"and on slashdot I have seen an amazing number of posts stating that patents shouldn't be allowed to teach religion to their kids."
OMG. *blinks* Patents are having kids now?! I suppose we'll be hearing about patent marriage rights soon, and then SCOTUS will rule that patents have free speech rights. Where will the insanity end? The US needs real patent reform more than ever. (j/k)
Oh, I dunno about most folks, but my morality stems from basic ideas like peace on earth, goodwill towards my fellow man, and a strong desire not to be seen as a self-righteous asshat by the same. (But I'm also not athiest, rather mostly agnostic, with leanings towards Deism, and can count the number of times I've been in a non-wedding religious service on the fingers of one hand.) As has been pointed out elsewhere, there is a fundamental non-sequitur in most organized religions where they insist that only their "One True God" can establish morality in we poor weak humans, despite the long history of facts to the contrary, and that we are all doomed to commit atrocities without some "supernatural father figure" watching over us with threats of punishment. What happened to free will? What happened to basic human dignity?
Many, many years ago, my Egyptian co-worker chastised me for lamenting the lack of "African-Americans" (I was young and foolish*) at my office. He rather pointedly noted that Egypt is located in Africa, and that as a Copt his ancestors had been Africans for a very long time.
*Now married to a lovely Jamaican lady who rightly points out that she does not identify as "African-American" despite being Black. Apparently that's a Caribbean thing.
Based on my own anecdotal evidence, I would guess UID 218170 probably wasn't even a twinkle in someone's eye in the 1960s. Speaking of ackthpt: Do I get bonus points for recognizing the Bloom County reference?
Another problem with heat pumps is that they lose their heating capability in cold weather (varies by model but usually within a few degrees of freezing). Most heat pumps have electric resistance heaters built into the forced air unit to supplement the heat pump when the temperature drops too low. In most of the temperate zones of the United States, this is only a problem for a few days (maybe weeks) a year, so heat pumps can still be a very efficient choice -- mainly because they can be used for air conditioning (cooling) during warmer weather. But at higher altitudes and northern climate zones, the electric heat would be used so frequently that you end up better off with just using an electric heat source (or natural gas, or wood/pellet stove, or something else). Plus, some people just don't want/need forced air cooling, so the initial investment in a heat pump doesn't make sense for something that will only be used for part of the year.
Nothing in this proposed legislation (or really, just about all of the disability related civil rights laws, including the ADA) would apply to truly private facilities, including "private websites." However, if your website (or physical facility) offers what is referred to as "public accommodation" -- do you offer some service or benefit to the general public, as opposed to excluding the general public and/or not offering a service or benefit? -- then it would have to comply. Youtube would need to comply (and probably already does). Your personal website probably would not, unless (for example) you offered software you wrote or a free ebook or something like that; but even in such an example, only that part of public accommodation would be required to be made accessible.
"Making accessible" sounds like a lot of hard work, but for a website it is almost entirely based on established "best practices" for coding HTML and related technologies. Include alt attributes on your images. Specify alternate content for embedded media (descriptive text is compatible with screen readers). Use tables for tabular data, or identify the table as a layout tool not containing actual data. These are all things you should be doing anyway for a commercial/public accommodation website, given the number of folks who are browsing the Web with images turned off, Flash and other media disabled, or on devices (iPad, mobile phone) that do not support fancy sites and technologies.
Possibly the most important part is that "making accessible" doesn't mean doing away with the (theoretically) inaccessible portions. The whole point of accessibility is to provide an alternative experience that is as transparent (non-separated) as possible to the inaccessible experience. In the physical world, this often requires changes to the inaccessible experience (floor space at doors, ramps and wheelchair lifts at stairs, etc.), but in the electronic world of the Web there are established techniques (HTML elements and attributes) and technologies (screen readers, braille pads, eye-trackers) that allow persons with disabilities to access a properly coded Web page without forcing the author/creator to make a separate version for accessibility, or to do extra work that is specifically done only for accessibility purposes.
Not correct. Large corporations tend to be blind (no pun intended) to particular demands for equal treatment, especially when it comes to civil rights. Walmart springs to mind, but an established case is NFB v. Target.
Prior to 2006, Target's website looked nice (subjectively) but was coded in such a way that it could not be translated or converted to a non-visual format. According to this summary, "The lawsuit alleged that Target had not made the minimum changes necessary to its Web site to make the site compatible with screen access technology and to allow blind users to access the site to purchase products, redeem gift cards, find Target stores, and perform other functions available to sighted customers." I added the emphasis to point out that the lawsuit was not asking Target to completely redesign its website so that it was the same for sighted and non-sighted customers, or even to allow some random specialty interface; it was asking for minimum changes for compatibility with established accessibility technology.
Civil rights work that way -- you don't have to make everything the same, but you have to provide similar functionality in a way that is as transparent (non-separated) as possible. The technology and techniques to make accessible websites has existed since nearly the beginning of the public Web (screen readers, alt attribute for images, alternative content for embeds, etc.). There was really no excuse (except ignorance or malice, perhaps, neither of which is defensible in a civil rights case) why Target's website was inaccessible over a decade later.
Gloria Romero, the bill's sponsor, is being termed out. She's a lame duck right now with an uncertain future (she placed third in the recent primary for Superintendent of Public Schools). The biggest problem she has is what to do next. Aligning with a potentially divisive (but ultimately meaningless) issue like this gives her something to be remembered by, and possibly positions her for a run for some other tangentially related elected position, like Insurance Commissioner.
SWA is all single-class 737 aircraft. The closest thing to an upgraded class of service you can get is their "business" fare (which they call a "class" but is not in the sense that any other airline uses) that means you get to be one of the first 10 people on board the plane to grab your unreserved seat before the rest of the cattle.
A petition is not a vote, it's a public statement that "I support initiative X."
Gonna have to disagree with you (and everyone else in this discussion making similar statements). While the above is certainly the common understanding of what it means to sign a petition, from a deliberative process standpoint all it really means is that the question (in this case, "Should same-sex unions share the same rights and privileges as opposite-sex unions?") is worthy of consideration. This is distinctly different than "worthy of support." If you feel strongly about a petition (referendum, ballot measure, whatever) -- either strongly for or strongly against -- you should push to see it placed before voters. If for no other reason than to see where the issue really stands in the jurisdiction. (Maybe the overwhelming majority of Washington voters are raging homophobes -- this referendum will let the non-homophobic residents know where they stand.)
My point is that "supporting" a petition to get a measure on the ballot is not the same thing as supporting the measure itself. The danger of what these folks are doing is that most people will fail to make that distinction and treat anyone who signed the petition as a homophobe. I am not arguing that the petition signers should not be a matter of public record, only that the public should be educated that there is a distinction between supporting a petition and supporting the referendum.
I am not a resident of Washington, but if I was then I would sign the petition specifically so I could vote against the referendum. Trying to prevent decisive measures from coming to a vote is a losing proposition that engenders a lot of ill will on both sides. If the "No On R-71" crowd is convinced that they can win, they should push for the referendum to be on the ballot so that the supporters can see just how outnumbered they are.
"First your state develops that absurd vehicle mileage tax system that was discussed yesterday"
Wrong. A guy from district 3 is looking at alternative to a gas tax to help recoup loss from improved gas mileage. NO one has develod, implemented or OK'd any such system.
"This type of pilot program has already been tested in Oregon, along with a few other states. In November 2007, 260 Portland residents volunteered to have a mileage-tracking device installed in their cars as a VMT [Vehicle Mileage Tax] program trial run."
As the linked article notes, there were tracking issues because it was limited to the state of Oregon and had limited funds; the point of the new proposal is to expand the trial program nationwide so that folks can be tracked (purely for accounting purposes, of course) across state borders. From time to time, it throws out something stupid, too.
That being said, you're right about it not being the entire state of Oregon that has gone mental. Most folks in my home state are good people, whether they're raving liberal city-dwellers or raving conservatives from everywhere else. Oregon has a long history of being very progressive, from beverage container recycling laws to "death with dignity" (assisted suicide).
No christian churches label you an 'oppressive person' and send their office of special affairs after you.
Well, not anymore, anyway. I seem to recall this thing called the Spanish Inquisition. Nowadays no one expects it, but at one time it was the "office of special affairs" for the most prominent Christian church.
For the first time since the War of 1812, the US Mainland was hit in war.
You might want to check your history facts. Santa Barbara was shelled by a Japanese submarine in February 1942. A few months later, another Japanese submarine shelled Fort Stevens at the mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon. Both of these locations are on the U.S. mainland and both were hit "in war." Furthermore, Oregon happens to be the only location on the U.S. mainland to suffer a deaths from the otherwise ineffectual Japanese "balloon bombs." Mainland attack, since the War of 1812, with a fatality no less.
Now for the rest of your post, I happen to agree that the terrorism threat is waaaay overblown. However, I also think that the long-term threat of radical Islam is a real threat that should not be so easily dismissed. There is a war going on, but it's a war on cultural/religious diversity.
Sorry to rain on everyone's parade, but SCO filed for Chapter 11 (reorganization), not Chapter 7 (liquidation). To quote this guy from Texas:
Businesses may used Chapter 7 bankruptcy to liquidate or Chapter 11 bankruptcy to reorganize their business and repay their debts over a period of years under a "plan." Business that want to continue as going concerns must use Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
So no used furniture for Novell, SteveB or anyone else. IANAL, but IIRC on the plus side Chapter 11 doesn't discharge debts or prevent the acquisition of new ones (e.g., a new court-imposed fine), it just delays lenders' abilities to collect until the company emerges from the Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and obligates lenders to accept reasonable repayment terms as approved by the bankruptcy court.
A legitimate copy of the last desktop version of Photoshop,etc is going to be like gold to publishers.
So maybe that's their plan? If I'm a filthy rich executive of a software company that has damn-near complete market saturation, what does the future of my company look like? Innovation is hard and costs a lot of money, and once you've put out a "good-enough-can't-complain-too-much" product, the urge to upgrade to the next release is minimized or eliminated altogether. (See Microsoft's problem: Windows XP falls into the good-enough-can't-complain-too-much category, and folks are rejecting Vista in epic numbers.)
So what do you do? You tell your customers that you're going to make their lives miserable 5 to 10 years from now. You tell them, "This is the last version of this program that will work the way you've expected it to for the last 20 years. From now on, it will be a slower, more frustrating experience that will only be available according to the whim of your internet service provider."
Then you watch the sudden influx of new orders and upgrades as people and firms interested in a legal copy of the software throw more money at you than ever before. Because, as noted, this last desktop version will like gold.
Flush with previously unknown levels of cash, you leave the company with an unbelievably fat retirement pension, gracioiusly given by the Board of Directors because you've been such a financial genius, and retire to that nice island in the South Pacific that you've always enjoyed visiting but, until now, did not have the resources to purchase.
Assuming you're debating this in the United States of America, in our Constitution, Article VI, Paragraph 2 includes this tidbit (with added emphasis):
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
A duly ratified treaty carries the same weight of law as the Constitution itself. That's why the U.S. gets so wiggy about signing on to treaties that would allow prosecution of military personnel for war crimes, because doing so would circumvent any supposed protections in the Constitution, including but not limited to the 5th Amendment protection against self-incrimination.
I am an architect who deals with building codes every day at work. As $1uckpoints out, it is far better for engineers (plus architects, fire marshals and other parties specifically interested in public safety/welfare) to write building codes than politicians, who are much more likely to be influenced by big donors and other "special interest" parties specifically interested in lining their own pockets.
Unfortunately, this means that you have a private third-party developer that is essentially writing your laws -- which is actually not much different from the way most laws are written by lobbyists anyway. But the difference here is that the group writing the building code "law" is made up of construction industry representatives and extensively peer reviewed to ensure the health, safety and welfare of the general public. Each major building code organization used to develop different building codes (ICBO, BOCA, SBBCI, NFPA, etc.). Near the turn of the century, most of them (notably not NFPA) got together to form the ICC (International Code Council), and to develop and publish the so-called I-codes, of which the International Building Code forms the flagship product. The goal of the ICC was to develop a single, unified building code that would be adopted throughout the world -- a stark contrast to the balkanized state of building regulations that existed less than a decade ago.
These codes are marketed to various jurisdictions that range in size from cities and states up to entire countries. The way it generally works is that the building code group (ICC) lobbies the powers-that-be to adopt "by reference" their publication as the official building code for that jurisdiction. Many (but not all) jurisdictions follow up the adoption of the "standard" version with jurisdiction-specific amendments. California in particular modifies a significant portion of the underlying UBC (soon to be IBC) publication -- I'd estimate somewhere in the range of 80% of the language is expanded, deleted, revised or completely replaced.
In California, the Building Standards Commission (CBSC) is given the authority to adopt and revise the varioius construction industry codes for the entire state. California law then requires each jurisdiction within the state (counties, cities, etc.) to adopt the California versions of the codes, but also allows them to make further restrictive amendments. (Los Angeles, for example, uses a much more restrictive version of the CBC.)
Okay, so what does this matter? The code organizations publish their codes and "give them away" to various jurisdictions with the understanding that their expenses will be recouped through protected retailing of their copyrighted products. However, in most jurisdictions -- I can't speak for the Texas case OpenGLFannoted, but this is the case in California -- copies of the building code are available to view for free at public depository libraries. The "copy protection mechanism" employed is pretty low-tech: You can't check out the codes, so by the time you photocopied the entire code on the library's pay-to-use photocopiers you could have purchased several legitimate copies for the same price. (I suppose you might try taking digital photos or bringing a portable scanner with you, but the CBC is something like 900 pages long... I hope you have good batteries!)
It is interesting to note that 5 of the 11 parts of the California Building Standards Code are free to download from the CBSC's Title 24 website. Granted, only errata and supplements are available for the other six parts -- including the most-frequently used
You should spend some time here reading about Oregon's exlusive vote-by-mail (VBM) policy. In particular, there is an excellent and balanced analysis (PDF!) by Jimmy Carter and James Baker III -- you may have heard of these guys. From the report:
The official guide to VBM, published by the Secretary of
State's office, claims that it "raises voter participation, decreases costs and increases the overall
integrity of the election process. It is a system that the vast majority of Oregonians love."
The report continues to note that the voter participation claim may be exaggerated, though it admits to a 10% increase mostly in primary elections. There is also meager evidence to support an overall cost savings, though the administrative costs are lower a "hybrid" ballot-box and absentee system common most everywhere else. And to directly refute your concerns over the integrity of the system, the report notes "Despite having moved to an all by mail voting system in 1998 and having been a battleground state in the last two presidential elections, Oregon has been relatively free from the controversies that have dogged some absentee ballot systems." The report notes that of six supposed double-votes in the 2004 election, five were false and the sixth had already been caught and was being investigated prior to the complaint.
Let us not forget, too, that VBM has been exceptionally well-received by Oregonians across every spectrum you can think of, be it political, social, economic, educational, etc.
The key here is that everyone votes by mail. If you have the more typical hybrid system of ballot boxes and absentee VBM, you open yourself up to the kind of deceptive practices you warn against. A nationwide exclusive VBM system would probably solve a great number of the "voting irregularities" that continue to surface every couple of years.
Hmm. In the State of California, you should be more concerned with complying with Chapter 11[a/b] of the California Building Code than with the ADA (or more correctly, with the ADA Accessbility Guidelines). I'm interested in the "statutory" requirements for 100-square-foot bathrooms. I routinely design California-compliant accessible bathrooms well under that mark (about 8 feet by 10 feet). While I'll freely admit that this is twice the size of a "standard" bathroom (8 feet by 5 feet), you shouldn't kid yourself that someone in a wheelchair would be able to even enter such a bathroom, let alone be able to actually manuever within it. First hand experience: you need about 30 inches for wheelchair clearance, and most older homes have bathroom doors between 28 and 30 inches -- but the door hangs into that width, so in reality you only have about 26 to 28 inches. So California requires 32 clear inches for accessibility, which means at least a 34 inch door... Anyway, there's nothing preventing you from adding creative storage opportunities (wardrobe or linen closet?) in your fire-truck-sized accessible bathroom. A well-designed accessible bathroom should feel a little roomy but hardly excessive; anything that falls into that latter category is probably the result of a lazy developer who, fed up with trying to figure out something complicated, just decides to throw a whole lot of floor space at the problem because that makes it go away. Note that the requirement for most new apartments to be either accessible or "adaptable" came about because those same developers (those damn free marketeers;-) kept locating the accessible units in the "undesirable" locations next to garbage dumpsters, elevator shafts, and so forth, in clear violation of the "equivalent facilitation" mandate of earlier laws.
Hi, I'm an architect. I deal with building codes on a daily basis. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is civil rights legislation in the same vein as the Voting Rights Act. As a gross simplification, the ADA merely states that thou shalt not discriminate against persons with disabilities. It is not building code legislation.
Now, this is a pretty broad decree. How exactly does this apply to the real world? The ADA does not say. In this way, it is very much like most of the Constitution, which is long on general guidelines but rather short on specifics of implementation. So the Constitution says the legislative branch makes the laws and the executive branch implements them (current realities notwithstanding). In response to the vagueness of the ADA, the Department of Justice (the executive branch organization charged with enforcing the ADA\) came up with a document called the Americans with Disabilities Act Accessibility Guidelines, or ADAAG. (Note that this is being replaced by a new document that combines the requirements of the ADA with the ABA, or Architectural Barriers Act, which is itself much more like building code legislation but still leaves a whole lot of specifics floating in the breeze; it also incorporates ANSI 117.1, which is kind of a predecessor to the ABA and ADAAG.)
So Congress passed the ADA, which says you can't discriminate, and the DoJ published the ADAAG, which basically says "if you do (or don't do) these things then you are not discriminating." But one of the most fun things about the ADA is that, like the Constitution itself, it is constantly being reinterpreted by the Courts. So even if you've complied with the specific building code-like requirements of the ADAAG, you can still be sued and lose for failing to comply with the ADA, because a judge somewhere can rule that, well, you know, on second thought, maybe 34 inches is too high for a countertop after all... And like that, all of those countertops that were perfectly accessible yesterday are suddenly discriminating today.
I'll let someone else explain the history of the Interstate Commerce clause and why you're mistaken about its reach, even though you've given the obvious (and probably intended) interpretation of it. In summary, the federal government went on a power grab following the Civil War, and courts have not been exceptionally sympathetic to "states' rights" issues ever since, never mind giving a hoot about the 10th Amendment.
Please understand that that "20% disabled niche market" of yours could just as easily be described as a "20% black niche market" or any other subdivision of humanity. Remember that the ADA is about civil rights, not about building codes.
Designing down to kids is a recipe for crap, as well as a refuge for the incompetent.
I have no idea where you get the OLPC is "designing down to kids." Maybe it is for children who grow up with iPods, XBoxen, broadband Internet access and plasma TVs. Keep in mind who this product is being designed for though. (Hint: It isn't the kids at Beverly Hills High.) Most of the target audience doesn't even have reliable electrical utility service -- hence the hand-crank to generate power -- let alone access to all of the high-tech resources and modern conveniences that you and I take for granted.
Remember Logo?
I do remember Logo! My first exposure to it was in the second grade. We actually had a real "turtle," wired to a computer, that would move around on the floor and draw out our programs (after testing them on the computer, of course). Logo taught me a lot about the geometric principles of distance and direction half a decade before they got around to teaching it in school.
My second exposure to Logo was in the seventh grade. Only the on-screen turtle this time around, but now I was exploring complex trigonometric relationships three years before I would actually take a trigonometry course. I also programmed a simplistic question-and-response interface to draw complex objects based on user input. The latter project certainly illustrated the relative limitations of Logo as a programming language, but I was really more interested in the geometric features anyway.
Crap on Logo if you want, but it is an excellent entry-level programming language for young people.
Well the guy behind Logo, Seymour Papert, is part of this project.
Good! Then there's a chance that these things will actually be usable by the users for which they're intended. I suppose we could hand them laptops with CLI Debian and say "go for it," but what use is that? Most of these kids can barely read -- one of the forces driving this projet is that there is a critical shortage of qualified teachers in these un(der)developed areas, hence the OLPC needs to be a surrogate teacher. Think more "Sesame Street," with Count von Count counting to eight ('cause that's how many fingers he has! And look! There's Big Bird! Isn't learning fun?), and less differential equations in calculus (extremely powerful stuff to be sure, but also totally overwelming for someone who is just learning how to add integers).
We do not object to use of this slang term to describe UCE, although we do object to the use of the word "spam" as a trademark and to the use of our product image in association with that term. Also, if the term is to be used, it should be used in all lower-case letters to distinguish it from our trademark SPAM, which should be used with all uppercase letters.
...the U.S. government seized the assets of Bayer, a German company, and resold them to U.S. companies during WWI. From Wikipedia:
On March 6, 1899 Bayer registered it as a trademark. However, the German company lost the right to use the trademark in many countries as the Allies seized and resold its foreign assets after World War I. The right to use "Aspirin" in the United States (along with all other Bayer trademarks) was purchased from the U.S. government by Sterling Drug in 1918. Even before the patent for the drug expired in 1917, Bayer had been unable to stop competitors from copying the formula and using the name elsewhere, and so, with a flooded market, the public was unable to recognize "Aspirin" as coming from only one manufacturer. Sterling was subsequently unable to prevent "Aspirin" from being ruled a genericized trademark in a U.S. federal court in 1921. Sterling was ultimately acquired by Bayer in 1994, but this did not restore the U.S. trademark. Other countries (such as Canada and many countries in Europe) still consider "Aspirin" a protected trademark.
Slashdot Mirror
I refute it thus: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki...
"and on slashdot I have seen an amazing number of posts stating that patents shouldn't be allowed to teach religion to their kids."
OMG. *blinks* Patents are having kids now?! I suppose we'll be hearing about patent marriage rights soon, and then SCOTUS will rule that patents have free speech rights. Where will the insanity end? The US needs real patent reform more than ever. (j/k)
Oh, I dunno about most folks, but my morality stems from basic ideas like peace on earth, goodwill towards my fellow man, and a strong desire not to be seen as a self-righteous asshat by the same. (But I'm also not athiest, rather mostly agnostic, with leanings towards Deism, and can count the number of times I've been in a non-wedding religious service on the fingers of one hand.) As has been pointed out elsewhere, there is a fundamental non-sequitur in most organized religions where they insist that only their "One True God" can establish morality in we poor weak humans, despite the long history of facts to the contrary, and that we are all doomed to commit atrocities without some "supernatural father figure" watching over us with threats of punishment. What happened to free will? What happened to basic human dignity?
Many, many years ago, my Egyptian co-worker chastised me for lamenting the lack of "African-Americans" (I was young and foolish*) at my office. He rather pointedly noted that Egypt is located in Africa, and that as a Copt his ancestors had been Africans for a very long time.
*Now married to a lovely Jamaican lady who rightly points out that she does not identify as "African-American" despite being Black. Apparently that's a Caribbean thing.
Based on my own anecdotal evidence, I would guess UID 218170 probably wasn't even a twinkle in someone's eye in the 1960s. Speaking of ackthpt: Do I get bonus points for recognizing the Bloom County reference?
Another problem with heat pumps is that they lose their heating capability in cold weather (varies by model but usually within a few degrees of freezing). Most heat pumps have electric resistance heaters built into the forced air unit to supplement the heat pump when the temperature drops too low. In most of the temperate zones of the United States, this is only a problem for a few days (maybe weeks) a year, so heat pumps can still be a very efficient choice -- mainly because they can be used for air conditioning (cooling) during warmer weather. But at higher altitudes and northern climate zones, the electric heat would be used so frequently that you end up better off with just using an electric heat source (or natural gas, or wood/pellet stove, or something else). Plus, some people just don't want/need forced air cooling, so the initial investment in a heat pump doesn't make sense for something that will only be used for part of the year.
Nothing in this proposed legislation (or really, just about all of the disability related civil rights laws, including the ADA) would apply to truly private facilities, including "private websites." However, if your website (or physical facility) offers what is referred to as "public accommodation" -- do you offer some service or benefit to the general public, as opposed to excluding the general public and/or not offering a service or benefit? -- then it would have to comply. Youtube would need to comply (and probably already does). Your personal website probably would not, unless (for example) you offered software you wrote or a free ebook or something like that; but even in such an example, only that part of public accommodation would be required to be made accessible.
"Making accessible" sounds like a lot of hard work, but for a website it is almost entirely based on established "best practices" for coding HTML and related technologies. Include alt attributes on your images. Specify alternate content for embedded media (descriptive text is compatible with screen readers). Use tables for tabular data, or identify the table as a layout tool not containing actual data. These are all things you should be doing anyway for a commercial/public accommodation website, given the number of folks who are browsing the Web with images turned off, Flash and other media disabled, or on devices (iPad, mobile phone) that do not support fancy sites and technologies.
Possibly the most important part is that "making accessible" doesn't mean doing away with the (theoretically) inaccessible portions. The whole point of accessibility is to provide an alternative experience that is as transparent (non-separated) as possible to the inaccessible experience. In the physical world, this often requires changes to the inaccessible experience (floor space at doors, ramps and wheelchair lifts at stairs, etc.), but in the electronic world of the Web there are established techniques (HTML elements and attributes) and technologies (screen readers, braille pads, eye-trackers) that allow persons with disabilities to access a properly coded Web page without forcing the author/creator to make a separate version for accessibility, or to do extra work that is specifically done only for accessibility purposes.
Not correct. Large corporations tend to be blind (no pun intended) to particular demands for equal treatment, especially when it comes to civil rights. Walmart springs to mind, but an established case is NFB v. Target.
Prior to 2006, Target's website looked nice (subjectively) but was coded in such a way that it could not be translated or converted to a non-visual format. According to this summary, "The lawsuit alleged that Target had not made the minimum changes necessary to its Web site to make the site compatible with screen access technology and to allow blind users to access the site to purchase products, redeem gift cards, find Target stores, and perform other functions available to sighted customers." I added the emphasis to point out that the lawsuit was not asking Target to completely redesign its website so that it was the same for sighted and non-sighted customers, or even to allow some random specialty interface; it was asking for minimum changes for compatibility with established accessibility technology.
Civil rights work that way -- you don't have to make everything the same, but you have to provide similar functionality in a way that is as transparent (non-separated) as possible. The technology and techniques to make accessible websites has existed since nearly the beginning of the public Web (screen readers, alt attribute for images, alternative content for embeds, etc.). There was really no excuse (except ignorance or malice, perhaps, neither of which is defensible in a civil rights case) why Target's website was inaccessible over a decade later.
Gloria Romero, the bill's sponsor, is being termed out. She's a lame duck right now with an uncertain future (she placed third in the recent primary for Superintendent of Public Schools). The biggest problem she has is what to do next. Aligning with a potentially divisive (but ultimately meaningless) issue like this gives her something to be remembered by, and possibly positions her for a run for some other tangentially related elected position, like Insurance Commissioner.
SWA is all single-class 737 aircraft. The closest thing to an upgraded class of service you can get is their "business" fare (which they call a "class" but is not in the sense that any other airline uses) that means you get to be one of the first 10 people on board the plane to grab your unreserved seat before the rest of the cattle.
Gonna have to disagree with you (and everyone else in this discussion making similar statements). While the above is certainly the common understanding of what it means to sign a petition, from a deliberative process standpoint all it really means is that the question (in this case, "Should same-sex unions share the same rights and privileges as opposite-sex unions?") is worthy of consideration. This is distinctly different than "worthy of support." If you feel strongly about a petition (referendum, ballot measure, whatever) -- either strongly for or strongly against -- you should push to see it placed before voters. If for no other reason than to see where the issue really stands in the jurisdiction. (Maybe the overwhelming majority of Washington voters are raging homophobes -- this referendum will let the non-homophobic residents know where they stand.)
My point is that "supporting" a petition to get a measure on the ballot is not the same thing as supporting the measure itself. The danger of what these folks are doing is that most people will fail to make that distinction and treat anyone who signed the petition as a homophobe. I am not arguing that the petition signers should not be a matter of public record, only that the public should be educated that there is a distinction between supporting a petition and supporting the referendum.
I am not a resident of Washington, but if I was then I would sign the petition specifically so I could vote against the referendum. Trying to prevent decisive measures from coming to a vote is a losing proposition that engenders a lot of ill will on both sides. If the "No On R-71" crowd is convinced that they can win, they should push for the referendum to be on the ballot so that the supporters can see just how outnumbered they are.
"First your state develops that absurd vehicle mileage tax system that was discussed yesterday"
Wrong. A guy from district 3 is looking at alternative to a gas tax to help recoup loss from improved gas mileage. NO one has develod, implemented or OK'd any such system.
Bzzt. You may want to check the history on the proposal. In fact, such a system was already "developed, implemented and OK'd" in Portland. From http://www.dailyemerald.com/news/ore-rep-floats-mileage-fee-to-replace-gas-tax-1.236118:
"This type of pilot program has already been tested in Oregon, along with a few other states. In November 2007, 260 Portland residents volunteered to have a mileage-tracking device installed in their cars as a VMT [Vehicle Mileage Tax] program trial run."
As the linked article notes, there were tracking issues because it was limited to the state of Oregon and had limited funds; the point of the new proposal is to expand the trial program nationwide so that folks can be tracked (purely for accounting purposes, of course) across state borders. From time to time, it throws out something stupid, too.
That being said, you're right about it not being the entire state of Oregon that has gone mental. Most folks in my home state are good people, whether they're raving liberal city-dwellers or raving conservatives from everywhere else. Oregon has a long history of being very progressive, from beverage container recycling laws to "death with dignity" (assisted suicide).
Well, not anymore, anyway. I seem to recall this thing called the Spanish Inquisition. Nowadays no one expects it, but at one time it was the "office of special affairs" for the most prominent Christian church.
You might want to check your history facts. Santa Barbara was shelled by a Japanese submarine in February 1942. A few months later, another Japanese submarine shelled Fort Stevens at the mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon. Both of these locations are on the U.S. mainland and both were hit "in war." Furthermore, Oregon happens to be the only location on the U.S. mainland to suffer a deaths from the otherwise ineffectual Japanese "balloon bombs." Mainland attack, since the War of 1812, with a fatality no less.
Now for the rest of your post, I happen to agree that the terrorism threat is waaaay overblown. However, I also think that the long-term threat of radical Islam is a real threat that should not be so easily dismissed. There is a war going on, but it's a war on cultural/religious diversity.
So no used furniture for Novell, SteveB or anyone else. IANAL, but IIRC on the plus side Chapter 11 doesn't discharge debts or prevent the acquisition of new ones (e.g., a new court-imposed fine), it just delays lenders' abilities to collect until the company emerges from the Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and obligates lenders to accept reasonable repayment terms as approved by the bankruptcy court.
So maybe that's their plan? If I'm a filthy rich executive of a software company that has damn-near complete market saturation, what does the future of my company look like? Innovation is hard and costs a lot of money, and once you've put out a "good-enough-can't-complain-too-much" product, the urge to upgrade to the next release is minimized or eliminated altogether. (See Microsoft's problem: Windows XP falls into the good-enough-can't-complain-too-much category, and folks are rejecting Vista in epic numbers.)
So what do you do? You tell your customers that you're going to make their lives miserable 5 to 10 years from now. You tell them, "This is the last version of this program that will work the way you've expected it to for the last 20 years. From now on, it will be a slower, more frustrating experience that will only be available according to the whim of your internet service provider."
Then you watch the sudden influx of new orders and upgrades as people and firms interested in a legal copy of the software throw more money at you than ever before. Because, as noted, this last desktop version will like gold.
Flush with previously unknown levels of cash, you leave the company with an unbelievably fat retirement pension, gracioiusly given by the Board of Directors because you've been such a financial genius, and retire to that nice island in the South Pacific that you've always enjoyed visiting but, until now, did not have the resources to purchase.
Damn. Is Adobe hiring?
A duly ratified treaty carries the same weight of law as the Constitution itself. That's why the U.S. gets so wiggy about signing on to treaties that would allow prosecution of military personnel for war crimes, because doing so would circumvent any supposed protections in the Constitution, including but not limited to the 5th Amendment protection against self-incrimination.
I am an architect who deals with building codes every day at work. As $1uck points out, it is far better for engineers (plus architects, fire marshals and other parties specifically interested in public safety/welfare) to write building codes than politicians, who are much more likely to be influenced by big donors and other "special interest" parties specifically interested in lining their own pockets.
Unfortunately, this means that you have a private third-party developer that is essentially writing your laws -- which is actually not much different from the way most laws are written by lobbyists anyway. But the difference here is that the group writing the building code "law" is made up of construction industry representatives and extensively peer reviewed to ensure the health, safety and welfare of the general public. Each major building code organization used to develop different building codes (ICBO, BOCA, SBBCI, NFPA, etc.). Near the turn of the century, most of them (notably not NFPA) got together to form the ICC (International Code Council), and to develop and publish the so-called I-codes, of which the International Building Code forms the flagship product. The goal of the ICC was to develop a single, unified building code that would be adopted throughout the world -- a stark contrast to the balkanized state of building regulations that existed less than a decade ago.
These codes are marketed to various jurisdictions that range in size from cities and states up to entire countries. The way it generally works is that the building code group (ICC) lobbies the powers-that-be to adopt "by reference" their publication as the official building code for that jurisdiction. Many (but not all) jurisdictions follow up the adoption of the "standard" version with jurisdiction-specific amendments. California in particular modifies a significant portion of the underlying UBC (soon to be IBC) publication -- I'd estimate somewhere in the range of 80% of the language is expanded, deleted, revised or completely replaced.
In California, the Building Standards Commission (CBSC) is given the authority to adopt and revise the varioius construction industry codes for the entire state. California law then requires each jurisdiction within the state (counties, cities, etc.) to adopt the California versions of the codes, but also allows them to make further restrictive amendments. (Los Angeles, for example, uses a much more restrictive version of the CBC.)
Okay, so what does this matter? The code organizations publish their codes and "give them away" to various jurisdictions with the understanding that their expenses will be recouped through protected retailing of their copyrighted products. However, in most jurisdictions -- I can't speak for the Texas case OpenGLFan noted, but this is the case in California -- copies of the building code are available to view for free at public depository libraries. The "copy protection mechanism" employed is pretty low-tech: You can't check out the codes, so by the time you photocopied the entire code on the library's pay-to-use photocopiers you could have purchased several legitimate copies for the same price. (I suppose you might try taking digital photos or bringing a portable scanner with you, but the CBC is something like 900 pages long... I hope you have good batteries!)
It is interesting to note that 5 of the 11 parts of the California Building Standards Code are free to download from the CBSC's Title 24 website. Granted, only errata and supplements are available for the other six parts -- including the most-frequently used
You should spend some time here reading about Oregon's exlusive vote-by-mail (VBM) policy. In particular, there is an excellent and balanced analysis (PDF!) by Jimmy Carter and James Baker III -- you may have heard of these guys. From the report:
The report continues to note that the voter participation claim may be exaggerated, though it admits to a 10% increase mostly in primary elections. There is also meager evidence to support an overall cost savings, though the administrative costs are lower a "hybrid" ballot-box and absentee system common most everywhere else. And to directly refute your concerns over the integrity of the system, the report notes "Despite having moved to an all by mail voting system in 1998 and having been a battleground state in the last two presidential elections, Oregon has been relatively free from the controversies that have dogged some absentee ballot systems." The report notes that of six supposed double-votes in the 2004 election, five were false and the sixth had already been caught and was being investigated prior to the complaint.
Let us not forget, too, that VBM has been exceptionally well-received by Oregonians across every spectrum you can think of, be it political, social, economic, educational, etc.
The key here is that everyone votes by mail. If you have the more typical hybrid system of ballot boxes and absentee VBM, you open yourself up to the kind of deceptive practices you warn against. A nationwide exclusive VBM system would probably solve a great number of the "voting irregularities" that continue to surface every couple of years.
Hmm. In the State of California, you should be more concerned with complying with Chapter 11[a/b] of the California Building Code than with the ADA (or more correctly, with the ADA Accessbility Guidelines). I'm interested in the "statutory" requirements for 100-square-foot bathrooms. I routinely design California-compliant accessible bathrooms well under that mark (about 8 feet by 10 feet). While I'll freely admit that this is twice the size of a "standard" bathroom (8 feet by 5 feet), you shouldn't kid yourself that someone in a wheelchair would be able to even enter such a bathroom, let alone be able to actually manuever within it. First hand experience: you need about 30 inches for wheelchair clearance, and most older homes have bathroom doors between 28 and 30 inches -- but the door hangs into that width, so in reality you only have about 26 to 28 inches. So California requires 32 clear inches for accessibility, which means at least a 34 inch door... Anyway, there's nothing preventing you from adding creative storage opportunities (wardrobe or linen closet?) in your fire-truck-sized accessible bathroom. A well-designed accessible bathroom should feel a little roomy but hardly excessive; anything that falls into that latter category is probably the result of a lazy developer who, fed up with trying to figure out something complicated, just decides to throw a whole lot of floor space at the problem because that makes it go away. Note that the requirement for most new apartments to be either accessible or "adaptable" came about because those same developers (those damn free marketeers ;-) kept locating the accessible units in the "undesirable" locations next to garbage dumpsters, elevator shafts, and so forth, in clear violation of the "equivalent facilitation" mandate of earlier laws.
Hi, I'm an architect. I deal with building codes on a daily basis. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is civil rights legislation in the same vein as the Voting Rights Act. As a gross simplification, the ADA merely states that thou shalt not discriminate against persons with disabilities. It is not building code legislation.
Now, this is a pretty broad decree. How exactly does this apply to the real world? The ADA does not say. In this way, it is very much like most of the Constitution, which is long on general guidelines but rather short on specifics of implementation. So the Constitution says the legislative branch makes the laws and the executive branch implements them (current realities notwithstanding). In response to the vagueness of the ADA, the Department of Justice (the executive branch organization charged with enforcing the ADA\) came up with a document called the Americans with Disabilities Act Accessibility Guidelines, or ADAAG. (Note that this is being replaced by a new document that combines the requirements of the ADA with the ABA, or Architectural Barriers Act, which is itself much more like building code legislation but still leaves a whole lot of specifics floating in the breeze; it also incorporates ANSI 117.1, which is kind of a predecessor to the ABA and ADAAG.)
So Congress passed the ADA, which says you can't discriminate, and the DoJ published the ADAAG, which basically says "if you do (or don't do) these things then you are not discriminating." But one of the most fun things about the ADA is that, like the Constitution itself, it is constantly being reinterpreted by the Courts. So even if you've complied with the specific building code-like requirements of the ADAAG, you can still be sued and lose for failing to comply with the ADA, because a judge somewhere can rule that, well, you know, on second thought, maybe 34 inches is too high for a countertop after all... And like that, all of those countertops that were perfectly accessible yesterday are suddenly discriminating today.
I'll let someone else explain the history of the Interstate Commerce clause and why you're mistaken about its reach, even though you've given the obvious (and probably intended) interpretation of it. In summary, the federal government went on a power grab following the Civil War, and courts have not been exceptionally sympathetic to "states' rights" issues ever since, never mind giving a hoot about the 10th Amendment.
Please understand that that "20% disabled niche market" of yours could just as easily be described as a "20% black niche market" or any other subdivision of humanity. Remember that the ADA is about civil rights, not about building codes.
I have no idea where you get the OLPC is "designing down to kids." Maybe it is for children who grow up with iPods, XBoxen, broadband Internet access and plasma TVs. Keep in mind who this product is being designed for though. (Hint: It isn't the kids at Beverly Hills High.) Most of the target audience doesn't even have reliable electrical utility service -- hence the hand-crank to generate power -- let alone access to all of the high-tech resources and modern conveniences that you and I take for granted.
I do remember Logo! My first exposure to it was in the second grade. We actually had a real "turtle," wired to a computer, that would move around on the floor and draw out our programs (after testing them on the computer, of course). Logo taught me a lot about the geometric principles of distance and direction half a decade before they got around to teaching it in school.
My second exposure to Logo was in the seventh grade. Only the on-screen turtle this time around, but now I was exploring complex trigonometric relationships three years before I would actually take a trigonometry course. I also programmed a simplistic question-and-response interface to draw complex objects based on user input. The latter project certainly illustrated the relative limitations of Logo as a programming language, but I was really more interested in the geometric features anyway.
Crap on Logo if you want, but it is an excellent entry-level programming language for young people.
Good! Then there's a chance that these things will actually be usable by the users for which they're intended. I suppose we could hand them laptops with CLI Debian and say "go for it," but what use is that? Most of these kids can barely read -- one of the forces driving this projet is that there is a critical shortage of qualified teachers in these un(der)developed areas, hence the OLPC needs to be a surrogate teacher. Think more "Sesame Street," with Count von Count counting to eight ('cause that's how many fingers he has! And look! There's Big Bird! Isn't learning fun?), and less differential equations in calculus (extremely powerful stuff to be sure, but also totally overwelming for someone who is just learning how to add integers).
From the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse: Your Social Security Number: How Secure Is It?