The standards aren't done yet. Nor will they be. Standards are an evolving thing. The big issue of the Netscape/IE wars in the late 90s was that both parties tried to predict where the standards were going, and tried to go straight to the final standard without waiting for them to be ratified.
Actually that's mostly not true. The engineers from MS (predominantly but also the NS ones) were part of the forum which defined the standards (CSS1 in particular). They went back to their home companies and implemented something different.
Yes, standards evolve, just like software. But where a standard exists, it should be followed - when you're defining software behaviour, you should follow all ratified standards up until that point.
Adding stuff on top (with the intent of influencing standards) is OK, as long as the core is followed, and you recognise that your new stuff may be in conflict with future standards, and at that point, will have to be deprecated.
If there is a ratified standard for a feature, you should follow the standard or not implement the feature.
Ah, I see. It would have been easy to spot those obviouly Arab names like McVeigh, Begin, Mandela, Sands, Guevara, and a fair proportion of the CIA during the Cold War, and therefore stop the terrorism. If only we'd known...
It depends on the rate of error. If you were sure of under 1% false positives to gain 99% identification of true positives, it would be acceptable. But 30% false positives for only 90% true positives?
Given that to be 90% certain of highlighting the desired people (suspects), there's a 30+% false positive error rate, no, I wouldn't rely on this system.
How much data is unclassified anyway? In an environment where there are massive disincentives to revealing anything, you tend to get the phone number of the local pizza delivery classified, right next to the phone number of the Kremlin. "Classify everything" is easy to implement.
Kind of makes a mockery of the classification system, but there you go.
During the first three years the programme has five streams of studies: computer games, programming, mathematics, creativity and software engineering. Students will develop their skills in understanding games genres, gameplay, 2D and 3D game production and console and PC programming. This will be underpinned by a thorough understanding of mathematical modelling, producing quality software and C, C++ and assembler languages.
The course is intended for people straight out of high-school, rather than as a second degree for people with a CS qualification already.
If sites become dependent upon client side niceties like Flash, data binding and Javascript for their basic functionality, they stop being accessible to those using assistive technologies which don't support those capabilities.
Now you may not be aware of this, but in many countries, sites must be accessible.
In the US, the Americans with Disabilities Act means that all federal services (and many state ones) must be accessible.
In the UK, any site which offers a public service (nb this includes all online stores) must be accessible, thanks to the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act.
In Australia, the Sydney Olympic Games Organising Committee were successfully sued for being inaccessible to the blind
With this going on, an IE-only web is going to get further away, not closer. The only way to be accessible is to ensure that basic HTML standards-compliant pages will allow users to access the basic functionality of their sites.
Anyone processing personal data must comply with the eight enforceable principles of good practice. They say that data must be:
fairly and lawfully processed;
processed for limited purposes;
adequate, relevant and not excessive;
accurate;
not kept longer than necessary;
processed in accordance with the data subject's rights;
secure;
not transferred to countries without adequate protection.
Personal data covers both facts and opinions about the individual. It also includes information regarding the intentions of the data controller towards the individual, although in some limited circumstances exemptions will apply. With processing, the definition is far wider than before. For example, it incorporates the concepts of 'obtaining', holding' and 'disclosing'.
This is so much more stringent than US models that until the recent 'Safe Harbour' agreement, it was not possible to transfer personal data from the UK to the US. Obeying this will enable you to gain 'Safe Harbour' status, yet it's not hard.
Tell your users:
Who you are
What data you're collecting
Why you're collecting it (for each data type)
How you're collecting it (for each data type)
Who you're intending to share that data with and why
Take more care with sensitive data (anything to do with health, money, beliefs or sexual orientation)
And you must, must, must give people an opportunity to opt out of any data uses which are not absolutely central to the operation of your service. Actually, an opt-in is better - Seth Godin explains why (fair warning - Amazon Associates apply; circumvent if you feel the need).
Does the UK have any law similar to the American Disabilities Act?
Yes we do - the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act which came into force last October.
In that, providers of public services (shops are specifically mentioned) are required to make 'reasonable adjustments' to make services accessible (ie providing services to the same manner and quality), or suffer unlimited penalties.
Just in case anyone doesn't know where to get the downloads of PGP outwith the US, they're at http://www.pgpi.com/. Free for non-commercial use and entirely legally exported from the US (unless you're in the Sudan, Iran, Iraq and few other places).
Aye, but what are the timings? With the current units & the latest clients, my 300MHz G3 (192MB RAM) has gone from ~9hrs to ~14hrs per unit. If it does its thang under 5 hrs then it's reason to move to cable modems and connect automatically (****ing metered calls - http://www.unmetered.org.uk/)
DA is on record as being very, very, very bad at meeting deadlines; usually delivering only after the publisher has tied him up and threatened his nearest and dearest with body part removal.
OT-ish: has no-one outside the UK heard of The Meaning of Liff [sic]? This was a non-Amazon link but BOL's URLs are too long.
Probably about as likely as they are to give away possibly the world's best news site. Or insist that any site officially syndicating the content place zero ads on the same page. Yahoo are the only ones to take them up on it so far.
fwiw, there's no radio license any more.
Aside: There's an anecdote about Ballmer circulating in UK eCommerce circles - he visited the Beeb and was very nice about the news site. Then he asked what the revenue model was and was told "Um, it's free. Users pay for it from their TV licenses which you have to have if you watch TV in the UK"
Be registered to hold and process identifying data and only do so for a proper length of time
Obtain data fairly (ie from you with your permission or from a reputable (ie registered)) source
Ensure that that data is up to date
Ensure that the data is only disclosed to proper persons or bodies
Give you the right to view your own data
Only use it for proper purposes
Therefore, you can view your credit history as disclosed to financial companies by writing to Equifax or Experian (the 2 big credit reference agencies) with a £2 cheque, and challenge any erroneous info they hold about you.
While I agree that legislation doesn't curb the average spammer, in the UK and throughout Europe, data protection legislation means that abuse such as Caldera's just doesn't happen.
This is because of the Data Protection Acts of 1984 and 1999. Businesses are obliged to seek explicit permission before storing and using *any* identifying information. They also have register with the Data Protection Commission with a fairly exact list of what data they're allowed to collect, where they're allowed to get it from and to what purposes they're allowed to put it.
Further, data subjects (that's you and me) have a right to the data stored about them for a 'reasonable fee' (ie around a tenner), and revoke permissions to data they have provided. It's not only commercial data users who are under obligation to go through this, but also health bodies, the police and so on. And the commission is a body with some teeth, as the kicking it handed out to the government over its privacy bill shows.
Slashdot Mirror
The standards aren't done yet. Nor will they be. Standards are an evolving thing. The big issue of the Netscape/IE wars in the late 90s was that both parties tried to predict where the standards were going, and tried to go straight to the final standard without waiting for them to be ratified.
Actually that's mostly not true. The engineers from MS (predominantly but also the NS ones) were part of the forum which defined the standards (CSS1 in particular). They went back to their home companies and implemented something different.
Yes, standards evolve, just like software. But where a standard exists, it should be followed - when you're defining software behaviour, you should follow all ratified standards up until that point.
Adding stuff on top (with the intent of influencing standards) is OK, as long as the core is followed, and you recognise that your new stuff may be in conflict with future standards, and at that point, will have to be deprecated.
If there is a ratified standard for a feature, you should follow the standard or not implement the feature.
Current W3C recommendation for HTML is 4.01 (which is 4.0 with bugfixes)
Ah, I see. It would have been easy to spot those obviouly Arab names like McVeigh, Begin, Mandela, Sands, Guevara, and a fair proportion of the CIA during the Cold War, and therefore stop the terrorism. If only we'd known...
It depends on the rate of error. If you were sure of under 1% false positives to gain 99% identification of true positives, it would be acceptable. But 30% false positives for only 90% true positives?
Given that to be 90% certain of highlighting the desired people (suspects), there's a 30+% false positive error rate, no, I wouldn't rely on this system.
http://www.liquid.se/pong.html
How much data is unclassified anyway? In an environment where there are massive disincentives to revealing anything, you tend to get the phone number of the local pizza delivery classified, right next to the phone number of the Kremlin. "Classify everything" is easy to implement.
Kind of makes a mockery of the classification system, but there you go.
The course description might be helpful. Here's the key bit:
The course is intended for people straight out of high-school, rather than as a second degree for people with a CS qualification already.
The University of Abertay in Dundee, Scotland (original home of Lemmings creators, DMA) has a degree in Computer Games Technology
Now you may not be aware of this, but in many countries, sites must be accessible.
With this going on, an IE-only web is going to get further away, not closer. The only way to be accessible is to ensure that basic HTML standards-compliant pages will allow users to access the basic functionality of their sites.
More info:
A pretty good model is the UK Data Protection one:
This is so much more stringent than US models that until the recent 'Safe Harbour' agreement, it was not possible to transfer personal data from the UK to the US. Obeying this will enable you to gain 'Safe Harbour' status, yet it's not hard.
And you must, must, must give people an opportunity to opt out of any data uses which are not absolutely central to the operation of your service. Actually, an opt-in is better - Seth Godin explains why (fair warning - Amazon Associates apply; circumvent if you feel the need).
fwiw the original hitch-hiker's radio series is available on CD and tape.
Yes we do - the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act which came into force last October. In that, providers of public services (shops are specifically mentioned) are required to make 'reasonable adjustments' to make services accessible (ie providing services to the same manner and quality), or suffer unlimited penalties.
More info at http://www.disability.gov.uk/dda/fin alcode.rtf. This is the non-legalese Code of Practise resulting from the Act, rather than the Act itself.
Lawyers are currently interpreting this to mean that minimum compliance is Conformance Level A of the W3C Accessibility Guidelines.
Just in case anyone doesn't know where to get the downloads of PGP outwith the US, they're at http://www.pgpi.com/. Free for non-commercial use and entirely legally exported from the US (unless you're in the Sudan, Iran, Iraq and few other places).
The Lords can't chuck it out completely, they can merely request amendments.
Full info is on the FIPR site: http://www.fipr.org/rip/
Aye, but what are the timings? With the current units & the latest clients, my 300MHz G3 (192MB RAM) has gone from ~9hrs to ~14hrs per unit. If it does its thang under 5 hrs then it's reason to move to cable modems and connect automatically (****ing metered calls - http://www.unmetered.org.uk/)
OT-ish: has no-one outside the UK heard of The Meaning of Liff [sic]? This was a non-Amazon link but BOL's URLs are too long.
fwiw, there's no radio license any more.
Aside: There's an anecdote about Ballmer circulating in UK eCommerce circles - he visited the Beeb and was very nice about the news site. Then he asked what the revenue model was and was told "Um, it's free. Users pay for it from their TV licenses which you have to have if you watch TV in the UK"
The good people over at The Register have the story without registration [sic].
Y'see, *this* is why the EU has been unhappy about data transfers to the US - we have stringent data protection legislation.
In the UK (whose implementation I know best), data holders *must*
Therefore, you can view your credit history as disclosed to financial companies by writing to Equifax or Experian (the 2 big credit reference agencies) with a £2 cheque, and challenge any erroneous info they hold about you.
The recent Demon libel case shows that community publishing is increasingly seen as placing a duty of care on hosts.
Certainly legal advice to UK sites is very clearly to be very careful over community content, as it may incur liability.
This cryptography possibility is outlined in some detail in John Gribben's "Shroedinger's Kittens", around page 108.
Phil GreenspUn != Alan GreenspAn
This is because of the Data Protection Acts of 1984 and 1999. Businesses are obliged to seek explicit permission before storing and using *any* identifying information. They also have register with the Data Protection Commission with a fairly exact list of what data they're allowed to collect, where they're allowed to get it from and to what purposes they're allowed to put it.
Further, data subjects (that's you and me) have a right to the data stored about them for a 'reasonable fee' (ie around a tenner), and revoke permissions to data they have provided. It's not only commercial data users who are under obligation to go through this, but also health bodies, the police and so on. And the commission is a body with some teeth, as the kicking it handed out to the government over its privacy bill shows.