Slashdot Mirror
FEMA Demands Use of IE To File Online Katrina Claims
WebHostingGuy writes "As reported by MSNBC, if you survived the hurricane and are a Mac, Linux or Firefox user you cannot file a claim online. Further, you must have javascript enabled or face rejection. From the site: 'We are sorry for not being able to proceed your requests because you have failed our tests.' Opera and Netscape don't work either." Also reported at InformationWeek. From that story: "To file a claim online at FEMA's Individual Assistance Center, where citizens can apply for government help, the browser must be IE 6.0 or later with JavaScript enabled. That cuts out everyone running Linux or the Mac operating systems, as well as Windows users running alternate browsers such as Firefox or Opera. When TechWeb tested the site using Windows XP and Firefox 1.0.6, the message 'In order to use this site, you must have JavaScript Enabled and Internet Explorer version 6. Download it from Microsoft or call 1-800-621-FEMA (3362) to register' popped up on the screen." Update: 09/08 13:48 GMT by Z : Added word 'Online' to title to clarify story.
... i'd just love to know what feature they're requiring that everyone else DOESN'T have... I wonder if opera using it's browser masking could do it?
Shadus
...FEMA certainly knows how to get things done! (efficiently too!)
I can feel it coming already
From TFA: If you're running Mac OS X, you could run Virtual PC 7 and then access Windows and Internet Explorer.
+1 funny, -2 overrated. Life isn't fair.
The title pretty much sums it up. This is such a none issue that I cannot believe that it is on the front page.
Look at the destruction in New Orleans and Biloxi. Do you really think that there are any/many people filing FEMA claims via the internet?
What stops those people, other than there probably are not many people using it?
"George Bush doesn't care about Mac people!"
I had a sucky sig.
Doesn't the disabilities act apply to FEMA? And doesn't that require a certain level of website?
From TFA:
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
It's not that they can't file claims without using IE... they just can't do it online. If you've ever tried programming javascript for client side error checking of complex forms, you know that standards are very non-existant in the internet world. I completely understand why they would only want people using IE to register, especially if they didn't have much of a tech support staff. It's near impossible to cater a web app to every single flavor of every browser for every OS.
"You had this look that of an angel, it was such a bad disguise" --Dishwalla
I live in the United States and pretty much like it here. But this kind of stupid shit, coupled with all the freedom we've given up for the sake of "greater security," makes me want to bitch-slap the entire Federal government.
That's quite okay. I'd rather FEMA spend resources getting their arses to help the people instead of designing a better web portal.
If you think thats even in the top hundred things FEMA has gotten wrong on this, you haven't been watching the news.
Its a non-issue. A tiny percentage of real users have heard of anything other than IE, and an even tinier percentage of people who need FEMA support have electricity, internet access or a computer anymore.
If you all are going to get bent about something FEMA is doing, get bent about the fact that phone and internet is the only way to register and most refugees have neither. Or get bent about the fact that 90% of calls don't go through to the FEMA number.
This is just rediculous to get worked up about. Who cares? If 1% of thet people affected have internet access, and 1% of those use Firefox (and happen to be using someones computer that has Firefox and not IE), then out of the million people affected, what? 100 might have a problem? 100 people tech aware enough to use firefox? They probably can find a damn cell phone.
When did Bill gates buy Fema?
Next you guys will have to use Windows to be considered citizens, get passports, a social security number...
How can a government possibly limit it's services to people who use a certain software package? Is this discrimination? What would happen if it said "Sorry but because you're black you can not use this website" ?
Yeah, that would be an issue...
How do people without electricity and no computers after having a hurricane ravage their homes and lifestyles, goto a website to make a claim?
If they use public terminals, at least here in the NW, the majority are Windows OS with IE.
... contractors who hacked something together to do FEMA's webpage. Probably ripped them off while doing it.
help you--as long as you're using Microsoft Windows. Pp>Of course, with that type of help, it makes me happy to be a Mac user.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Then call the damn phone number.
2b2b2b415448300d
Incompetent in more ways than you can imagine!
I swear the politics section of slashdot was the worst idea ever. Now you're putting articles that have nothing to do with politics in this section just to try and induce non-applicable political debate in a non-political issue.
from the above link:
Written Correspondence: FEMA P.O. Box 10055 Hyattsville, MD 20782-7055 Fax: (800) 827-8112
If FEMA has requested information from you in writing, you may send it to the address or fax number listed above. Please include your name, social security number, and Registration ID number on all correspondence.Technical Assistance: (800) 745-0243 Monday- Friday, 8:00am - 5:00pm ET The technical helpdesk provides technical support for the on-line registration and user account creation applications and cannot answer disasters assistance related questions.
Please though, remember these people are a federal aid agency working overtime. PLEASE BE CORTEOUS when asking them.
Ars Technica has a good article. Another one on Macworld
;)
Ok, if you want in-depth perhaps you're in the wrong place, but if you happen to want it....
Grammar Zealots: please spare a non-english writer (lastknight dot com)
Clearly the government doesn't care about minorities. Only educated, rich, Windows users can apply for aid online.
(Funny, not flamebait)
They should not put anything up until the site is 100% cross-browser compatible.
Obviously.
I'm surprised this is even an issue for anyone. There is a huge disaster recovery effort going on and they need to have things working as soon as possible. If it requires IE, then that's just how it's going to be for the time being. There are other methods to file your claim (and let's face it, if you're online, you've got it better than 99% of the refugees who are stuck in a shelter).
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
It appears that FEMA is requiring victims to make themselves vulnerable to Gator attacks in order to file a claim.
Oh, wait. If they live in the bayou, they already are vulnerable...
Agree. I'm also pretty sure they have other things to do right now other than make cross-platform code. The author seems to have forgotten that.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
You win!
a) stupid site programming, so that really nothing but IE6 works
or
b) stupid testing; other browsers would work just fine, but they don't want to know
this is a 90% solution. fits into the picture, like to be happy that 90% (or whatever number) of the NO populace made it onto dry ground.
apparently, not only the chain of command at the FEMA and above should be fired, but their developers, too.
It's amazing, just a quick online form and they get a huge chunk of money I earned. I'm so glad the federal government decided to branch off into the free insurance business at my expense.
that rediculous. having such a lousy system must be neglingence or violate some accessiblity laws or something. this is the kind of piss poor design thast can't be tolerated.
Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
"Anyone who slaps a 'this page is best viewed with Browser X' label on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another computer, another word processor, or another network." - Tim Berners-Lee (in Technology Review, July 1996)
It just sickens me whne people do this. At my company, I'm not alloud to even show my boss an idea if it doesn't work in at least 4 browsers... (IE and F must be 2 of them).
"You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm." - S. G. Colette
This is incorrect, because the things you need to implement complex JavaScript validation are actually some of the few areas where there is a well implemented standard. Unless you decide, intentionally, to make your validation only work on IE because you want to use XML data islands or modal dialogs or any of the other slews of crap. But as long as you don't do that, and there's no good reason to, all you need to implement JavaScript validation is a W3C DOM implementation. And *maybe*, if it's very complicated, which this form is not, some AJAX techniques.
This is somewhat similar to a state regulation in Iowa that all government forms are only available in English. They are obviously too 'busy' or too cheap to hire someone who speaks spanish for the large hispanic population... and in this case their just too stupid to write a webpage that can work in both IE and real browsers.
You can tell I'm an aries because of my ram.
Easy Change your Browsers reported User-Agent and tell Fema to suck it.
I sincerely have to say MS must have a big hand in FEMA's pocket. Dont tell me that far superior browsers cant do the job.
Exactly, now read the sentence from the summary. "if you survived the hurricane and are a Mac, Linux or Firefox user you cannot file a claim online." That is blatantly incorrect, as you pointed out from the article. Just a poorly worded article and and an even worse summary in my opinion.
Finance tutorials and more! Understandfinance
90% of the users out there have windows with IE not to mention if your filing a claim most likely your pc and/or house just got flooded or blown away and on top of that yous till have the option of calling it in if you still have phone service.
I hope you can claim the costs of buying Windows. When you can't, type the claim in your favorite editor and post it :D
So you can't use anything but WIN IE and there's a captcha just in case your visually impaired - but hey you can phone...m a_to_mac_linux_us.html blogs that when you try to register by phone an automatic voice says it will send a form out to your registered address ...i.e. UNDERWATER.
Xeni de BoingBoinghttp://www.boingboing.net/2005/09/06/fe
Boing Boing report (link above) that OPERA or any modern browser works so long as it spoofs that it is IE6.
FEMA, more like FUBAR
If you've ever tried programming javascript for client side error checking of complex forms, you know that standards are very non-existant in the internet world.
You shouldn't use clientsided checking, as the golden rule in web developing is that you can't trust the client, EVER. Clientsided checking should only be used as a convenience for the user (save the user a trip to the server and back because he forgot to fill in something), not for anything serious. You have to check input at the server script anyway, so why not allow non-javascript browsers?
9 times out of 10 when sites demand that you use IE, it works fine with other browsers as well and the check is completely unneccessary. Just damn lazy site creators who assume it will take a lot of resources and time to verify that the site works with other browers.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
Now we Linux and Mac users from all over the world can try to test the site. That will at least help stress the servers to the point that simply no one will be able to file their requests.
my other sig is a 500 page novel
This just one of a growing number of complaints against the FEMA. It's so bad that some are calling for its director, Micheal Brown, to be fired. Apparently, he's had problems in prior positions as well, as described HERE
Also, to address your point, I'm guessing that people will be filing their claims OUTSIDE of those areas.
I'm sorry, but that's not just true anymore. It's what I do, every day - and where JS/Client side scripting was hellish in the late 90's there are plenty of examples of complex and mature javascript driven apps. Claiming that it's all too hard is the easy way out, there are standards, they are supported, widely amongst modern clients and it's just lazy to say, "screw it, we'll make it work in IE and nothing else".
You should also never be mandating error checking of complex forms on the client side because you can't control the client-side. If it's complex enough that you can't reliably deploy it in JS, you should be writing that logic into the server side code.
<? include ('signature.inc'); ?>
I'll let Daffy speak for me.
"Where's my other sock?" - A. Einstein
I used the user agent swithcer extension with firefox. Switched it to IE 6 and was able to get to the registration form and fill out some info before quiting.
I think in the end you're probably better off just using the telephone. They're more likely to understand technology thats been around for more than 100 years.
"MS-Internet" is confusing to them.
No France
They should be doing the validaton on the server anyways...
This is an example of what happens when you remove the public from participation in routine activites. One reason the gov't especially on public information systems should invite citizens to give them feedback is to prevent this kind of problem: people with older computers can't file. (this is a much bigger problem than Mac/Linux)
Back in the day, FEMA was drilled and had a civilian function though the Civil Defense program. FEMA was well drilled and practiced at large scale disasters because it was busy preparing to deal with what happens after a massive nuclear strike. In the 80s much of FEMAs prepositioned assets were sold off (as opposed to updated) - handy stuff like surgical kits, sealed ready for action truck-in hospitals, pre-built emergency clinics, ready to go tent towns and prepositioned ration reserves. I bought some stuff at a local government auction when it happened, too (nice tents, cots, surgical kits make nice fly tying tools).
The cold war era FEMA would have easily handled this disaster. The military commad structure would not have been nearly so worried about waiting for approval from a clueless governor or a mayor who was stuck in a location with limited communication capacity. Sometimes it is better to ask forgiveness from the politicians than the public.
-- $G
After all, this is a major branch of the Federal Government being run by a political hack whose main experience is running the National Arabian Horse Association.
Exactly right.
Sweet informative mod.
http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/?t=archives&date= 2005-06-08
"FEMA Demands Use of IE"
Is this FEMA demanding? Or an ignorant IT services supplier supplying a solution which only works on the IE6 platform? Or (horror of horrors) is this system an in-house job?
Maybe FEMA need to revist their IT procurement strategy - if they have one.
In a situation like this, I would have thought that every effort would be made to make the application process accessible to everybody.
Try using Firefox with the User Agent Switcher installed and set to IE6.
Odds are fair to good that the only reason you can't connect to a given site is because a line of code explicitly denies all browsers except IE6.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Having endured very similar circumstances, last year with hurricane Ivan, I can tell you that cell phones worked a month before any land lines or internet.
I can also tell you that the people waist deep in this disaster really appreciate the media and Slashdot slashdotting the FEMA site right when they need it the most. But, at least you worthless bastards are doing your part by whining about their choice of browser, stuff that really matters! The browser debate was really important to me when I had no water or electricity for a month!
Sounds like one monopoly enabling another.
ADA should apply to any web site the government puts together that cannot be declared protected in this War on Terrorism. But then, we all know that the terrorists hate our way of life, so they will hate us helping each other. Thus, I expect rampant attacks to start any day now. Not like the good old American criminals setting up bogus contribution sites, no, these attacks will be merciless. They will fill out forms for dead people, moo ha ha ha!
...tizzyd
Actually, as I understand it, if you try to register by telephone, it arranges for FEMA to mail you a form to your home address... ...something tells me the mail might not get through to New Orleans addresses for a while...
That isn't the issue. The issue is that FEMA created a website for people to file claims and because if it's poor, incompetent and idiotic design (according to reports, the page works great with the IE user agent), people are barred from accessing that functionality. That's the problem. No one is advocating that the FEMA people stop all operations so that they can focus on fixing the site.
When a public institution sets up a service with the tax payer's money for the tax payers to use and in the end there are clients which *UNNECESSARILY* can't access the service, that is just plain incompetence.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
This is exactly why I posted to Ask Slashdot (rejected) to ask what everyone thought about putting together some type of generic system for disaster victims.
Disasters may be the worst time for requiring proprietary systems.
There has been some discussion on isc.sans.org about the Red Cross needing IT volunteers to develop their system.
My idea is that most of us have extra stuff laying around that could easily be used with a customized Knoppix type CD (no HD keeps the cost down and the system intact up). The systems could be used to get shelters online (some corp can provide the circuit for Internet access). On the backend there could be a DB for victims.
Also, a lot of these people have lost EVERYTHING. A barebones computer that gets them online is better than no computer at all.
And what better way to introduce more people the world without MS.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
They're offering a telephone number..... so who gives a rat's ass ... fill in the form on someones PC... it's an emergency!!!! DUH!!!!
Non-MS users quite probably have access to printers, faxes, postboxes and probably telephones as well.... maybe they even have pens too (shock, horror).
The way things are going Americans are soon gonna be complaining because their government didn't wipe their asses properly (or in time). What happened to individual responsibilty? Get a grip!
In Sudan women have been gang-raped and seen thier entire families cut to death. Do you think they would give a flying F$#% if they couldn't fill in their "Compensation for having my entire life fucked up" form in Opera, Firefox, Netscape, Lynx or any other dumb-ass browser???
Get some perspective people.
Oh, boo fucking hoo. I know basically nothing about "programming javascript for client-side error checking of complex forms," but I bet there are other options. Lots of other organizations and companies seem to accomplish this task, using browser-agnostic methods (server-side checking...).
Sorry, I file this under "FEMA, Incompetence of, Further Examples."
"Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible" -Jacob Bronowski
Yes, I'm sure that they have their web developer out in a helicopter right now scanning for survivors. Give me a break. Someone is paid to maintain and support this website, and he or she is not doing his job well.
If your code is REMOTELY standards compliant then it'll pretty much work on every browser. You have to really lock yourself into Active X and .Net before you run into true incompatibility, which means you have to decide from the start to use a platform that you know is imprefectly supported.
If this was a business, fine, who cares. But this is a disaster relief agency funded by taxpayer dollars, and they goddamn well better have a site that can be viewed by all citizens who need to view it.
Just part and parcel with the rest of their collossal incompetence during the current distaster.
And don't tell me they have better things to do; I haven't seen 'em do hardly anything yet. They could have used the week after the hurricane, when they were sitting around with their thumbs up their asses while everyone else was doing their job for them to at least make a webpage that could at least be viewed by the people who're still using older versions of IE!
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
What the hell? There are people struggling to survive, who have lost almost everything in their lives, and somehow we're supposed to be up in arms over the fact that you have to use Internet Explorer to access the FEMA site. Never mind the fact that most people who would be filing don't even have computers right now! I despise how people take advantage of disasters so they can further their own petty agendas and point fingers elsewhere.
Really, there is more to life than your choice in an operating system, and events such as this one should be more than a sufficient reminder.
Did a quick check of the source...it appears that at least the front page was developed using Macromedia Dreamweaver--there are the tell-tale signs of Dreamweaver javascript code embedded in page. Not to bash DW or anything, but...
I can see it already..
... User accepts pre-defined choices in the following categories.... ... User declines the right to recall.... ... User hereby waives right to request a recount.... ... User will be registered to vote in a state of Microsoft's chosing as needs require....
Download Microsoft Vote(tm) for the next election!
Anyone without a Genuine Advantage Entitled Windows XP Service pack 2 must either upgrade or not be able to register to vote. Available also for Windows MobileXP.
From the EULA
---------
Miles and miles away, in the White House....
*computer*
Good morning mister president
*POTUS*
Good morning computer, what are my orders today?
-if at first you don't succeed, stay the heck away from paragliding.
OMG! Only 90% of the people are going to be able to file a claim online! Assuming those people didn't have their computers destroyed in the flood.
What if you're running virtual PC on a mac?
That whooshing sound was you missing the point entirely.
More
Once the rescue effort has completed and the effort shifts to rebuilding, FEMA will set up several "registration sites" to which people can show up and fill out these forms. That's been my experience with them in the past.
These people don't have power, so computers are almost completely out of the question.
I'm surprised that there didn't seem to be any CD activity at all during and after this disaster. Surely New Orleans has a Civil Defense department. They were probably just overwhelmed with lack of preparation and funding, as you say.
Anyway, hopefully New Orleans can get back to some semblance of normalcy before too long.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
I was going to make FEMA king of the winter carnival.
The or "call ....." should ring a bell.
And now let's
I only had to read through 10-15 relatively inane comments before I got to some common sense. Thank you. You made my day.
Somehow, I can't picture a guy whose clothes are still stained and wet, hasn't eaten a decent meal in a week, can't find his wife and kids, and no longer has a house to go back to, is going to give a shit that he can't use his favorite open-source browser.
funding, and they STILL cant find a decent web designer?
Yeah, sounds like FEMA alright.
perhaps they should outsource to India, not for the cheap labor, mind you, but for the superior educations.
The pettiness regarding this entire non-issue sickens me. I encourage my fellow Slashdotters to use any browser and donate to redcross.org.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Wouldn't most people have left their PC at home during the evacuation? I would expect most people working on an online filing are using some wide-open public access terminal in their place of refuge anyway.
Why, oh why, didn't I take the Blue Pill?
Except for actual anarchists (which I'm not), we agree that there should be some form(s) of government in the world, even if we vastly disagree about governments' proper scope and place. That being so, we'd probably at least mostly agree that governments, however constituted, are going to need *things* to operate, whether its a meeting tent and some whiteboards or a new set of smoke signals. The modern, bloated, greedy U.S. government needs a *lot* of things, and this being (largely) a market economy, the government generally buys stuff on the (largely) open market, and that includes the operating systems for most government employees' personal computers.
In the U.S., too, the government is formulated as subordinate to and responsible to the citizens; it does not exist *by right,* but nominally by consent.
Unlike when the government buys (or, this case, requires its citizens to use) a particular believed-good brand of folding chair, disposable coffee cup or helicopter, when it buys closed-source software, it in some ways invites known, knowable dangers, and in others simply fails to maximize the use of the money it has borrowed from taxpayers to spend on their behalf and for their benefit.
The dangers (at least some of them) are obvious: ask a group of computer users whether they've ever lost time or money to malicious software installed against their will on their own system or someone else's; odds are that most such losses are thanks to malware targeting Microsoft systems. That's not Microsoft's fault, exactly, but it's reality.
If it's released with a liberal license and source code -- whichever exact formulation you prefer for those things -- software for personal computers, unlike the chair, cup, or 'copter, can be reused at low cost, and modified or improved (or simply used) by anyone with a computer and the skill to do so. By requiring software that runs on only one company's computer operating system (here, Microsoft's), the government is robbing some of the market's potential for efficiency, an ever more glaring misstep as the price of an "adequate" personal computer's hardware drops in relation to the cost of Microsoft's operating systems. Please don't blame this on the "free" part of the free market; this is the government failing to take advantage of the free market.
Imagine a privately donated computer kiosk carried by pickup truck from community to community just for people to apply for FEMA relief; what percentage of the cost of such a hardware setup should be paid to a favored government supplier simply because FEMA has locked themselves into a single-supplier system? The answer is None.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Send them a nice, polite response at FEMAOPA@dhs.gov
And I am not being sarcastic when I say nice. It doesn't help anyone to start cussing at them.
I was listening to NPR today. FEMA has ground personel going door to door and registering people for relif. Most people in the affected areas don't even have electrticity and just now got water, although it's not drinkable. Hopfully by the time people can actually file their claims online, they'll fix this.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
WHAT?!? FEMA incompetent?!?!? Surely not!
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
with those truckloads of dollars ($6.4b/2003) in funding they couldn't afford to spend 10-30k on a website that works
your Tax dollars at work..or not
You have an excellent point; if online is not an option for you, use pen and paper.
However, i don't quite agree on your last sentence. I'm not a web developer, but i can create a page (with a form even) that can be used by any popular browser.
This sucks for the Katrina web kiosk project, which is using Linux: http://desktoplinux.com/news/NS4984662030.html
Seeing the computer use at the public library here in Baton Rouge, most of the people are using them to fill out FEMA forms or register for unemployment.
If the kiosks can't be used to fill out FEMA information, that's quite a blow. As for the poster who mentioned mailing in a FEMA request, you're talking about a major delay in getting any kind of response.
I was collecting donations (mostly in american money) to send to the Red Cross.
On the 1st of September, I donated some of my own money, and it worked. I could select Nova Scotia, Canada as my address.
However, sometime this week the Red Cross changed their site, and now the form doesn't support Canada. Sure, you can select "Canada", but the State list only lists all of US's states and colonies and has two "Intl:" selections- one for Far East and one for Europe. It says if you're Itnl to use Europe (why didn't thye just make it "Rest Of The World?), but there's still no place to put Nova Scotia, and I need that for my credit card info.
I had to go through redcross.ca which required calculating how much money it actually is and invariably getting it wrong.
I'm trying to help here, but like about half the american web they seem to think the world is the united states+other continents, forgetting the existance of two other countries in the same continent as them.
ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
if Mac is for Democrates and Commis i dont want to know who you think linux is for.
If not, why are they wasting resources doing it at all?
If so, why are they reducing the number of people they help by doing a half baked job of it?
They've put resources into the web portal, so it must be important and important to do it properly.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
For every idiot that blames FEMA for all the problems down there, have you even started to look at yourself and what you could do? And don't tell me you donated 10 dollars to the relief effort so your duty is done. People's first reaction to everything is bitching at the government for once would someone stop complaining and actually do something meaningful to help.
IANAL (blah, blah), but shouldn't the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) have something to say about this? Seems to me that limiting choice is the last thing the federal government ought to be caught doing, especially if there are specific plugins & features in alternate browsers that provide access to the web (for disabled individuals) that isn't available with IE.
Also, I bet judge Kotar-Kotelly would love to hear about this.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
Or the contractor said "we can get it up and running with 2 days it it is IE-only. Testing cross-browsers will take 4 days.
"Get it up quick" said FEMA.
Wrong call?
This is clearly speculation, however...
As they say, not FEMAs fault
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Client-side error checking is an optional extra. It's not necessary. The only things that are necessary to take information down from people are standard HTML forms that work in any browser.
Cross-browser client-side validation isn't exactly rocket surgery either though. Checking field values in anything more recent than Netscape 4.0 is essentially identical.
No, it's not. It's difficult to do so if you want to incorporate fancy extras like animation, complex styling, dynamic page sections, etc, but none of that kind of thing is needed for a government website intended to take down peoples details. All they need are standard HTML forms with cookies to maintain state - things that have been working reliably in common browsers for a decade or so.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Contrary to popular /. belief, organizations that contain more than one person are in fact capable of doing more than one thing at the same time.
Well, if the site didn't work in FIrefox, that'd be a valid concern. But, according to all the other comments here, I'm getting the impression that the site works under Firefox if you use the User Agent Switcher. I could care less if they don't want anyone using Firefox because the site doesn't work in Firefox. But the only reason it doesn't work in Firefox is because they're explicitly blocking everything except IE6.
Now the site will get slashdotted and now one will be able to get to it.
If you survived hurricane katrina and need to file a FEMA claim, the likelyhood that you have a working PC (or at least access to it) is pretty low. Most people that will NEED FEMA aid are going to be filing via PAPER or PHONE, probably with assistance from their shetler.
These claims aren't for frivolity. If you have a working computer and have access to it, you don't need to file. If you didn't have other insurance and are not in a dire situation then it's really on you to repair.
something tells me the mail might not get through to New Orleans addresses for a while...
Something like this, perhaps.
If you're running a copy of Windows in a VM on Linux or a Mac, you're no longer just a Mac or Linux user. You're a Windows user. And you will have shell out ~$80 to get a valid copy of Windows.
The statement isn't "blatantly incorrect". It's only incorrect under your pedantically literal interpretation. Of course any Turing-complete system can be made to emulate any other such system. That's not the point.
It's not like the FEMA has to be designing a better web portal NOW, after the storm. The very purpose of FEMA is to handle emergencies... and looks like they've gone out of their way to screw up non-IE users.
Too bad.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
You imply that making the form perform well for non-IE6 web browsers would have required more resources than making it perform well for only IE6.
A multi-browser interface requires a different design, not necessarily a more expensive one.
It was likely more a case of FEMA doing a poor job of anticipating the needs of their customers.
If it was important enough for FEMA to spend resources to create an online form, it should have been important enough to take into account how people would likely access the form.
Seems to work fine in opera 7 so long as you Identify as MSIE 6.0. No problem with the capcha or anything.
Of course, I didn't finish the registration process fully, so I can't say for sure. But it looks like the broweser banning is just a choice on their part rather than a technical limitation.
The ______ Agenda
Dear FEMA:
Stop whoring for Unca Bill. It's disgusting.
XOXO
American Geeks
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
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I think in the end you're probably better off just using the telephone
--krrrr click--Thank you for calling FEMA, we regret to inform you that since you're using a Nokia mobile phone, we cannot connect you to an operator, please switch to a Motorola cellphone to make full use of our services. -bzzz- Have a nice day. --bleep--
I honestly hope you are not a web developer seeing as how you have absolutely no clue how design/development works.
It isnt difficult to make it cross platform, and basically if you code to the standard most browsers will work, then you just modify a bit here and there so that IE will now work.
it isnt a big deal.
and it just goes to show how truely incompetent a lot of developers are.
Just askin'.
Seriously, as a 6+ year web developer for a state university, we managed complex JavaScript solutions which were platform agnostic.
But more importantly, we designed sites that didn't rely on JS to be functional. We recently had to ditch a plan to make a database vendor's page look like it was inside our core site because WebFeat's code capuchins decided they needed to dynamically generate the entire content from an array client-side using JS (apparently XSLT is unknown there). When we requested that they generate HTML we could include into our framework using Perl SSIs, their answer was that because the form used JS validation, logically the entire form had to be generated with JS.
No one's arguing that FEMA isn't busy or that there aren't other massive fuckups on FEMA's part which dwarf a browser compatibility issue. But this is Slashdot, and this is what we bitch about here.
This is a dumbshit situation.
"Made up/misattributed quote that makes me look smart. I am on
I see that Anti-Trust suit was real effective...
Insert Sig Here
Nice to know the government uses Windows. You know how scary that is??? VERY SCARY!!!!1
Linux, because a PC is a terrible thing to waste.
For Pete's sake - let's cut the propaganda for once. I've been helping out at the Dallas convention center for the past five days and I can tell you first and that, for the people I've encountered anyway, they have very, very limited computer skills. Most of them were very poor prior to Katrina and owning a computer was never truly an option. It's not like they're sitting there, pulling out their self-built box, and saying "Ah shit - Damn FEMA for forcing me to install IE". I'd be shocked if more than a handful have even heard of Linux or Firefox, nevermind using it. The people that are affected by FEMA's choice certainly have the skills, knowledge, and ability to handle this very, very minor situation. The rest of us, quite frankly, don't really care.
This isn't about open-source browsers or favourite browsers. It's about unnecessary incompatibility. Picture this poor guy walking (through the water, if you want a melodramatic scene) to the nearest library so that he can take care of these things, only to have this FEMA web page come up that says "sorry, we don't support this browser". Perhaps the library is using Linux boxes with the Firefox browser. Okay, so he gives his friend a phone call and trudges several blocks to his friends house to try it there. His friend has a Mac. "Sorry, we don't support this browser". This person is being seriously inconvenienced! If there were a reason for this inconvenience, such as actual browser capability, then it would be understandable. But the whole point of this thread is that there's no reason for this inconvenience. All it does is make life just a little bit harder for those whose lives are hard enough already.
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I've heard of several attempts of people setting up "Internet islands" using cheap hardware and FOSS near refugee encampments. The intention is to facilitate communication to their loved ones across the country. For even the technologically inclined, these are the only functional PCs they have access too.
If the vast majority of these people can only use Firefox or Konq at the moment, how good is this decision?
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
FEMA is required by law to make their site accessable to people with disabilities. Demanding that the all visitors to the site must use IE6 with javascript is in direct violation of that law. It's not "impossible" is "lazy" and "irrresponsible".
And if you try to file a claim by phone they will only send the paper work to your address, and if you're filing because of Katrina, your home probably doesn't exist anymore. There's going be enough lawsuits due to this to bankrupt the whole agency.
Stupid Cheap Guitars
Government websites are required to be standards compliant. By requiring a particular browser type and above a certain version is not standards complient.
No one is saying FEMA should stop what they are doing to fix the issue.
/. right now and taking action.
They are pointing it out because maybe it can be EASILY fixed by someone who gets paid to fix those things anyway. Some geek at FEMA maybe reading
When a disaster hits FEMA doens't send all of their employees to the site.
Some of you people act like the Katrina victims are still in the dome. Many (not all, maybe most) of the Katrina victims are now in shelters, relatives homes, hotels, and are working on filing paperwork with FEMA.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
Maybe it could help them understand that IE is not the only browser out there.
Just quit it already, this whining about IE isn't becoming to half of you that normally have decent posts.
I post at -1. Clearly I'm not a poster child for slashbot.
Ya' know, over 10 years ago, when I was programming devices you would consider computers (not the embedded devices I do now), I was able to produce code which would run on DOZENS of unique hardware/OS combinations. Often, it required little more than having the source tree available, and typing make.
10 years ago. Dozens of unique platforms. What's funny, is when I say anything about cross-platform these days, the current crop of 'proffessionals' can only think of different versions of that pile-of-poo-OS. And yet, now the next generation of web-monkeys, when given the potential to not have to worry about hardware/OS issues, can't manage what was 'state of the practice' 10 fucking years ago.
I do have to thank the OP'er though. For the last few years, I've been running on what turns out to be a gross assumptions. I've been feeling the incompetance in the (what passes for) tech sector was in the management (and to some extent marketting) areas. It's now apparent ignorance and even outright stupidity (which, contrary to a common razor, is not mutually exclusive to malice) is present throughtout all the industry. Thank you, again.
That's not true. Opera works. I spent last weekend volunteering at the Reunion Arena shelter in Dallas. We booted one machine with Knoppix because the Windows install was bad. Mozilla and Konquerer failed to load the page correctly. So I downloaded Opera and it worked. Unless FEMA have gone out of their way to eliminate Opera, you should be able to register with Opera. In other words, there is nothing on that page that Opera cannot handle. We've registered a few hundred people already and a few with Opera.
The stupid site really ticks me off. Even with IE you will have problems. I think they did the stupid thing in ASP. Every stupid action you take requires exchange of states between you and the server. If you click before that's complete it will give you and error and you might have to start all over. There was nothing on that page that could not have been done with simple HTML
BTW, yesterday was the first day FEMA started working fully in Dallas. Their computers couldn't network properly so they had to take over OUR PCs to register people by doing exactly the same thing we've been doing. Not only that, they only want those computers, which do not belong to them, to be used only for FEMA registration. In the words of a FEMA worker, "People need money not email or Internet." That would be great if they all knew where the family was or our government was competent enough to provide them with that information. Unfortunately, most people have to look for their family on their own on the Internet.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Javascript is standard now... more or less.
Let me guess, your one of the idiots who develop these shitty sites.
It's not like they can't ride the bus... they just can't ride at the front.
Should read: FEMA Demands Use of IE Or Telephone To File Katrina Claims
Likewise I've heard that people who contact FEMA to file a disaster relief claim (not just food and water) are told they will have to make their claim at the New Orleans office.
Great, does this mean that the laptops in our emergency packs have to be replaced that that they run the latest verion of MS Windows?
To participate in this tragedy your computer must also meet the following tragic specifications:
Internet Explorer 6
Or you can opt out of online filing and complete one of the following:
>Completing a claim form and sending it by US Mail. (Please wait 6-8 weeks for delivery)
>Shooting yourself (Please allow 6-8 nanoseconds for bullet delivery)
The upcoming Katrina 2.0 enhances the disaster experience by mythological proportions:
>Fire
>Locusts
>Lakes of blood
>Frogs
>A greatly expanded FEMA bureaucracy
Get yours today...before it gets you!
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
George W. Bush IS himself a mac user.
Which means he'd better fire the FEMA director for this one... as a fellow Mac using Republican, I would expect no less! Either that, or beat him with his iPod.
Enable the Debug menu and change the User Agent to IE 6.0.
I completely understand why they would only want people using IE to register, especially if they didn't have much of a tech support staff. It's near impossible to cater a web app to every single flavor of every browser for every OS.
Screw that. How about just supporting three browsers and the three most widely used OSes? How about not blocking access based on the UserAgent header?
If they don't have "much of a tech support staff" -- then maybe they should write simple forms that work without jumping through browser-specific hoops. HTML forms have been around a while. The simple stuff is just that -- simple.
And it ain't *that* hard to write JS form validation for the three main browsers.
Pardon my french, but the parent post is bullshit.
Software Wars
There ought to be a law that says that all government web pages are standards-compliant and do not call for users to use a specific company's product to use them.
Why people like the FSF aren't out there pursuing this instead of trying to ram political stuff into GPLV3, is what I want to know.
welcome to Slashdot, news for nerds, where we discuss technology issues, digital products and their impact on society and culture, i think you want CNN if you want to read about FEMA's human resources and aid distribution logistics
--AC/PAS/ABS
Please do your part and E-mail the fema webmaster to let him know his website is broken.
femawebmaster@dhs.gov
In the middle of the largest disaster ever to befall the country, Slashdot goes and performs the Slashdot effect upon the website that takes claims.
Good work and foresight, there, editors.
And, you don't HAVE to Have IE 6 with JS enabled to file a claim. You could just use a TELEPHONE.
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
Now c'mon guys. It is really nasty to nitpick on FEMA in this moment. So you expect them to make their site cross browser compliant, when there are more important things like saving lives. And I just don't understand how guys here have the time and enthusiasm to check out little things on the site in browsers like Opera. It is a shame really. The site gives a phone number and a place to download IE if you don't have it. So who cares? Is the site really going to cause inconvinience to anyone needing the site?
Besides why don't you guys blame the browsers and W3C to agree on common standards instead of whining about FEMA? Why on earth is Opera so different and offers a crazy way to change the User Agent?
Folks keep blaming Microsoft for adding non-standard extensions to IE. But think about things like XMLHTTPRequest, just because MS saw its use long back today we are experiencing some nice interactive websites. If Firefox had to copy it why didn't they simply make it work the same way it was working in IE? Why their own request and way of handling errors? And what is W3C doing? Why couln't the 100s of "experts" preparing tomes at w3c not anticipate such a simple thing?
This cross-browser is such a unrewarding drain of development time. I wonder how much of combined development time has been spent on this artificially generated problem, solving which provides zero gain to the users.
Explore your creative side
That cuts out everyone running Linux or the Mac operating systems, as well as Windows users running alternate browsers such as Firefox or Opera.
Dont forget all of the poor people who dont have computers or who lost their computers in the flodding.
But, to continue the pedantic trend, the systems in question aren't truly Turing-complete.
;)
They've got finite memory, don't they?
I thought that all Fed websites had to comply with Section 508 for accessability. That means that all it's going to take is ONE blind guy trying to file a claim, not being able to, and the people at FEMA can go to pound-me-in-the-ass Club Fed...
Why couldn't they just use something that didn't require IE as a solution? Ummm, maybe, I don't know - just a wild guess here - but HTML FORMS?
We are *all* bush voiting mac users!
"I'm sure FEMA's web developer is out there in a helicopter looking for survivors right now
There's a distinct possibility that this guy is standing in a soup kitchen somewhere slinging food or handing out supplies.
Or, the web developer normally has a lot on his plate that got even more complicated with the requirement of a high visibility, disaster-specific site. His boss probably paged him and said, "Get something up ASAP. It doesn't have to be perfect. Just get as much done as fast as you can."
Could it be better? Yes.
Is it working for the vast majority of people? Yes.
Is it a reasonable response in this amount of time? Yes, I think so.
Your logic is seriously flawed. First of all, FEMA is a COORDINATOR of emergency services. This includes coordination at all levels from first aid and plucking from roof tops to getting people the information and help they need to get longer term assistance and aid across different agencies. FEMA is not providing helicopters, money or food directly. Again, they are cordinating emergency responders. Not every one of the million or so people effected by the storm in the area is at the same point or condition. You can not wait and devote every resource (including your contracted web developer like you suggest) until every single person is out of the city before you start working with the people that are already out. The emergency response is a parallel effort, not serial. Many people are at the next level and need to apply for assistance now. There is an artifical barrier in place that may make the application harder or more difficult for some people. I agree that FEMA is all jacked right now though.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
If you've ever tried programming javascript for client side error checking of complex forms, you know that standards are very non-existant in the internet world.
Even if you are incapable of figuring out how to do cross-platform forms validation in JavaScript, there is a very simple choice: don't do forms validation in JavaScript at all, do it server-side.
It's near impossible to cater a web app to every single flavor of every browser for every OS.
Maybe you should go back to flipping hamburgers.
Overall the government has done a poor job of handling things the past DECADE or so. I'm surprised that people are surprised over such a minor lack in incompetancy as this when we've had things such as invisible WOD and politicians blithly flinging money at corporations they have a pretty close tie with.
What I'm MORE surprised at is that people haven't really fought back...like with guns.
Well, technically, one could consider an IE user as having a disability. therefore, the designer of this sight was probably making section 508 their top priority, with the intent of going back later and making the site available to the "normals".
A republic cannot succeed till it contains a certain body of men imbued with the principles of justice and honour.
As I mentioned when I filed this story yesterday - but was REJECTED. Probably for the best, because it would have looked odd given my handle (gov_coder).
Rob Enderle's excellent new book: Everything I needed to know about Computer Science I learned in Marketing School
I hope it's compatible with AMD's PIC devices:
o m/0,,51_104_543~100901,00.html
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRo
Which have been distributed to the shelters
Are you suggesting that the nerd who made this website should be hauling sandbags and treating injuries?!
Does anyone else read these Federal government screwup stories and wonder "I don't remember buying _The Onion_ today..."?
--
make install -not war
In particular, a lot of people use client-side error checking instead of server side, for which they should be taken outside and shot. Client side error checking is a nice thing so the user doesn't waste a form submission, but is not a replacement for properly validating user input.
Sorry, just fed up with everyone who knows Visual Basic and/or what the <script> tag does calling themselves a web application developer.
Just to add to this story...I was listening to a local talk radio station on my way home from work yesterday. They played an interview with a woman who was extremely frustrated, almost to the point of tears, with FEMA and their apparent lack of knowledge on the situation of people displaced by Katrina.
She called them in order to make a claim and they asked her for her address so they could send her the required paperwork (not sure HOW she called them). She told them she no longer had an address as her home no longer existed. They then asked for her home phone number so they could call her back...she again informned them she no longer had a home. They then asked for her cell phone number. She again told them there was no cell phone service where she is located. They then asked her for her fax number...then her email address....you get the picture.
FEMA's motto must be "Let's make it hard for people to get the support they need."
Is FEMA living in a hole, in a cave, in the middle of a desert or what?
What I find funny is that the MSNBC article is rather indignant about it.
The good news: If you've survived Hurricane Katrina, the government will let you register for help online. The bad news: But only if the computer you're using is running Windows.
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
Why do you think that re-designing the portal somehow reduces the amount of help they can give to the people? Do you assume that FEMA-webmaster is in New Orleans helping people out? No, he's propably in FEMA headquarters, sitting on his ass. If he spent half a day fixing the website, how would it reduce the resources that are being spent in New Orleans?
The problem here is that the aid-workers wanted to set up computers that the victims could use to access the FEMA site. The simplest way to do that was to use Linux Live-CD's. Pop in the CD and you are good to go. But because of the idiotic design of the portal, that plan would not work. So it's the AID-WORKERS who are complaining!
The purpose of the portal is to help people. But if people can't access the portal, it's not helping, now is it? No, it's not "quite OK", to deny lots of people from accessing the portal. It's not "quite OK" to make the work of the aid-workers harder.
This is simply inexcusable incompetence.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Surely they can be nailed on the accessibility.
There is a nice helpful link on every page saying that they are committed to accessibility.
There is even a email address, to allow people who think that accessibility to this site is sub-optimal, to contact them.
If you know anyone who feels this way, maybe they should send an email to
FEMAOPA@dhs.gov
and I'm sure they will be pleased to sort it out.
Humorous signatures are over-rated.
So this is apparently just another site in the Microsoft Wide Web where they use IE and WINS and IIS. Any plans they will put that on a separate physical network soon?
You know that you should also make it work server side, client side validation should be a 'bells and whistles' feature not a requirement for operation.
Last time I tried to write anything that wasn't w3c I searched on the web and found a script that made all browsers look the same, that was 5 years ago if it's not easy nowadays then you should be looking for another job.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Given all of IE's vulnerabilities this problem equates to mandatory viruses and spyware. I wonder if:
a.) FEMA's website designers were plain retards
or
b.) Microsoft is paying off somebody
If a.) is the case they must have been some REAL big retards and better fix this problem.
Here. I already gave 'em my 2 cents.
Rob Enderle's excellent new book: Everything I needed to know about Computer Science I learned in Marketing School
The fact that IE is an abomination that merrily ignores standards doesn't mean web developers should code to it, instead of everything else.
If you are using Proxomitron and Grypen's Latest Filters for Proxomitron, then this sites "IE only requirement" becomes VERY easy to bypass.
How do you we do this once Proxomitron and Gryphen's filters are installed? Easy! Open up
User - Include - Exclude.txt
Then add the following into this file.
www.fema.gov $SET(keyword=.js.ajs.code.flash.popup.iesite.)
Once this is done - you can now visit the site using any god damn browser you want. In my case I tested the registration page under Opera, Firefox, and Mozilla, and as far as FEMA site was concerned, this was my user agent.
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)
So really, I don't know why moronic webmasters, especially for a government or government related site, want to pull shit like this for users whom may not know how to get around "IE only" requirements.
You must master your joystick like a fisherman masters bait! - Gimpy
Wow! What a toolbox!
If you've ever tried programming javascript for client side error checking of complex forms, you know that standards are very non-existant in the internet world.
BS. There's a standard way to do everything a website ought to be allowed to do. My code works on every single major browser with no browser detection whatsoever. For the most part there are no special features I can provide only by sticking in some browser specific code, nor will it visibly reduce my code size. If you code for IE, you can easily produce a site that's broken in all other browsers. If you code for Mozilla, your sites will usually work everywhere.
Perhaps it is not my place to write this here, since I am not a citizen of this country. Hence I will remain just an anonymous voice of a coward, but, somebody got to say this.
It is your own damn fault that things like this happen. It is you who need to stand up, write to your congressmen, and demand that laws would be passed where public information as well as public government websites be made available indiscriminant of the tools the citizens have to access them. And if the citizens do not have the tools to access them, the government should provide those for free (how expensive is it to provide an iso image of a bootable CD that has a browser - pick a choise of quite a number these days).
All of the government websites should be required by law to be written for the lowest common denominator between all the browsers adhering to the most widely supported HTML standard among them all.
I think this kind of follows in the same tracks as serving the blind and the deaf, they are a minority, yet they are just as important members of this society. Perhaps lynx users are also a minority, yet I do not find any reason to think why they would be any less valuable members of it.
Yes, most of the blind and the deaf became not of their own choosing, and yes, not all of the lynx users are using it because they just love it. There are times when circumstances limit you to using a particular browser, say IE no matter how much you hate it, however I would expect to be able to access my government's site no matter what browser I have at hand at the moment.
So get off your behinds, and do something about it, because I cannot do that for you, your government does not allow me to.
Of all my computing friends/ family that us IE I know of one who actually back their data up. Only one. Of all those I know who use a Mac they either back up their stuff to .Mac or an iPod or some other external media.
Linux? Well, those guys I don't understand but they seem to have a lot of computers that are connected, backing each other up.
Consider the need to use IE "victim rites" ...
The Luddites were ahead of their time.
There is a huge disaster recovery effort going on and they need to have things working as soon as possible. If it requires IE
Yes, that's the question: why does it "require" IE? Putting together a web site in general doesn't require IE. Putting together complex web applications doesn't require IE. In fact, it doesn't require IE at all, FEMA's staff is simply ill-prepared and incapable of producing a web site that doesn't require IE.
I'm surprised this is even an issue for anyone.
The issue is not what they should do in the short term. Obviously, if they are incapable of fixing this (which they seem to be), it's not going to get fixed right now.
But their inability to fix things in the short term doesn't make the issue disappear. Just like any other aspect of disaster recovery, if someone is incapable of doing their job during the disaster, you go back afterwards and look at the causes and take appropriate action.
This particular screwup may (and probably should) eventually result in a reprimand or dismissal.
well, I hope he would do a better job of that than he made of the web-page!
b3 4phr41d 0f my 4bov3-4v3r4g3 c0mpu73r kn0wI3dg3!
MadDwarf
Do you have any idea how much money Microsoft plowed into Bush's election campaigns?
He who pays the piper calls the tune. Next time don't vote Republican, you stupid fuckwads.
Sorry, but these incompetent, heartless bastards ("well they're poor anyway, this should be nice for them") have REALLY been pissing me off this week.
"You don't go to war with the army you want, you go with the army you've got."
They should have prepared for this hurricane. They should have programmed the site better. They should have had a plan to keep civil order. They should have had a rescue operation planned out.
They didn't and people are suffering. So what are we going to do now? Rewrite the site for cross-browser compatibility? And have it crash miserably when it goes live? Better to keep those 87% of IE users, no?
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
No way! There's no reason why decent, clean Americans should be subsidizing a bunch of fence-jumping wetbacks!
How about all the people on here whining about how they could have done a better job ... GOING AND DOING A BETTER JOB!
Write an example form-page and send it (with full code) to FEMA.
Maybe they'll give you a job.
b3 4phr41d 0f my 4bov3-4v3r4g3 c0mpu73r kn0wI3dg3!
MadDwarf
Sorry, but as a web developer of at least some apptitude, I have to say that the only answer I could provide to your obvious ignorance of the subject would a single word, two syllables long, that describes the substance excreted from that end of a male bovine which is incapable of facial expression.
Are you a Looter or a Producer? ('m a Producer...)
That may not be quite right. According to this this the call to the FEMA number does not open a claim; it results in a package containing the claim form being mailed to the address of the evacuee. However, being in a shelter, the evacuees are unable to receive mail.
I appreciate and agree with the parent post that this is not nearly the biggest concern right now, but it IS just one more slap in the face for everyone trying to file claims with anything other than Windows/IE6.
I work in this industry and can assure readers with no uncertainty that such users comprise well more than 1% of the computing population. Recent numbers put non-IE6 use for a number of popular sites anywhere between 12-26%. My read is that US government sites will currently attract a number at the low end of that range.
Whether or not site compatibility is a priority right now IS debatable so long as people have other means of contact but this should NEVER have happened in the first place.
Didn't the department of Homeland Security say that using Firefox was the "secure" choice a year or so ago?
Wheeeee, this "administration" is a heck of a lot of fun.
I have gone through this with a number of organizations.
I have found that writing emails about the situation, the existence of the World Wide Web Consortium standards body, and the existence as well as compliance of "other browsers" with the w3.org standards.... politely, usually results in the site getting updated when the organization gets a chance.
Nobody wants to have their organization as being seen as backwards technically or with regards to standards.
Please do no just complain about this issue on slashdot. Send a polite not to FEMA.
Perhaps if a few Slashdotters hit their site using Firefox, Safari, Netscape, and Opera (ensure your browser ID is correct Opera users) they may realize the error of their ways when they check their site logs later...
We are all familiar with the parallels of spoken languages and programming languages and so I think it prudent to apply those parallels in this scenario.
The USA has no National Language, which then dictates that (IIRC, IANAL) the government must provide/accept documents in any language requested. This is in part due to our ideals of democracy, equality and so on, which makes sense: any citizen (we are assuming an ability to read some language) should be able to read (or respond to) documents generated by the government.
That said, it seems to me that the government is doing precisely the opposite in this case. They have chose (whether actively or passively) a specific 'language' and then stated directly that if you don't speak that 'language' you are simply not allowed to file this request.
Now, there is the obvious argument that requests can be filed offline, so they are not absolutely excluding people, yet I fail to see why the government could restrict online when it is not legally allowed to offline.
In all honesty, this probably does go back to incompetence. Unfortunately for them, incompetence may be a reason, but it is not an excuse. Especially when there are so many techies out there who could easily fix such a thing (and also need jobs, but that is another issue for another time).
C'mon US of A, hold yourself at least to your own standards.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
the website only allows to request a claim filing document, which will be (nsail) mailed to the requestor's adress (somewhere under the water...)
Ok, so FEMA's website doesn't like Firefox/Opera/Safari...whatever. The site was probably thrown together quickly overnight, so yes its going to have bad design flaws. However, the point of it was to give refugee's an opportunity to ask for help. I'm sure that they're site is getting slammed as is. So.. Why in the hell are we sending the slashdot crowd to it? There are actual refugee's who need to use that site to request help. We DO NOT need to be slashdotting it. The last thing FEMA needs is a shitload of forms filled out with crap like "IE SUCKS! SUPPORT FIREFOX!" Even though that statement is true, FEMA has MUCH better things to be doing with their time right now.
There's no place like ~/
...how many Linux and Mac users do you think you'll find among the flood victims that are most in need of assistance? I can see Firefox users and maybe the oddball Opera user, but that's about it. The FEMA site is likely not employing the most technically adept people to manage their site. They're either outsourcing it to people who use the simplest tools (FrontPage, ColdFusion, etc...) or their in-people are paid low enough that they can't hire enough talent to actually understand how to code for cross-platform compatibility. No matter. This SHOULDN'T be an issue right now because Katrina victims need to be getting help no matter how. Another example... Even though Walmart is the scourge of the Earth, it would probably be stupid of me to turn my nose up at the water they were going to supply if I was a Katrina victim in New Orleans. Can you picture this: "I haven't had clean water to drink in 38 hours, but I'll be damned if I drink water from Walmart just on the principle of the whole thing". How stupid is that? Same thing here with the IE requirement. Pick your battles folks.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
It would be stupid for FEMA to use him for that kind of tasks. Anyone could do those tasks, but not everyone could fix their portal. And yes, having the portal up & running IS important! Right now it's not functioning and it's making the relief-efforts more difficult!
Well, AFAIK, this website was there long before the hurricane. It's not like they created it in a rush just for this particular disaster. So there really is no excuse to actively stop non-IE users from accessing the website! None at all! they are making the relief-efforts harder, when they should be making them as easy as possible.
What is "this amount of time"? Close to 1 year? According to archive.org, this website has been in existence October 2004!
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
and are a Mac, Linux or Firefox user you cannot file a claim online.
My girlfriend, on her Mac, has Internet Explorer. I am a FireFox user, but I have IE on my computer if I need to use it (for situations like this). I am not sure if Linux users can install IE, so this may be true.
I guess I should be thankful that our wonderful editers got 1 out of 3 correct. Oh, lets not forget the proper English usage. The statement does not follow a correct parallel. The person talks about: OS, OS, Browser in the same sentence as if they were all the same. It would have been more appropriate (though still partially wrong) to say "If you only use Mac, Linux, or BSD or if you only use FireFox"
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
Use Linux, OS X and Windows. (I have four machines.)
When I develop for the web I test for each environment.
The problem is that Microsoft's development tools generate a lot of crap (like the 'gotta have IE 6' preamble) as well as being absolute wastrels for tables definition.
Of course, if you're NOT a web developer, or even a programmer, and depending on a Wizard to build your web pages, like these surely were, you're going to use every default.
This page was probably put together by some well-meaning secretary under pressure to get something, anything out there. (Who's the AUTHOR="" of the page?)
The IE Dev tools are TERRIBLE! They cobble pages together mechanically and they are full of cruff. Coding with almost any other tool would out together something better.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Collecting people data and filing claims is basically same for any disaster. So FEMA should have made a portal that supports popular browsers long *before* Katrina hit.
I might agree that this is not the biggest fuckup of FEMA but it's just one more proof that lots of people there are not doing their job.
BTW, many people were writing that refugees don't have computers and Internet access to use this portal anyhow. Most of the refugees by now are located outside of the disater area and any (or most) town libraries have Internet access. So Internet may be the best way for them to file claims and look for relatives.
FEMA isn't about accessibility to those who need it. They've already demonstrated that. Whatever happened to Section 508? The Slashdot blurb may be misleading, but FEMA may be in violation of the law. And if they are they should be held accountable. Write your congressperson. This about the 508 law:
n 1998, Congress amended the Rehabilitation Act to require Federal agencies to make their electronic and information technology accessible to people with disabilities. Inaccessible technology interferes with an individual's ability to obtain and use information quickly and easily. Section 508 was enacted to eliminate barriers in information technology, to make available new opportunities for people with disabilities, and to encourage development of technologies that will help achieve these goals. The law applies to all Federal agencies when they develop, procure, maintain, or use electronic and information technology. Under Section 508 (29 U.S.C. ' 794d), agencies must give disabled employees and members of the public access to information that is comparable to the access available to others.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Consider it the tip of an iceberg.
If the web site has problems, not for any functional reason, but merely because somebody didn't think things out, you have to ask yourself what else in FEMA won't work, because someone didn't think things out. Wireless communications based on cell phones that won't work if towers go down? Rescue vehicles that require certain difficult-to-obtain spare parts? Medical supplies located at the end of a road that's prone to landslides?
FEMA's supposed to think of potential situations and plan accordingly to minimize problems, just like a good web developer would. The only difference is, this isn't just Joe Bob's Billy Joel Tribute page, but a federal agency charged with helping people in a disaster. If they can't get something as straightforward as a web site to work, you have to wonder what else is screwed up that we can't see.
I would scream!!!!
Java Oracle Linux Enthusiast
Now all of those homeless nomads won't be able to use all that spare electricity and bandwidth going around the Gulf Coast to get help unless they bow to the power of Microsoft! Have any of you worked in a government agency? I do. It isn't even remotely what you think. It is far worse. I am mandated to only develop using Microsoft technologies. If I go above and beyond and make sure my stuff works on anything else (mozilla (which I use) etc...) there is a good chance a mozilla or opera user will be denied access anyway.
--Always, I mean never..., No I mean always check your references.--
"George Bush doesn't care about Mac people!"
This is not a Mac versus Windows thing, so don't go putting that into the discussion. We all need to pull together during this crisis. 2008 is right around the corner, after all.
And there is no proof, none whatsoever, that the President ordered the IE6-only policy. I'm sure people expect him to make that kind of high-level decision, but Condie never delegated that to him. FEMA's part of Homeland Security, not State, so she doesn't give it the kind of attention that it deserves.
Besides, I hear she's a Mac user.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
How is this insightful? What phone or computer would you have a person in the middle of chaos use?! FEMA of all institutions should have and be able to deploy a communication system EVERYONE can access regardless of what form of web browser they use. PERIOD! People don't have time to be frustrated by messages like. "You only do IE but you are a remotely embedded linux terminal machine; sorry champ and good luck" sort of messages. Stuck in an arena and only have access to a handheld, all circuits busy!?! Guess you'll have to wait for dell to donate those laptops. This is FEMA remember? THE Federal EMERGENCY Management Agency. Well in an emergency you usually like to have as much tools as possible at the ready. This is clearly incompetence and something needs to be done about it. Yesterday... No one should be denied the right to register because the technology exists, and this is why it exists. Exactly for these situations.. Someone at FEMA needs to be let go and let go to fucking day.
I can't imagine the frustration I'd be going through if I was in the middle of chaos and the agency that is supposed to be helping me is continually slapping me in the face. All crisis situations aren't going to run smoothly otherwise there'd be no crisis but this is absurd.
Real easy for you to sit there and actually believe most people have access to a working phone or for that matter computer.
twirling of waxed mustache tips reference.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
This is not news. The least of these people's concerns is whether or not they can use something other than IE to make thier claims with. I thought this site was "stuff that matters"? The first time Katrina is even mentioned on the site is for this garbage? While you are complaining about FEMA's site not working with alternative browsers I will be out there helping repair local housing for survivors that are being relocated next week. Get a clue.
Yes, wrong call.
A co-worker of mine has family that lived in the Mississippi/Louisiana border area. He mentioned the name of the town, but I don't remember it. He now has a sister and a brother, their spouses and several children living in his home about 600 miles from the coast. I know this guy well enough to bet that he has NEVER updated IE since he bought his computer years ago. So he will need to update IE for his family to apply online. Like He doesn't have enough stress with three families living in a single family home and the relatives don't have enough stress with their entire community gone. Applying for assistance may need some minor customiztions for each disaster, but the underlying system should remain the same and should have been in place for YEARS. DHS and FEMA specifically have been spending tons of money since 9/11 to be prepared for the next big disaster. Are you saying none of that money went to build a lousy registration site?
Somehow, I can't picture a guy whose clothes are still stained and wet, hasn't eaten a decent meal in a week, can't find his wife and kids, and no longer has a house to go back to, is going to give a shit that he can't use his favorite open-source browser.
So when the Red Cross finds a company nice enough to donate 100 PCs to the local evacuation shelter so that evacuees can check in with loved ones and start the FEMA paperwork, we're supposed to laugh at them and tell them "sorry, refugees! Shouldn't have picked such a sucky computer! LOL open source hippies!"
It's a lot easier to hook up a hundred new computers than it is to get a hundred new phone lines into a building.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
I had that J.C.Denton in the back of the cab, once.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
What if I make/have a browser that only supports text. No java, graphics, flash, or any other plugins. Should they be forced to make a site that works for me too? If not, they wouldn't have their 100% compatability.
Its also not fair that the only other option is by using a phone that has to be connected to the pstn. Some people could have their own home brewed phone system and want to be able to use it to make a claim.
Then next think you know, they will require you to speak English! All the Cajan only speaking home-brewed phone Mac/Linux users will be left in the cold.
I bet its because George Bush doesn't like Cajan only speaking home-brewed phone Mac/Linux users.
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
I for one welcome our IE browser overlords. This type of forced standardization by government experts is exactly what we need. It's too confusing to support more than one operating system and browser when writing evil attacks.
"As for the future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable it." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"go and do a better job"?
You fucking halfwit!
You are a douchebag and NO ONE should hire you. An incompetent fucktard douchebag yes, but a programmer, no.
FEMA is lucky to have the web developers it does have.
I am glad they can at least support the #1 browser in the world, now if only all those storm victims could get someplace to log on and fill out the forms. Anyone here donate Laptops or internet connectivity to these shelters?
Perhaps later, when FEMA gets some of its dignity and funding restored, they will be able to hire 3 or 4 more web guys and offer web support to everybody, every browser, everywhere.
But for now, it looks like they got their hands full, doing what they are doing...
Good Luck FEMA, thanks for all the help you are providing, hopefully now the rest of the USA government and all the people will remember why FEMA was created in the first place:
To pick up all the mess when the Sh*t really hits the fan.
These guys are sucking so hard, their suck has gone from sad to noteworthy to cultural meme in less than a week.
GOOD JOB BROWNIE!!!!!
Incompetence.
This is part of a string of bad moves from FEMA. Brown is a serial Incompetant. This is a man kicked out of the International Arabian Horse Association for gross stupidity.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
It seems like there are a zillion websites that work just fine with almost every browser under the sun. I have ordered stuff from Dell on my Mac no problem at all. I have never had a major e-commerce site not work with alternative browsers no matter what the operating system was. It isn't a matter of being impossible it is a matter of stupidity. Amazon and Dell welcome every one's money. The moron who did this site was too lazy to make sure the crap they put out with the Windows Wizard for Super Web Masters 2005 didn't try to keep other browsers out when it generated code.
-- To mess up an OS X box, you need to work at it; to mess up your Windows box, you just need to work on it.--
Whoa there.
I'm in this boat. Heck I submitted a version of this story. I'm just happy to see that they posted some version. of it on slashdot.
Please realize that there are 1.3 million people in The Greater New Orleans area. In New Orleans proper, officials have estimated that roughly 80% of residents evacuated. In my home town of Slidell, it's estimated that 50% of our residents evacuated.
It's safe to say that for every one person that is stuck in a shelter, there are two or three people that got out and are tapping their own resources to stay out of shelters. These range from hard working folks to our very prolific "Cajun Spam Gang." All these people need help too. Even Ronnie and Flo. Most evacuated with an eye to returning in two days.
Can't they use the bloody phone? Sadly, the answer is probably no. The phone system here, and for a few hundred miles around here is fairly borked. I have to try my calls five and six times to get through. Some numbers work better from the cell, some from the landline. Many lines are down, and the remaining lines are at capacity. FEMA isn't staffed for the size of this disaster anyhow. After two dozen attempts yesterday, I got through twice, and each of those times, I was read a few privacy notices, informed that they were too busy, and then disconnected.
FEMA needs the internet right now.
But, here I am, at my sister's house, trying to register using her iMac. I've changed the user-agent in Firefox, which lets me in, but much of the help system doesn't work, and the form isn't written to work without the help. Some form fields are labelled with things like "PRIMARY?" because it's supposed to lean on context-sensitive help. I went to the local library, but this St. Mary Parish branch runs IE 5 on Windows.
I finally registered by calling a friend who still has an internet connection and an up-to-date XP box, and having him set up a VNC connection for me.
If they required a plug-in, or supported 5.x browsers, things wouldn't be so bad. Right now, they're saying that you need Windows ME, XP, 2000, and that's it.
If they needed to do something so advanced that they had to restrict browsers, things wouldn't be so bad. The site presents the user with a page full of forms with a next and previous button at the bottom. It's a simple "wizard" style interface, and could be designed sothat it could work in nearly any web browser, including html and wap phone browsers and lynx.
Visit a neighbor with a Windows machine... tsk tsk. That works, if you assume that you and your neighbor both evacuated to the same place, and your neighbor brought their moderately late-model laptop with them. Most people who left are in strange surroundings and don't know anyone in their town.
"they just can't do it online" and if you don't file online you need to find the paper forms, Fill them out (better have the instructions so you dont answer the questions wrong), then find somewhere to mail it or take it in. Which has to then be physically routed to some processing center with a person reading your handwritting and typing it in (hopefully your paper has not gotten wet and the ink ran, or the typest can under your handwritting). Probably that document is verified (if done right), and then and only then can they start to process your claim. Already we have the built in week (minimum) for FEMA to respond.
You don't need javascript at all. You can let your server check your inputs. It is only when you are trying to be too fancy and get outside the bounds of the Standards that you run into trouble.
For an application like a FEMA claim form I would think the most important concern would be access rather than flash.
I have found that the reason you find this kind of nonsense is incompetent programmers or "Web Designers" using proprietary tools that generate non-standard code (so you don't need to hire programmers). I would think that government oversight would have identified this issue before now. I am sure others have complained to them, as I will as a concerned citizen. But not right now, they have other things to worry about for a few weeks/months/years.
As a government agency, they are bound to the Section 508 accessibility requirements
Guys, given we are Slashdot, we should try not to all go to the offending site, and test it in Lynx with a changed user-agent and send millionsof emails to their support department. We need to keep this site up so ppl can submit submit their Hurricane claims.
Thats why most people that have ever tried programming javascript for client side error checking make it optional and rely on server side error checking to do the check that actually has credibility. When it comes to validation, JavaScript should only be a feature offered to users whose browsers support it, server side validation should always be the ultimate judge.
What the fuck is a fema?
It's been 10 seconds since you hit 'reply'.
Rush Limbaugh is a die-hard Mac user.
:-)
Have a nice day.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
But outside of a corporate intranet, you really can't trust the client end to do the validation. It's very convenient and it does save bandwidth, but ultimately it can be spoofed. Google for netcat .....
Your backend code really does still need to do some checking of its own. And if you haven't mucked around with the -T option in Perl, then you probably ought to.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
You gotta love their disclaimer...
"unless an undue burden would be imposed on us"
Who, exactly, decides what is an "undue burden" and what is their criteria for deeming it so?
We have enough youth, how about a fountain of SMART?
All the un-desireables use alternative Operating systems and browsers, so we dont want to help them.
Its all Bush's fault of course, its part of his master plan..
Or at least thats what you idiots will be saying next.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
After seeing all the people stranded down south due to the massive Storm, I was surprised to see that they are RED states.
They sided along with the Bush Administration, who enacted budget cuts that could have prevented some of this disaster.
But being red states, they now realize that their selected leaders are a major disappointment during this crisis.
Perhaps next time around Mississippi, Louisiana, and the other gulf states and damaged states will vote BLUE.
You can't blame the government for the storm,
but you can hold the people accountable for the men (and women) they put in office.
Red vs. Blue - Who's got the Flag?
Try to get through on the phone other than at 4am.... not to mention the reports earlier in the week that getting through on the phone only gets them to mail you the application that you can fill out on-line, thus delaying any assistance by about 2 weeks. Better off? I think not.
When I ran for school board I tried finding the needed information for filing on the county website. No matter how hard I looked it simply wasn't there. On a whim I tried IE [instead of firefox] - and voila that menue bar on the left turned out to have 5 not 3 items and use javascript to expand. Someone might have been disenfranchised.
take it easy, but take it.
I am sure there are plently of people who will take issue with this, but online FEMA filing is simply not a very high priority. I have to agree with that stance too. FEMA is concentrating on face to face information gathering. This has to be the priority as many of the people currently in need of their serves no longer have a home, besides a computer, to file their claim. In that vein, FEMA makes (is making) it a point to send a person to each and every home site, to each evacuee location, hospital, etc to be sure that they are getting everyone. They also have snail mail and telephones. Maximum compatability of the online filing forms, simply isn't viewed as a priority for disaster victims for whom the majority of have lost their ability to access online services to begin with.
I agree. I just sent them (femawebmaster@dhs.gov) this quote, and some other nasty thoughts. Please crush them with email. This is BS.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Federal law requires* them to support other browsers, not just IE on Windows. FEMA has excessive funds for full tech support. You can't get registered offline either -- unless you have a mailing address. That's right: call the number and they want a mailing address to send you the paper forms to register. Do evacuees usually have mailing addresses? The incompetence of FEMA and its subcontractor IEM, Inc. is egregious.
So, I guess the correction to your post is: It's not that they can't file claims without using IE... It's that they can't file without IE or a mailing address.
--
* The browser requirement is a violation of the Section 508 regulations for accessibility and usability of US federal government websites.
Hmmm. FEMA is currently spending 50 million dollars a day. How much do experienced web developers go for these days?
That's quite okay. I'd rather FEMA spend resources getting their arses to help the people instead of designing a better web portal.
Well, so you're arguing that the web portal is a non-essential system. By that logic, why spend any money on a web portal at all?
The answer of course is that it's obvious that getting information to and from people who have suffered in a disaster like this is a critical task. What we're talking about is them doing a sloppy job at a mission critical task.
Now consider this: http://www.fema.gov/kids/. Now don't get me wrong: I think it's great that they went through all that effort to education tweeners on dissaster preparedness. But a tiny fraction of the cost of one of the flash games might have ensured that many refugee families could get the help they need to get back on their feet faster.
I'ts all about priorities.
Look, this is a well known operating priniciple of venal and morally corrupt political hacks: never spend money where it doesn't show. For years here in my state, we had an agency that was in charge of recreational resources like skating rinks and beaches on one hand, and essential infrastructure like water supply and sewerage treatment on the other. Guess where the money went? Of course the sewage treatment plants were dumping pathogens onto the beaches they maintained, but since you couldn't see the pathogens, it didn't (politically) matter, until they got their ass sued and we went from having the cheapest water rates in the country to the most expensive, because of all that rotting infrastructure that had never been maintained. We had water distribution mains that were over a hundred years old and made of wood. Nobody did anything about them because you'd have to spend money and people would complain about the streets being torn up.
Your assumptions about cost are way off base. It's maintaining the appearance of being on the ball when nothing is actually happening that's too expensive to do on multiple browsers. Providing the critical, essential functions without unnecessary bells and whistles would actually be cheaper and more robust in an emergency scenario. So what if your web portal that's dressed up like a cheap streetwalker is too difficult to get to display nicely on cell phone browsers? You probably shouldn't piggyback your disaster response systems with your PR stuff anyway.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Yeah right, all five of them.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
or maybe 25. I'm just a kid so I don't know.
Can I ask a follow-up question? When, if ever, did it first occur to FEMA that people registering/applying via the Web might be a Good Thing? This week?
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
For the sake of the people who NEED to register, please do NOT Slashdot their site!!!
I wasn't aware that using an alternative operating system and/or browser was considered a disability.
If that is true, can I get a handicap parking sticker?
-Valiss
Do all those libraries and public terminals have IE6 installed? Are you SURE that libraries and public terminals use IE? I know for a fact that many libraries are running windows 98 or Windows 2000. All the public internet kiosks I build for the university I work at use Firefox (and previous builds used Mozilla.) Even with Windows 2000, you have to get IE6 as a separate download; something I found had not happened on my last trip to the library.
Thanks for playing!
FEMA is now headed up by homeland secuirty, right?
Well, wasnt it homeland security that said "Not to use IE because it is a security threat" in the first place that got the firefox movement so successful?
Of course homeland security doesnt know its head from its ass and is a huge not well thought out joke.
Slashdotted?
I used the about:config route in Firefox, pasting in a user-agent string from IE6 on XP.
Once in, I found that the context sensitive help didn't work, and the form field labels were written with the assumption that the context help would be displayed.
I live and run a PC Repair/Gaming shop in western New York (Chautauqua County, to be more specific). This area's main industry is grapes (as consumable food stuff, i.e. Welch's juice, jellies, etc...), ergo, there are a lot of farmer's here.
As of last year, most of the buyers began requiring the farmers to file their spray reports (records of fertilizers and pesticides) electronically. The means of filing differed between two major buyers -- one is via the web, the other via a spreadsheet and emailed. The web version - IE only (no mac's, no *nix, no alternative browsers). The other, an Excel spreadsheet that does not like opening in OOo.
(In all honesty, that has opened up a nice side service for my business...)
My point is not to detract from the tragedy that has befallen the victims of Katrina, only to point out that it is not uncommon for decision makers (who's very decisions effect a group's livelihood) to make unwise decisions.
I would be interested to see if there's an increase in sales of x86 laptops on ebay (or any used market) specifically for Mac users who need to file with FEMA. (Just as interesting would be to see if there's an increase in sales of Crossover Office).
<sarcasm> Maybe's there's grant money there for a study.</sarcasm>.
#SickNotWeak
or haven't you read about FEMA detainment centers for evacuees?
more New Orleans nightmares...
My wife's an arabian horsewoman and shot up in her chair when she heard he was in charge of FEMA. He nearly broke the International Arabian Horse Association with lawsuits over equine comsmetic surgery, and soon after solicited personal defense funds as part of his work - an ethics violation. He left with the IAHA in a pretty good uproar in the middle of a three year contract. Either way, it was Charlie Foxtrot.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
"Never disobey your boss on technical matters, even when he has no fucking clue what he's babbling about. That's how you get fired."
No, disobey.
1) How will he tell?
2) If it works, why will he bother?
3) You'll give yourself an ulcer if you keep bending over like that
4) If you let the insane define reality, then your reality will be insane
5) NEVER get into a position where you *need* the job. Build up, save a little, keep within your means and you can kiss a stupid job goodbye (note: if you get sacked because you didn't apply the required solution, but still got the result, you will get severance and dole).
Life is too short to fight ALL the time, but it is too long to give in to any pissant napoleon. You have a backbone. Use it.
Please contribute to a Katrina relief fund. The need is huge and the support (at least from the Feds) so far has been minimal.
And when I called on my rotary telephone, I got a message saying only touch tone phones are supported and that I should mail my claim in. And if I mailed my claim in, only BLUE ink letters are supported. UGH! ;0)
~Hergio
Not a popular topic for macphiles but IE does exist on the mac, and I never have heard of a real price for it. (why should they, when Microsoft can claim it's dominance from "free ware") And Linux CAN use Wine at least that's what every guru who tries to get Windows users to change keeps shouting.
I don't know abbut Javascript itself but IE is multi platformed at the very least, something Safari has yet to be able to do. Firefox too, Officially though this is bs, but at least they chose something everyone can use, as opposed to what the article says.
Insightful?! He misquoted and misattributed a saying that was obviously referenced in his grandparent and correctly attributed in his parent.
... I think you're my hero.
It's good to know that microsoft is doing their part in, to quote our great president, "Helping the Victums of our Relief"
Another bushism that was a simple slip, but rings so very true...
In my web systems, when I'm going to upgrade the files, i upload a file called "busy.lock". The main page detects if the file is present, and gives the user a busy message. After the 5 minutes (at most) I took to upload all the files, i delete the busy.lock and the system is back online.
Now, that wasn't too hard, was it? Fixing a one-liner shouldn't take more than one minute, so yes, that's another reason for saying they're incompetent - to say the least.
It's called Section 508.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
"IE is the most common browser by several miles."
I think this brings up a bigger issue. See what happens clueless people develop with Microsoft tools. You inadvertantly lockin and lockout. And that's just the way the software vendor likes it. That WWW people input means World Wide Web not MWW (Microsoft Wide Web) regardless of how many IE http user agents exist.
Seriously, this IS the Bush admin, right? I'm shocked they don't require you to buy a computer with Microsoft Windows (tm) preloaded first, preferably from one of their national vendors.
Download it from Microsoft or call 1-800-621-FEMA (3362)
I'd call.....
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
Tell them you tried to do it online but couldn't, so you're calling to do it offline because that's the only option they've left you.
Firefox usage is around 5% or 10%, assuming 5% that's 1 out of 20. They're telling 1 out of 20 people they basically must call in, so you should assume they have the operators standing by to handle that kind of volume.
Where is FOFEMA (FEMA Of FEMA) when you need it?
(Daily Show, Sept 6)
The director of FEMA should resign immediately, since he's proven himself unable to do his job.
It's been pointed out that ever since FEMA was reoganized under the direction of the Department of Homeland Security (FEMA used to sit on the President's Cabinet), it's been harder for them to do their job independently. See a news article here, among others.
State and Federal government agencies seem always to require IE for website use. I've often wondered how much of this is due to incompetence (don't know how to to better) or elitism (you'll use what I use dammit!). But it is strange that so much medical information which is required to be transferred in a secure manner is also required to be transferred via IE. IE spoofing doesn't work -- activeX is required.
...
Perhaps Windows has contracts with government agencies requiring IE?
BTW, posting anonymously because can't seem to get an account set up
I had to call, but they still offered me nothing. I am in Hattiesburg, MS. We are still recovering and the web site was just another slap in the face. FEMA has given me nothing. I don't know what I was expecting, but my company has not made money in 8 days. I did get a 60 days from most of my creditors, never thought those bastards had a heart.
ENMOD means environmental modification. It was tested extensively in the gulf war for oil number 1, by british/israeli agent george bush (knighted by englands queen) and ENMOD has been deployed here in murka (texan for America) as an attack on America by foreign powers who have infiltrated through religious fanatacism and perpetuation of ignorance. The attacker of course is son of george I, who is george II, who is actually the THIRD george here in usa, counting George Washington. FYI and BTW, george III just happened to be the name of the king of ex insula angelorum (england) during murkas first revolution. So. We are being attacked by england through the bush crime family. ENMOD is radiation science which causes severe damage to many peoples digestive tracks, and makes cancers and funguses grow at accelerated pace, as well as causing confusion, and sleepiness in the subject population when needed, plus a lot lot more. This explains why Americans have not risen up and cut off the head of bush the super criminal.
...Sufficient energy is employed to cause ionization of neutral particles (molecules of oxygen, nitrogen, and the like, PARTICULATES, etc.) which then become part of the (plasma) region, thereby increasing the charged particle density of the region. This effect can also be enhanced by providing artificial particles, eg electrons, ions, etc, directly into the region to be affected from a rocket, satellite, or the like, to supplement the particles in the naturally occurring plasma. The artificial particles are also ionized by the transmitted electromagnetic radiation thereby increasing charged particle density of the resulting plasma of the region... ...Thus, this invention provides the ability to put unprecedented amounts of power in the Earths Atmosphere at strategic locations, and maintain the power injection level, particularly if random pulsing is employed, in a manner far more precise than heretofore accomplished by prior art, particularly by the detonation of nuclear devices of various yields at various altitudes...
Here are two links to a REAL BIG picture of hurricane ivan (the edu site has already gone down several times), which show in no uncertain terms ENMOD being used to steer and POWER UP the hurricane:
http://www.luxefaire.com/ivan.jpg
http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~gumley/modis_gallery/ima ges/HurricaneIvan_20040916_1620_500m.jpg
Hurricane Katrina (911, tsunami, etc) was an attack and there is a lot more to come. ENMOD incorporates old tesla tech, tectonic energies, particulate spraying and much more. Here is some info from a patent by bernard eastlund concernin that:
from Patent 4,686,605 HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program)
DISCLOSURE OF THE INVENTION...
In another embodiment of the invention, electron cyclotron resonance heating is carried out in the selected region or regions at sufficient power levels to allow a plasma present to generate a MIRROR FORCE which forces the charged electrons of the altered plasma UPWARD along the force line to an altitude which is higher than the original altitude... Sufficient power, eg 10 to the 15th joules, can be applied so that altered plasma can be trapped on the field line between mirror points and will oscillate in space for prolonged periods of time. By this embodiment, a plume of altered plasma can be established at selected locations for communications modifications or other purposes...
=
ed.-That means Surveillance KEYHOLES of ALLLLLL types, folks. Coupled with Time Domain Corporation Classified Eavesdropping Patents (200+) that does not bode well for Human Liberty ANYWHERE.
=
Disruption of communications can be employed by one knowledgeable of this invention as a communications network at the same time (Disruption is caused t
Light Happens.
This is because Microsoft has totally and completely penetrated our government and all of its IT operations and infrastructure. If you don't think THAT is a problem... then you are part of the problem.
Because the reason why MS pulled out of the Mac development was because they could not compete with a browser build in to the OS...!
Hivemind harvest in progress..
Hey, It would be very bad to use the phone number provided to call in complaints as that may interfere with people getting the help they need... is there any other contact information we can publish here so that we can make our voices heard?
Then that's just one more example of stupid incompetence. Do you have any idea how much computing power and bandwidth the Federal Government has?
There is NO EXCUSE WHATEVER for FEMA to not be able to handle any amount of traffic anybody could throw at it. None.
The cold war era FEMA was trained and prepared with the nessesary tools to handle a nuclear disaster. The FEMA of today can't even build a fucking website? Wait, that's not it, because the site works fine with just about every browser, they just added some checks to forcably deny certain browsers that are fully (if not more) capable.
Until a bipartisan investigation is complete, I'm hesitant to draw conclusions, but this article discussing Army Corps of Engineers funding in Louisiana makes some interesting points.
For example:
Since a "study" does not upgrade a levee, it seems like perhaps some previous administration didn't provide enough funding and insight to get the "study" complete to get construction started in time.and...
Makes one wonder where the Louisiana's US Senators and Representatives priorities were - sounds like they may not have been all that focused.Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
FEMA Found To Be Incompetent!
Film at 11...
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
... to slashdot the FEMA website.
/. the site further I did not try to find out how much complexity the form has... but even a simple form that posts to a servlet to store in a temporary database table. Something....
That being said, I don't understand how it is that a simple form could not have been quickly created using generic technology just to capture the information required. A day or two? I call strawman to their excuse that it was an internal application that fails them; clearly it was a choice that fails them. A choice made under duress, admittedly. But duress due -again- to being *unprepared*.
I would think that the scenario is obvious since 9/11, so having had several years to prepare, this situation is most egregious. Unfathomable. Unconscionable.
Not wanting to
Where did you left your sense of humour today?
The GPP was obviously being sarcastic, but your sarcasm detector seems to be broken.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
But just wait, my friend, just wait... Brazil has some quality natural resources that Bush may need.
If the people filing the claims, online or otherwise even care about this issue. So, what is it to you? First things first, let's get the places hit by the hurricane, cleaned and operational. Then you can worry about what site does or does not run on what browser. Sheesh.
...and the legendary tradition of american mediocrity and terrible lack of consideration for one another carries on... and on... and on...
"That's funny, because I seem to remember notable publications...blahblahblah..."
That's funny, because I seem to notice you don't back your contentions with any reference url's.
And to say that more funds have been diverted to 'social programs' than Iraq during the last 5 odd years, is rather disingenuous, to say the least.
I predict at least one Medal of Freedom for FEMA response from the Bush White House. After all, we have a president who can alter reality.
Look, FEMA fucked up and was sloppy. I have no idea how much was the politically appointee at the top, and how much is institutional stupidity that goes back years. Some blame belongs to Bush and his appointee, on the "buck stops here" logic, but let's be realistic on some of what happened.
The Levee maintenance program has been "underfunded" for THREE decades. Every federal program is "underfunded," because people ask for the world, get something, and can now claim to have been underfunded.
It is NOT clear that if that $250m was restored to the Federal budget that the levees would have held. We have NO IDEA. But when the levees and a system designed for Category 3 Hurricanes gets hit with a slow moving Category 4, better maintenance PROBABLY WOULD NOT have mattered.
Louisiana/New Orleans have a Levee Maintenance Board that is supposed to maintain and improve the Levees. They can issue municipal bonds to pay for it (those lovely options that cities and states have that pay a lower interest rate than treasuries, because the interest is federal tax free, so the government picks up a third of the interest tab in terms of your rate being lower by a third). However, in typical Louisiana corruption, it was filled with political friends with NO INTEREST in Levees, and focused on casinos.
Further, FEMA is EXTREMELY powerful, which makes civil libertarians nervous. Here you have an executive branch department that can single-handedly declare martial law, basically suspend the constitution, etc., powers normally only available to Congress in wartime. The CHECK on government abuse is that a city or state MUST request that help. Now, in an ideal world, FEMA would ONLY be called in REAL emergencies (but when you declare an emergency, FEMA picks up 80% of the tab, so anytime you can you declare an emergency), but federal programs only work when they expand, not only act 1-4 times a decade.
The evacuation of New Orleans was the city's responsibility and the city's PLAN called for using school buses to evacuate people... why didn't this happen?
Notifying FEMA of where shelter's are is a LOCAL responsibility, because FEMA doesn't come in until AFTER there is an emergency. The Superdome is a lovely batch of embarrassment. FEMA learned through official channels 2 or 3 days in that there were people there with no food and water. The news-media was floored "don't you have a television." But as sad as this is, it kinda makes sense... You have some level of lower down FEMA officials going over their checklist, and the Superdome isn't on it, so it is ignored. The higher ups are watching the Superdome footage on TV thinking "those poor people, at least help is on the way." But a disconnect there completely makes sense, and is extremely tragic. Whoever is on the ground sees that it isn't on their list and assumes that it is someone else's. Those above that see it isn't getting help assume that it is on someone's list... More people die... I place the bame 70%-30%, 70% on local officials who didn't notify FEMA properly, and 30% Fed's, because when you see the media talking about people there being without food or medicine for 2-3 days, you call down the pipe until you find out who is responsible for it. The media attention could have made it possible to save lives, if someone thought outside the box.
Decades of mismanagement and corruption in Louisiana caused a catastrophe... Bush is apparently a COMPLETELY incompetent leader who can't get anyone good in the government... This situation sucks. But I'm sick of the partisanship on this... Plenty of stupidity goes around.
BTW: more has been spent on Levee's by the Feds in the 5 years that Bush has been in office than the 8 years that Clinton was in office. That doesn't mean anything, but this "Bush wanted to levees to break so he cut funding" doesn't match reality. I'm pretty sure that the leader of the free world wasn't personally overseeing levee maintenance... unfortunately, neither was the levee maintenance board...
Alex
I just tried firefox and mozilla, both with the prefbar extension. When selecting to hide the browser and appear as IE, the site works flawlessly. Looks like their compatibility checks are pretty limited... 5u113n
Half the stuff on MSNBC requires Windows last time I tried it.
http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/508standards.ht m
Potentialy a sign of the lack of broad thinking across the whole of FEMA.
You would think FEMA in an emergency would make it possible to use
lynx
telnet
morse code
flash lights
read and green flags
smoke signals
I wonder how many languages they can speak in when you use the telephone?
"Never trust a computer you can't throw." -- The Mac
The FEMA web site states emphatically that their site and web applications are compliant with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.
This IE specific issue is absolutely NOT compliant with Section 508.
The general email address for FEMA is FEMAOPA@DHS.GOV and I would encourage folks to send them a message voicing your concerns about FEMA requiring IE.
I feel this is total incompetence on the part of FEMA to require a specific browser to apply for assistance as a goverment agency that responds to disasters should provide services that people can get to with almost any browser to insure that the folks who need the help, can get it.
I am a state goverment employee with an agency that provides assistance to the unemployed and support as many browsers as possible to include IE, IE 5.2 for Mac, Firefox, Opera and Safari.
We have a web staff of 2 people and if we can provide this type access for non-emergency services, our federal folks should be able to do the same for critical services.
Just to counter all the sibling posts from Mac-using Republicans, I refer you to this comment. Do any of these people strike you as having voted for Bush?
y .jpgj pgp gq .jpgj pgq .jpgm .jpgy .jpg. jpgd .jpgk .jpgg .jpga .jpgv .jpgd .jpgk .jpg
http://img371.imageshack.us/img371/7792/img08079i
http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/3600/img10156rv.
http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/2539/soho0uj.j
http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/5614/img66606p
http://img95.imageshack.us/img95/6756/img64271jj.
http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/5082/bleeder0w
http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/1672/img85083c
http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/7234/img82642a
http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/787/img60047ow
http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/4819/img58719t
http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/9681/img46882w
http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/8519/img45081g
http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/3102/img39464t
http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/7783/img07414p
http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/5816/img07328r
http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/5096/img07309m
Federal Extreme Mismanagement Agency
Isn't FEMA part of the Department of Homer Sim...er, Homeland Security? Don't they read their memos?
Nevertheless, this will be convenient... ... for the hordes of New Orleans refugees who will (apparently) move to Nigeria.
For most of my own websites, I'll post a big fat warning to any browsers I don't like, mainly IE, but also Opera. I'll throw out a "Get Firefox" button, but I'll also say, "The W3C says I'm standard-compliant, so if the site looks bad, it's your own fault. Complain to your browser people or get a new browser."
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
FEMA now requiring MS Longhorn.. er Vista O/S to file online claims!
I lost my sig...
It is quite apparent that this web page was *not* put up for this particular natural disaster. Indeed, I'd find it rather disturbing if an organization with the purpose of FEMA had had to quickly put up a web site for this.
It is also apparent that the web page wants a specific version of IE, so it seems that the Mac version will not do. It is quite clear to anyone who creates web sites and knows the appropriate standards that building a web site which requires a specific browser is actually *more* work than doing otherwise.
Hmm. I really don't feel like going on. I guess that if you are interested in finding out why you are wrong, you'll read up a bit on the matter, and if you are not, well, there is ni point in my writing anything else...
Enjoy.
Interesting that FEMA does not comply with US Accessibility laws.
Update: 09/08 13:48 GMT by Z : Added word 'Online' to title to clarify story.
Yeah, nice catch you fucking moron. Why don't you just go suck some dicks like the whore that you are and leave journalism for the journalists.
It *seems* to work just fine. Admittedly, I didn't go through the entire application process -- I am not in need of disaster relief and do not want to bog down the already bogged process -- but what I saw looked promising.
There are many websites that claim to only work with IE and refuse entry to other browsers, even when there is *NOTHING* on the site that actually uses any of the special IE "features" (read: bugs). Maybe FEMA is one of them.
The facts that I'm aware of include authorization paperwork for other states to send national guard troops in. And Washington sat on the paperwork for days.
Now WHY two sovereign states require permission from a Federal Executive Branch agency to help each other is beyond me, unless it is to prevent the formation of a new Army of Northern Virginia... which keeping military forces from moving around makes it harder to create an open rebellion.
I actually don't understand why we have FEMA... it seems like the heavy lifting in real emergencies is via the National Guard, and multi-state agreements generally handle it. It seems like FEMA is an attempt to share information and disaster planning (like the expanded and increasingly useless and dangerous Department of Education, which doesn't do much for education but creates red tape and sucks down resources).
It seems like a more cost effective solution would be to have a disaster planning division in the Army, instead of a civilian organization since the real work is done via military personnel, and private donations seem to dominate over government contributions...
But that's just me.
I aam in NO way excusing inept behavior by FEMA, I'm just saying that it wasn't the problem.
It was catastrophically prepared for and messed up long BEFORE FEMA got a chance to make things worse, that's all I'm saying.
Alex
14. OBLITERATION OF THIRD PARTY CANDIDATES. You may obliterate third party candidates through the election of the President. The third party candidates are not under the control of Microsoft, yet. Microsoft is mentioning third party candidates to you only as a convenience, and does not imply an endorsement by Microsoft of the third party candidate.
19. The President is protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws and treaties. Microsoft or its suppliers own the title, copyright, and other intellectual property rights in the President. The President is bought, not sold.
A cross between "never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to stupidity" and "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
I thought you guys were supposed to be nerds?
(mind reading capcha: sorter)
GOD DAMN IT.... slow down cowboy its been sixteen minutes... GOD DAMN IT!!!
I guess I was wrong about this being a nerd site...
"FEMA Demands. . ."
Um, how about, "FEMA Streamlines Support And Development Requirements By Supporting The Browser That 90% Of People Use" (and probably 99.9% of people have easy access to).
FEMA is struggling just to get food to these people do you think they want to deal with 4 different browser configs that only make up maybe 10% of market share?
Plus, 70% of New Orleans residents are below the poverty line. I doubt these people even have a computer. That means that they will be using the ones at the libraries at whereever they evacuated to. And **pretty-much** all public-use Library computers are running IE.
So chill out! It is a smart decision for FEMA to cut cost & time by standardizing the site on IE browsers.
Oh, BTW, I don't think any of these people who's houses got destroyed give a flying F*** about the Open Source browser movement right now. So don't even go there (but I'm sure you will).
--
This post is DOA.
Use your imagination...
Requiring IE implies that you can only accept hardware donations which have the correct version of Windows and IE installed, and of course, you have to make sure that the licence is transferred with the donation and what not. Have you ever tried to set up a Windows box? Have you ever tried to boot from a Knoppix CD? Which one takes longer? WHich one requires more work and expertise in order to avoid being completely owned after the first 7 minutes online?...
In the best academic tradition, I'll leave it as an easy exercise for you to come up with a list of 5 more things that result from requiring IE6 which are completely unnecessary.
Apart from these practicalities, there is always the principle, which, one could argue, can be left for consideration till after things have calmed down... Is it correct that a government agency picks a proprietary piece of software as a requirement for citizens to interact with it, when the knowledge and means needed in order to avoid imposing such a requirement are easily available?
My bank's online system demands using IE; Although I sent a couple of emails clarifying the bugs in IE & how insecure it is, they kept their stupid standards.
I downloaded FireFox's extension, User Agent Switcher, changed the browser's agent to IE 6 - WinXP and everything worked out fine.
I hope that helps.Mod points are a dangerous tool. Abuse them wisely.
last straw
WTPOUAWYHTTOTWPA
What's the point of using acronyms when you have to type out the whole phrase anyways?
Here is the email link (FEMAOPA@dhs.gov)
Let FEMA know that there are multiple OS's and web-browsers in the world. Leaving 1/10th of the population out of the loop isn't only a bad idea from the perspective of what's fair, it's not smart for our Country to rely on one OS/Browser/etc.. from a Federal Emergency point of view. Hopefully they listen (afterall, that's the job of FEMA).
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= - The Celtic - =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Figure this, enviromentalists sued to stop a floodgate system on Lake Pontchartrain. Same type of system used around the world for storm surges from typhoons and the like.
Imagine if it had been built several years ago planned as a 'stratigic fortifications' system, rather then leaving the lake system as it is. People are their own worst enemy.
Om, nomnomnom...
What in the hell is the $50 billion for, or even $10.5 billion, or whatever congress gives them.
On wireless services, it's possible to locate the user of a wireless service.
But I think there are people there with satellite mobile phones; Isn't it possible to locate the caller's position using GPS or something similar?
That would give the exact geographical location, to which they can send aids to.
Mod points are a dangerous tool. Abuse them wisely.
Sorry, Section 508 does not help vendor- or device-indepence. Read it. It's only about physical disability (mostly blindness).
A blind person *can* use MSIE and that fulfills Section 508.
JPL's job website is another of these. See JPL Career Launch. From the site: "In order to access the JPL Career Launch website using a Macintosh you must use Internet Explorer running under a PC Emulator."
Talk about adding insult to injury...
Want to file for aid online? Better run Windows
Its shamefull that MSnbc to gloat over its stranglehold over government developement.
1) I have serveral relatives in Louisiana, and all of them have Archaic computers. Even with windows I doubt that it will be up to the latest and greatest IE 60.
2) It probably doesnt matter because online filing requires (a) power, and (b) communication lines. So unless they were relocated to a house that has these, no dice.
This is a hot issue for me because I used to work with a business that had some unknown developer develop its tools with rigid IE only crap. Dispite the many hundreds of different ways to develop a dynamic website, this junk is still used....GRRRRRRR
So not only do you need Windows... you need Windows XP, or at least a heavily updated 2k or ME.
I live in the US, and I didn't vote for him either.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Something about a buck stopping somewhere...
Harry Truman said it. A better saying for the current occupant of the White House, Bush, is "I don't even see the buck". If it obstructs his roadmap he doesn't see it.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Don't be silly. Everyone knows it's actually Jewish banker midgets from outer space working on Xenu's behalf that are responsible for this hurricane.
Slashdot requires you to wait longer between hitting 'reply' and submitting a comment.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
On a side note, my "confirm you're not a script" is "sacred". Nice.
"Currently to complete your application online you must be using Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6.0 or above. We are in the process of modifying the application so that it will be available to additional browsers."
Slashdot Effect in Action. Slashdot Activism is Cool
Interesting that a news Network owned (in part) by Microsoft is reporting this. Are they saying it with a big smile on their face?
It's also very possible that this browser was specified by the government procurement rules which prevent government agencies from making their own decisions on what tools and products to use. I.E. may well have had a contract which said that was the browser everyone had to use. (Of course that doesn't mean that the software had to deny all other browsers).
Another agency of the US gov't (another arm of the Department of Homeland Security, in fact)
in early June of 2004 said STOP USING INTERNET EXPLORER.
gewg_
Isn't one tragedy enough?
FSF is collecting copies of comments that people e-mail to FEMA about this. See http://www.fsf.org/news/fema.html.
- Sigs are so 1900's, read my blog.
One good reason it'll cost you something. If these people are left unemployed and unhoused in other places (having been evacuated), you'll just end up with more crime, more social support issues (and corresponding expenses), a more tightly stretched local and state tax base, and probably an economic recession.
Though it costs money, the rebuilding will lead to a mini-boom of sorts to help compensate for the flood, will get people back to work, encourage people to flow back out of the heavily refugee-laden states (whose own state planning is going to have troubles handling the population influx), etc.
It looks like money burnt, but in reality, much of the rebuilding and reconstruction money and accompanying programs to encourage industry will result in jobs, new opportunities, etc. and it will help turn people who are destitute now back into (in many cases) rate-payers.
So, you could be short-sighted and give them short shrift, but the people you'd really be screwing are the states they evacuated to and the nation as a whole.
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
What if your computer is under water and you have no power? Or worse yet, are living in a shelter with no computer?
....in eachother's pockets and down their paints?!
This isn't the first time something like this
happen.
Anyway, if I were a Katrina victim who gouldn't get
help because of this shit, I would be demanding the
head of the webmaster.
I suspect the number of people who know anything about large scale disaster planning in the media or who post on slashdot (as an alternative media outlet) are diminishingly small. Hence, we have a lot of people speaking to matters they know Sweet FA about.
I have served some time in the Army and have lots of friends in the Coast Gaurd and the US Army. The Coast Gaurd, especially, was making a full court press (as my friend put it) in the rescue efforts, getting 29 cutters and 52 aircraft into action fairly quickly.
Part of the problem is we (in the Western World) have become the 'now now now' Internet generation. We expect everything to happen post haste. My mother, who survived the Blitz and WW2 in Britain, finds the people getting all worked up over the US response to be ridiculous. I have to admit, I agree with her.
Let's look at the response. New Orleans didn't use its city and school buses to evacuate the city. Why not? People didn't leave the city when they were told to. What were they thinking? The levees weren't upgraded, even though this problem has been known about for many decades. Sure you can blame the Feds, but I'm thinking the state and NO taxpayers themselves had better go thinking about their part in that failure.
As for the Fed's response, they've put in (in about a week), more troops than are in the entire Canadian Army. They've deployed what I assume must be hundreds of helicopters on rescue duties. Now, yes, the helicopters picked people off of flooding housing and dropped them on overpasses and at the superdome. Those pilots did what they were told and are only first-line responders. Where was the NOPD, city gov't and state organization at the Superdome and the Convention Center? Not too visible, was it?
As far as getting rescue supplies in and second stage rescue operations setup - yes, it could have been done better I feel sure. Yet at the same time, in order to have a chopper operating to do rescue, you need to setup a FARP where the chopper can fuel up. You need base facilities for routine maintenance and mechanical failures to be handled (we've seen remarkably few catastrophic failures given the number of rescue sorties and presumably pilot duty schedules). Pilots need to sleep and be fed as do mechanics and SAR techs. All in a secure area. That takes a lot of logistics, just to get these sorts of FARPs setup. And it takes time.
It takes time for an Aircraft Carrier or Amphibious Assault ship to steam to the area. It takes time for the army engineers to clear roads to let larger relief vehicles in. NO wasn't the only place hit, many of the roads into new orleans would be absolutely impassable.
This process all takes time. Did it take too much time? Maybe. BUT THE ONLY PEOPLE WHO CAN ASSESS THAT ARE DISASTER RELIEF EXPERTS WITH ALL THE DATA IN THEIR POSSESSION.
This is clearly an analysis that cannot be meaninfully conducted until well after the fact. I saw a piece in the UK Gaurdian talking about how most of the claims of murders and rapes and dead babies and such in the Superdome just cannot be substantiated or firsthand witnesses located. Rumour works like a wildfire in these situations. I'm not saying crappy stuff didn't happen and crimes didn't happen (I'm not an idiot). But it may well be that as bad as it was, the media hype and the rumour (how many times did the media talk to actual eyewitnesses? how many times did they tell you the unsubstantiated stories could not be confirmed? how many people, hearing these unsubstantiated tales, just took them as gospel?) probably did as much damage as anything and it shaped our perceptions.
We don't have the expertise to do anything more than say "It seems like more might have been done, maybe" or "The response didn't seem fast enough for the requirements... even if it was the fastest possible". We need to let experts on the subject collect data on the response, analyse that data, talk to the various institutions involved, talk to various first responders and organizers, and figure out what
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
In the same vane as the Firefox fix, you can switch Safari's user agent identification buy activating the Debug menu scrolling down to User Agent and choosing Windows MSIE 6.0. Apps that allow you to active Safari's Debug menu include: Safari Debug Safari Debugger Safari Enhancer Cocktail
Here is the email I sent to FEMA, feel free to use it, abuse it, or copy and paste it (remember at least to change "your name here" at the end!)
To whom it may concern,
While it may seem a small matter to you, roughly 10% of Internet users use a browser other than Internet Explorer. It is also the case that Internet Explorer will run only on Windows, making your disaster-relief site unavailable entirely to users of Macintosh, Linux, or any other operating systems aside from Windows.
It is entirely possible to design interactive websites to be compatible with all browsers. It is in fact done every day. This is widely accepted as the only proper way to design a website.
I believe that it is FEMA's primary responsibility to ensure that in a disaster, as many people are reached with as little in the way as possible. Instead, it appears that our tax money is being spent on the promotion of a commercial product, to the detriment of many who may need aid. I do not consider advertising for Microsoft an appropriate use of my taxes. Please design your website properly.
Thank you,
(your name here)
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Why can't these browsers have a IE compatability setting? It'd probably just need to spoof the browser ID. Then automatically email webmaster@idiot_site telling them they're a shithead and worse than Hitler.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Come on you bastards, stop slashdotting FEMA! Don't you realize they don't have the resources to handle a sudden influx of slashdotters peeking at their code? I mean, you're going to tie up their bandwidth, and they're not going to know how to manage this emergency! And really, how can we expect them to? It'll take them at least a day to recognize that they're getting slashdotted, and another 12 hours to arrange a conference call to examine the situation... after which they'll have to spend at least a day deciding whether or not to just turn on their spare T1 line. And by the time they get around to actually doing something, their won't be a need for more bandwidth, but rather a need for standards-compliant web forms. Unfortunately, they'll have used up their weekly conference call talking about the bandwidth issue, so we'll have to wait on that. Maybe in the meantime some enterprising middle manager will get some more firefighters to go door to door asking people to stop slashdotting the server, even though (a) it's too late and (b) there's no power, internet, or living people.
/.ing, and get my very own Medal of Freedom(tm)! Yay!
Hey, maybe I'll get credit for saving FEMA from his horrible
Oh, wait, I fergot, they only hand those out to Citizens, and conquered subjects from "freedomized" sovereign countries. Oh well, there's billions of barrels of oil a few hours north of me, I'm sure we're on that list they were working on in the 90s.
Hey, maybe I'll get extra points for coming up with the new ad slogan to put on the leaflets dropped from the planes flying over NO...
"Sorry we couldn't use this plane to bring you food or water. We wanted to let you know that the people who can help you are still stuck in Iraq. Sorry about that. But we hope that you'll take this chance to evaluate our new national motto, and let us know your opinions on it. Just mail this leaflet back to us... you know, once the mailboxes are no longer submerged.
New National Motto: Freedom! Now double-plus good!"
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
Oh. It's a federal agency that is to be used for disaster relief. Here's an idea, lets make it easy for people to access forms online. So I pull out the wi-fi device from my pocket (with the embedded OS and W3 compliant browser). Turn it on, thank God the batteries are still up. This is the only working hotspot I've found in the last 3 days! Good. Here's the FIMA website, now maybe I'll be able to get some water or maybe even some food for the kids or insulin for my diabetes..... FIMA website...got it! Now on to the forms.... What the hell? I need to upgrade what? Where is my gun! Time to shout at some braindead fuckup of a webmaster, show him my gun and shout "UPGRADE THIS!"
When Slashdot hits FEMA's site with 90% Firefox they may change their tune. Until then, I'd say there are more important issues to worry about than one more relatively minor (in the overall scheme of things) FEMA screwup.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I could not read the word they asked me to type in twice. Luckily I got through on the third and final try.
After that I could not proceed because I was using Firefox.
Why cant FEMA use a bot-restricting system like slashdot where the word is human readable everytime (and is a dictionary word) ?
I smite them!
You're right, at least you would be if things like paper or phones didn't exist. People who wind up at shelters that use non windows computers can probably find a phone, or find someone working for FEMA.
If you don't have the time to do it RIGHT, how are you *ever* going to find the time to do it OVER?
The original concept of the Web was that ANYONE with a computer could access ANYTHING on the Web.
It was supposed to be equipment-agnostic.
How hard is this to grasp? This should be #1 on the list for any Web developer.
gewg_
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=http%3A%2 F%2Fwww.fema.gov
according to this link their site is running linux but yet they require internet explorer.
are they retarded or what?
gee - lets make the web a client server application just like the 80's.
what fricken idiots
I wish someone would bring a lawsuit.
you are an idiot - it is because of people like you that this problem exist -
standards exist - deal with it - and if they are willing to run their site on linux then they should support linux.
isn't java the write once run everywhere language that wonderful sun promotes?
there is no excuse to write a website to one browser - write to standards and deal with it.
it is possible to write to every browser and os - that is why standards exist -
Curious, I went to the link using Mozilla and Linux. Sure enough, it popped up a display saying I needed IE.
Then using mozdev prefbar, I set the very same Mozilla browser running linux to pretend to be IE6.
BINGO! The page came up with the form and check boxes.
I stopped here because I'm not actually applying for aid.
There doesn't appear to be a valid reason for even looking for IE.
If you read carefully the news, you can find out on Microsoft site that they have provided infrastructure and three lead tech pro to help them. What do you expect return from Microsoft if they are providing the facility and manpower? I think this is the minimum requirements from their side. :)
I'm guessing "cluster fsck" from context and the initials.
I didn't go very far into the process since I don't need aid, but I got as far as the form where personal data would be entered by using the current beta of iCab for Mac OS X. I set iCab to identify itself as Explorer (twice, browser ID and Javascript ID).
Hmm...I tested this myself, and with the User Agent Switcher set to IE, there's no problems at all. Seems to me that the problem with non-IE browsers is a purely manufactured one...one that could be fixed by editing one lne of code.
And some QA testing on other browsers.
You REALLY don't want to lead somebody through the forms process and have it abort near the end, or (worse) tell the user he's completed the form and then fail to file it for him. (That could actually KILL people.)
So the thing to do, given the results of our volunteer probes showing that the problem is PROBABLY just arbitrary denial) is for
- FEMA to put up an internal web site
- with code hacked to accept a list of other browsers
- test that each browser on the list actually processes the forms correctyly, and
- add browsers to the list on the live form as they're checked out. Then
- upgrade the forms to add support for any that fail. (Perhaps have the detection code redirect browsers needing special support to a new form so as not to break the existing stuff.)
They can probably have several modern browsers checked out within hours. Older ones will take longer.
But for FUTURE disasters they should, as a background job, construct a new form using NO fancy features - something that will work even on really old browsers that only support HTML and need CGI scripts for anything fancy. Then they can just clone it and fill in the text, URL addressing, and database selection for the particular disaster and have it up in hours.
(In the case of Katrina they had days of notice AND a presidential emergency declaration two days in advance. If this had been ready then they could have had it deployed while the storm was still on its way.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
> New York Times criticizing the earlier form of his budget
So? Since when did the NYT have any control over the budget of the federal government?
The buck stops where the control rests; bringing in irrelevant parties---whether they're the NYT or Santa Claus---doesn't change who is responsible for cutting New Orleans levee funding.
I was trying to dig up who made the FEMA website. Was it internal or external to the government?
w ww.fema.gov/library/lib04alpha.shtm .
/ 2001Oct/0075.html
Looking at http://web.archive.org/web/20030417184051/http://
There is a comment in the source by Jarrod Dieppa
A web search on that name brings up : http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-validator
so the person works for http://www.mbakercorp.com/
Baker has over the years obtained various contracts from FEMA.
Also the website http://www.bakerproject.com/fema
has links for FEMA exranet and
other fema information. Their webmaster is bperez@mbakercorp.com
or jdieppa@mbakercorp.com.
Hence most likely FEMA website is maintained
by Baker Corp.
> else I didn't learn while studing english.
It means "leader of a country that can beat up any other country in the free world". It's not so much "leader" as "we can beat you up, so you'd better agree we're more important than you; it makes us feel special".
promotion - enforcement in fact - of a monopoly?
What kind of idiot thinks that IE is the best thing out there?
Is there some feature on the site that REQUIRES IE (such as ActiveX)? If there's not, what the hell were they thinking? This is blatant discrimination against those who use alternatives to Windows/IE.
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
Konqueror seems to work. without actually going through with the application, it seems to be perfectly happy to at least start it and go through the first couple pages if I select Tools -> Change Browser Identification -> Internet Explorer 6.0 on XP
(I'm using KDE 3.4.0 on SuSE Linux 9.3)
You are right: problems and inconveniences can always be solved or worked-around.
What is being discussed, though, is the fact that there is absolutely no need for those problems and inconveniences to be there in the first place. There are no technological impediments which force anyone to introduce those problems and inconveniences. In fact, from what I have read, no useful capability was gained by excluding non-IE6 browsers, and it appears that simply forging a UserAgent string was enough to get access to the site. Evidence clearly points to incompetence and carelessness as the sole explanation.
No amount of work-arounds will change this simple facts.
I'm really, REALLY tired of these assholes at FEMA. This is the last straw.
Monkeys... own..... ASCII Slashdot: |/.|
I gather this was an internal application that quickly got made external. But there is no excuse for any app, internal or external, to be IE only.
One of the main points of making an application web based is so you don't have to worry about what platform the user is running, freeing them up to run whatever works best for them. Otherwise you might as well just make everybody download and install a Microsoft Windows Win32 client/server application just like in the bad old days.
It amazes me that this kind of incompetence can continue to exist, just today I was reading an internal design document where management inserted a comment to the effect of "Only design this to work in IE 6, we do not need to spend extra time to support other options, we can expect the [external Internet!] users to have IE 6"
Any competent web designer could design an app like this to work properly in any standard compliant web browser. And with a little hacking, make it work in IE 6 also.
Can't Opera change its browser string to look like 'Sploder?
With a link to Ars Technica, which had a much better explaination of the situation, but it was rejected.
Just tried, worked. Part of the frameset - changed my agent after the captcha then got sent to download page.
Wonder if I may now be subject to prosecution for bypassing/hacking a government website.
Meh.
[Integrated Security and Access Control System]
Yes, but whats that got to do with the price of tea in D'ni?
You're so very wrong. This isn't about some ideology conflict between "us" and Microsoft. This is going to be redundant information but it looks like it needs to be said again and again to get through to many people. The only way for most of the victims of Katrina to apply to FEMA for relief is on the web. They can call but FEMA will only mail them a form, and there is nowhere to mail the form to, besides the fact that the mail system is gone.
The FEMA site is requiring IE 6.0, not IE 5, 5.5, 7, or any other browser. It will only work with IE 6.0. The "intended audience" are people who have lost their homes, who are probably sitting in a shelter in some state other than Louisiana, sitting down to a donated (i.e., old) computer set up by relief workers who probably aren't very technical themselves.
A donated, old computer has a rather small chance of running the proper version of IE, if it's even running Windows in the first place. Windows is a nightmare to keep functional and secure in a stressful environment where you have multitudes of users combined with internet access, so you can bet that a lot of these computers have a Knoppix or other LiveCD inside to make it really easy to keep the machines running day after day. Some of them are also probably old Macs running OS 8 or 9. They very likely have IE on most of the Macs, but it'll be the wrong version.
Putting all this together, let's come up with a really generous estimate and say that one in four of the computers available to the Katrina victims actually has the right version of IE installed. If you only have one computer at your shelter and it isn't the lucky one, that means NOBODY at that particular shelter can get to the online FEMA application. At big shelters you'll have a one in four chance of sitting down in front of the right computer for making a FEMA application.
And why does this situation exist? Because of a couple of lines of code that arbitrarily check for a User Agent of IE 6.0, even though as more technical users have repeatedly demonstrated the form works just fine with other browsers as long as they fake the IE 6.0 User Agent code. The check and block is probably completely unnecessary. Maybe 2% of computer users will know how to get around it. The rest of them are locked out for no good reason.
Wake up and get real. This isn't about bashing Microsoft or IE. It also isn't a piddly little thing that should be ignored because "more important things" are happening. This is a stupid, incompetent coding decision that is actively stopping people (probably a lot of people) from applying for relief until they get to the "right" computer. Realistically it will be more like one in eight computers that have the right version of IE 6.0 and JavaScript enabled. And that's still being generous.
If they were requiring Safari 1.2 or Konqueror 1.0 or Opera 6.0 instead of IE 6.0, hopefully we would all be just as irritated as we are now. The name of the browser is not the important thing. What's important is having our government build web applications that are available to as many browsers and platforms as possible. So that you can sit down to damn near any kind of computer made in the last half decade and it will be useful. Neither the victims nor the relief workers need this kind of stress and incompetence from our government in an emergency situation.
I seem to recall that they never get a good rating in any large scale disaster. The key people keep forgetting is that this disaster isn't just New Orleans, we are talking about a Federal Disaster area the size of the United Kingdom.
n \archive\200509\NAT20050907a.html covers the fact that they don't spend most of their levee money on making it work!
m l
Now tell me, just what do you expect? The media is going to focus on the worst cases they can find because it sells ads.
The issue about the levees is being disputed by many sources now and more and more will come out. One interesting story http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=\Natio
Also LA has received more money Corps money than any other state in the last five years. Yes, they got more than even California did! The problem was that the money meant to shore up the levee system went to pork projects instead.
http://www.startribune.com/stories/125/5602732.ht
I know its the in thing to bash Bush here but damn it get you facts straight. It seems anything labeled "Insightful" and has Bush's name in it is only so provided it attacks.
FEMA has sucked for ages and it never gets better in what we are shown. Yes they screw up, but damn look at what they have done in such a short time. Biloxi and the rest of Miss. sure in the hell didn't get a pass in this storm but the way everyone is acting you would think only NO was affected.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I just tried with Firefox and got the nasty IE message. Then I set the browser ID to IE6/Win5.1 and tried with konqueror. After a few glitches probably attributable to a busy server, it worked!
This tells me that it probably should work with Firefox, but they have set it to give the error when it gets that browser string!
I know some of these guys like M$, but this is ridiculous!
Access should be ready to go in about a year. Purchase an approved copy at the sports stadium housing you for a discounted price of $29.99.
Be aware that written permission from FEMA is mandatory to connect Firefox with our Claims site. Read the EULA carefully. There is a 7 p.m. curfew on Firefox use so be sure to only use it during office hours. If you do not know how to use Firefox, contact one of the National Guardsmen "protecting" you. If you are not currently in a displaced person's facility, return to one for an opportunity to purchase a copy of Firefox and for approved FEMA Firefox instruction from one of our select instructors at a very nominal fee.
WARNING: illegal for use within the city limits of New Orleans.
I only care who suffers. I'm not in the delta basin... I'm in southern Ontario. I don't care who gets e. coli or not... I'm in southern Ontario. I don't care who sniffs raw sewage or tends to get the bends from having to get back up from 12 feet of water overlaying their house.
I'm from southern Ontario.
I do care about some things, though.
I care about people. This is something I've not read about much on here. Like it or not, Slashdot readers/posters seem to be a bit of a-lacking when it comes to communal feelings. Assholes, I'd call it.
I'd like to take the time to thank the poeple that are saving the animals. I'm not a Noah, but I respect the task that they're doing, and recognize the risk that's involved. Kudos to them, and most gracious thanks to their work.
I'd also like to send out thanks to everyone else who isn't in the disaster zone, who is helping out with arms-outstretched, to help those in need of some caring, some basic human comfort. If you're a person, we need you to survive, and I've been there, arms wide open. It's a generous thing, to have gone through such a struggle, and emerge intact. We need your stories, not for the root cause of survival, but for the sustaining that your stories give us. Tell us about it, and make our meagre lives better.
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. ~~ Hunter S. Thompson
You know, people have been pretty consistently screaming about the horrendous federal fuckup, with lots of TV footage of inhumane conditions (well, conditions that most people in the world live in, but that citizens of the US aren't really used to).
But, really, let's think about the situation.
Nobody, not a single person, knew exactly what was going to happen up until after Katrina went through. Nobody knew whether the walls would break, what would be unusable and what wouldn't, and so forth. Nobody even knew what would be hit the hardest, or how much.
So the first step is figuring out what's usable and what isn't. You can't always do that from just a flyover, and it takes a while even to piece together all the photographs of a flyover. So it's going to take a while just to figure out what in the existing infrastructure you can use. What if they trucked everyone onto I-10 and then I-10 collapsed due to undermined foundations? Sure, it seems easy in hindsight...
Second, there was some less-than-mediagenic behavior on the part of cops (one group had people begging for food at a Wal-Mart -- they opened it up, and sure enough, people looted everything. Another group just sat around, with no information about what to do). That may not be great, but there aren't many major disasters where you *aren't* going to have localized chaos in the aftermath. Yes, the cops may not have been organized after the disaster, but authorities managed to get 4/5 of the population to leave (remember that lots of people couldn't leave or didn't believe that this was going to be a big deal), and managed to keep hospital, firefighting, and police personnel in place.
Communication was out, and there were only a few sat phones and radios set up. There isn't a whole lot you can do about that. It's going to take a while to repair landlines. Maybe more wireless gear would have been helpful -- in the days after Katrina, tons of radio volunteers started donating hardware and expertise to assist the communication situation.
You had people running around and shooting things. Okay, maybe in the future it's a good idea to tell Wal-Mart to move out all the guns from its store when it's planning on evacuating. I don't think I would have thought of that in advance, though.
Power is out and it's taking a while to restore -- but there isn't any real screw-up there. You have almost all your poles down, lots of lines broken or chopped through by people who need to pass them, flooded facilities, and highly conductive water all over the place. It's just going to take time to get back.
It did take a while (a day or two too long, in places) to chopper in fuel for hospitals who had generators going out. Okay, maybe establish a reserve of fuel to fly in...but, again, remember that even simple things like that aren't so simple. New Orleans' airports are out of commission -- as far as I know, there isn't any flight coordination going on (though I'm not a pilot -- perhaps there's some system for such situations). There are people shooting at helicopters.
FEMA tried to bring in a mobile hospital, but it's new. Lousiana didn't know what to do (every bureaucrat doesn't want to be responsible for some kind of liability), so it went to Mississippi. That will definitely be resolved next time (dammit, there needs to be an Good Samaritan law that gets invoked when FEMA has to start rolling in where malpractice suits are automatically invalid, or lawsuits need to have damage seriously capped in the US, because concerns about liability has screwed things over many a time).
There were fires, but no water pressure to put them out. That sucked, but it's happened plenty of places before (including after California earthquakes). Maybe have a fast-response aerial firefighting plane to deal with major fires after disasters.
Remember, also, that there was a hurricane active right after New Orleans got hit. It wasn't that *easy* to move aircraft around, period.
The National Guard was cal
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
The above is irony. Please donate to people who actually need your help.
"Everybody is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arenas here, you know, were underprivileged anyway. This is working very well for them."
What the hell is this woman thinking? Is there a limit on the idiodicy of American thinking? Is there a limit on the crassness of American stupidity
Please put this woman out of her misery. Otherwise, countless others are going to lose their lives.
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. ~~ Hunter S. Thompson
The webserver is Apache 2, but it appears to be running on WIN32. Other than that browser test, there seems to be no other limiting factors at all.
Hopefully someone can pull that offending code as a face saving measure.
* You don't read the NY Times except when it comes up on /.
* Not all relevant content is found in URLs. Any sane person knows that.
* Because something is not referenced does not make it untrue.
* "They" refers to those criticizing the budget, not that the funds were diverted to social programs.
I don't mind people having varied opinions, but try to at least be a little civil instead of throwing a tantrum like you did.
I can definitively say the Department of the Treasury put together a web site for insurance companies to file claims for the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act.
That of course has nothing to do with FEMA or people registering for aid in the wake of disasters that happen several times every year. It is woeful incompetence that FEMA did not have a site up and ready for any disaster years ago.
I live in Jackson, MS and have been helping my friend and his parents, we maintain a small cybercafe we set up at the Jackson Coliseum (which is being used as a Red Cross Shelter) to help people file their FEMA application, look for lost relatives, and get news on the relief situation.
What really strikes me about FEMA is their total lack of consideration for people that are most likely to need their help, i.e. poor people. Forget this whole IE-only/web-standards thing. The real issue is FEMA being lazy about making assistance available to poor people.
1. First of all there are no paper applications. In a disaster that knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of people and primarily affected the poorest people in the country, THE ONLY way to apply for federal aid is through the FEMA website. FEMA MUST realize that most of the people in the most need of aid either can't access a computer or have never used one before. We've been helping people fill out their FEMA applications because 90% of the people are computer illiterate and would not have been able to apply for aid if we had not been there to help them.
2. About 15-25% of the time, the FEMA website's servers are overloaded. 100% of the time the FEMA phone line is unavailable. (They don't even put you on hold; they just hang up after a recorded message.) Buy some more fucking server time. Train some more fucking phone operators.
3. So a guy from FEMA--only ONE guy came for ONE day to serve 2000 people--actually came to the Coliseum and all he did was scatter some orange fliers with the address of the FEMA website and the FEMA phone number. When we asked him about some problems we've been having with the application, he was equally clueless. For instance, the FEMA application requires a current phone number, but obviously most people at the Coliseum don't have one. So the FEMA dude said they should enter their cell phone number. Most of these people don't have any form of insurance or even a bank account. How the hell do they expect them to have a cell phone?
For me, this whole hurricane thing has made it more obvious how racism and classism in American is sustatined through this kind of indifference and ignorance. Equality isn't treating everybody the same way; it's putting an equal amount of effort in recognizing and addressing everybody's unique needs.
~John Y.
IMHO but I think that all government website administrators ought to be sued in federal court for discrimination and disenfranchisement that make websites that require me to use IE or MS OS.
I remember some native Americans went through federal court and got the BIA website shutdown for a while for lack of security.
I can be done.
I find this all a bit ridiculous. This is the government! I find it cool that MSNBC reported this as well, given that it is a microsoft venture. Linux users can use IE via wine or crossover. There is also vmware. My question is: Why should people who use a non MS browser be punished?
Honsetly, our friends in DC are working on changing that. The next time a major disaster hits, it'll be ready. Once you have registered by phone, it wil;l work online. Personally, I haven't had a problem with it when I trick it into think I'm using IE.
Be prepared. Make a disaster kit. Visit ready.gov! And join a CERT Team!
I'm pissed off because there is no lynx support. Now I know what Dubya means by the two internets: Ms-Internet and the rest the govmt doesnt support.
For the sake of expediency in saving lives... ...could someone who really knows browsers please hack the site and put the proper HTML code in place so it works with most browsers exactly like it does in IE6?
I'm assuming no nasty message will be added about FEMA/Bush incompetence as it may distract disaster victim - so make it visible only when viewing the HTML source if you're into the hacker fame or comment thing.
The sooner it is done, the sooner lives might be saved. Perhaps maybe just 1% chance of saving one life - what are you hackers waiting for?
Microsoft is pure dog-ma. FreeBSD is pure cat-ma.
I have heard a lot on Slashdot before, but this is a bit much. Can we all just put aside the constant browser war debate until after everyone stranded in New Orleans is safe?
Really, they ASS-U-MED all people would have :)
:)
access to a system with AYYYEEEEE!!!!! 6.
Fuck you FEMA, and fuck your webmaster.
(Note, the smilies don't mean I'm kidding, they mean that I am seeing so much red to the point of insanity over
this,.
I know damn well that there is no functionality extended to IE that is unavailable to Any Other Browser. (Microsoft Trolls and Flamers, give it a break this post and keep your stupidity to yourself, no one falls for it anymore!) So we might as well call this what it is: techno-harassment! The unreasonable and gratuitious bigotry and stigma perpetrated against users for not using the "mainstream" choices, i.e. requiring Microsoft Word to submit a resume, requiring one brand of browser, etc.
We need to launch a full-scale counter-offensive, in which we hack code into our systems that fools the world into thinking it's whatever it is "supposed" to be. I would be interested in a "cloaking device" for Firefox that tells the nosey, busybody web server that it *is* Internet Exploiter, a "Moronizer" mode on Emacs (friendly companion to this: http://www.fourmilab.ch/webtools/demoroniser/ ) which inserts the garbage ASCII characters necessary to fool the recieving party into believing it's a Microslop We^|d document, and generally the equivalent hacks for every application that could be affected.
Like with my internet provider who sternly insisted that they support only Microsoft and Macintosh, so I hacked a script file in and *voila*, best internet connection to a Linux box ever, and I offered to share my "secret" for getting their service to work with Linux so they could start supporting that platform too, and was ignored. Maybe because my sentences are too long?
Anyway, we already have emulators to run Windows-only software in Linux. It's time we took that idea all the way through, and also made some Very Noisy Protests against Government and Corporate techno-harassment!
As to moving aircraft around, TODAY there are several Blackhawk choppers from Floria whose air crews are reportedly "livid" because instead of being used to drop food and supplies, they're being used to ferry CNN news crews around.
As for assets, I wonder if you saw the Shepard Smith Fox News reporter interviewed where he pointed out that there is a bridge right near the Convention Center that leads to another parish where the damage is much less and there is food, water, etc.
And if you go near that bridge, the National Guard checkpoint turns you right around back into NO.
He was unable to find anyone with FEMA or the NG who could explain this reasoning.
As for the NO cops, around twenty or thirty percent of them abandoned their jobs according to one article I saw.
I saw a list of FEMA decisions today that was just ridiculous. Right on their Web site supposedly there is a notice requesting "first responders" NOT to respond to this crisis. They have refused to use the Navy hospital ship in the Gulf, they are blocking several reverse osmosis water production units that could produce 250,000 gallons of fresh water from entering the city, they blocked the state-of-the-art mobile hospital built by DHS for exactly this situation from entering the city, they refused to let the Coast Guard deliver fuel, they blocked Wal-Mart's three trailer trucks full of bottled water, and on and on.
Yes, they have fucked up. Whoever ELSE fucked up is not the issue at this point. FEMA was in charge effective when Bush declared the city a disaster area and SINCE then they have fucked up royally according to EVERY news report and personal recounting I've seen.
AND I heard EXACTLY the same stories from people from Florida during the last big hurricanes there.
So nothing's changed in the last couple years at FEMA.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I never said FEMA didn't suck before. I'm sure it did. It's job was NEVER to protect the citizenry, but to protect the state from insurrection. Everything else is window dressing for public consumption.
That doesn't excuse Bush's inept handling of the situation.
So NO received more money than other states - whoop-de-doo. Did they get enough? Not according to the Corps of Engineers. Deal with the real issue, not the irrelevancies.
Sure, the money they did get got diverted to pork. The same Congressional fuckwads that signed the budget cutting the budget made sure the budget that was there got diverted. Standard politics in this fucked up country. I don't give a shit whether it was Demos or Pubs, but you can bet the Pubs were in on it just as much as the Demos - and Bush is a Pub. Deal with it.
And the FEMA response to the rest of the disaster area seems to be in line with their NO fuckup. So what's relevant about that?
This makes everything right with you?
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
well in an area where 100,000 people make less than 8,000 dollerd a year you have to wonderhow many of those are usein an alternitative browser.
the persons with disability accessibility act
makes such crap illegal
Sheesh! The gall of this guy astounds me a little more each day...
This isn't FEMA's fault. I've run into this idiocy at any number of sites, government and otherwise. It's the result of laziness and incompetence, and a sure indicator that whoever is running their computersystems out to be summarily fired for (1) abusing public trust and disenfranchising the citizenry, and (2) possible malfeasance and corruption in requiring users to financially support a private company by buying its software. It may not be intentional, but nevertheless the effect is the same, and whether the malfeasance is intentional or the result of negligence, the result is the same.
It is more likely +5 insightful and very very sad.
Nobody, not a single person, knew exactly what was going to happen up until after Katrina went through
Thats funny, it was in government reports only a few years ago. Just like the terrorism notes that were supposed to have been read when Bush got into office which didn't turn up until after 9/11.
It's obvious at this point that Bush is incompetent. He is incapable of reading the pre-digested reports he is handed. He cannot be trusted with appointing people now that it's been publicized that he appointed a guy whose sole achievement in life was to run a horse association into the ground and donate money to Bush to be the head of FEMA.
Not only that, but states requested mobilizing their national guards days before Katrina hit. With a category 5 storm in the Gulf, it was obvious to the governors that it was going to be BAD no matter where it landed, and that they'd need to be ready. Washington did not approve the mobilizations (required for the national guard to cross state lines in certain situations and capacities) until after Katrina hit, when those guardsmen would have been best stationed in the Gulf behind the hurricane to follow Katrina ashore, where they would have been there the instant Katrina moved away from the shore (if not sooner, assuming you believe the Guard exists to risk their lives to defend our country).
There's level upon level of fuckup here, and the federal government had their finger in everyone's pie, from the national guard's slow response to FEMA's inability to operate.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Per Slashdot article just a few days ago:
9 58220&tid=95&tid=17
Alternative Browsers Impede Investigations
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/01/1
Could it be that FEMA is just aligning itself with Law Enforcement and Homeland Security needs?
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
Well, well, well. More corporate welfare from the all time leaders. First the GOP had to give handouts to Haliburton in the form of Iraq infrastructure contracts. Now, even when you are a victim you are a victim. Pay the Microsoft tax in order to get your assistance. How many millions will MS collect off the misery of hurricane victims?
Bill and Steve have to be the biggest weasels of all time.
Microsoft, Gates, and Ballmer are big Republican contributors. http://www.buyblue.org/detail.php?corpId=143 Buyblue says Microsoft has a 44% "light red" rating, giving $1,142K in 2003-2004. Gates & Ballmer each gave the personal maximum of $2,000 to Bush. Gate's own personal donations are also light red.
Apple has a 99% dark blue rating from BuyBlue.org, giving $65K in 2003-2004. The individual donors at the top of the company are also "dark blue." http://www.buyblue.org/detail.php?corpId=99 Sun is light blue with a 57% rating, giving $89K in 2003-2004. http://www.buyblue.org/detail.php?corpId=145
[conspiracy on] So the artists, designers, and the "design-aware" that use Apple computers can't file a claim online. The thrifty, the independent, and the tech-minded who use Unix or for that matter even just Mozilla can't file a claim. Even folks who have older versions of IE have to upgrade, call in the middle of the night, or go without.
The Gates Foundation has pledged about $10M to The Discovery Institute. The Discovery Institute is evidently researching transportation when it is not promoting "Intelligent Design." http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/08/26/gates foundation/
[outright_paranoia on]
And why do you need to have javascript enabled? For FEMA spyware?
[outright_paranoia off]
[conspiracy off]
We don't need to knock down FEMA's doors this week with this topic, but we must oust a government that puts corporations before the people.
So THATs why they got there so late....... they had to clean up all the spyware infestations from the MS/Javascript/IE machines to figure out where .LA.US is...
You ( >50% ) stupid Americans. And you voted for Bush the second time. How many tears does a person have? And you can not plea incompetence after the Fahrenheit 9/11 movie.
There are sometimes more than two viewpoints on any given subject. Some people tend to forget this because the mainstream media will hardly ever give more than two. I just think it is important to point out that it is possible for a person to disagree with both the New York Times, and our current Fearless Leader.
But as they say, hindsight is 20/20, so it is easy to say we/they should have done this or that.
Regardless, it does seem that the people in charge made some mistakes. Perhaps there should be recriminations, but not until the current crisis is over with. And then you still have to ask what, if anything, have we learned from this, and how can we avoid these mistakes in the future.
I hate Liberals and Conservatives.
If you are a Liberal or a Conservative, then HAVE A NICE DAY!
Courage.