WordPress is Free Software. Its rules will never change. In the event that the WordPress community disbands and development stops, a new community can form around the orphaned code. It's happened once already. In the extremely unlikely event that every single contributor (including every contributor to the original b2) agrees to relicense the code under a more restrictive license, I can still fork the current GPL-licensed code and start a new community around it. There is always a path forward. There are no dead ends.
PyGoogle allows you to access the web API from Python. Download here. Python has no SOAP support in the standard library, but a working SOAP library is included with PyGoogle.
-Mark
Dive Into Python - a free Python book for experienced programmers
Clay Shirky wrote an excellent article on why intelligent agents (like the ones Berners-Lee is describing) are a dumb idea, regardless of the underlying infrastructure. The article is over a year old but still just as relevant as ever:
Learning Python is not hard (remember how long it took you to learn Perl?) -- you can do it in an evening by reading any one of these free (and Free) online books:
Dive Into Python - written for the Slashdot crowd, it assumes you know one real language (like Perl, Java, or C++) and takes you from there. Steps through real code to teach you the language basics (and not-so-basics), and makes frequent comparisons to the language(s) you already know.
Learning To Program - for those with no programming experience whatsoever who want to learn Python as their first programming language.
Once you've read any or those, you'll want to dig into some real code, so head over to the Python Knowledge Base for tons of real code examples, and Vaults of Parnassus for tons of free third-party modules and libraries.
Also, the ABCNews article and Slashdot write-up dwell entirely on the privacy violators, while the original site also mentions that
2 awards were also given to champions of privacy. The Brandeis Award is named after US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who described privacy as "the right to be left alone." The awards are given to those have done exemplary work to protect and champion privacy.
If you're behind the curve and just now figuring out that you should learn Python, do yourself a favor and read Dive Into Python.
Just as Python itself doesn't treat you like you're stupid, Dive Into Python assumes that you're smart and that you have a working knowledge of at least one other real language, be it Perl, Java, or C++. It was written with the Slashdot crowd in mind (well, the Slashdot crowd as I see it -- but I read at +2 nested reparented).
Oh, and it's under the GNU Free Documentation License. To quote everybody's favorite communist RMS, "Free software deserves free documentation."
We use XML-RPC on our Python-powered intranet to grab headlines from O'Reilly's free Meerkat wire service via Secret Lab's free xmlrpclib module. Dave Warner wrote an excellent article on XML-RPC and Python here, using Meerkat as an example of a real XML-RPC server.
If Python is not your thing, there are XML-RPC libraries for PHP and Perl. Rael Dornfest wrote an excellent article on Meerkat's XML-RPC interface here, with sample PHP and Perl code (as well as Python).
I am currently working on a US government web site. (OK, it's a state web site, but they are holding us to the federal rules because they know they're next...) Here's some practical advice:
Read the W3 Accessibility Initiative to get an idea of the concepts of making the web accessible. Contrary to popular opinion, the web is for everyone.
Use Bobby, a free automated tool written in Java that can check your entire site for accessibility problems. It categorizes problems based on priority level, checks pretty much everything listed in the WAI, and tells you what you still have to check manually that it can't check automatically.
Read the W3 Techniques for Web Accessibility to get an idea of how to implement the changes. Contrary to popular opinion, HTML 4 has many features specifically for blind/deaf/disabled users.
Test your site yourself. Use Lynx to see what your site looks like to the blind. Do all your images have meaningful ALT tags or LONGDESC tags? Do your tables have SUMMARY tags? Is your navigation usable without Javascript or Flash?
Set your text size to maximum to see what your site looks like to visually impaired users. You are using relative sizes for your fonts and percentages for your table widths, aren't you?
Turn off your speakers to see what your site looks like to the deaf. If you have audio feeds, do you also have transcripts? If you have video feeds, are they closed-captioned?
It's not rocket science once you know what you're doing. Personal anecdote: I applied the same principles to my own web site, even though I didn't have to and my friends told me I was wasting my time because "nobody uses Lynx anymore." In the first week, I got 10 Lynx visitors.
Slashdot Mirror
All the cool kids use Greasemonkey: unping.user.js
This is covered later in the article:
PyGoogle allows you to access the web API from Python. Download here. Python has no SOAP support in the standard library, but a working SOAP library is included with PyGoogle.
-Mark
Dive Into Python - a free Python book for experienced programmers
Clay Shirky wrote an excellent article on why intelligent agents (like the ones Berners-Lee is describing) are a dumb idea, regardless of the underlying infrastructure. The article is over a year old but still just as relevant as ever:
-M
You're smart; why haven't you learned Python yet? diveintopython.org
Learning Python is not hard (remember how long it took you to learn Perl?) -- you can do it in an evening by reading any one of these free (and Free) online books:
Once you've read any or those, you'll want to dig into some real code, so head over to the Python Knowledge Base for tons of real code examples, and Vaults of Parnassus for tons of free third-party modules and libraries.
-M
Neither ABCNews nor the Slashdot write-up seem to link to the actual Privacy International site or their 2001 US Big Brother Awards page.
Also, the ABCNews article and Slashdot write-up dwell entirely on the privacy violators, while the original site also mentions that
...and awards the Brandeis Award to...
These are the good guys (and girls). They deserve some recognition, too.
-M
You're smart; why haven't you learned Python yet? http://diveintopython.org
If you're behind the curve and just now figuring out that you should learn Python, do yourself a favor and read Dive Into Python.
Just as Python itself doesn't treat you like you're stupid, Dive Into Python assumes that you're smart and that you have a working knowledge of at least one other real language, be it Perl, Java, or C++. It was written with the Slashdot crowd in mind (well, the Slashdot crowd as I see it -- but I read at +2 nested reparented).
Oh, and it's under the GNU Free Documentation License. To quote everybody's favorite communist RMS, "Free software deserves free documentation."
Share and enjoy.
-M
We use XML-RPC on our Python-powered intranet to grab headlines from O'Reilly's free Meerkat wire service via Secret Lab's free xmlrpclib module. Dave Warner wrote an excellent article on XML-RPC and Python here, using Meerkat as an example of a real XML-RPC server.
If Python is not your thing, there are XML-RPC libraries for PHP and Perl. Rael Dornfest wrote an excellent article on Meerkat's XML-RPC interface here, with sample PHP and Perl code (as well as Python).
-M
You're smart; why haven't you learned Python yet? diveintopython.org
I am currently working on a US government web site. (OK, it's a state web site, but they are holding us to the federal rules because they know they're next...) Here's some practical advice:
It's not rocket science once you know what you're doing. Personal anecdote: I applied the same principles to my own web site, even though I didn't have to and my friends told me I was wasting my time because "nobody uses Lynx anymore." In the first week, I got 10 Lynx visitors.
-M
You're smart; what haven't you learned Python yet? http://diveintopython.org/