak (i.e. bullshit).
To put it another way...if a newbie coming from the Windows world asked me if IE was available on the Mac, I could only honestly say that Microsoft distributes a program called IE that's available for the Mac, but it's not really IE and doesn't give you the features of the Windows version.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
USPTO informed? About real inventions operating in the real world? Surely you're kidding?
You're an idiot. The grandparent only advocated writing original letters rather than using someone else's form letter. They aren't taking people to task for the mere act of getting involved.
The easiest resoning for them not making the website IE-only is that IE is not available on all computer platforms.
Microsoft is only developing new versions of IE for Windows. I mean, yeah, you can still download it for Mac and maybe a couple others if you want, but it's no longer supported. It's only a matter of time before IE for Mac breaks on some new version of OSX.
By restricting the site to IE-only, they are restricting the online registration to people who own Windows PC's.
>
I notice you didn't say 'unique users' so what 50 of your friends with windoze each create a hundred or so accounts and a couple of penguins pop over and make up the difference with the little BSD devil.
FragHARD or don't Frag at all.
FragHARD or don't frag at all
If you read the thing you'll find out that the reason why it might be IE at first is that they plan to use Siebel for this.
For one thing, that means it cannot possibly launch when they think it will - if in fact it ever works at all (just based on past experience). For another, it's not really up to the USPS to get other browsers working - it's up to Siebel since it's thier client that doesn't work. And who knows when that REALLY will happen.
Siebel is the mosty clunky client-side heavy interface I have ever used. In my letter I'm going to chastise them for choosing a proprietary solution from a dying company. They must be warned of the problems they are taking on...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
(and CSS, or whatever STANDARDs are necessary to provide the desired functionality). Screw the browser incompatibilities. Develop to the standards and let people complain to the browser developers if they have a problem working with an standards compliant site.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
OMG, you are the biggest faggot I've ever seen
ditto
Isn't there something in the Constitution about no Government establishment of religion? 'nuf said
"There is nothing so permanent as a temporary fix."
Consider the results of a budget-crunch, or manpower shortage. The IE-only pages could very well be deemed "good enough."
"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
Microsoft has been found to be a monopoly abuser.
If it is too hard to test for comparibility with multiple browsers the least they could do would be to choose one NOT from Microsoft.
Pick anything but Internet Explorer.
Don't encourage the beast.
That's going to be interesting if someone trys to apply for a pattent on an non running MSIE OS (OSX 10.4 doesn't have IE anymore), and if it just so happens that someone else is applying for the similar patent (like the iPod/MS interface thingy)...
How will they rule that - yeah, Bob was first, but only because we blocked Sue from doing so?
Sounds like a load of crock to me.
"Any other professional is expected to show, you know, *professionalism* in their field."
Now if only builders had to deal with clients like that... "and the house has to have light shows like las vegas, and we don't care if 15% of people can't fit through the door... now redesign it with a different sort of flashing light... and replace the brick with papier mache, oh you have to work overtime to keep it upright during the storms...
I'm not a professional webdesigner, but I think they're allowed to start acting like professionals when they started getting treated as such...
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=158949&cid=133 17510
surely a vpn over the open internet can't properly support QOS
Actually, it can, in the practical sense that it can either deliver the desired QOS or tell you that the QOS can't be guaranteed and offer a few choices (try again, try TCP, abort).
A lot of the Internet now implements RTP. Not everywhere, of course. There's lots of VoIP now, and that is often done with RTP, falling back to TCP if RTP rejects the connection. With threads, you can try both connections in parallel, use the first one that works; if it's TCP, the RTP thread keeps trying just in case the bandwidth opens up. It's a bit more programming, and not for an utter net newbie or the faint of heart.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
I drafted a letter to the office, and I will be hand-delivering the following tomorrow, since I have appointments in DC anyway:
Copyright GC/ I&R, P.O. Box 70400
Southwest Station
Washington, DC
20024-0400
To Whom It May Concern:
I am writing in regards to a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on preregistration of copyright claims, issued July 22, 2005 (37 CFR Part 202, docket No. RM 2005-9). The notice seeks information in regards to the exclusive use of the Internet Explorer for electronic-only preregistration forms.
I strongly object to the use of Internet Explorer as a standard for electronic-only preregistration forms. I object because an IE-only-registration system cannot adequately meet the needs of copyright holders. I maintain digital recording and editing systems for multi-million dollar media facilities. I manage copyright and royalty filings for both my own record company and several clients. My clients in the film and audio recording businesses hold many copyrights that have been violated in the past, and have a high potential for violation. The reasons for my objection to the use of a single software program for preregistrations stem from a few key issues. Preregistration is going to become a critical tool for protecting intellectual property, and my clients need unfettered access to that tool.
Internet Explorer represents a security and stability risk to the facilities I serve. A computer problem can cause tens of thousands of dollars in downtime expenses, and I seek to minimize those expenses for my clients. Clients do not usually use Internet Explorer for Internet access because too many bugs and security holes exist. On Windows computers, it is often unwise to allow Internet access with IE because of the security risks involved. It is preferable that facilities use web browsers that use established, rather then proprietary Microsoft standards, because they are more compatible and secure.
Another problem with using IE as the standard for a web interface is that it causes problems for many people working in creative fields. Microsoft Windows/IE is not a standard platform for creative work. It should be noted that many companies, and a majority of my clients do not use a single Microsoft Windows based computer in their entire facility. Microsoft has chosen to stop development of Internet Explorer for the Macintosh, meaning that Macintosh users will no longer be able to use certain proprietary Microsoft technologies . In addition, Microsoft has never released a version of IE for a Linux/Unix platform. If the copyright office uses an IE only system, people using Apple Macintosh and Linux/Unix computer systems would be shut out of an electronic-only preregistration system. This would place an undue hardship on many copyright holders and applicants.
The copyright office has a fiduciary responsibility to the taxpayers and copyright holders to implement systems that serve the most people the best way possible. The Government Paperwork Elimination Act (2003) policy implementation specifically endorses a policy of technology neutrality:
Accordingly, the final guidance [of the GPE Act] maintains the basic policy of technology neutrality for automated transactions while recognizing that agencies should select an alternative relative to the risk of the application, and calls on agencies to consider all of the available electronic signature technologies (including the advantages of public key technology) as part of their assessments.
Also, 1703 b (1)(B) of the GPE Act states:
(1) The procedures developed under subsection (a)...
(B) may not inappropriately favor one industry or technology;
The endorsement of a specific technology, company, or web browser, therefore contradicts a policy implemented by the rest of the federal government.
Technologies exist
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
The letter written and posted by the contributor of this article has the following: Macintosh OS users have "no access to Microsoft Windows and may have never used Microsoft Internet Explorer (which only runs on Microsoft Windows) before." Just a point of clarification, this is wrong. This MS Page (micrsoft.com) has several Microsoft downloads for Mac, including a free download for Mac OS. Not trying to dispute what the purpose of the letter is, however. While I myself would be unaffected by this, being a Windows 2000 user with IE6 as my main browser, I do support the Linux community and other OSS projects and feel that requiring the use of IE is an unfair and blatently bad idea.
A certain subset of them are just idiots.
A client of mine recently had their marketing department hire a 'Web Design Firm'. I won't name names, but it's the kind where everyone has nappy hair and wears thick rimmed black glasses, 20/20 or not. Herman Miller furniture, I'm sure.
OK, so they get the new website and it doesn't render in Safari. A number of the employees have Macs.
So they say, "yo, 'sup?," marketing folks understanding the vagaries of web standards. The 'Web Design Firm' replies, "The problem is that the Internet was invented on PC's and there are certain portions of the Internet that a Mac just can't get to."
No kidding.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
This is important for a few reasons. They only say they plan to have support for other browsers later on. that doesnt mean they'll actually do it. Making a lot of noise about it now will help them realize why they need to support all browsers. doing something as MSIE only sets a bad precedent that other government agencies may follow. I've heard this excuse all the time from every job I've worked at: "but everyone uses IE anyway". people think 8% is a small number and while it is much smaller than 92% (arbitrary numbers) 8% of 100 million is still 8 million users. And the people who have operating systems other than Windows certainly should not be shut out. If they do this, then some idiot suit and tie pencil pusher will then tell his superiors that everyone on their site is using IE so they shouldnt bother with the other browsers. of course that will only be true because they made and IE only site. Now how bad is Seibel's software for only supporting certain browsers and saying they will have support for netscape 7.2 later. that's great, but netscape just released version 8 a little while ago. What is this software anyway?
-- Does anybody know where the 'any' key is on the keyboard?
In reality, letter-sending is probably (yes, I'm making an informed guess here) handled the same way phone calling is handled: some peon in the administration tallies up "yea" letters and "nay" letters and gives the bureaucrat for whom he works a number.
Hey, what country do you live in, where they do such a good job?
Here in the US, the usual procedure is: You sent your rep a letter for or against his policy on something. You get back a letter thanking you for your support. The peons count the letters that mention each topic on their list (and ignore letters on other topics). They give those counts to the rep, one number per topic. He declares a "mandate" for his policies.
In a few cases, he's a she, so you can change all the pronouns in the above paragraph.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
That's true, but not particularly relevant. In this case, the problem is simply a server running an older piece of software that only supports IE. More recent versions of the software work on other browsers, but they may not be able to upgrade before the system goes live.
In other words, lack of support for other browsers is a temporary issue that will certainly be fixed - the only question is whether the issue is sufficiently important that the go-live should be delayed until it's resolved.
It's also not clear the degree to which the application is IE-only. It may, for example, be mostly functional under other browsers but with some display issues. Or it may be depending on Javascript that fails completely. We don't know.
Just got my reply from them. My favirote part:
If hand delivered by a private party, an original and five
copies of any comment should be brought to Room LM-401
of the James Madison Memorial Building between 8:30 a.m.
and 5 p.m. and the envelope should be addressed as follows:
Office of the General Counsel, U.S. Copyright Office, James
Madison Memorial Building, Room LM-401, 101 Independence
Avenue, SE., Washington, DC 20559-6000. If hand delivered
by a commercial courier, an original and five copies of any
comment must be delivered to the Congressional Courier
Acceptance Site located at Second and D Streets, NE.,
Washington, DC, between 8:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. The envelope
should be addressed as follows: Copyright Office General
Counsel, Room LM-403, James Madison Memorial Building, 101
Independence Avenue, SE., Washington, DC. If sent by mail,
an original and five copies of any comment should be
addressed to: Copyright GC/ I&R, P.O. Box 70400, Southwest
Station, Washington, DC 20024-0400. Comments may not be
delivered by means of overnight delivery services such as
Federal Express, United Parcel Service, etc., due to delays
in processing receipt of such deliveries.
"I'm not ashamed I can't function in society like I'm supposed to." - Paul Westerberg
I can't believe what I just received when I sent in a comment as this guy
m l) asm l).
suggested.....
We have received an email from you regarding the
proposed rulemaking on electronic-only preregistration.
The comments you submitted cannot be considered because
they were in the form of email. As the instructions in
the Copyright Office's Federal Register notice state,
comments can be delivered to the Copyright Office by the
following means:
If hand delivered by a private party, an original and five
copies of any comment should be brought to Room LM-401
of the James Madison Memorial Building between 8:30 a.m.
and 5 p.m. and the envelope should be addressed as follows:
Office of the General Counsel, U.S. Copyright Office, James
Madison Memorial Building, Room LM-401, 101 Independence
Avenue, SE., Washington, DC 20559-6000. If hand delivered
by a commercial courier, an original and five copies of any
comment must be delivered to the Congressional Courier
Acceptance Site located at Second and D Streets, NE.,
Washington, DC, between 8:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. The envelope
should be addressed as follows: Copyright Office General
Counsel, Room LM-403, James Madison Memorial Building, 101
Independence Avenue, SE., Washington, DC. If sent by mail,
an original and five copies of any comment should be
addressed to: Copyright GC/ I&R, P.O. Box 70400, Southwest
Station, Washington, DC 20024-0400. Comments may not be
delivered by means of overnight delivery services such as
Federal Express, United Parcel Service, etc., due to delays
in processing receipt of such deliveries.
If you wish to submit comments, we strongly urge that you
first read the entire notice of proposed rulemaking published
July 22 (available on the Copyright office website at
http://www.copyright.gov/fedreg/2005/70fr42286.ht
well as the supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking
published Aug. 4 (available on the Copyright office website
at http://www.copyright.gov/fedreg/2005/70fr44878.ht
"You have never actually met a customer or an end user, have you? Excluding 90-odd % of the market just isn't an option."
Kindows for Linux will take care of that.
"There are many ways to make political hay. Sending form letters to your representatives is, in my opinion, one of the least productive methods of making your voice heard."
Why not? They send form letters to me all the time. Anyway I happen to live in the capital of my state and can just drive downtown to yell at some of them.
Free Software Foundation is also collecting responses on this issue.
I think a temporary solution is have the server do most of the work. Let it handle all the browser differences (that's what machines are for, right?). What the designer writes to is a universal standard that reflects the intent of the designer. It then spits out correct code for a given browser. The IDE will let you know if what your attempting is outside it's capabilities to handle. e.g. every browser ever made.*
*Coupled with basically every rendering engine. e.g. like what netscape presently does on windows, just taken further. A designer can double check everything without owning multiple machines, software.
it stands for World Wide Web Consortium.
Not that those of us that refuse to use IE and/or Windows are 'handicapped' in some way... shouldn't access be universal? or as made as close as possible by following standards?
and why even bother coding all of that stuff when you'd eventually have to do it 'the right way'?
*sigh* then again, how can you expect common sense out of a government office that issues ridiculous patents all day long?
CHAPTER XVI--OFFICE OF GOVERNMENT ETHICS
PART 2635--STANDARDS OF ETHICAL CONDUCT FOR EMPLOYEES OF THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH
Subpart I_Related Statutory Authorities
2635.901 General.
2635.902 Related statutes.
(a) Public service is a public trust. Each employee has a responsibility to the United States Government and its citizens to place loyalty to the Constitution, laws and ethical principles above private gain. To ensure that every citizen can have complete confidence in the integrity of the Federal Government, each employee shall respect and adhere to the principles of ethical conduct set forth in this section, as well as the implementing standards contained in this part and in supplemental agency regulations.
(b) General principles. The following general principles apply to every employee and may form the basis for the standards contained in this part. Where a situation is not covered by the standards set forth in this part, employees shall apply the principles set forth in this section in determining whether their conduct is proper.
*snipped 1 - 7 as they do not apply*
(8) Employees shall act impartially and not give preferential treatment to any private organization or individual.
The above has been interpreted that if a government employee requires an individual to purchase a product from a specific company in order to do business with the government, then they are giving preferential treatment to that company and they are violating the Standards of Ethical Conduct.
In addition to writing to the Patent Office, please send a message to the Office of Government Ethics: http://www.usoge.org/
U.S. Office of Government Ethics
1201 New York Avenue, NW.
Suite 500
Washington, DC 20005
DarkRide
I'm not a professional webdesigner, but I think they're allowed to start acting like professionals when they started getting treated as such...
Respect is earned, not given. My job ( net admin, programmer ) is low on the respect totem as well. If shit works, I look like I'm slacking off, if it breaks I obviously wasn't doing my job. Does that mean I get to whine how no one respects me and do a half ass job of it?
No. It means I do my best work to satisfy my own sense of pride.
After years of hard work and learning, I finally am in a position where I do get respected for my work. But it was because I worked hard to earn it.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
The US government is on record as opposing Open Source internationally. They Department of Commerce and the State Department have both explicitly and openly supported proprietary software (read: Microsoft) in international fora. In Japan, recently, the US was the only country in the Asia/Pacific region to object to a communique expressing a desire to look into Open Source solutions for governmental computing needs. This was not an isolated example. The United States, today, is following a unilateral and self-interested path. Where computing is concerned it is about promoting Microsoft's monopoly and doing what they can to extend and maintain it.
Only boring people are ever bored.
I sent an email using the webform suggested by the blogger and got this response back:
We have received an email from you regarding the
proposed rulemaking on electronic-only preregistration.
The comments you submitted cannot be considered because
they were in the form of email.
What a joke. Send your comments by mail (an original and five copies)to: Copyright GC/ I&R, P.O. Box 70400, Southwest
Station, Washington, DC 20024-0400. Don't send it using anything other than US mail. These guys are a bunch of fuck-tards.
Detailed instructions here: http://www.copyright.gov/fedreg/2005/70fr44878.htm l
We have received an email from you regarding the proposed rulemaking on electronic-only preregistration. The comments you submitted cannot be considered because they were in the form of email. As the instructions in the Copyright Office's Federal Register notice state, comments can be delivered to the Copyright Office by the following means:
m l) as well as the supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking published Aug. 4 (available on the Copyright office website at http://www.copyright.gov/fedreg/2005/70fr44878.htm l).
If hand delivered by a private party, an original and five copies of any comment should be brought to Room LM-401 of the James Madison Memorial Building between 8:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. and the envelope should be addressed as follows: Office of the General Counsel, U.S. Copyright Office, James Madison Memorial Building, Room LM-401, 101 Independence Avenue, SE., Washington, DC 20559-6000. If hand delivered by a commercial courier, an original and five copies of any comment must be delivered to the Congressional Courier Acceptance Site located at Second and D Streets, NE., Washington, DC, between 8:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. The envelope should be addressed as follows: Copyright Office General Counsel, Room LM-403, James Madison Memorial Building, 101 Independence Avenue, SE., Washington, DC. If sent by mail, an original and five copies of any comment should be addressed to: Copyright GC/ I&R, P.O. Box 70400, Southwest Station, Washington, DC 20024-0400. Comments may not be delivered by means of overnight delivery services such as Federal Express, United Parcel Service, etc., due to delays in processing receipt of such deliveries.
If you wish to submit comments, we strongly urge that you first read the entire notice of proposed rulemaking published July 22 (available on the Copyright office website at http://www.copyright.gov/fedreg/2005/70fr42286.ht
Thank you for your prompt response.
I should point out, of course, the delicious irony of not accepting electronic comments on a proposal to accept electronic-only pre-registration.
I should also point out that your delightfully bureaucratic rules on how to deliver comments as appended to your email do not, in fact, preclude the submission of comments in electronic form - they simply give instructions on how to deliver documents in paper form.
Thirdly, I should point out that, in fact, I did not send an email containing my comments but rather submitted my comments using a web form on your own web site. So your assertion that the comments were made via email is presumably only true if the comments I submitted were then converted to an email format by the systems running your web site.
I am also somewhat saddened by all of the above, which seem, ultimately, unreasonable. As a member of the public and the IT community who, these days, rarely, if ever, delivers documents of any kind by paper mail, your failure to accept electronic comment is mystifying. I have no particular interest in submitting a short comment with 5 copies by paper delivery, it seems somewhat onerous to have to do so, when your department presumably would save considerable sums of money by *preferring* electronic comment.
In any regard, my comments stand and I have taken the liberty of posting them on several IT web sites and encouraging other people to submit similar comments. I am sure that my comment will not be the only one made in a similar vein. You and your department are of course at liberty to take note of my opinions or ignore them completely, as you see fit.
Regards
Dan Shannon
Even better, look at Siebel's list of top accounts (IBM, etc.)
I'm pretty sure that the companies listed there either have or are planning to standardize on Firefox.
The core of my letter, sent today, is:
"IE is not available for Linux, and I have no interest in purchasing a different computer -- your action will disenfranchise me. There is no technical justification for such an exclusionary move by a public agency -- the open and democratic process of developing web standards has resulted in tremendous diversity and choice in Internet software. The proposed Copyright Office ruling undermines the very integrity of the web, and makes a mockery of the international standards effort that built the web."