W3C Bars Public From Public Conference

xk0der writes "Danny Weitzner, one of the W3C's policy directors and event co-chair, repeatedly claimed in a follow up telephone conversation that, by "public," the W3C actually means "closed to the public." Weitzner was the person who personally barred my colleague from entering the conference." The story is worth a read- it's very strange. Personally I think this guy is just vying to replace Tony Snow at the White House.

Comments

public, who are invited

[Bizzeh]

its the same public as any other public thing like this... the general public can get an invite. but cannot walk in from the streets.

Re:public, who are invited

[Otter]

I was going to suggest that "public" means that discussions from the conference can be openly discussed afterwards, in contrast to some I've been to where the proceedings were confidential.

But maybe you're right. The article is so vague and makes so little effort to explain the W3C's side that it only really serves as a platform for flamebait, which is how Taco seems to have decided to use it.

Re:public, who are invited

[ShieldW0lf]

Maybe it's just your standard, plain jane corruption. It's in the right place.

Re:public, who are invited

[Anonymous Coward]

[the article] only really serves as a platform for flamebait, which is how Taco seems to have decided to use it.

slashdot is little more than a flamebait in itself anymore. gone are the days of honest technological discussion. when the politics section got put up i knew slashdot had jumped the shark.

Re:public, who are invited

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, in most countries, public means that the public can just walk in. It means open for everyone. The other invitation-only "Public", as you describe it is just the same as the Davos Conference hosted by the World Economic Forum. I think most people agree is NOT a very public Conference, although, they anyone who gets an invititation is welcome and they try to invite all who are relevant.

Re:public, who are invited

[Maxo-Texas]

And what's up with the "won't be open with the press there".

If the meeting can be discussed publicly after the meeting, then what they say is open to publication and discussion anyway.

Unless they keep no notes and do not record the 'public' meeting.

Re:public, who are invited

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been involved with W3C and can tell you first-hand Danny runs W3C like a personal fiefdom, an exclusive club of which he is the fuhrer. Steve Bratt, TimBL are great guys and they do not get into such things, but Danny is a real a**hole. Any current/former W3Cer would tell you that.

Re:public, who are invited

[Zeinfeld]

I have an advantage here since I am actually in the meeting. For the reasons Declan in particular would be excluded, see my blog. Declan has a history of deliberately misrepresenting statements, in particular he was the origin of the myth that Gore claimed to have invented the Internet. We are talking about using technology to support E-Government. Many of the speakers do not have permission to speak to the press. Others such as myself do have press speaking rights, but are not speaking for our companies. The history of why we built the Web 15 years ago are not something my employer would or should share. Anyone could attend the workshop, there isn't even an entry fee. All you had to do is to register in advance, to submit a position paper and to agree that the statements made are not for attribution. This is incidentally the press terms that the IETF operates on, we do not speak for our employers at the IETF.

Re:public, who are invited

[laughing rabbit]

Thanks for the clarity. Refreshing.

Re:public, who are invited

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. Public means "for the public" or "for everybody who cares".

The other thing, where you need permission to take part in something is usually called private, and for a good reason. It's like public domain vs. private property.

Re:public, who are invited

[Wavicle]

I believe this conference was "public as in beer" not "public as in speech."

That should clear it up for everyone.

Re:public, who are invited

[hesiod]

Well, thank god you're here to tell us why you left! Waitaminnit...

Re:public, who are invited

[PoderOmega]

Although I do understand that this was actually "by invitation only" and only the results were public, I think your argument that the reporter was known for misrepresentations is irrelevant. If there is a truly public you can't selectively throw out people who may or may not be total liars.

Re:public, who are invited

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, you ARE aware that Al Gore did, in fact, claim to have created the Internet? You must be, because the Snopes article you linked to points it out.

True, "creating" isn't quite the same as "inventing", but it's still a highly over-inflated claim and it's very easy to see how people could get the two confused.

But, hey, don't let the truth come in the way of slamming some guy who expected a public event to actually be, you know, PUBLIC.

Re:public, who are invited

[Zeinfeld]

True, "creating" isn't quite the same as "inventing", but it's still a highly over-inflated claim and it's very easy to see how people could get the two confused.

Gore appropriated the money for us. Without a legislative champion such as Gore the Internet would not exist in its current form. The NSF backbone would never have been funded.

Declan was fully aware that he misrepresented Gore at the time he did it. In Senate terms 'took the initiative' means that he was the lead person in getting the money into the bill.

Re:public, who are invited

[Zeinfeld]

Although I do understand that this was actually "by invitation only" and only the results were public, I think your argument that the reporter was known for misrepresentations is irrelevant. If there is a truly public you can't selectively throw out people who may or may not be total liars.

There are two issues here. First no press of any kind were invited so that people could speak off the record. Second the reason that no press was admitted was precisely because of journalists who follow their own agenda.

Declan failed on both counts.

If you are press, you are not the public.

Re:public, who are invited

[Anonymous Coward]

no press of any kind were invited so that people could speak off the record. When someone is only willing to speak while maintaining plausible deniability, why does anyone listen?

Re:public, who are invited

[Anonymous Coward]

"If you are press, you are not the public."

Please resign from the IETF, or whatever body you are part of.
I do not want such illucid thinking within a mile of any standards body.

Where the conference was hosted, constitutionally, everyone can be press.
If you do not want the press, you do not want anyone.

Re:public, who are invited

[putaro]

For the reasons Declan in particular would be excluded, see my blog.
Declan wasn't the reporter excluded. Anne Broache was the reporter excluded. Declan is reporting on her exclusion.

Why would Anne Broache, in particular, be excluded?

Re:public, who are invited

[geekoid]

if by "honest technological discussion" you mean Discussing petrified actress and grits, then you are correct.
If you mean "honest technological discussion" then you must have been someplace else.

I'm pretty sure post like your started on day 2.

Re:public, who are invited

[Reaperducer]

its the same public as any other public thing like this... the general public can get an invite. but cannot walk in from the streets.

It's not just the public. You'd be surprised how many times organizations will put out press releases inviting the media to cover an event, then when the media shows up they lock the doors and say it's a private event even though they sent dozens of faxed invitations and filled up your voice mail to make sure you're coming. Then they get pissed that no one covered their event and you get angry calls from their friends/family/colleagues/bosses/whatever demanding to know why you didn't cover the event and they blog about how bad the big evil media conspiracy is.

Bottom line: People are stupid and ill-informed.

Re:public, who are invited

[Reaperducer]

Many of the speakers do not have permission to speak to the press. Others such as myself do have press speaking rights

Geez... Welcome to Soviet Amerika.

Re:public, who are invited

[Reaperducer]

If you are press, you are not the public.

Since when? You sound like some P.R. flack. That attitude doesn't stand up in court. Public is public. It's been ruled dozens of times over in court cases about open records, open court proceedings, and open government meetings.

Re:public, who are invited

[Zeinfeld]

Many of the speakers do not have permission to speak to the press. Others such as myself do have press speaking rights

Geez... Welcome to Soviet Amerika.

One of the consequences of SEC regulation is that if you are an employee of a public company and speak to the press on behalf of the company you can get into real trouble if you say the wrong thing, as in cause a lawsuit.

Re:public, who are invited

[Anonymous Coward]

from the article:
making an event discussing government transparency less transparent was necessary because government officials could then speak more freely "without wondering how the press would interpret what they have to say."

this is just disingenuous. They are not worried about how the press will interpret what they say. They are worried that they will be held accountable for what they say.

Re:public, who are invited

[Archtech]

"Welcome to Soviet Amerika."

So you think it is repressive, or even Fascist, for companies to be allowed to choose when and how they make public announcements? In extreme cases, the consequences of a single unguarded statement by any employee of a company to any representative of the media can be utterly disastrous to that company - and its employees, shareholders, suppliers, and even customers.

That is why companies carefully choose public spokespersons, who usually have appropriate authority, knowledge, and training. The alternative to having closed meetings like this one would simply be not have any meetings at all.

The issue of whether the meeting should have been described as "public" is separate; that decision is hard to understand or justify. But it was a relatively minor mistake.

Re:public, who are invited

[Zeinfeld]

Anonymous Coward said

Please resign from the IETF, or whatever body you are part of. I do not want such illucid thinking within a mile of any standards body. Where the conference was hosted, constitutionally, everyone can be press. If you do not want the press, you do not want anyone.

Somewhat ironic that the comment would be posted as anonymous coward here. So he can speak off the record but nobody else should be allowed to.

anonymity has a place on the Internet, so do closed door meetings. The IETF, W3C and OASIS do not issue press credentials, they are working meetings, not opportunities for people to pimp their companies to the press.

The first meeting of the ASRG (anti-spam) at the SF IETF the then chair ran the whole meeting as a press opportunity for his own company. That is not the way a working group meeting is meant to work.

We have processes in which public comment is solicited and processes where private discussion takes place. In this case the meeting was public in the sense that you did not have to pay $6,000 or $60,000 to join W3C.

We did as a matter of fact have bloggers there, but they were talking about the technology of blogging, not blogging the meeting.

If we were going to do a press call it would have been an entirely different affair. Gingrich and Gore would probably have been invited to keynote, the presentations would have been describing technology that exists today, not technology we might create in the future.

Orwellian Doublespeak

[TheWoozle]

Weitzner, a lawyer and Washington insider before moving to the W3C, said making an event discussing government transparency less transparent was necessary because government officials could then speak more freely "without wondering how the press would interpret what they have to say." "There are times when in order to have an open exchange of ideas, you need to provide an off-the-record environment, which is what we did," Weitzner said.

So now we can add "Secrecy is Transparency" to the list.

Re:Orwellian Doublespeak

[UbuntuDupe]

Yes, so we have:

"public" means "non-public"

"secret" is "transparent", and, don't forget:

Weitzner was the person who personally barred my colleague from entering the conference."

"Personally barred" means "impersonally barred" ;-)

Re:Orwellian Doublespeak

[Kadin2048]

I can understand what they're doing, but calling it "public" is a load of crock. It's a closed session. They should call it that.

If you want to bar the press, bar the press -- but don't say it's a "public" meeting, because that's a bald-faced lie. (Anyone know how to translate that concept into Washingtonese?)

Re:Orwellian Doublespeak

[RingDev]

I'm not sure of the exact term, but I believe it would fall under a "Strategic Initiative" of some type.

-Rick

Re:Orwellian Doublespeak

[Aladrin]

"Bald-faced lie"? I think that translates to 'standard operating procedure' in Washingtonese.

Re:Orwellian Doublespeak

[TapeCutter]

BFL == Press release.

Re:Orwellian Doublespeak

[i_ate_god]

Public is an opposite of private. Thus, if the meeting is not held in secrecy behind closed doors, then it's public. Just because the average joe (like the submitter's colleague) can't actually attend the meeting doesn't mean the meeting is obscured, hidden, or otherwise, PRIVATE.

Re:Orwellian Doublespeak

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone know how to translate that concept into Washingtonese?

I could do it ... with a 2x4.

Re:Orwellian Doublespeak

[Kadin2048]

That doesn't make sense.

You're confusing a "private" meeting with a "secret" one.

If I have a 'private function,' of any sort, then it just means that it's not open to anyone who wants to come in. Generally, this means you have to be invited, or there's some other precondition for attendance. E.g., a wedding reception is usually a private or semi-private event. A private meeting would be one where the doors are closed, and only certain people can get in.

This is different from a "secret" meeting, where the very existence of the meeting itself was not disclosed.

The W3C was engaging in a private meeting, not a secret one.

Re:Orwellian Doublespeak

[smellsofbikes]

>because that's a bald-faced lie. (Anyone know how to translate that concept into Washingtonese?)

"marketing" or "advertising" or "spin" or "public relations" comes to mind.

Re:Orwellian Doublespeak

[abb3w]

So now we can add "Secrecy is Transparency" to the list.

Can we add "Assassination is a Political Contribution" yet?

Re:Orwellian Doublespeak

[mojomojoman]

So... it takes secrecy to ensure honesty? Thoughts and opinions can only be expressed openly if done in private? This is the same argument used by the White House in justifying its refusal to release the names of VP Cheney's energy task force attendees. Any third-grader--no offense to third graders-- would know it's just self-serving bull.

Re:Orwellian Doublespeak

[Captain Sarcastic]

The concept could be described as "supporting an inexactitude," but that nomenclature is no longer supported, as it did not include the possibility of surmise or supposition. The preferred reference would be "expressing something that is counter-factual," which would then be useful in that it would allow for an incorrect thing to not necessarily be a matter of blame.

Re:Orwellian Doublespeak

[Zeinfeld]

The W3C was engaging in a private meeting, not a secret one.

Actually it is a Web Science Research Institute Workshop that is sponsored by the W3C.

And Danny has not been at W3C for some time, he is at WSRI. The difference is likely to be easier to understand after WSRI has a building, see my proposal.

Re:Orwellian Doublespeak

[Anonymous Coward]

All this pointless and unfounded banter about how W3C is some sort of cabal, operating in the shadows, to keep the World out of the loop on web standards is just so silly.

Anyone who registered could have attended, and the CNet folk were not among them. It is simply sour grapes to throw a hissy fit about how you couldn't get into a meeting that you should have registered for, if you were so interested. But, like everyone else in America, we want our exceptional treatment, even though we were too boneheaded to think ahead. Way to go Declan! Get a life dumbass.

And for those of you who really have a bone to pick with W3C, please, do so. But if you are to have any credibility on the matter, you are obligated to inform yourself on the W3C process, and how it works. I am assuming, based on the comments I see around here, that very few mature commenters have actually done that.

Re:Orwellian Doublespeak

[TheWoozle]

You're right, but "Privacy is Transparency" doesn't have the same ring to it ;-)

Anyway, the underlying sentiment is the same. Having a private meeting, where the only thing the general public will be privy to is the final conclusions of the entire committee, is not transparent at all. A big part of the push for transparency is so we know what the decision makers really think...what their arguments are and *how* they reach their conclusions.

I daresay that the first-hand accounts of the constitutional congresses (who argued for what, and why) is as important and interesting as (and much more entertaining than!) the final document they produced.

When I was a little kid

[niceone]

When I was a little kid I was confused about this private / public thing... maybe the W3C have the same problem? My misunderstanding came from a misreading/mishearing (I forget which) of this phrase: "public hair".

Re:When I was a little kid

[niceone]

Wow, that is my most moderated post of all time! Stop it! It's just a little joke - not worth your points!

So far it has had (it's a bit hard to figure out there have been so many):
-1 overrated
-1 offtopic
+1 funny
+1 underated
+1 underated
-1 overrated
And now -1 Troll!

Call TBL

[xmedar]

He'll sort it out over a nice pot of tea, and perhaps some scones.

I, for one, welcome our...

[Anonymous Coward]

completely-backwards-talking Internet policy overlords. ;^>

-AC

Re:I, for one, welcome our...

[Anonymous Coward]

I welcome our double-minus unsane W3C minus uncontrolling double-plus reverse representatives.

Re:I, for one, welcome our...

[jagdish]

Ok, you may welcome them now. We can always bar them later when they arrive.

I warned them...

[eln]

This is the sort of thing that happens when you make announcements on Opposite Day.

Re:I warned them...

[sharkey]

Unless you're in a Boomerang Zone, whereupon the opposite'd announcement gets turned back to the original. Until someone bonks you with the Calvinball, anyway.

Single Paragraph

[AKAImBatman]

Weitzner, a lawyer and Washington insider before moving to the W3C, said making an event discussing government transparency less transparent was necessary because government officials could then speak more freely "without wondering how the press would interpret what they have to say."

And that pretty much sums up the entire event. As the invitations said, only the results of the event will be public. Thus the reporter in question is proving Weitzner's point by twisting the words to create this story.

Here's what the W3C page says:

Position papers received for the Workshop will be posted publicly on the Web. In addition, a final document summarizing the outcome of the Workshop and the suggested future actions, will be posted publicly. Conversations and results are public.

TFA quotes part of that and says, "SEE? SEE? It's a PUBLIC event!" No, it's an event about the public that will have its results published to the public. Nowhere does it say that the event is open to the public.

Sorry, there's no story here. Just lame reporters trying to make one.

Re:Single Paragraph

[shawnce]

It does state that the workshop doesn't require W3C membership but participants require registration... so did this reporter register? (note registration window closed on the 7th of June)

http://www.w3.org/2007/eGov/eGov-policy

"Space is limited and priority for registration is given to those who have submitted position papers. If you request registration without sending a position paper we suggest that you wait to make any non-refundable travel arrangements."
"W3C membership is not required in order to participate in the Workshop."
"The total number of participants will be limited. To ensure diversity, a limit might be imposed on the maximum number of participants per organization."

Re:Single Paragraph

[Jeff DeMaagd]

The article quotes the chairman as saying that reporters would have been turned away anyway.

Re:Single Paragraph

[Jeff DeMaagd]

If the results are truly so open, that makes me wonder why they don't want journalists. The stated reason quoted from the chairman doesn't really seem to cover it well enough.

Re:Single Paragraph

[Anonymous Coward]

Position papers received for the Workshop will be posted publicly on the Web. In addition, a final document summarizing the outcome of the Workshop and the suggested future actions, will be posted publicly. Conversations and results are public.

It seems to me that what they should have written was not "Conversations and results are public", but rather "Conversations and results will be made public".

People familiar with W3C process might automatically deduce the real meaning without even realising, but people unfamiliar with the W3C might not. Of course, because the reporter feels he was mistreated, he's turned this into a vendetta and is twisting this unclear language out of context to suit this purpose.

Re:Single Paragraph

[fataugie]

Conversations and results are public.


Except, isn't this exactly what wasn't going to be made public?

I don't really give a shit one way or the other. What pisses me off is that the guy in charge can't just say the truth. If you fucked up on the website, say so. You're not that good of a salesman to try that doubletalk bullcrap and get away with it.

Re:Single Paragraph

[TheRaven64]

To play devil's advocate, if I were organising an event like this with restricted space then I would rather every chair had someone who wanted to turn up and participate in it. Journalists are just there to tell other people what happened, not to contribute. If there was space left over, then maybe let some in, but don't exclude people with a contribution to make in favour of people who want to write about the contributions of others.

Re:Single Paragraph

[b.thompson]

Conversations and results are public. How can conversation be public unless the general public (or at least public with a genuine interest like journalists) are allowed to hear them? Unless they plan on releasing an audio and/or video recording of the whole event, or transcripts of what each and every person said, this very easily reads as being open to the public.

Re:Single Paragraph

[Anonymous Coward]

Because space was limited and they give preference to people who have something to say.

Re:Single Paragraph

[shawnce]

"Jointly sponsored by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI), this workshop will bring together government officials, computer scientists and other academics specializing in both technical and legal eGovernment issues, leaders in the Web standards community, as well as a wide range of companies providing products and services in the government marketplace." (http://www.w3.org/2007/eGov/eGov-policy-cfp)

I don't see reporters or general public listed. So turning away reporters, etc. is inline with the call for participation and further supported by the statement about limited space and hence limiting participation.

Re:Single Paragraph

[Anonymous Coward]

No. RTFA, moron.

"There are times when in order to have an open exchange of ideas, you need to provide an off-the-record environment, which is what we did,"

The point was to have discussions between the government and W3C which were NOT public. Just like the energy policy discussions, the budget discussions, the Iraq war planning and every other thing the "democratic" government does.

Re:Single Paragraph

[Intron]

But the reason he gave was not limited space, it was to allow government attendees to talk freely.

If you really want to enlarge your audience, why would you exclude journalists? The real reason was to limit the scope, not to broaden it.

Re:Single Paragraph

[oh_my_080980980]

Hey moron...it said it was a public event on W3C site.

And WTF is, "...an event about the public?" Nice job pulling that one out of your ass.

Stop apologizing you troll. There was no reason to bar the report and even one W3C member, stated in the article, thought it would be fine.

Re:Single Paragraph

[AKAImBatman]

How did you ever get a +1 bonus with posts like that?

I quoted the W3C site in my post. If you don't believe me, look again. That exact same quote appears in TFA. Neither place explicitly says it was a public event. It says that the results of the event will be public. The reporter then twisted those words to make it sound like it was a public event that wasn't public.

I dare you to prove me wrong.

Re:Single Paragraph

[wytcld]

The excuse for turning the reporter away:

There are times when in order to have an open exchange of ideas, you need to provide an off-the-record environment, which is what we did.

The session announcement:

Conversations and results are public.

So: the off-the-record environment will encourage conversations which will subsequently be made public. WTF? On complete analysis, this looks just as screwy as on first glance. People will say things on the understanding that the whole conversation is scheduled to be transcribed and published publicly, but wouldn't say those things with a reporter in the room? Why? The only difference a reporter might make is if the reporter manages to ask a revealing question from the floor. That would make sense: They didn't want any probing questions that didn't match their agenda.

However, instead of making an honest explanation of this, they made an excuse that either is a lie, or if the truth, shows their conference announcement was fraudulent.

Re:Single Paragraph

[Yacob]

I'm writing from the conference itself. I walked in without prior registration and without a problem. I gave my company name and was waved through, two of my coworkers had registered so that *may* have helped. Seating is definitely limited and water, coffee breaks, and lunch are provided so I can understand the organizers wanting to have a head count and requiring registration -thats just basic planning.

Re:Single Paragraph

[laughing rabbit]

If only those calling themselves reporters were actually reporting. These days they cherry pick a few phrases, or even just a word or two here and there, mash it into something that be be played as a sensational sound bite, and then opine about it until a misconception is spread world wide.

I don't blame them for keeping the slugs out. At least they would have a tougher time distorting a transcript of the meeting.

Re:Single Paragraph

[geek2718]

Not only that, but the poor reporter can't even figure out what the Nat'l Academies are. The building is _not_ a federal building any more than say, Lockheed Martin, is a federal building. Both Natl Academies and Lockheed do large amounts of work for the government, but they aren't directly part of it. (See for example http://www.nationalacademies.org/about/faq1.html) There is a big difference. It hardly matters here, but it is one more reason to discount this rant.

Re:Single Paragraph

[Anonymous Coward]

Now why would anyone who wanted to encourage discussion include journalists? Do journalists have some God-given function that overrides all other interests? The CFP stated clearly what the function of the workshop was, and there was not a single word about ensuring that non-contributors to the eGov arena have a ring-side seat to the candid discussions of those who actually worked or had abiding interest in the subject matter. Some times you don't get to see everything that happens in grown-up meetings. Get over it!

Re:Single Paragraph

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. It seems this was simply too ambiguous, but it has nothing to do with the fact registration was required, and no amount of carping or quibbling will change that fact. Declan's rant is sour grapes, and should just be ignored.

/ignore declan

Re:Single Paragraph

[cycoj]

Bullshit! Read the conference announcement http://www.w3.org/News/2007#item96

2007-05-15: Toward More Transparent Government: Workshop on eGovernment and the Web will be held 18-19 June in Washington, D.C., USA, at the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. Attendees, invited speakers and panelists will discuss how the Web works for citizens and governments and how it can best achieve their goals. Co-sponsored by W3C and the Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI), the Workshop is free and open to all but registration is required. The deadline was extended to 22 May for position papers which are strongly encouraged. Read the press release, the report of the first W3C eGovernment symposium, and about Workshops.

It says open to all, where does it say open to all except for journalists? I agree on the fact that the reporter should probably have registered, however given that the organizer said they wouldn't have let the reporter in anyways, it doesn't seem to be the reason why they would not let her in. Cyco

W3C's purpose?

[jrumney]

Public or not, what exactly is the W3C doing organizing a conference on Government Transparency in the first place? Shouldn't they be working towards the next set of standards for the Web or something? Or are they losing focus and trying to become the regulators of everything that touches the Web?

Re:W3C's purpose?

[RingDev]

That's my question as well. Who cares about some government official's anonymity. It's the W3C, not a senate judiciary hearing.

-Rick

Re:W3C's purpose?

[Vandilizer]

What is the point of working towards the next set of standards if no one is currently up to or following the ones already in place?

They need something to do in there spare time...

Re:W3C's purpose?

[Lumpy]

Nope, they are working on their plan to sue web browser viewers in order to pay royalties to the poor web artists.

They are going to start by suing grandmothers and children found to be sharing the dangerous links to their artists' intellectual property.

Re:W3C's purpose?

[RingDev]

Web compliance through legislation?!?

'Cause them tubes need laws!

-Rick

Re:W3C's purpose?

[Vandilizer]

We tried that with Micro$oft but they just turned around a bought all the politicians.

Re:W3C's purpose?

[rifter]

We tried that with Micro$oft but they just turned around a bought all the politicians.

Which might have been the real goal in the first place. Before the Microsoft trial Microsoft did not hire lobbyists. Now they have lobbyists in Washington and make regular political contributions like everyone else. They basically learned to "play ball" and the politicians not only left them alone, but starting doing things for them.

Re:W3C's purpose?

[Kopretinka]

Public or not, what exactly is the W3C doing organizing a conference on Government Transparency in the first place? Shouldn't they be working towards the next set of standards for the Web or something? Or are they losing focus and trying to become the regulators of everything that touches the Web?

It was a workshop, not a conference - difference not only in size. The W3C organizes workshops in order better to judge where standards work should be going, or where the W3C should provide guidance.

The W3C is a standards body that thinks, as opposed to other standards bodies that just provide the name and a voting process.

Access descriptors

[Applekid]

Couldn't they just call it a protected conference and get a conference that's private to the unwashed masses and public to objects of types that are friends of W3C? I mean, that's what the keyword is there for.

Re:W3C and cuisine

[jofny]

That rocked.

How is government transparency a W3C issue?

[Anonymous Coward]

The internet is what it is because of the absence of government. The WC3 should be touting technical standards that allow the internet to continue with as little government interference as possible.

It seems they are embracing the beast. Their dance with the devil is turning them into yet another bureaucracy.

I suspect at the end of the day, the WC3 will be protecting their position by cozying up to the world's governments, to enable the spies, censors, do-gooders, and know-betters, destroying our new frontier and turning it into another picket-fenced suburb.

P.S. I am for complete transparency.

Yawn. Power corrupts, next please.

[pla]

by "public," the W3C actually means "closed to the public."

Although I will completely agree this behavior sounds like an egregious example of doublespeak, I can't help but ponder...

"So what?"

All of my own web pages still start with "<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN">", which I consider just about the last thing the W3C did of any significance to the rest of the world outside their own little social/political clique. If they want to hold opaque conferences on government transparency, let 'em. No one really cares what they do anymore.

Should I also feel outraged that Calvin won't let Susie join the GROSS club? Ill-behaved little boys gloating in their personal positions of power, nothing more.

I, for one, welcome our...

[Will the Chill]

apparently-insane double-speak W3C overlords.

-WtC

Seems like

[cs668]

there is at least one douchebag in every organization :-(

Typical

[Anonymous Coward]

This is typical of of the clarity of communication for which W3C specs are famous. No wonder we can't agree on web standards.

Closed to reporters ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't the same as closed to the public. Saying reporters are not welcome at an event isn't the same as saying the public isn't.

But the article is right, if that was the intent the W3C should have come out and said it in the conference materials. It would be pretty hard to justify the reasoning, because it does look weird when everything else about the conference is public, but they still should have said it rather than let reporters find out the hard way. For one thing, you *know* that their exclusion would then become the story for the reporters, so it is going to backfire if you hide the fact.

Re:Closed to reporters ...

[Anonymous Coward]

In a world where everyone can have a blog, and thus everyone can be a journalist, is barring journalists from an event not the same as barring the public?

Re:Closed to reporters ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Only in the same sense that politicians are also eligible voters, for example.

If you bar politicians from an event, can the politician angrily declare that voters are being unfairly excluded from the event? I say no. The fact that any voter can theoretically become a politician is also irrelevant. It woudl still be a distortion and exaggeration of what the actual situation is (no politicians). Personally, I think of "reporter" as someone who is paid to report -- it's their job -- even though you are quite right that any joe could have a blog and perform some of the same functions.

If the author of this article wanted to complain that it wasn't fair to exclude all reporters from a so-called "public" event, or even use the argument that you have (that you don't have to be an official "reporter" to do the same thing, so what's the point), that's reasonable. But to insinuate it was some individual special treatment they were getting, and to obfuscate the actual nature of the exclusion is silly.

As other people have commented, the reporter's failure to clarify the situation doesn't exactly speak to the quality of their reporting. It's a badly-written and confusing article, and might partially justify the whole point of the exclusion in the first place (not individually, but in general).

Article is painfully vague

[Short Circuit]

The article...er...blog entry is painfully vague, and even the summary fails to include a link to the W3Cs comments. Am I supposed to take a blogger's comments at face value, with only a few choice out-of-context quotes?

There better be a Slashback article in response to this...

Re:Article is painfully vague

[dhasenan]

First time I've ever heard a slashdotter asking for a dupe.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Black is #ffffff

[Anonymous Coward]

white is #000000

I'm waiting for the private one so I can attend

[erroneus]

"Danny Weitzner, one of the W3C's policy directors and event co-chair, repeatedly claimed in a follow up telephone conversation that, by "public," the W3C actually means "closed to the public." Should I not then be able to assume that by "private" he would mean "open to the public."?

Re:I'm waiting for the private one so I can attend

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that means closed to the private.

Re:FUCK YOU, TACO

[Anonymous Coward]

He just knows the moderators would have a field day with his karma. Gotta whore it somehow.

Weitzner is a bonehead

[woboyle]

Time to change the "guard" at the W3C methinks. Idiots like this don't help in the promulgation of what are supposed to be open standards, and if there are govt. officials that are reticent to speak up in a truly public forum I can only ask them "Who do you think pays your salaries?".

you're farming

[Programmer_In_Traini]

I think you're just farming for karma.

Of course the FA says documents will be public and the results and all that, but the point of the FA and the point of this discussion for that matter is why go through the trouble of making all that public if you're going to keep the public out of it.

We're gonna be passed the results without having to say our word on it.

its as if the GPL wasn't really open source, sure its open, here's the pseudo code and the graph depicting how it works but we're gonna keep the actual one so we can model it the way we want. That's making it public, no ?

and that's Weitzner's whole point.

there's more than meet the eye here, clouded by political dust imo

Re:you're farming

[AKAImBatman]

I think you're just farming for karma.

Bullshit. I happen to be one of the few people around here that cares about the truth. And the truth is that this story (and many others) are overblown non-events.

Of course the FA says documents will be public and the results and all that, but the point of the FA and the point of this discussion for that matter is why go through the trouble of making all that public if you're going to keep the public out of it.

Because it's a meeting of minds, not a public event. It simply isn't a secret event. I don't see why that's so difficult to understand.

Lets say you and I attend the event. We talk about a great way of solving the problem of filing taxes electronically. (To pull an example out of thin air.) In some conferences, this information would be confidential to the attendees. In this case, you and I could talk to the public about our ideas and possibly get feedback.

Why is that difficult to understand?

Re:you're farming

[Maxo-Texas]

I believe you.

There is a certain truthiness to what you say.

Re:you're farming

[jc42]

Of course the FA says documents will be public and the results and all that, but the point of the FA and the point of this discussion for that matter is why go through the trouble of making all that public if you're going to keep the public out of it.

Actually, there's a great deal of precedent for this sort of approach. For example, the folks who developed usenet learned very early that they needed "moderated" discussions. For those not familiar with the term, this means a discussion that is visible to the public, but all contributions are sent to a central "cabal" for clearance.

Without some approach like this, many discussions simply can't happen. One case that I saw a lot of was biological news. In an open forum, even the slighted mention of anything that touched on evolution would elicit a torrent of the same sort of religious stuff that bogs down such stories here. This would bury any attempt at a scientific discussion. Serious biologists responded by adopting the moderation approach everywhere. In a few cases, they went so far as to try to restrict distribution of some groups (mostly those related to evolution), because some religious people would go to great lengths to pose as a biologist to get entry, and then flood the moderators with huge piles of religious tracts, making the moderators' job impossible.

Similar things turn up in political discussions all the time. I haven't seen them for a while, but back in the 90s, there was a gang (centered in Turkey as I recall) that wrote software to scan for keywords and phrases ("Armenian genocide" and "Kurd" were two), and post floods of fairly incomprehensible flames in response. This made open discussion of just about any Middle-Eastern topic impossible unless you effectively restricted participation to those willing to cooperate. I remember a funny case on an admin list, where someone tried starting a discussion of the general problem, and included a few examples of keywords (as I just did). The result was that the group suddenly went from around 10 messages per day to several thousand, as the political tracts were repeatedly posted from a large number of different sources.

Needless to say, many religious discussions take place on very restricted lists. Otherwise, they couldn't take place at all.

In some cases, you want the discussions private, with only a few summaries made public. This may be to protect the identities of the participants, or it may be just because the interminable discussions are deemed not worth the waste of bandwidth or disk space. In other cases, you can make the entire discussion public, but just restrict membership. In any case, there are often very good reasons for taking such steps.

It's easy to see why someone dealing with a hot-button topic (in some circles) like Net Neutrality might want to discuss things quietly, out of the public spotlight, even if the intent is to publish all the conclusions.

Now to see if my use of a few keywords elicits a flood of political tracts out of that Turkish gang ...

Re:you're farming

[Anonymous Coward]

> but back in the 90s, there was a gang (centered in Turkey as I recall) that wrote software to scan for keywords and phrases ("Armenian genocide" and "Kurd" were two), and post floods of fairly incomprehensible flames in response.

Serdar Argic was hardly a gang, just one guy with a bot. When anatolia got UDP'd, Argic was shut up for good.

Re:you're farming

[jc42]

Serdar Argic was hardly a gang, just one guy with a bot.

Well, I've sometimes wondered about the facts. I'd concluded that it looked like the work of a very small gang with some bots and possibly an early version of what we now call zombie botnets. But I don't recall seeing good evidence that it was only one person. I don't know if you could distinguish that case from just catching one guy, and his buddies all deny any knowledge.

Not that it matters that much. The religious harassment of biological discussions is probably usually done by one or a handful of people, but with a bit of computer help, it doesn't take a lot of people to bog down a forum into uselessness.

In the current topic, it's a bit odd to read comments by people who don't have any idea why a group that wants to be open and public might find it necessary to have private discussions and only make the conclusions public. In only a few decades, the Internet has accumulated a lot of experience with "public" discussions, and we've learned a lot about the potential pitfalls. Some topics just can't be discussed sanely in an open, public forum, because a very small group (or a bit of software) can easily shout everyone else down.

Re:Yawn. Power corrupts, next please.

[nagora]

All of my own web pages still start with "<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN"&gt>", which I consider just about the last thing the W3C did of any significance to the rest of the world outside their own little social/political clique.

Actually, I tend to think of that as the first sign that they'd gone off the rails. Since all HTML docs started with <HTML> already, the doctype is a pointless piece of text. The correct modification would have been to allow <HTML version="3.2"> instead. I mean, what type of document did they expect to find inside HTML tags?

TWW

ill be a man about it

[Programmer_In_Traini]

At least ill be a man about it and ill say that i responded too quickly, you were absolutely right.

I read the whole thing diagonally and miss the part that sais prior registration was required but membership not required for registration.

So, there you go, im sorry. i just happen to sort of sensitive about all the net neutrality stuff and government trying to regulate the internet. when i first read the thing, it didnt feel right.

Re:ill be a man about it

[AKAImBatman]

No worries. Apology accepted. :)

Are they even relevant at this point?

[JasonWM]

I think everyone would agree that the W3C needs to seriously change their methods and their leadership. I can't think of an orginization that has a more waning influence.

The standards put forth by the W3C are nothing more than "guidelines" and everyone changes their web-design to accomodate their needs, with only passing interest in conformance. All someone needs to verify this is look for the W3C images on websites. No one looks and I think most don't care. While it would be nice for everyone to practice compliance with some standard, that won't happen until it is forced, which seems to be simply impossible at this point for a variety of reasons.

Re:Yawn. Power corrupts, next please.

[Arimus]

Other than the fact servers can server more than just html docs?

I do agree though that sticking it in SEEMS like redundant information/duplication but the two tags serve different roles in life...

The HTML tag tells the browser this is the start of the html section of the document, render everything between here and the closing tag as html.
The doctype tag tells the browser what sort of document to expect - HTML, XML, FREDSNEWDOCTYPE etc.

Re:Yawn. Power corrupts, next please.

[Anonymous Coward]

That URL is prettyu important too. For instance if you point to 3.2 some browsers (IE 6.0, I'm looking at you) will revert to an earlier, retarded way of interpreting the code. 4.0 Strict all the way!

Article Quote

[wdr1]

Weitzner, a lawyer and Washington insider before moving to the W3C, said making an event discussing government transparency less transparent was necessary because government officials could then speak more freely "without wondering how the press would interpret what they have to say."

Seems straight forward enough to me...

-Bill

Re:Article Quote

[Stumbles]

Yeah. Sounds like some government officials want to know how they can pull some shenanigans away from public view.

The internet sucks!

[billcopc]

This sort of sneaky behavior is like a big billboard on Wall Street saying "For auction: W3C, ICANN and other dirty rotten entities"

To everyone outside the USA, it seems obvious that there is no way a "neutral" organization can honestly survive within US borders. We don't necessarily care who runs it, as long as it's not Americans. It's not the American people that are the problem, it's the rampant cutthroat business attitude that spoils everything, in the land where everything has its price, and corporations are virtually immune from prosecution, as long as they know how to hand out bribes. Given the huge amount of money in internet ventures, the W3C is a prime target for manipulation and doing things behind closed doors is just proof that they have stuff to hide.

Re:The internet sucks!

[Anonymous Coward]

We invented it, so fuck you, build your own.

Clue: everything has it's price everywhere. Even in whatever lala land you live in.

I can NOT believe you talk about bribes like it only happens in America. At least in America we try to end it, many countries bribing is the NORM and expected.

The Doctor sez:

[Tumbleweed]

"Inflammable means flammable? What a country!"

Re:The Doctor sez:

[jc42]

"Inflammable means flammable? What a country!"

Yeah; and by country I assume you mean Merry Old(e) England, since "inflammable" dates to the mid-1300s. The shortened form "flammable"
wasn't invented for five more centuries, in the mid-1800s.

Similarly, doctors treat inflammations, not flammations. And politicians
make inflammatory remarks about their opponents, not flammatory remarks.

And when something has finished burning, it has been incinerated, not
cinerated. This use of in- as a prefix meaning "in" or "into", goes
way back to Latin. English did make it a bit confusing by also using
in- as a negative. The two in- prefixes have different etymologies.

Not that this helps much. Pity the poor foreigner trying to learn
our insane language. ;-)

(And nobody has yet pointed out that we drive on parkways and park
on driveways.)

Re:The Doctor sez:

[rthille]

Oh pleaze, our language isn't insane...

It's just a _tool_ for making _people_ insane. :-)

415 response

[trolltalk.com]

Actually, he got an rfc2616 415 response - "Unsupported Media Type".

The rest of us got a 417 response - "Expectation Failed"

Re:Yawn. Power corrupts, next please.

[nagora]

The doctype tag tells the browser what sort of document to expect - HTML, XML, FREDSNEWDOCTYPE etc.

Yeah, right. It's a web browser, if it's not expecting HTML then it needs fixed. The mime-type is already there to indicate other document types are being served. It's just more XML wank.

TWW

Re:Yawn. Power corrupts, next please.

[ben there...]

Since all HTML docs started with already, the doctype is a pointless piece of text. The correct modification would have been to allow instead. I mean, what type of document did they expect to find inside HTML tags?

HTML, or some other derivative of SGML, such as XML. See HTML DTD.

Oh boy...

[Minute Work]

Personally I think this guy is just vying to replace Tony Snow at the White House.

Are the comments areas getting so full of Daily KOS 1-liners that they need to be spilled over into the headlines too?

I expect that kind of thing in the forums, but it doesn't belong in my RSS feed.

Re:Oh boy...

[phoenix.bam!]

I found that line pretty annoying. The summary itself is factually incorrect about the W3C event and to follow up with an insult to a W3C member is plain rude. That "zinger" is calling the person a liar when he did no such thing. This slashdot story needs a major editorial update including an apology.

Re:Oh boy...

[Zonekeeper]

You must be new here. Either the editors feel that they need to tow the average slashdotter's 3rd grade bash America bash Bush line, or they believe the same crap too. So their either easily manipulated, hard-up for acceptance from the lamer crowd, or they are on the the same level as said crowd. All reasons are sad, with some scarier than others. At any rate, welcome to Slashdot.

Re:Oh boy...

[Anonymous Coward]

True.. I can't stand political stabs for the sake of doing them. Its childish and inappropriate. Leave your politics for something labeled "Politics".

Re:Oh boy...

[Minute Work]

Thanks for the regards. I'm not too new and am well-aware of the mentality of which you speak. I think it's one thing for such remarks to be in the comments area, but quite unnecessary for them to be stapled to the news headline (especially when it wasn't all that funny to begin with).

Imagine if every website was so inclined:

Popular Science
Archaeologists uncover door to tomb that has been closed to man for over 3000 years
-That's almost as long as Hillary's thighs have been closed to man!

Re:Oh boy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly right.

Re:Yawn. Power corrupts, next please.

[ubernostrum]

Yeah, right. It's a web browser, if it's not expecting HTML then it needs fixed.

Several things:

• The DOCTYPE directive is an SGML construct; HTML (up through version 4) is an SGML application, and the DOCTYPE directive is (one method) used to indicate to SGML tools how they should process a given document.
• Web browsers are expected to handle a variety of SGML- and XML-derived (and XML is itself an SGML application) formats already, including things like RSS and Atom feeds and SVG images, as well as arbitrary XML with XSL stylesheets defining display.
• Web browsers are not the only types of applications which process these types of documents.
• Web browsers are expected to be able to save copies of retrieved documents to disk, after which users may invoke other local applications to process them.
• Unrelated to these concerns, most web browsers (including all of the "popular" ones) are able to switch from a backwards-compatible "quirks mode" which is intended for legacy documents to a more modern "standards mode" for documents which follow the HTML and CSS specifications more closely; the switch is accomplished by looking at the DOCTYPE directive (which made quite a lot of sense originally, since only people who'd bothered to follow the specifications would include it correctly).

So, on the whole, using the DOCTYPE directive as is conventional in SGML (or the XML prolog as is conventional in XML) is a good thing and helps make lots of stuff work better.

In Soviet America...

[Anonymous Coward]

...government makes you transparent!

Re:Yawn. Power corrupts, next please.

[jc42]

Since all HTML docs started with already, the doctype is a pointless piece of text.

Well, if you think of HTML as a one-off creation unrelated to anything else in the universe, you're right. But actually, HTML is a dialect of SGML (and not a very well-conforming dialect, either). SGML had been around for some decades by the time HTML was devised, and HTML was consciously designed as a special case of SGML.

That <!DOCTYPE ...> thingy is a standard SGML declaration stating information that clues SGML software in about where it can find the specs for the language used inside the <html> tag. Granted, the HTML folks could have included a version number, but that wouldn't have handled the problem that standards-compliant SGML software wouldn't recognize the contents of the <html> tag as a form of SGML. By adding that DOCTYPE tag at the beginning, a HTML doc became usable by SGML software. For a few years, anyway, until HTML started degenerating into the mess it is today.

Of course, most of the web crowd has never heard of SGML. Web developers went through all the pain of reinventing decades of software, due to their ignorance of (or contempt for) the efforts of the SGML crowd. The result was something that really isn't SGML-compliant, and the good intentions of the DOCTYPE tag were pretty much lost. That's the way the software biz works, mostly.

As someone who has written a fair amount of software to extract data from web pages, I'd agree that the DOCTYPE is somewhat pointless now. I do write code to parse it if it's there, and extract some useful info. But my code doesn't really "believe" it, because once you pass the <html> tag, all hell breaks loose, and there really aren't any reliable standards. The code just has to take such things as hints, and do its best to try to decipher the encoding that was actually used. Thus, that //EN is very often a lie; the text isn't always restricted to the English (i.e., 7-bit ASCII/ANSI) char set. So the code should try to figure out whether bytes above 0x7F were intended as 8859-1 or Windows-1252 or UTF-8 or whatever characters.

Oh, and I've seen <html version=...> tags. They are usually also lies.

It's all just a big example of the general contempt for standards.

Run!

[Klowner]

He's an Ori!

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c8/Prio r_4_(Beachhead).jpg

Kind of like MIT's false "openness"?

[sethstorm]

Given the person's stated background, I'm not even the least bit surprised he reached this conclusion. That being, that as someone's educational background is more exposed to restricted admissions universities such as MIT, the more they want to implement that as an end-run around the public. The only clear misinformation out of this was with the W3C.

Now, could someone have informed him clearly about who foots the bills for the building? It's not like it's run by a organization who insists on a large Far Eastern presence.

Re:Kind of like MIT's false "openness"?

[Otter]

Out of curiosity, why are you so obsessed with MIT?

Reporters and Transparency

[Anonymous Coward]

Since it would seem that reporters are vital to transparency in government, how can one justify not having reporters at a meeting regarding transparency in government? It would seem to me that people vital to the discussion are being deliberately excluded to secure the participation of politicians. Transparency clearly runs counter to the interests of the latter group, yet is essential for former.

Article a little overboard? paranoid?

[hanshotfirst]

I can understand the director's point - to get government officials to speak freely, they need assurance that their words won't be twisted into something that kills their funding/votes/public image/whatever.
I can understand the point of the article - public!=not public. The description of the meeting was confusing at best, misleading at worst.
Where the article lost credibility for me was the rant on location (more than once). Yes, it is in a federal building, payed for with taxpayer dollars. That does not imply that it is open to the public merely by its purpose. The pentagon is a federal building, payed for with taxpayer dollars. Does that imply anyone can waltz in there and listen in on any-old-meeting-they-please? (I concede the difference: the pentagon never advertises its meetings as "public")
I sense a little over-reaction here.

Reminicent of Bilderberg meetings

[CokoBWare]

The Bilderberg group says that the meetings are closed to the public because they want free and candid discussions without the fear of the press twisting their words. In actuality, it's a forum where the world's 100 most powerful and influential people get together and make plans for us peons.

Sounds like W3C is using a page out of the Bilderberg textbook. For shame.

Transparent Government

[KlomDark]

As in "Transparent Sticky Tape", or NOT as in "Able to see through walls in order to observe the government."

In other words: So you are unable to see what the government is doing. So they can sneak around behind your back and do bad things to you.

Ambiguity, publicity and patheticy

[Roadkills-R-Us]

The text in that paragraph is certainly ambiguous; it can easily mean either that the conversations are to take place publicly, or that they will be made public, with no clear definition of when that is to take place (in that paragraph).

Give that part of the reason for the event appears to be for government officials to speak freely, I can easily see why they would want to limit participation and observation, especially by the media. Everyone has to decide for themselves whether that's good or bad, but it's very logical. For some time now it has been dangerous for government workers to be honest, especially in public. (Anyone attempting to blame a single administration or party for that is, IMO, an utter fool. It's pandemic.)

There may or may not be a story here, but it's not the one the OP quoted. That's just noise from a media person with a chip on their shoulder.

Liberalism is a Mental Disorder

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot has nothing to do with tech... its just a bunch of angry liberal trolls taking pot shots at America. Losers

English, the Crazy Language

[falconwolf]

English did make it a bit confusing by also using in- as a negative. The two in- prefixes have different etymologies.

Not that this helps much. Pity the poor foreigner trying to learn our insane language. ;-)

English, as such a Crazy Language, may be the hardest language for nonspeakers to learn. Afterall if the pural of "tooth" is "teeth" then why isn't the plural of "booth" "beeth"? Then again Chinese is pretty difficult as well, as is Japanese. Written Chinese has more than 66,000 ideograms representing words. Then there are 3 major methods of Romanizatization, writing Chinese with the Roman alphabet, Pinyin, Wade Giles, and Yale. And that's just for written Chinese, spoken is totally different. There isn't 1 spoke Chinese. There are a number of different ones, the two most common are Mandarin and Cantonese, with Mandarin the official spoken language in China and Formosa, often called Tiawan. And while Japanese has one spoken language, it has at least two written systems, though I don't recall what they are now.

Falcon

Oh, in going back to English some have noticed my spelling of "time" as "tyme", this spelling is an Old English spelling.

Re:English, the Crazy Language

[jc42]

English ... may be the hardest language for nonspeakers to learn.

Some time back, in another forum I asked about this. English seems to be a close competitor of both Japanese and Korean. In all three cases, this seems to be mostly due to their illogical, only-slightly-phonetic writing systems. English may be the most annoying one of the three, because all the other European languages have had major spelling reforms in the past century or so that gave them decent spelling systems. The only holdout is English, whose spelling is a messed-up historic artifact long overdue for total revision. And it really wouldn't be all that difficult, though there would be a significant period of overlap, as happened with all the other languages.

There isn't 1 spoke Chinese. There are a number of different ones, ...

Actually, linguists routinely dispute this. "Chinese language" is a term on a par with "Romance language" or "Germanic language". "Chinese" is about a dozen closely-related languages. Calling them all "Chinese" is a lot like calling French, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and Romanian all just "Latin".

The Chinese languages are sort of the opposite of the old saying that a language is a dialect with its own army. This explains why, for instance, Ukrainian is considered a different language from Russian, although they are (mostly) mutually comprehensible. But in China, there's a single government controlling the areas where all these languages are spoken, so people pretend that they're all just dialects of "Chinese".

And while Japanese has one spoken language, it has at least two written systems, though I don't recall what they are now.

Actually, they have four: Kanji, Hirogana, Katakana, and Romaji. And they mix them all together in the same sentence or on the same sign. ;-)

Re:English, the Crazy Language

[Anonymous Coward]

lol, read up on atleast the wikipedia entry for Japanese.

Hiragana and Katakana represent the exact same pronounciations. Katakana being used to write 'foreign' words; hiragana used for regular japanese. Kanji are the chinese characters that were borrowed. They are used because writing in hiragana tends to produce very long sentences. Ro~maji is just writing japanese using *english* characters.

Re:English, the Crazy Language

[UbuntuDupe]

Afterall if the pural of "tooth" is "teeth" then why isn't the plural of "booth" "beeth"? Then again Chinese is pretty difficult as well, as is Japanese.

Yeah, what a bitch that English still keeps a few irregular plurals. Never mind that French also has irregular plurals. Never mind that French has irregular *adjectives*. Never mind that French verbs have more distinct forms, so there's more to remember about a verb irregularity. Never mind that French orthography itself is pretty messed up (last four consonants are optional!).

Among European languages, English is about alone in:

-only having declension for pronouns
-no noun gender
-how few forms there are for each verb

Sorry, [/rant]

Re:English, the Crazy Language

[Jesus_666]

Well, they also write English words in katakana*, especially loanwords and [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasei-eigo]pseud o-Anglicisms[/url]. Japanese has a lot of loanwords, which usually get shortened - for example the Japanese word for part-time work is "arubaito", derived from the German word for work, "Arbeit". The informal version would be "baito". And yes, the word is written with [url=http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%A2%E3%83% AB%E3%83%90%E3%82%A4%E3%83%88]/.-unprintable characters[/url]. And yes, they do mix and match all four alphabets.

* Or hiragana. Or phonetic kanji. Or any of them, interchangably.

Re:English, the Crazy Language

[jc42]

Actually, it's fairly well understood by linguists that all "natural" human languages have approximately the same amount of "complexity" (however you like to define that). English threw out most of the old Indo-European inflection system (noun cases, verb tenses, gender markers, etc.), but it trade, it has an unusually large number of irregularities in what is left. Most common nouns have irregular plurals, most common verbs have irregular past tense forms, etc.

The only real exceptions to this general pattern are 1) languages like modern Hebrew, which was revived from the dead in the midst of a war back in the late 1940s, and they didn't have the patience to master the full complexity of the classical languages; or 2) artificial languages like Swahili, Malay, and Esperanto, which were designed to be simple and regular. But give them a thousand years, and if they survive, they'll be just as complex as "normal" human languages. There's a certain amount of complexity that the human mind can handle, and our languages all end up that complex.

The main reason that English, Chinese, Japanese and Korean are considered more complex and difficult to learn is their writing systems. Most languages have a fairly simple phonetic (or phonemic) writing system, with only a few irregularities. Those languages are burdened with writing systems that are crufty mixtures of several other languages' writing systems, with lots of illogical historical baggage and few reliable phonetic patterns.

Japanese and Korean are especially frustrating cases, because both of them have a fairly good phonetic writing system. (Japanese has two.) But they have kept the traditional (Chinese) writing, and intermingle it with the phonetic characters. If they would scrap the Chinese characters, they would be as easy to learn as, Spanish or Russian. But attempts to do this have been soundly rejected by both societies.

Chinese itself is a funny case. It's a runner-up, because its writing system consists of many thousands of random-looking characters, but it's not quite as bad as Japanese or Korean. The characters are actually a "syllabary", with each character standing for a specific syllable. Most of the characters have components that loosely indicate a base "semantic" category and a pronunciation. The "system" is messy and irregular, so there's a lot of memorizing. But it's partly phonetic (and partly semantic). So it's not as bad as using Chinese characters in Japanese or Korean, where they are just random glyphs with no tie to the pronunciation.

Actually, there's some dispute as to whether English spelling is closer in complexity to Chinese or Japanese writing. One could make a good argument that Japanese and Korean occupy the top slot in writing complexity, while English and Chinese are in the second slot (semi-logical with lots of irregularities that require rote memorization). Most of the rest of the world's languages are in the third slot (mostly phonemic writing, with some irregularities). There's a fourth, easiest slot that holds the few languages that are simpler than normal and have a purely phonetic or phonemic writing system. But such classifications have a lot of problems, because at least in the top slots the writing systems are overwhelmingly complicated and illogical, and meaningful comparison of complexities is difficult.

The real problem is the illogical nature of human societies. ;-)

Re:English, the Crazy Language

[falconwolf]

"Chinese language" is a term on a par with "Romance language" or "Germanic language". "Chinese" is about a dozen closely-related languages. Calling them all "Chinese" is a lot like calling French, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and Romanian all just "Latin".

True, it's only been recently, the past 100 or so years, that there has been "1" unified language in either China or the European countries. In Germany it's called High German, or it was, but the German that's spoken colloquially in northern Germany is different than that spoken in southern Germany. In France different regions or provences have their own dialects if not different languages. For instance the Celtic language Breton is spoken in Brittany and Loire-Atlantique. Towards the south, around the Pyrenees the Basque language Euskera is used.

And while Japanese has one spoken language, it has at least two written systems, though I don't recall what they are now.

Actually, they have four: Kanji, Hirogana, Katakana, and Romaji. And they mix them all together in the same sentence or on the same sign. ;-)

I though there was three but I wasn't sure of the third one. Kanji is the, for lack of a better word, "normal" or common isn't it? And Hirogana was created in the 11th/12th century for women who wanted to write? Another is based on the Chinese ideograms isn't it? As for the Ainu of Japan, I don't know what is their language. I have heard from some Native American Indians though that it resembles a language of the Inuits of northern Canada.

Falcon

Re:English, the Crazy Language

[falconwolf]

Yeah, what a bitch that English still keeps a few irregular plurals. Never mind that French also has irregular plurals. Never mind that French has irregular *adjectives*. Never mind that French verbs have more distinct forms, so there's more to remember about a verb irregularity. Never mind that French orthography itself is pretty messed up (last four consonants are optional!).

And depending on what gender the subject is, verbs are conjegated differently. If I recall right there are 6 different conjegations forget the particples and tenses. Je ne parle pas Francious, je suis oblage moi Francious.

Among European languages, English is about alone in:

-only having declension for pronouns
-no noun gender
-how few forms there are for each verb

In the sense that English doesn't have genders with verbs, it's easier. However it has a lot of verbs that conjegate irregularly, or are pronounced differently. Such as "read", it is spelled the same for future, past, and present tenses and while it's pronounced the same for future and present tenses the prenounciation is different for the past tense. However some words are borrowed from other languages.

Falcon

So... it takes secrecy to ensure honesty?

[falconwolf]

Thoughts and opinions can only be expressed openly if done in private?

Though I hate to admit it I have to agree with this. As early as the early 1800s the USSC, US Supreme Court, has ruled freedom of speech especially political speech, can only be possible when speakers can remain anonymous. If a person can't remain anonymous then they are not able to fully speak as what they say can be used against them. During the American Revolutionary War many pamphlets written in support of independence were written anonymously. One of the few who signed his writing was Thomas Paine, who wrote the line "These are the times that try men's souls". He wrote it while serving in the war under Gen Washington's command.

This is the same argument used by the White House in justifying its refusal to release the names of VP Cheney's energy task force attendees. Any third-grader--no offense to third graders-- would know it's just self-serving bull.

Oh, I agree. As I see it there's a difference between the two. The first makes it easier for democracy whereas the second shuts out democracy.

Falcon

Re:Yawn. Power corrupts, next please.

[nagora]

The DOCTYPE directive is an SGML construct; HTML (up through version 4) is an SGML application, and the DOCTYPE directive is (one method) used to indicate to SGML tools how they should process a given document.

I'll grant you that this is one of the basic design mistakes in HTML - it should never have been SGML, but it's a mistake easily fixed in the way I suggested above.

Web browsers are expected to handle a variety of SGML- and XML-derived

Maybe by you; I prefer my web browser to handle HTML and only HTML (+CSS) and do it well. I don't want the developers to waste any time whatsoever on SGML or goddamned XML coding. It has no interest to me or to 99.999% of web users. Just drop it.

including things like RSS and Atom feeds and SVG images,

RSS is a joke and SVG can be handled by a plugin that is written for SVG - a much better division of development time.

as well as arbitrary XML with XSL stylesheets defining display.

XML is just plain shit designed by idiots who can't handle BNF. Bin it.

Web browsers are not the only types of applications which process these types of documents.

Well, if they saw a tag at the top that said "HTML v4" and the programmers had a nice BNF for HTML 4 then everyone would be happy.

Unrelated to these concerns, most web browsers (including all of the "popular" ones) are able to switch from a backwards-compatible "quirks mode"

A pointless exercise in the extreme. Buggy rendering should be eliminated as quickly as possible and not brought back. If your site won't display then fix it.

the switch is accomplished by looking at the DOCTYPE directive

The HTML tag could be used for that too if you wanted to go down that route, which you shouldn't.

XML DTDs are a nightmare and next to useless for implimentation (as opposed to testing and parsing).

So, on the whole, using the DOCTYPE directive as is conventional in SGML (or the XML prolog as is conventional in XML) is a good thing and helps make lots of stuff work better.

It makes a lot of badly designed standards limp along and keep the sort of second-rate and superannuated programmers that sit on these committees in a job. Meanwhile, the rest of the world has to handle ghastly, over complicated, inefficient XML-based file formats that achieve nothing of any value.

TWW

Re:Yawn. Power corrupts, next please.

[nagora]

HTML, or some other derivative of SGML, such as XML. See HTML DTD.

XML is junk and undeserving of the attention of any serious programmer. Badly designed with goals that could all be achieved by much older and well established methods in a more efficient way. Total garbage. It should be left out some winter night to die.

TWW

Re:Yawn. Power corrupts, next please.

[vidarh]

Thanks for playing. Meanwhile in the real world a large part of the web content normal users want to access are in formats you consider useless and "plain shit" because people who actually need to get things done and turn a profit doing it have found them to work well and provide significant benefits.

They need something to do in there spare time...

[falconwolf]

What is the point of working towards the next set of standards if no one is currently up to or following the ones already in place?

Perhape they can use the tyme to push more for companies and developers to follow web standards.

Falcon

Question for Zeinfeld

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you however agree it is misleading of Gore to say the 'he took the initiative in creating the Internet', if neither he nor anyone else knew that the funding he advocated would lead to the internet of today?

Re:Question for Zeinfeld

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you however agree it is misleading of Gore to say the 'he took the initiative in creating the Internet', if neither he nor anyone else knew that the funding he advocated would lead to the internet of today?

Not at all. It was abundantly clear that having an "information superhighway" would profoundly effect the way people communicate. Companies all over the nation were already using electronic mail internally. There was talk of having a massive on-line library at the time. BBS's were commonplace. The idea that they could span the nation was not lost on the lobbyists or the people they lobbied.

Gore led the way in privatizing the internet in 1992. That came after he led the way in extending the internet to colleges all over the nation in 1988. Certainly he must have been aware of the effects the 1988 legislation had before he started pushing the 1992 legislation.

Re:Question for Zeinfeld

[Anonymous Coward]

would profoundly effect the way people communicate

"affect".

Re:Question for Zeinfeld

[Zombywuf]

And had it been created privately, from grass roots, by individuals setting up ever expanding links. Connecting networks into larger and larger networks, would the internet be worse, or better? Would we be even thinking about net neutrality?

Gore may have been instrumental in the internet being the shape it is today, but he was not instrumental in it's creation. We can't even say it's better this way, we just don't know.

Re:Yawn. Power corrupts, next please.

[ben there...]

I think that those that feel so strongly averse to XML don't understand it. Undoubtedly, RSS (used in web feeds), RDF + XUL (used throughout Firefox), and SVG (used in Firefox, Opera, and Safari) have proven that XML is not "undeserving of the attention of any serious programmer." Heck, I just got done with a session of playing Civ4, whose mechanics and interface are fully customizable using Python and XML.

I'm not sure exactly what your issue with it is--you didn't specify--but if it is the excessive size of XML files, that is what compression is for. And if it is the need to write full opening and closing tags, that's what namespaces and perhaps more importantly, XML parsers and editors are for. Finally, if you think that everything that XML does could be done with .ini and /etc files, you're missing most of the main benefits of XML, which are clear when you look at RDF triples and standards such as Dublin Core.

What does W3C have to do with govt transparency??!

[gd23ka]

That's the real question to ask, don't you think? Never mind if that's a stupid question,
in that case I must have missed the merger of W3C with Das Homeland.

They do ahve a point.

[geekoid]

"without wondering how the press would interpret what they have to say."
I see this a lot. The press reports what someone says, it's out of context and then everybody assume worst case, or speculate and then it becomes a pain in the ass for the person who did nothing wrong.

That assumes the person reporting it didn't have a bias. I have seen selective quotes from government workers intentional put out of context. I have seen papers that have a known bias(specific political affiliation) and take quotes completely out of context and use them in an article that had nothing to do with what the quote was for.

I believe in openess, but it does take some responsibility of the listner to think and act properly with the information.

Re:They do ahve a point.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no question that the folks at News.com have a bias. From one of Declan's articles we learn:

I've written scores, if not hundreds, of stories based on confidential leaked government documents. News.com has broken its share of business stories, including being the first to confirm the highly confidential information that Apple was switching to Intel chips. And in the Bartnicki case, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld journalists' First Amendment right to publish highly confidential information (that they had obtained by breaking no laws).

So why, exactly, would I be desirous of accomodating journalists in an eGov meeting when they have not met publicly noted deadlines, have not met the meeting registration requirements, or show up on meeting day with no other justification for being there other than "I'm a journalist"?

hypocrites

[nothings]

Even if this whole article is stupid, I still have to love the idea of the w3c--a consortium of big companies that "care" about the web (to the extent that the browser creators went off and formed their own w3c-independent working group to make new standards)--caring about transparency, about public accessibility.

I have to love it, because it was almost 10 years ago I noticed a problem with an algorithm recommended in the HTML specification and went to w3c.org and couldn't figure out any way to tell them about the problem. And, sure enough, browsers still use that algorithm today.

Again, this time with proper code

[Jesus_666]

Ugh. Should've previewed the text. Too much time in VBB-style boards. Let's try this again.

Well, they also write English words in katakana*, especially loanwords and pseudo-Anglicisms. Japanese has a lot of loanwords, which usually get shortened - for example the Japanese word for part-time work is "arubaito", derived from the German word for work, "Arbeit". The informal version would be "baito". And yes, the word is written with /.-unprintable characters. And yes, they do mix and match all four alphabets.

Re:Yawn. Power corrupts, next please.

[Jesus_666]

RSS is a joke

Your browser doesn't handle RSS. MSIE7 handles RSS. RSS is popular. Ergo to the general public MSIE7 is superior in this regard to your browser.


XML is just plain shit designed by idiots who can't handle BNF. Bin it.

Wait, I'll tell everyone. I'm pretty sure the whole world will just stop using XML and switch to your proposed document format (you DO have a superior alternative, right?) in a week.


A pointless exercise in the extreme. Buggy rendering should be eliminated as quickly as possible and not brought back. If your site won't display then fix it.

Most websites do not fully conform to the relevant standards, ergo your browser can't display most websites the way people expect it to. Congratulations, now even most geeks will consider IE7 superior to your browser.


I agree that XML can be used to produce shit and it's used in places it shouldn't be, but that doesn't mean it's completely useless. At least a proprietary XML derivate is easier to decypher than a proprietary binary format.

Kind of like MIT's false openness?

[sethstorm]

Given the person's stated background, I'm not even the least bit surprised he reached this conclusion. That being, that as someone's educational background is more exposed to restricted admissions universities such as MIT, the more they want to implement that as an end-run around the public. The only clear misinformation out of this was with the W3C.

Now, could someone have informed him clearly about who foots the bills for the building? It's not like it's run by a organization who insists on exclusivity even though it is known for being "open"?


They'd serve well to be more truthful about their openness, or the lack thereof.