Re:I'm sorry to say I agree with the court ruling
on
ADA Doesn't Apply to Web
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· Score: 5, Insightful
1. The cost to existing and new websites would be extremely high to implement ADA standards.
The cost to new sites is zero. Using HTML properly gets you ADA compliance. The HTML standards were designed very carefully to accomodate different types of client, including non-visual. The only problem arises from those who incorrectly try to use HTML as a graphic design medium
As I remember, Google's ranking algorithm takes into account both the number of other sites that link to you AND the number of people who have historically clicked on a particular link for a given combination of search keywords.
This is not technically possible, unless Google used a clickthrough system for each link, which it does not. When you click on a link from a Google page, other than things like cached pages or sponsored links, your browser goes directly to the site linked to in order to get the page. No more information is sent back to Google. There is no way for them to get more information about which link you click on, unless each link is to a Google address that redirects you to the real page. Again, this is only done for sponsored links.
Given the fact that both the terms 'search' and 'king' are pretty common, it's not suprising that lots of sites come up.
Neither the search terms 'search' nor 'king' will match with 'SearchKing'. Google and most other search engines, IIRC, don't search based on stems, but for the exact word you type (including plurality). From Google's basic help page:
To provide the most accurate results, Google does not use "stemming" or support "wildcard" searches. In other words, Google searches for exactly the words that you enter in the search box. Searching for "googl" or "googl*" will not yield "googler" or "googlin". If in doubt, try both forms: "airline" and "airlines," for instance.
I don't care whether you care about market-share, but the success of an Open Source project is reasonably measured by how many users it has in proportion to other similar projects.
I disagree. There's room for more than one distribution. This isn't a contest, and I don't think Debian's success is lessened by the fact that more people use RedHat. RedHat caters to a larger audience than Debian. Debian has a niche that it fills very successfully.
It seems that you (and many other people) think about this in terms of a traditional capitalist, profit-driven point of view - which is entirely appropriate when talking about a company which is seeking a profit. Open-source projects however, as distinct from the companies that try to market and sell their products, don't need to have a huge following to be successful, they just need to be useful (to someone). Debian is eminently useful to me and many others, and meets my needs for an operating system almost perfectly. That, in my book, is a success.
The Debian installation is mostly OK, but you need to be an absolut pompous prick not to recognize that dselect is the most horrible piece of installation software ever devised by any human being.
Well, to be fair, I never use dselect, other than to jumpstart the installation process after I've run 'dpkg --set-selections' to install a new package list. The few times I have used it, I haven't particularly liked it. Apt, however, is an amazingly convenient and powerful collection of software.
I mean would it really hurt debian all that much to give people,(newbies who have not learned all the in's and out's of unix maybe),an easy install option along side a more complicated one , would a half way house really hurt all that much ?
Well, it would mean that someone would have to maintain all those paths. If that meant taking that person's time away from aspects of Debian that influence people for more than the first day of use, I'm not sure it would be worth it.
What people seem to have a hard time grasping here is that Debian is not a company. What gets improved and worked on is what developers are interested in improving on. Companies that use Debian worry about getting new users, and they spend time/money on improving the installer. Eventually Debian itself will probably benefit from that. If a developer is sufficiently interested in improving the installer, she will do so. If not, it will remain a minimal implementation that suffices for the apparent majority of us (that already use Debian) who are more concerned with the experience after installation.
Firstly, much of the article wasn't complaining about that, it was complaining about things which are simply dumb or demonstrate carelessness on the part of those responsible for installation.
"That" amounts to essentially what you just said. To build more intelligence into the installer would require more time and effort on some developer's part. I don't find the installer to be inconvenient enough to warrant the use of someone's time to improve it, if that means taking that time away from another part of Debian.
Secondly, if you want Debian to only be of interest to "people like you", then you should be prepared for it to continue to decline in market-share relative to Redhat...
I'm not sure why you think I give a flying rat's ass about market-share. Market-share is meaningless to an organization without profit motives, beyond the critical mass necessary to sustain the project. Worrying about that is left to companies, some of which have already built or are working on better installers for Debian. As I said before, if the Debian installer doesn't suit your needs, and the installer is your basis for choosing an operating system, use a different distribution or write a better installer. Most of us don't worry about the installer, because either it isn't a problem for us, or because the amount of time spent installing is negligible (even if it takes 3 days the first time) in comparison to the amount of time spent actually using the system.
Touché. On the other hand, I'm pretty happy with Debian's release priorities. They don't release until the distribution is solid. This means that I can trust it to run my server flawlessly for years. Servers don't like to be changed very often, anyway. I run testing on my laptop and find it to be a perfect balance between stability and currency.
That's an excellent point. Debian isn't really meant to be a polished OS. It's meant to serve the developers that create it. Since it's not a company, there's little drive to get more users, and thus no drive to polish the install process, etc., other than to make it more useful for the developers themselves.
This leaves that job to the 3rd parties, who add the polish for those who want it to an excellent base, furnished by those happy developers.
That is exactly the wrong attitude. I am not an idiot because I want a fully working and configured system in 20 minutes, rather than after hours or days of tinkering.
Debian was not made for you. Debian was made for people like me, who don't want arbitrary installation choices made for them to making installation "easier." Installation is not a frequent process with Debian, because upgrades are practically automatic. So you generally only have to install once, and it's a very small part of the overall experience. Thus, installation is not worth spending excessive development time on, because those of us that use and develop for Debian don't have a commercial agenda driving adoption rates. If Debian works well for you, use it, if it doesn't, use another distribution. That's why there's more than one.
I recently upgraded my web/cvs/mail/etc. server from RedHat to Debian (finally!), and it was effortless. It didn't take much more than 20 minutes of my time, and at the end I had exactly the packages I wanted, no more, no less. Netinst in particular makes Debian a dream to install. Just insert the CD with the minimum necessary software needed to talk to the network, then select your packages (as simple as copying a file and issuing a single command if you've got a similar system running). Hit apt-get update and it downloads all the software from the network (the most recent version - no installing then upgrading right away), then configures and installs it. The configuration system even lets you select the level of detail you want to have control over. If you want all the default choices, you don't have to do much configuration at all.
Debian's installation is totally unpolished, inconvenient, and it basically sucks. That argument that it is only inconvenient if you are a newbie is bunk - it is inconvenient for anyone that doesn't have time to burn configuring every tiny little detail.
That's just uninformed, one-sided bullshit. Debian's installer is simple, easy-to-use (for those that know what they're doing), and gets the job done. My last few installs have been painless and quick. Furhermore, any pain that might have been experienced the first time installing has been rewarded many times over by the effortlessness of upgrading and maintaining a stable system.
Yes, apt-get might be wonderful, but it will be much easier for Redhat and co to incorporate Debian's advantages than it will be for Debian to incorporate Redhat's. That is simply a fact.
RedHat doesn't have any advantages for me that I've seen. None. So much for fact.
Debian will never succeed until it takes the installation process seriously.
Debian is right now an overwhelming success. It meets my and many other developers' needs to a tee. It is by leaps and bounds the best operating system I have ever used (including Mac OS X, BTW). If you want a system that holds your hands through a "polished" installation (an activity that probably occupies much less that 1% of your time using the system), and guesses how you want your system configured to spare you the trouble, either write a new installer yourself, or use a different distribution. You'll be missing out on a lot of functionality, but that may be appropriate, because you may not have the desire or be willing to spend the time to learn how to use it.
Don't forget that Debian is not a company. It doesn't have profit motives. It is written by the developers for the developers. And for the developers, it's a pretty damn fine system.
P.S. Okay, one more thing...I do evangelize a lot about Debian, not because I think that Debian is right for everyone, but because it still happens that every once in a while, Debian makes me break out in an ear-to-ear smile at how easy the system is to use, and how powerful it is (I think this happened when I was installing on my server). I know that other people can experience the same joy if they're willing to put in some effort. But I readily acknowledge that Debian isn't for everyone. If you're not interested enough to put in some effort, then you probably won't appreciate Debian's greatness anyway.
The real question here is how important these patents are to actually performing software licensing. Do they cover the only way possible, or the most important way possible to do so under Palladium? If there's a way to implement the same thing in a different way, MS could just disregard them altogether.
You missed another goal, which is to abuse the patent system. The patent system should be used to protect long years of research and work, or truly dramatic insights (which often occur only following longs years of research and work). They should be a means of rewarding investment in research.
This is why this approach is so ingenious. This is just the kind of thing that could actually correct some of the ridiculous flaws in the patent system. Patent something that someone with tons of cash and powerful lawyers (i.e. Microsoft) needs, and if they want the patent destroyed, they'll fight the patent system to have it nullified. If they win, they set a precedent for stupid patents being overthrown. If they lose, they're bitten by the same mechanism that they usually wield to crush others, and high-profile attention is given to the broken patent process. Justice wins either way.
This could be the little guy's method of exacting justice for all the wrongs that have come out of the patent system in recent years.
I like *not* having an external antenna on my TiPB.
I agree completely. It's sooo nice not to have to worry about that silly piece of plastic sticking out. And my range is fine on the 2nd rev. model.
For those who need extra range, the TiBook airport card does have a connector for an external antenna. You can see it by looking through the card slot grate. There's a round black plastic cover over it. Same connector as in other Lucent WaveLAN cards. There's not really a great place to put the wire, though you could easily run it through the fan grate.
Our webmaster is having a horrible time designing a Unv website that complies with the ADA requirements. It's truely a nightmare.
Clearly, your webmaster is incompetent. Tell him to learn HTML. Accesibility has been built into HTML from the beginning. The only source of nightmare in designing an accessible site is a misunderstanding of the web. The most common error is trying to make the web a graphic design medium. The web is not a graphic design medium. Disavow yourself of the mistaken notion that you can control what your site will look like on every (any) browser. To do that is to defeat the central premise of the web.
HTML was designed to provide a logical description of textual content, which then could be formatted to the needs of the user. The designers of HTML have taken great pains to ensure that HTML, when written correctly, remains accessible in every type of browser. The problem is that incompetence is dominant in the web design field, and people write incorrect, poorly thought-out HTML, attempting to do something with the technology that is counter to its purpose. Dictating layout robs users of one of the great benefits of the web: that of being in control of the content's presentation.
The web was designed to support users changing font sizes, etc., to meet their own needs. Fortunately, it was also designed with accessibility in mind, and thus a properly written HTML page is one that is also accessible. If you're using stupid tricks like spacer images and tables all over the place to try to control layout, you deserve whatever nightmares you're bringing on yourself.
Ah yes. Reminds me of when I used to read alt.cesium, back in the day. Wonderful stories of Cesium and swimming pools and other bodies of water. The conjecture of all the great possibile combinations of Cesium and everyday products (like condoms - for explosive sex!).
Please. Microsoft isn't stupid, it's evil. It certainly has the capability and intelligence to produce secure software, but it doesn't because it would be more expensive to do so, and people weren't willing to pay for it. Further, it's in MS's best interest to produce flawed software, because that's how it sells upgrades. This has been publicly recognized by MS representatives in the past.
Now that MS has established itself as having buggy, insecure software, and entrenched itself in the market, it can easily extract more money by charging for security. Don't underestimate the shrewdness of Bill Gates. This is just good business.
What amazes me is the willingness to continue buying MS's software given their atrocious security record. So many large companies reject open source alternatives, giving as a reason that there is no company to stand behind the products. This carries the assumption that they hold enough clout to get the proprietary companies to stand behind their products, and be responsive to their needs. Yet these companies continue to gobble up software that is so clearly designed without security from the beginning. This is the company that made the email virus possible for Christ's sake! That used to be a joke!
... But this could set a bad precedent making all companies with graphical type sites liable. How many major sites now use flash, can the screen reader translate that?
That's the whole point! Flash is a terrible medium for textual information. I can't read it (because I don't have a Flash plugin, and can't get one because they don't make it for my platform), Google can't read it, and blind people certainly can't read it. Flash is fine for superficial embellishments, but important information just doesn't belong there. The web standards are very carefully crafted in order to preserve the universal accessibility of the information represented by their formats. Flash clearly does not benefit from such rigorous planning, and thus information stored in a Flash format is effectively hidden.
The fabric of the web is built on accessible text, and the extent to which accessibility is subverted by the incompetence of web designers is the extent to which the web will cease to become useful.
Too many in the web business try to contort the web into a graphical design medium. The web is not a graphical design medium! For that we have things like PDF. It's time for people to learn how to adapt their ways of thinking to a new medium, rather than trying to corrupt and contort the medium until it fits their ways of thinking.
It would also suck if this set a precedent so that even my little site had at to conform to blind-compatible standards (I do, however, try to use text when possible for lynx compatibility etc)
Conforming to blind-compatible standards is essentially achieved by conforming to web standards. While I tend to prefer as few things as possible to be dictated by law, this is no great burden on web designers, and given the benefit to humankind, it certainly is worth it in this case, IMHO.
Annoying to you, maybe. Good thing the whole world doesn't have your sense of taste, though, or we wouldn't have such triple delights as
Homestar Runner.
Wow. What a great site. That little icon in the middle is really cute, and the popup that says "This page contains information of a type (application/x-shockwave-flash) that can only be viewed with the appropriate Plug-in" is totally cool. I keep reloading the page so that I can watch it pop-up again.
Seriously though, this is all I get when I visit the page, and thus is an example of nothing other than incompetence. I neither have nor particularly desire a flash plugin, and the site gives me no incentive whatsoever to get one. I can't tell the first thing about what content may or may not be present on the site, that may or may not warrant a download of the plugin they'd like me to use. Not surprising, Google and other search engines can't tell either.
Google, fortunately, is pretty smart, and a search for "homestar runner" brings up the right listing, with a short description of, "Original web cartoons and games." Too bad I had to use Google to find that out. Now, obviously, cartoons and web games aren't going to be that amusing for someone who can't see them, but Christ, would it really kill them to put some text on the site?
Having just acquired a new PS2, I'm wishing that Netflix rented games as well as movies. I think this model is perfect for games, because you could actually keep the game for a few weeks and play it leisurely, without penalty. Since I already have their subscription for movies, though, I'm not willing to shell out another $20 just for a games subscription. I'm not a big gamer, and I just want to play occasionally, so I just can't justify the expense.
Netflix certainly have the movie thing down, though. Since they opened a warehouse near Boston, I've been getting DVDs sometimes as soon as 2 days after I put the last one in the mail. 1 day for it to get to them, and another day for another movie to get back to me. That's impressive! And well worth the price tag, if you ask me.
Kerberos was created by MIT as a solution to these network security problems. The Kerberos protocol uses strong cryptography so that a client can prove its identity to a server (and vice versa) across an
insecure network connection. After a client and server has used Kerberos to prove their identity, they can also encrypt all of their communications to assure privacy and data integrity as they go about their business.
As for the rest I think the/. crowd has shown power in technology. In 1990 the FSF had a few interesting utilities that some Unix guys used but had no impact on computing....
True, and this shows tremendous power, however it was manifest only through a direct challenge, by bringing about a competing product. What I'm talking about is purchasing power. We shouldn't have to come up with our own alternatives to influence the industry. Instead, through the positions that slashdot readers hold in community and in industry - be it the role of tech guru or of purchasing manager - we can influence the actions of other companies simply by bringing issues like this to their direct attention. By linking the issues to our purchasing decisions in a way that is visible to the companies we choose to purchase (or not to purchase) from, we can assert this power, and effect change without having to replace.
Er, put a bit more succinctly, the slashdot crowd does have tremendous influence on purchasing, but it doesn't acknowledge it as such. If one in every 5 slashdot readers decided not to buy a product because the vendor was supporting a practice the reader didn't like, and half of those wrote a letter to the company, stating that she intended to cease purchasing of that company's goods (for her family, or for her entire company, as the case may be), because she disagreed with the practice, I think we would start to see some results. Endless pontification on slashdot (such as this) simply doesn't get us anywhere.
Only endless pontification, in combination with vigorous action, will succeed in influencing the corporate powers-that-be.
The next time CL releases a sound card it will get trashed here. They will notice the negative reaction. No company likes terrible word of mouth.
Well, unfortunately, I don't think it will. And I don't think they'll notice.
Why? First, because of the frog soup problem. People don't consider things a problem until they affect them directly and personally. I'm speaking primarily about America, but people other than a small active minority don't tend to get worked up - or even care - about issues that don't seem to influence them. Take the marijuana situation: the prevalent thought process is something like, "well, I don't want to smoke it, and I don't want my kids smoking it, so I don't see why it shouldn't be illegal - thus I won't vote in favor of legalization." Ignoring that this attitude is recklessly irresponsible in a democratic society (and however flawed that example may be, bear with me), this point of view that prevails, at least as far as I can tell, is that people aren't willing to change the status quo unless it directly benefits them, and they don't generally try to anticipate unforseen consequences down the road.
As for CL noticing, however intelligent it may be for them to follow your line of reasoning and court their technical customers, few companies take this approach. Sales and marketing folks are usually in charge of those decisions, and unless they are particularly astute - and following their common sense rather than their formal training - care about their largest demographic segment first and foremost. Rarely do for-profit companies take a high moral ground on issues unless their primary customers demand it.
This is why I believe that people in positions such as those that readers of slashdot often are in should actively and vocally assert their power of influence in this regard. Rather than complain to the choir of fellow-slashdotters, those in positions of influence - IT managers, family members who are sought for advice about products - should recognize their influence and use it in a way that upholds their ideals. Too often people vote with their dollars without being cognizant that they are doing so. Every time a dollar is spent on Microsoft products, it furthers their efforts to crush their competition. Every time a dollar is spent at Wal*Mart, it helps to replace a local merchant with an ugly box-store in a suburb. Until people recognize their power in purchasing decisions, companies will continue to recklessly and singularly follow their profit motives. Only when the profit becomes tied to the moral high-ground will the companies pursue that route.
Now, I'm not suggesting that everyone should immediately stop buying CL, or even MS, products. What I do suggest is that people, when buying a product, tell the sales person (especially if you're a corporate customer) about their concerns with this type of issue. If enough corporate customers - who normally wouldn't care about issues like DRM, because they're not media consumers - and normal consumers demand (to the salespeople they're purchasing from) that products be free of DRM, the vendors will start responding, and a good end with be brought about.
Slashdot Mirror
The cost to new sites is zero. Using HTML properly gets you ADA compliance. The HTML standards were designed very carefully to accomodate different types of client, including non-visual. The only problem arises from those who incorrectly try to use HTML as a graphic design medium
A discussion about a discussion.
Wait...didn't you just engage in a meta-discussion about 'bias'?
Hmm.
This is not technically possible, unless Google used a clickthrough system for each link, which it does not. When you click on a link from a Google page, other than things like cached pages or sponsored links, your browser goes directly to the site linked to in order to get the page. No more information is sent back to Google. There is no way for them to get more information about which link you click on, unless each link is to a Google address that redirects you to the real page. Again, this is only done for sponsored links.
Neither the search terms 'search' nor 'king' will match with 'SearchKing'. Google and most other search engines, IIRC, don't search based on stems, but for the exact word you type (including plurality). From Google's basic help page:
I disagree. There's room for more than one distribution. This isn't a contest, and I don't think Debian's success is lessened by the fact that more people use RedHat. RedHat caters to a larger audience than Debian. Debian has a niche that it fills very successfully.
It seems that you (and many other people) think about this in terms of a traditional capitalist, profit-driven point of view - which is entirely appropriate when talking about a company which is seeking a profit. Open-source projects however, as distinct from the companies that try to market and sell their products, don't need to have a huge following to be successful, they just need to be useful (to someone). Debian is eminently useful to me and many others, and meets my needs for an operating system almost perfectly. That, in my book, is a success.
Well, to be fair, I never use dselect, other than to jumpstart the installation process after I've run 'dpkg --set-selections' to install a new package list. The few times I have used it, I haven't particularly liked it. Apt, however, is an amazingly convenient and powerful collection of software.
Well, it would mean that someone would have to maintain all those paths. If that meant taking that person's time away from aspects of Debian that influence people for more than the first day of use, I'm not sure it would be worth it.
What people seem to have a hard time grasping here is that Debian is not a company. What gets improved and worked on is what developers are interested in improving on. Companies that use Debian worry about getting new users, and they spend time/money on improving the installer. Eventually Debian itself will probably benefit from that. If a developer is sufficiently interested in improving the installer, she will do so. If not, it will remain a minimal implementation that suffices for the apparent majority of us (that already use Debian) who are more concerned with the experience after installation.
"That" amounts to essentially what you just said. To build more intelligence into the installer would require more time and effort on some developer's part. I don't find the installer to be inconvenient enough to warrant the use of someone's time to improve it, if that means taking that time away from another part of Debian.
I'm not sure why you think I give a flying rat's ass about market-share. Market-share is meaningless to an organization without profit motives, beyond the critical mass necessary to sustain the project. Worrying about that is left to companies, some of which have already built or are working on better installers for Debian. As I said before, if the Debian installer doesn't suit your needs, and the installer is your basis for choosing an operating system, use a different distribution or write a better installer. Most of us don't worry about the installer, because either it isn't a problem for us, or because the amount of time spent installing is negligible (even if it takes 3 days the first time) in comparison to the amount of time spent actually using the system.Touché. On the other hand, I'm pretty happy with Debian's release priorities. They don't release until the distribution is solid. This means that I can trust it to run my server flawlessly for years. Servers don't like to be changed very often, anyway. I run testing on my laptop and find it to be a perfect balance between stability and currency.
That's an excellent point. Debian isn't really meant to be a polished OS. It's meant to serve the developers that create it. Since it's not a company, there's little drive to get more users, and thus no drive to polish the install process, etc., other than to make it more useful for the developers themselves.
:)
This leaves that job to the 3rd parties, who add the polish for those who want it to an excellent base, furnished by those happy developers.
Everybody wins! I love open source!
Debian was not made for you. Debian was made for people like me, who don't want arbitrary installation choices made for them to making installation "easier." Installation is not a frequent process with Debian, because upgrades are practically automatic. So you generally only have to install once, and it's a very small part of the overall experience. Thus, installation is not worth spending excessive development time on, because those of us that use and develop for Debian don't have a commercial agenda driving adoption rates. If Debian works well for you, use it, if it doesn't, use another distribution. That's why there's more than one.
I recently upgraded my web/cvs/mail/etc. server from RedHat to Debian (finally!), and it was effortless. It didn't take much more than 20 minutes of my time, and at the end I had exactly the packages I wanted, no more, no less. Netinst in particular makes Debian a dream to install. Just insert the CD with the minimum necessary software needed to talk to the network, then select your packages (as simple as copying a file and issuing a single command if you've got a similar system running). Hit apt-get update and it downloads all the software from the network (the most recent version - no installing then upgrading right away), then configures and installs it. The configuration system even lets you select the level of detail you want to have control over. If you want all the default choices, you don't have to do much configuration at all.
That's just uninformed, one-sided bullshit. Debian's installer is simple, easy-to-use (for those that know what they're doing), and gets the job done. My last few installs have been painless and quick. Furhermore, any pain that might have been experienced the first time installing has been rewarded many times over by the effortlessness of upgrading and maintaining a stable system.
RedHat doesn't have any advantages for me that I've seen. None. So much for fact.
Debian is right now an overwhelming success. It meets my and many other developers' needs to a tee. It is by leaps and bounds the best operating system I have ever used (including Mac OS X, BTW). If you want a system that holds your hands through a "polished" installation (an activity that probably occupies much less that 1% of your time using the system), and guesses how you want your system configured to spare you the trouble, either write a new installer yourself, or use a different distribution. You'll be missing out on a lot of functionality, but that may be appropriate, because you may not have the desire or be willing to spend the time to learn how to use it.
Don't forget that Debian is not a company. It doesn't have profit motives. It is written by the developers for the developers. And for the developers, it's a pretty damn fine system.
P.S. Okay, one more thing...I do evangelize a lot about Debian, not because I think that Debian is right for everyone, but because it still happens that every once in a while, Debian makes me break out in an ear-to-ear smile at how easy the system is to use, and how powerful it is (I think this happened when I was installing on my server). I know that other people can experience the same joy if they're willing to put in some effort. But I readily acknowledge that Debian isn't for everyone. If you're not interested enough to put in some effort, then you probably won't appreciate Debian's greatness anyway.
Man, I thought they were talking about code libraries! (*.a *.so)
The real question here is how important these patents are to actually performing software licensing. Do they cover the only way possible, or the most important way possible to do so under Palladium? If there's a way to implement the same thing in a different way, MS could just disregard them altogether.
Great idea, though.
This is why this approach is so ingenious. This is just the kind of thing that could actually correct some of the ridiculous flaws in the patent system. Patent something that someone with tons of cash and powerful lawyers (i.e. Microsoft) needs, and if they want the patent destroyed, they'll fight the patent system to have it nullified. If they win, they set a precedent for stupid patents being overthrown. If they lose, they're bitten by the same mechanism that they usually wield to crush others, and high-profile attention is given to the broken patent process. Justice wins either way.
This could be the little guy's method of exacting justice for all the wrongs that have come out of the patent system in recent years.
I agree completely. It's sooo nice not to have to worry about that silly piece of plastic sticking out. And my range is fine on the 2nd rev. model.
For those who need extra range, the TiBook airport card does have a connector for an external antenna. You can see it by looking through the card slot grate. There's a round black plastic cover over it. Same connector as in other Lucent WaveLAN cards. There's not really a great place to put the wire, though you could easily run it through the fan grate.
Clearly, your webmaster is incompetent. Tell him to learn HTML. Accesibility has been built into HTML from the beginning. The only source of nightmare in designing an accessible site is a misunderstanding of the web. The most common error is trying to make the web a graphic design medium. The web is not a graphic design medium. Disavow yourself of the mistaken notion that you can control what your site will look like on every (any) browser. To do that is to defeat the central premise of the web.
HTML was designed to provide a logical description of textual content, which then could be formatted to the needs of the user. The designers of HTML have taken great pains to ensure that HTML, when written correctly, remains accessible in every type of browser. The problem is that incompetence is dominant in the web design field, and people write incorrect, poorly thought-out HTML, attempting to do something with the technology that is counter to its purpose. Dictating layout robs users of one of the great benefits of the web: that of being in control of the content's presentation.
The web was designed to support users changing font sizes, etc., to meet their own needs. Fortunately, it was also designed with accessibility in mind, and thus a properly written HTML page is one that is also accessible. If you're using stupid tricks like spacer images and tables all over the place to try to control layout, you deserve whatever nightmares you're bringing on yourself.
Ah yes. Reminds me of when I used to read alt.cesium, back in the day. Wonderful stories of Cesium and swimming pools and other bodies of water. The conjecture of all the great possibile combinations of Cesium and everyday products (like condoms - for explosive sex!).
Such fond memories.
Please. Microsoft isn't stupid, it's evil. It certainly has the capability and intelligence to produce secure software, but it doesn't because it would be more expensive to do so, and people weren't willing to pay for it. Further, it's in MS's best interest to produce flawed software, because that's how it sells upgrades. This has been publicly recognized by MS representatives in the past.
Now that MS has established itself as having buggy, insecure software, and entrenched itself in the market, it can easily extract more money by charging for security. Don't underestimate the shrewdness of Bill Gates. This is just good business.
What amazes me is the willingness to continue buying MS's software given their atrocious security record. So many large companies reject open source alternatives, giving as a reason that there is no company to stand behind the products. This carries the assumption that they hold enough clout to get the proprietary companies to stand behind their products, and be responsive to their needs. Yet these companies continue to gobble up software that is so clearly designed without security from the beginning. This is the company that made the email virus possible for Christ's sake! That used to be a joke!
That's the whole point! Flash is a terrible medium for textual information. I can't read it (because I don't have a Flash plugin, and can't get one because they don't make it for my platform), Google can't read it, and blind people certainly can't read it. Flash is fine for superficial embellishments, but important information just doesn't belong there. The web standards are very carefully crafted in order to preserve the universal accessibility of the information represented by their formats. Flash clearly does not benefit from such rigorous planning, and thus information stored in a Flash format is effectively hidden.
The fabric of the web is built on accessible text, and the extent to which accessibility is subverted by the incompetence of web designers is the extent to which the web will cease to become useful.
Too many in the web business try to contort the web into a graphical design medium. The web is not a graphical design medium! For that we have things like PDF. It's time for people to learn how to adapt their ways of thinking to a new medium, rather than trying to corrupt and contort the medium until it fits their ways of thinking.
Conforming to blind-compatible standards is essentially achieved by conforming to web standards. While I tend to prefer as few things as possible to be dictated by law, this is no great burden on web designers, and given the benefit to humankind, it certainly is worth it in this case, IMHO.
Wow. What a great site. That little icon in the middle is really cute, and the popup that says "This page contains information of a type (application/x-shockwave-flash) that can only be viewed with the appropriate Plug-in" is totally cool. I keep reloading the page so that I can watch it pop-up again.
Seriously though, this is all I get when I visit the page, and thus is an example of nothing other than incompetence. I neither have nor particularly desire a flash plugin, and the site gives me no incentive whatsoever to get one. I can't tell the first thing about what content may or may not be present on the site, that may or may not warrant a download of the plugin they'd like me to use. Not surprising, Google and other search engines can't tell either.
Google, fortunately, is pretty smart, and a search for "homestar runner" brings up the right listing, with a short description of, "Original web cartoons and games." Too bad I had to use Google to find that out. Now, obviously, cartoons and web games aren't going to be that amusing for someone who can't see them, but Christ, would it really kill them to put some text on the site?
Having just acquired a new PS2, I'm wishing that Netflix rented games as well as movies. I think this model is perfect for games, because you could actually keep the game for a few weeks and play it leisurely, without penalty. Since I already have their subscription for movies, though, I'm not willing to shell out another $20 just for a games subscription. I'm not a big gamer, and I just want to play occasionally, so I just can't justify the expense.
Netflix certainly have the movie thing down, though. Since they opened a warehouse near Boston, I've been getting DVDs sometimes as soon as 2 days after I put the last one in the mail. 1 day for it to get to them, and another day for another movie to get back to me. That's impressive! And well worth the price tag, if you ask me.
Aroo? That's exactly what Kerberos was designed for. It was created to provide security over MIT's (physically pretty much wide open) network.
From the web site (emphasis added):
True, and this shows tremendous power, however it was manifest only through a direct challenge, by bringing about a competing product. What I'm talking about is purchasing power. We shouldn't have to come up with our own alternatives to influence the industry. Instead, through the positions that slashdot readers hold in community and in industry - be it the role of tech guru or of purchasing manager - we can influence the actions of other companies simply by bringing issues like this to their direct attention. By linking the issues to our purchasing decisions in a way that is visible to the companies we choose to purchase (or not to purchase) from, we can assert this power, and effect change without having to replace.
Er, put a bit more succinctly, the slashdot crowd does have tremendous influence on purchasing, but it doesn't acknowledge it as such. If one in every 5 slashdot readers decided not to buy a product because the vendor was supporting a practice the reader didn't like, and half of those wrote a letter to the company, stating that she intended to cease purchasing of that company's goods (for her family, or for her entire company, as the case may be), because she disagreed with the practice, I think we would start to see some results. Endless pontification on slashdot (such as this) simply doesn't get us anywhere.
Only endless pontification, in combination with vigorous action, will succeed in influencing the corporate powers-that-be.
Well, unfortunately, I don't think it will. And I don't think they'll notice.
Why? First, because of the frog soup problem. People don't consider things a problem until they affect them directly and personally. I'm speaking primarily about America, but people other than a small active minority don't tend to get worked up - or even care - about issues that don't seem to influence them. Take the marijuana situation: the prevalent thought process is something like, "well, I don't want to smoke it, and I don't want my kids smoking it, so I don't see why it shouldn't be illegal - thus I won't vote in favor of legalization." Ignoring that this attitude is recklessly irresponsible in a democratic society (and however flawed that example may be, bear with me), this point of view that prevails, at least as far as I can tell, is that people aren't willing to change the status quo unless it directly benefits them, and they don't generally try to anticipate unforseen consequences down the road.
As for CL noticing, however intelligent it may be for them to follow your line of reasoning and court their technical customers, few companies take this approach. Sales and marketing folks are usually in charge of those decisions, and unless they are particularly astute - and following their common sense rather than their formal training - care about their largest demographic segment first and foremost. Rarely do for-profit companies take a high moral ground on issues unless their primary customers demand it.
This is why I believe that people in positions such as those that readers of slashdot often are in should actively and vocally assert their power of influence in this regard. Rather than complain to the choir of fellow-slashdotters, those in positions of influence - IT managers, family members who are sought for advice about products - should recognize their influence and use it in a way that upholds their ideals. Too often people vote with their dollars without being cognizant that they are doing so. Every time a dollar is spent on Microsoft products, it furthers their efforts to crush their competition. Every time a dollar is spent at Wal*Mart, it helps to replace a local merchant with an ugly box-store in a suburb. Until people recognize their power in purchasing decisions, companies will continue to recklessly and singularly follow their profit motives. Only when the profit becomes tied to the moral high-ground will the companies pursue that route.
Now, I'm not suggesting that everyone should immediately stop buying CL, or even MS, products. What I do suggest is that people, when buying a product, tell the sales person (especially if you're a corporate customer) about their concerns with this type of issue. If enough corporate customers - who normally wouldn't care about issues like DRM, because they're not media consumers - and normal consumers demand (to the salespeople they're purchasing from) that products be free of DRM, the vendors will start responding, and a good end with be brought about.
That's just about all I have to say about that.