the ultimate hack of all time is the recovery of Apollo 13, by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, specifically Ken(?) Mattingly, astronaut.
Considering that they had to remotely instruct the astronauts to assemble a backup air filtration system from scavenged parts, power up a damaged spaceship in exactly the right order so as to use limited battery voltage, burn thrusters at exactly the right angle and duration to reenter the Earth without skidding off the atmosphere into deep space, or burning on reentry, and recovering the astronauts in the middle of the Indian Ocean, this isn't merely a hack, it's legend.
I'm surprised this didn't even get mention on Slashdot. _____
If you sift through the crappy prose, Katz actually has a point, and it's one I've been trying to make for a good couple of years:
If people who know something about how the Net operates don't get off their asses and vote, it's going to be left to the net.clueless, the net.profit-motivated, and the net.paranoid to make LAW that governs how Americans use and operate the Internet, and that's likely to be retarded.
We're already beginning to see it happen: CDA, Clipper, export restrictions on encryption protocols, DCMA, and other dog$#!+ that panders to the basest lusers among us. Even if politicians could hire someone to provide them with a clue, they aren't likely to listen to it in the face of thousands in campaign contributions, or on behalf of people who by and large don't even vote.
That's the reason that net-literate people need to vote in much larger numbers, but it's also why they need to band together and provide Americans with clueful alternatives to the candidates and initiatives that are in front of us now.
So while the Slashdot community is putting its collective foot to Jon's ass, I'd implore them to also consider voting, and when they do, to consider technical coherency a factor in whom they decide to elect. _____
Re:Funny, But too close to home..
on
Dear Mr. Lucas
·
· Score: 1
Your, not you're.
That may have cost you the part as well, since a 19-year-old Anakin will presumably have been taught proper English, which we all know is the official language of the Galaxy. Except the Trade Federation, which is Japanese.
Anyway - the answer to censorship (or speech you don't like) is more speech
[I had to point out that statement derives from a Supreme Court decision here in Los Estados Unidos, and as you can see below, I've had it in my sig since I signed up for Slashdot.]
Here in Portland a dude named Jarius Godeka had attended the local Scientology reading room once, maybe twice, before he freaked out and started taking shots (the gun kind) at people in the room. It made the news, where it was reported he was destitute, a drug user, and romantically involved with someone else who was going through the program. Which made me wonder: how many Scientologists are in my TV newsroom?
What I find disturbing is the paradox that this purports to be a religion (with religious freedom) and a corporation (with trade secrets) at the same time. CoS should be forced to pick one. _____
Having multiple pointing devices would take care of a lot of the disadvantages of any one, as long as you could work interchangeably between one and the other (say, a pen and a mouse, plus OC the keyboard).
For me, I'm dying to get a pen so I can make up in freehand drawing the talent I lack at manipulating Bezier curves and other mouse related artistic problems. I've heard it said, "drawing with a mouse is like signing your name with a bar of soap."
But nothing beats the mouse for screen interface, cause (as someone pointed out) you can push it and leave it, and it stays there until you're ready. It's just precise enough.
So I'll eventually have one pen, and one mouse, and they damn well better work at the same time.
What they CAN work on is getting me something like that that I can afford. A small pen tablet ought to cost about as much as a mouse, IMHO. I've looked at Wacom prices, and it don't -- yet. _____
While I also dig glassdog, whose mailing list I got the message from, I'm not sure the story is right. Would not 11/13/1999 ALSO be an odd day? 11/15/1999? 11/17/1999, and 11/19/1999? No, I think the significance, if you can even call it that, is some pattern more complex, that the day has equal numbers of odd digits in order, when expressed in mmddyy form (111999) or something like that.
I'm not going to do the math or play find the pattern, but when a topic such as this not only qualifies as 'News for Nerds' but also gets 300+ posts (to date), I begin to question anyone's premise for slapping ANY kind of 'News for Nerds' qualification criteria on Katz, the unfortunate suicide of Mary Kay Bergman, or any other topic that might be distant from Linux, gaming, standards committees, or any other more "pure" Slashdot topic. _____
Without wanting to seem overly simplistic, when Mitnick "stole" the Solaris source code from Sun, Sun really didn't "lose" the source itself; instead, it lost its right to be the only people who could do something with/to the source.
Granted, Sun set the value of its own loss, but it seems ludicrous that Solaris would be worth $80M, unless Sun itself were to lose the ability to develop on their own platform. Mitnick didn't accomplish that with his hack.
Also it's not like Sun couldn't change its Source to Solaris (and therefore cheapen, if not make obsolete Mitnick's hack).
What Mitnick did amounts to forcing Sun to share a secret with him. What the open-sourcing of MS Windows would do amounts to forcing MS to share its API with the public computing community. It's not like DoJ would go in and remove boxen, file cabinets and employees from Redmond.
Applied to the Microsoft anti-trust decision, isn't it then a different kind of "taking" to open the source than it would be to remove the Windows meme from the hands and minds of anyone associated with profit-taking at Microsoft (even if such a thing could be done)?
IANAL, but I wouldn't mind hearing one of that excellent panel speak to this issue. _____
Still, anyone who can put on those subtle accents and create characters out of that is unique and talented.
Hear, HEAR.
but always felt her voices on South Park at least were more or less one-note voices {snip}...but behind it all, I always heard the same voice.)
I'm with you as far as Ms. Broslofsky, the Mayor, Barbra Streisand, Stan's Mom, and the Bus Driver, but you're forgetting:
Cartman's mom Wendy Testaburger
Dude, to have those voices also in the repertoire is pure and f**king unadulterated RANGE. I'm still having a hard time believing that was also her. Maybe I have lower standards, but having been in radio myself, I doubt it. I used to be able to do about two sets of three or four characters that only slightly sounded like each other (similar to what you're describing of Mary Kay), and I'd consider that normal -- she had every female on South Park. THAT, sir, is talent.
And although I know half of making me laugh when I watch South Park is the writing, Mary Kay Bergman gets her share of credit for it, whether or not I knew her name before the announcement, because she helped deliver it to me regularly and perfectly. I thank her profusely for each and every one of her characters, and I'll miss her contribution to my psyche.
On another note, she apparently had to deal with a life-threatening tumor, and I have every bit of respect to anyone who must deal with that decision, NO MATTER WHAT they come up with. I hope she passed painlessly, and in the company of loved ones who celebrated her and her life.
In my home state, a right to assisted suicide for the terminally ill is the law of the land, and it was affirmed twice by our voters. I happen to agree with that right as it is expressed.
It's worth noting that another great voice talent, Jean Vander Pyl, passed recently too. She did Wilma Flintstone and a number of other Hanna-Barbera characters. _____
The same influence anyone would have as the known front-runner for next President, with Executive Branch access (DoJ, FBI), the current President's ear, an active role in domestic policymaking (similar to his crusade against the complexity of Federal administrative rules).
Believe me, Al Gore has an active role in this Administration's domestic policy decisions, ESPECIALLY with regard to tech and the Internet. And he should be held responsible for his performance in that role every bit as much as President Clinton.
In any case, someone should ask him where he stands with regard to those issues, so he can make it clear he's been playing both sides against the middle since he took office. _____
...if it hasn't already. We're all affected by laws, especially Internet laws, and by direct association, the political leanings of *anyone* attempting to be the person who writes/signs/enforces them.
As for impartiality, we're dealing with precisely this aspect at an organization I pay dues to, who is currently considering an offer for certain candidates for President to speak at one of their events. We're a tax-exempt non-profit, which as an organization is required to remain non-partisan. The way we figured it out is that if we invited every other (Presidential) candidate to speak at us, we could remain non-partisan. Or noone running for President could speak to us at all.
Slashdot (assuming it's non-partisan to begin with) could do likewise, and still remain non-partisan. Slashdot doesn't control the political thoughts of its posters in any meaningful direction, and in essence, that's the key to it. _____
Such an article would give the Vranesevich interview stiff competition as the most useless expenditure of disk space on Slashdot.
In fact, the sheer wooden superficially of this stump-speech cum article he wrote for Slate makes me believe he DID write it himself.
(Crashing? Puh-leeze. For maybe five minutes, MAX - and this assumes he actually tried to TAILOR content, and not just cut and paste from his campaign website.)
And if his daughter was any less of a fluff generator than he, it doesn't surprise me at all that she rose no higher than Editorial Assistant.
No, what's really sad is that it's 85% likely (according to the last turnout statistics) that of Karenna's "friends and former colleagues" that Dad chatted with in Slate breakroom, none of them gave the slightest shit about him or anyone else involved with making and administering the laws that govern them, enough to drag their ass three blocks to a polling center on Election Day.
I'll say it 'til I'm #0000FF in the face - laws that govern the Net are and will continue to be written by people with big egos and woefully insufficient cluons, until people who care stand up and vote them out of office.
Al Gore, who helped enable the CDA, Echelon, the consideration of wiretap tech built into IP, ADA restraints on web publishing, and every other recent evil thing that's happening on the policy side of tech, is not sufficiently different than Jesse Helms or James Exon in this respect.
That he didn't address this in his puff piece for Slate is only the latest proof of that. _____
If Priority One is all that is necessary, and I have options on the points in Priorities Two and Three, I see no problem for me (personally) to make any of my sites compliant to THAT standard.
Unfortunately, I have the creeping suspicion that a compliance program administered by the Justice Department (or for that matter, by resolution of a lawsuit) will not be nearly that calm and relaxing. Frankly, I hope it is.
My civil-liberties spidey-sense has also been throbbing mightily since the posting of this topic, and I tend to offend people who disagree with me when I feel my rights are threatened in even the slightest way. I'll work on that, but I promise nothing. _____
Actually, if you'd RTFT, you'd notice that I'm going to be working on bringing a federal government website into compliance, and as you're probably well aware, being as educated as you are, it's not just alt tags and text-menus at the bottom. That ACRONYM tag alone is probably a month of work for me by itself, easy.
For starters, we'll probably have to Bobby-proof our entire site (thousands of pages, with hundreds of authors and developers) to Priority Two, or even Three, but then again, that's just an educated guess. We'll find out for sure when DOJ proclaims from on high. Keep in mind that if DOJ was smart enough to simply comply with W3C spec, which you're right to infer is not nearly the pain in the ass, they wouldn't have to *write* as much as they've already spent months doing. And W3C spec won't apply to AOL, either, especially not their client software.
As for AOL, they've got at least as big a website as we do (don't even get me started on members.aol.com - cat-herding for 3 million, anyone?), and they're even more visual than we are.
So while I appreciate your polite attempt at 'bringing me up to speed,' I'm doing just fine on my own, thank you.
I DO dislike Jakob, but I have reasons for it, not the least of which is having met him. He's derisive, snobbish, and fascist in his beliefs. That I disagree with him on principle is separate from that.
But from up there in the W3C stratosphere, you wouldn't know anything about that, would you? _____
Go back and read the Old Man's post. Access, not benefits.
1) Nope, it could actually be an undue burden to have to redesign the AOL interface, which is highly visual, to comply. Not to mention that the "access" mentioned here isn't clearly defined. The blind already have access to the Internet. Technically, they already have access to AOL, even though they can't actually *see* that they're there. Some of it's text; a lot of it's images. As compared to the building analogy, if you enter the building, you've got access, even if you don't see that you do.
2) What makes you think that redesigning a multi-million page website for compliance isn't as much of an "undue burden" as printing works in Braille? If it is, then this lawsuit is as frivolous as the one you described.
3) As above, www.aol.com and members.aol.com are not "mere websites," and the AOL software has a hard enough time functioning to it's own spec, not to mention the months it might take the crack computer scientists to write functional voicetech, keyboard shortcuts, and anything else it might need to comply. Being a "big company" doesn't seem to have helped them at all in that respect. And then you have to define what's a "big enough company to handle ADA compliance without significant loss." Like it's been brought up before, it's about more than just ALT tags. I don't think the courts want to set a rule; they'll just wait until people get sued, and decide a case at a time.
4) If AOL thinks it's right, it doesn't matter how many times they had to tell the organization involved "No." And if AOL thinks it's a bullshit lawsuit, there's a fine line between debatable and outlandish. There's nothing wrong with the law, so the junk about writing your congressman doesn't apply, but the question is whether it does or doesn't apply to AOL, and the place to argue that IS in the Courts. It's also the place, incidentally, to argue whether or not it's a bullshit lawsuit. _____
You show me how to express the Mona Lisa in Braille, and I'll accept your analogy as not having been pulled out of your ass.
I think even Jakob Neilsen and his merry band of anti-progressives can admit that the Web isn't just about text. And whether the majority of the Web is text or not, image, color, and movement have a place on it, whether you or anyone else thinks that's a poor choice.
The Web's usability cabal doesn't have the right to take image, color and movement away from people who publish (nor CAN it, frankly), and when a private company (even one as odious and contemptible in its own right as is AOL, let me make that clear) faces lawsuits over usability and design issues, that is flat-out WRONG, because it enforces one choice out of many where no enforcement right belongs.
Whether there "ought to be Alt tags" is irrelevant. Whether blind people have a right to make sense of any given page on a private company's Web is irrelevant, because it encroaches on this private company's demonstrable freedom of expression. AOL is not a government agency, nor do I ever, EVER want to make it akin to one.
AOL should be able to set up a set of compliant pages, and leave the rest of it the hell alone. Otherwise, what, is the National Foundation for the Blind going to go after every pud with a tilde account?
Furthermore, saying or reading a visual concept such as "blue sky" is different from actually seeing "blue sky", and as you can tell from the guidelines they'd have us follow, it is not sufficient even under the accessibility guidelines. I invite you to Bobby to check them out in case you think I'm making this up.
I did, and if all that was necessary to comply with ADA was Alt tags, I promise you I would not be as loud about this as I currently am. It's not - in a big way. And when AOL is forced to comply with ADA, plaintiffs don't get to decide "OK, alt tags for GIF text is all we need." It's likely to have to be much, much more than that (if they win), and I'm sure Neilsen and his Web.Luddites can come up with enough baggage to drastically curtail AOL's whole corporate identity, not to mention their bottom line. Bye Bye, AOL. Bye Bye, any web publisher that the blind has its collective 'eye' on, figuratively speaking.
No thank you - it's like defending the Nazis' right to march in Skokie; it sucks, but it HAS to be done.
We just put up a server of thousands of photos, all of which are going to need extensive descriptions written for them to comply with ADA. We stand ready to do that, or TAKE THEM OFF, because we're in the Federal government, and that's our job. But forcing a company through litigation to redesign for ADA is what's utter bullshit, not my posts.
Web usability debates belong on discussion forums, not in District courts. And the Web itself will reroute around faults, such as imposing the lowest common design denominator on everyone who publishes; i.e., you can forget about it. _____
Actually, some browsers pop up the alt tag on mouseover even when the graphic is visible. If you're planning to swap images at the onMouseover event, your swap image can collide with the alt tag, interfering with your view of the effect. That's the "lose" scenario I was talking about. _____
This is what I got from Bobby, the ADA-checker another kind soul was kind enough to point us to (someone moderate him up, please):
1. Provide alternative text for all image map hot-spots.
That makes sense. So far, so good.
2. Ensure that descriptions of dynamic content are updated with changes in content.
Referring to the part of my page where the bot drops the last updated date. A pain in the ass, but probably doable with a little Javascript-mangling.
3. If any of the images on this page convey important information beyond what is in each image's alternative text, add a LONGDESC attribute.
Blow it out your art-school-ability-test ass, Bobby. A picture is worth a thousand words, and I'm not going to make people wait while I repeat all 1000 of them in text.
4. If you can't figure out any other way to make a page accessible, construct an alternate version of the page which is accessible and has the same content.
That's what the Alt tag is for, *if* I decide to use it. That's also why I took the picture, so I wouldn't have to write a Flaubert novel describing each image on my page. I pity any art museums, and the poor schmuck who has to interpret Mapplethorpe online for ADA compliance.
5. If this table contains data in rows and columns (i.e. a spreadsheet), have you identified headers for the table rows and columns?
If I'm using tables for visual layout, which I am, it's because the HTML I'm allowed to use doesn't allow me put things in the visual place I want them without it. TH tags (describing nothing, in centered, underlined/italic text) would blow my layout. And the use of tables for layout (as opposed to DHTML layering, or frames) is already a concession to usability I had to make in light of the tech of my audience.
That was the "Priority One" list of Bobbyisms.
Here beginneth Priority Two:
1. Style sheets should be used to control layout and presentation wherever possible. 2. Mark up quotations with the Q and BLOCKQUOTE elements. 3. Did you avoid using movement where possible? 4. Make sure that headings are nested properly. 5. Make sure that text, image, and background colors contrast well and that color is not used as the sole means of conveying important information. 6. Have you provided a linear text alternative for all tables that lay out content in parallel, word-wrapped columns? 7. Use relative sizing and positioning (% values) rather than absolute (pixels).
Finally, a summary of Priority Three:
1. Links that are in an image map should be duplicated in text elsewhere on the page - I had about 5 of those, and it's a valid criticism. 2. Use the ABBR and ACRONYM elements to denote and expand abbreviations and acronyms. I'd never used those tags before, but it sounds like a hell of an idea, especially for a government agency. 3. If this table is used to display data in rows and columns (i.e. a spreadsheet), have you provided a summary of the table? Again, referring to my use of tables as layout. 4. Etc., etc.
As you can see, it's a big job to comply with ADA, and the bigger your site, the bigger it gets. _____
Somehow, I don't think that Alt Tags are the end of it.
Even then, Alt tags can get in the way of the rollover effect we were trying to perpetrate. What are they going to do, sue us for rollovers?
If this holds, what the standards for accessibility should and do end up being is going to be a major point of contention for a long time to come. _____
Where I work (as a web designer), we've known for about 4 months that as an arm of the Federal Government, we'd have to comply with ADA. To put it plainly, I'm not worried about it. We should be able to do it easily.
Our compliance has to do with the Electronic Freedom of Information Act, which says (in a nutshell) that we've got to make all of our public information available electronically, whether it's running an FTP site, mailing people disks and cartridges, or (what's been easiest for us) running a web site.
Since we have to reach out to every citizen we can anyway, I don't mind having to do it. We're operating under a base user standard of Netscape/IE 3, and even that could go down, so it's not like we're pushing the envelope anyway.
That being said, I know full well that our compliance with ADA and America On-Line's compliance with ADA come from separate premises, and I can't say I agree with ADA having to comply with ADA electronically. Instead, I'd rather see technology rise to the occasion to give the blind an opportunity to see AOL pages (and other private pages) as close as possible to how they actually exist on the Web.
That way, we all move forward with technology, and we help to stem the tide of Web TV, proprietary HTML, and all of the other "advances" that actually hold us back.
As much as I'd like (like many others) to stick it to the big, bad, monopoly ISP with the draconian AUP, this actually hurts EVERYONE. AOL is not a provider of public information. They're a private company, and there's no EFOIA hanging over their every move like there is at my shop.
If ADA can apply to AOL's website, it can apply to any other company, and like it or not, a piece of tech's potential for filthy lucre to be made from it (for a company) is a large indicator of whether something survives. If in the midst of developing VRML, for example, people who used it for real-estate home tours had to check themselves every minute for access to the blind, I promise you there would be no real-estate home tours online.
As another example, how fun would gamespot.com be in ADA-compliant mode? What about the game companies themselves? Must Quake 3 now have an option to aurally describe each environment before it ships?
And that leads to the crux of my argument against: a significant and unassailable portion of the Web, even of computing in general, is visual. Blindness, by definition, means the inability to accept visual data. You do the math.
This makes about as much sense as deaf people suing radio stations for ADA non-compliance. _____
It seems like that annoying "Yah-hoooo-ooo" yodel that tags their commercials would be more fitting if sung through a gag, like the guy in the icon for this thread:
There's another point to make re: moderation, and whether it meets the guidelines of censorial conduct.
Moderators get a finite number of points - 5. Therefore, it is impossible for them to "censor *everything* they find objectable," if there are more than 5 such posts. If it's physically impossible for the moderator to accomplish the task, they can't be held liable.
I'm almost sure, too, that the number of moderator points slashdot gives out isn't even close to the number of objectable posts that make it onto Slashdot in total. Even if CmdrTaco tweaked the Slashdot software to introduce bunches more moderation, it still takes labor (i.e., willing bodies), and time that does not exist on Slashdot, that is, the moderator time to keep up with (and make progress on) the tide of crap. _____
M.o.R.E. should have quietly reported the problem to the Xing and whatever the main company that handles DVD technology is and helped them solve it, not just totally fuck them over, as well as the rest of us.
Even if they'd have done that, that old, crackable system is still burned onto millions of discs, and they're all available at your friendly neighborhood content provider, the video store. That's a lot of Disney flicks to steal.
Second, your premise assumes that MoRE should be interested in helping the nice multi-national megaconglomerates [who presumably represent the people]. That doesn't strike me as realistic.
In fact, I'd tend to think that groups such as this exist to subvert the profit of companies they perceive as evil (not that anyone in this community would know anything about that, based on their dealings with the Open Source Software movement). I don't gather from the article that MoRE is setting up to become your one-stop shopping center for bootleg Meg Ryan flicks. They hacked DVD, probably (if I had to guess) mostly for it's own sake.
Turn the argument around for a second, like this:
cDc is totally irresponsible to all of us who would use Windows because they didn't quietly alert Microsoft to the fact that it was so #@$! easy to administer remote control to a Windows box, and now they're forcing Microsoft to release another version of Windows. How dare they!
OK, I know the analogy breaks down somewhat, but the kernel is this: the same mindset from which MoRE came to hack DVD, probably prevents them from acting in the manner you described as correct. _____
Slashdot Mirror
the ultimate hack of all time is the recovery of Apollo 13, by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, specifically Ken(?) Mattingly, astronaut.
Considering that they had to remotely instruct the astronauts to assemble a backup air filtration system from scavenged parts, power up a damaged spaceship in exactly the right order so as to use limited battery voltage, burn thrusters at exactly the right angle and duration to reenter the Earth without skidding off the atmosphere into deep space, or burning on reentry, and recovering the astronauts in the middle of the Indian Ocean, this isn't merely a hack, it's legend.
I'm surprised this didn't even get mention on Slashdot.
_____
A Google search turns up nothing for "crowdedtheater" (all one word), and nothing related for the phrase separated into its component words.
You do, however, get a page on watchtower.org, the official website of the Jehovah's Witnesses.
Lousy spooks! They've gotten to the search engines!
_____
If you sift through the crappy prose, Katz actually has a point, and it's one I've been trying to make for a good couple of years:
If people who know something about how the Net operates don't get off their asses and vote, it's going to be left to the net.clueless, the net.profit-motivated, and the net.paranoid to make LAW that governs how Americans use and operate the Internet, and that's likely to be retarded.
We're already beginning to see it happen: CDA, Clipper, export restrictions on encryption protocols, DCMA, and other dog$#!+ that panders to the basest lusers among us. Even if politicians could hire someone to provide them with a clue, they aren't likely to listen to it in the face of thousands in campaign contributions, or on behalf of people who by and large don't even vote.
That's the reason that net-literate people need to vote in much larger numbers, but it's also why they need to band together and provide Americans with clueful alternatives to the candidates and initiatives that are in front of us now.
So while the Slashdot community is putting its collective foot to Jon's ass, I'd implore them to also consider voting, and when they do, to consider technical coherency a factor in whom they decide to elect.
_____
Your, not you're.
:)
That may have cost you the part as well, since a 19-year-old Anakin will presumably have been taught proper English, which we all know is the official language of the Galaxy. Except the Trade Federation, which is Japanese.
Meta-correction!! Woo hoo!
_____
Anyway - the answer to censorship (or speech you don't like) is more speech
[I had to point out that statement derives from a Supreme Court decision here in Los Estados Unidos, and as you can see below, I've had it in my sig since I signed up for Slashdot.]
Here in Portland a dude named Jarius Godeka had attended the local Scientology reading room once, maybe twice, before he freaked out and started taking shots (the gun kind) at people in the room. It made the news, where it was reported he was destitute, a drug user, and romantically involved with someone else who was going through the program. Which made me wonder: how many Scientologists are in my TV newsroom?
What I find disturbing is the paradox that this purports to be a religion (with religious freedom) and a corporation (with trade secrets) at the same time. CoS should be forced to pick one.
_____
Having multiple pointing devices would take care of a lot of the disadvantages of any one, as long as you could work interchangeably between one and the other (say, a pen and a mouse, plus OC the keyboard).
For me, I'm dying to get a pen so I can make up in freehand drawing the talent I lack at manipulating Bezier curves and other mouse related artistic problems. I've heard it said, "drawing with a mouse is like signing your name with a bar of soap."
But nothing beats the mouse for screen interface, cause (as someone pointed out) you can push it and leave it, and it stays there until you're ready. It's just precise enough.
So I'll eventually have one pen, and one mouse, and they damn well better work at the same time.
What they CAN work on is getting me something like that that I can afford. A small pen tablet ought to cost about as much as a mouse, IMHO. I've looked at Wacom prices, and it don't -- yet.
_____
While I also dig glassdog, whose mailing list I got the message from, I'm not sure the story is right. Would not 11/13/1999 ALSO be an odd day? 11/15/1999? 11/17/1999, and 11/19/1999? No, I think the significance, if you can even call it that, is some pattern more complex, that the day has equal numbers of odd digits in order, when expressed in mmddyy form (111999) or something like that.
I'm not going to do the math or play find the pattern, but when a topic such as this not only qualifies as 'News for Nerds' but also gets 300+ posts (to date), I begin to question anyone's premise for slapping ANY kind of 'News for Nerds' qualification criteria on Katz, the unfortunate suicide of Mary Kay Bergman, or any other topic that might be distant from Linux, gaming, standards committees, or any other more "pure" Slashdot topic.
_____
Without wanting to seem overly simplistic, when Mitnick "stole" the Solaris source code from Sun, Sun really didn't "lose" the source itself; instead, it lost its right to be the only people who could do something with/to the source.
Granted, Sun set the value of its own loss, but it seems ludicrous that Solaris would be worth $80M, unless Sun itself were to lose the ability to develop on their own platform. Mitnick didn't accomplish that with his hack.
Also it's not like Sun couldn't change its Source to Solaris (and therefore cheapen, if not make obsolete Mitnick's hack).
What Mitnick did amounts to forcing Sun to share a secret with him. What the open-sourcing of MS Windows would do amounts to forcing MS to share its API with the public computing community. It's not like DoJ would go in and remove boxen, file cabinets and employees from Redmond.
Applied to the Microsoft anti-trust decision, isn't it then a different kind of "taking" to open the source than it would be to remove the Windows meme from the hands and minds of anyone associated with profit-taking at Microsoft (even if such a thing could be done)?
IANAL, but I wouldn't mind hearing one of that excellent panel speak to this issue.
_____
Still, anyone who can put on those subtle accents and create characters out of that is unique and talented.
...but behind it all, I always heard the same voice.)
Hear, HEAR.
but always felt her voices on South Park at least were more or less one-note voices {snip}
I'm with you as far as Ms. Broslofsky, the Mayor, Barbra Streisand, Stan's Mom, and the Bus Driver, but you're forgetting:
Cartman's mom
Wendy Testaburger
Dude, to have those voices also in the repertoire is pure and f**king unadulterated RANGE. I'm still having a hard time believing that was also her. Maybe I have lower standards, but having been in radio myself, I doubt it. I used to be able to do about two sets of three or four characters that only slightly sounded like each other (similar to what you're describing of Mary Kay), and I'd consider that normal -- she had every female on South Park. THAT, sir, is talent.
And although I know half of making me laugh when I watch South Park is the writing, Mary Kay Bergman gets her share of credit for it, whether or not I knew her name before the announcement, because she helped deliver it to me regularly and perfectly. I thank her profusely for each and every one of her characters, and I'll miss her contribution to my psyche.
On another note, she apparently had to deal with a life-threatening tumor, and I have every bit of respect to anyone who must deal with that decision, NO MATTER WHAT they come up with. I hope she passed painlessly, and in the company of loved ones who celebrated her and her life.
In my home state, a right to assisted suicide for the terminally ill is the law of the land, and it was affirmed twice by our voters. I happen to agree with that right as it is expressed.
It's worth noting that another great voice talent, Jean Vander Pyl, passed recently too. She did Wilma Flintstone and a number of other Hanna-Barbera characters.
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The same influence anyone would have as the known front-runner for next President, with Executive Branch access (DoJ, FBI), the current President's ear, an active role in domestic policymaking (similar to his crusade against the complexity of Federal administrative rules).
Believe me, Al Gore has an active role in this Administration's domestic policy decisions, ESPECIALLY with regard to tech and the Internet. And he should be held responsible for his performance in that role every bit as much as President Clinton.
In any case, someone should ask him where he stands with regard to those issues, so he can make it clear he's been playing both sides against the middle since he took office.
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It should be:
certain candidates for President
that'll teach me not to verify hyperlinks.
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...if it hasn't already. We're all affected by laws, especially Internet laws, and by direct association, the political leanings of *anyone* attempting to be the person who writes/signs/enforces them.
As for impartiality, we're dealing with precisely this aspect at an organization I pay dues to, who is currently considering an offer for certain candidates for President to speak at one of their events. We're a tax-exempt non-profit, which as an organization is required to remain non-partisan. The way we figured it out is that if we invited every other (Presidential) candidate to speak at us, we could remain non-partisan. Or noone running for President could speak to us at all.
Slashdot (assuming it's non-partisan to begin with) could do likewise, and still remain non-partisan. Slashdot doesn't control the political thoughts of its posters in any meaningful direction, and in essence, that's the key to it.
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Such an article would give the Vranesevich interview stiff competition as the most useless expenditure of disk space on Slashdot.
In fact, the sheer wooden superficially of this stump-speech cum article he wrote for Slate makes me believe he DID write it himself.
(Crashing? Puh-leeze. For maybe five minutes, MAX - and this assumes he actually tried to TAILOR content, and not just cut and paste from his campaign website.)
And if his daughter was any less of a fluff generator than he, it doesn't surprise me at all that she rose no higher than Editorial Assistant.
No, what's really sad is that it's 85% likely (according to the last turnout statistics) that of Karenna's "friends and former colleagues" that Dad chatted with in Slate breakroom, none of them gave the slightest shit about him or anyone else involved with making and administering the laws that govern them, enough to drag their ass three blocks to a polling center on Election Day.
I'll say it 'til I'm #0000FF in the face - laws that govern the Net are and will continue to be written by people with big egos and woefully insufficient cluons, until people who care stand up and vote them out of office.
Al Gore, who helped enable the CDA, Echelon, the consideration of wiretap tech built into IP, ADA restraints on web publishing, and every other recent evil thing that's happening on the policy side of tech, is not sufficiently different than Jesse Helms or James Exon in this respect.
That he didn't address this in his puff piece for Slate is only the latest proof of that.
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Thank you.
If Priority One is all that is necessary, and I have options on the points in Priorities Two and Three, I see no problem for me (personally) to make any of my sites compliant to THAT standard.
Unfortunately, I have the creeping suspicion that a compliance program administered by the Justice Department (or for that matter, by resolution of a lawsuit) will not be nearly that calm and relaxing. Frankly, I hope it is.
My civil-liberties spidey-sense has also been throbbing mightily since the posting of this topic, and I tend to offend people who disagree with me when I feel my rights are threatened in even the slightest way. I'll work on that, but I promise nothing.
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Actually, if you'd RTFT, you'd notice that I'm going to be working on bringing a federal government website into compliance, and as you're probably well aware, being as educated as you are, it's not just alt tags and text-menus at the bottom. That ACRONYM tag alone is probably a month of work for me by itself, easy.
For starters, we'll probably have to Bobby-proof our entire site (thousands of pages, with hundreds of authors and developers) to Priority Two, or even Three, but then again, that's just an educated guess. We'll find out for sure when DOJ proclaims from on high. Keep in mind that if DOJ was smart enough to simply comply with W3C spec, which you're right to infer is not nearly the pain in the ass, they wouldn't have to *write* as much as they've already spent months doing. And W3C spec won't apply to AOL, either, especially not their client software.
As for AOL, they've got at least as big a website as we do (don't even get me started on members.aol.com - cat-herding for 3 million, anyone?), and they're even more visual than we are.
So while I appreciate your polite attempt at 'bringing me up to speed,' I'm doing just fine on my own, thank you.
I DO dislike Jakob, but I have reasons for it, not the least of which is having met him. He's derisive, snobbish, and fascist in his beliefs. That I disagree with him on principle is separate from that.
But from up there in the W3C stratosphere, you wouldn't know anything about that, would you?
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Go back and read the Old Man's post. Access, not benefits.
1) Nope, it could actually be an undue burden to have to redesign the AOL interface, which is highly visual, to comply. Not to mention that the "access" mentioned here isn't clearly defined. The blind already have access to the Internet. Technically, they already have access to AOL, even though they can't actually *see* that they're there. Some of it's text; a lot of it's images. As compared to the building analogy, if you enter the building, you've got access, even if you don't see that you do.
2) What makes you think that redesigning a multi-million page website for compliance isn't as much of an "undue burden" as printing works in Braille? If it is, then this lawsuit is as frivolous as the one you described.
3) As above, www.aol.com and members.aol.com are not "mere websites," and the AOL software has a hard enough time functioning to it's own spec, not to mention the months it might take the crack computer scientists to write functional voicetech, keyboard shortcuts, and anything else it might need to comply. Being a "big company" doesn't seem to have helped them at all in that respect. And then you have to define what's a "big enough company to handle ADA compliance without significant loss." Like it's been brought up before, it's about more than just ALT tags. I don't think the courts want to set a rule; they'll just wait until people get sued, and decide a case at a time.
4) If AOL thinks it's right, it doesn't matter how many times they had to tell the organization involved "No." And if AOL thinks it's a bullshit lawsuit, there's a fine line between debatable and outlandish. There's nothing wrong with the law, so the junk about writing your congressman doesn't apply, but the question is whether it does or doesn't apply to AOL, and the place to argue that IS in the Courts. It's also the place, incidentally, to argue whether or not it's a bullshit lawsuit.
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You show me how to express the Mona Lisa in Braille, and I'll accept your analogy as not having been pulled out of your ass.
I think even Jakob Neilsen and his merry band of anti-progressives can admit that the Web isn't just about text. And whether the majority of the Web is text or not, image, color, and movement have a place on it, whether you or anyone else thinks that's a poor choice.
The Web's usability cabal doesn't have the right to take image, color and movement away from people who publish (nor CAN it, frankly), and when a private company (even one as odious and contemptible in its own right as is AOL, let me make that clear) faces lawsuits over usability and design issues, that is flat-out WRONG, because it enforces one choice out of many where no enforcement right belongs.
Whether there "ought to be Alt tags" is irrelevant. Whether blind people have a right to make sense of any given page on a private company's Web is irrelevant, because it encroaches on this private company's demonstrable freedom of expression. AOL is not a government agency, nor do I ever, EVER want to make it akin to one.
AOL should be able to set up a set of compliant pages, and leave the rest of it the hell alone. Otherwise, what, is the National Foundation for the Blind going to go after every pud with a tilde account?
Furthermore, saying or reading a visual concept such as "blue sky" is different from actually seeing "blue sky", and as you can tell from the guidelines they'd have us follow, it is not sufficient even under the accessibility guidelines. I invite you to Bobby to check them out in case you think I'm making this up.
I did, and if all that was necessary to comply with ADA was Alt tags, I promise you I would not be as loud about this as I currently am. It's not - in a big way. And when AOL is forced to comply with ADA, plaintiffs don't get to decide "OK, alt tags for GIF text is all we need." It's likely to have to be much, much more than that (if they win), and I'm sure Neilsen and his Web.Luddites can come up with enough baggage to drastically curtail AOL's whole corporate identity, not to mention their bottom line. Bye Bye, AOL. Bye Bye, any web publisher that the blind has its collective 'eye' on, figuratively speaking.
No thank you - it's like defending the Nazis' right to march in Skokie; it sucks, but it HAS to be done.
We just put up a server of thousands of photos, all of which are going to need extensive descriptions written for them to comply with ADA. We stand ready to do that, or TAKE THEM OFF, because we're in the Federal government, and that's our job. But forcing a company through litigation to redesign for ADA is what's utter bullshit, not my posts.
Web usability debates belong on discussion forums, not in District courts. And the Web itself will reroute around faults, such as imposing the lowest common design denominator on everyone who publishes; i.e., you can forget about it.
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Actually, some browsers pop up the alt tag on mouseover even when the graphic is visible. If you're planning to swap images at the onMouseover event, your swap image can collide with the alt tag, interfering with your view of the effect. That's the "lose" scenario I was talking about.
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This is what I got from Bobby, the ADA-checker another kind soul was kind enough to point us to (someone moderate him up, please):
1. Provide alternative text for all image map hot-spots.
That makes sense. So far, so good.
2. Ensure that descriptions of dynamic content are updated with changes in content.
Referring to the part of my page where the bot drops the last updated date. A pain in the ass, but probably doable with a little Javascript-mangling.
3. If any of the images on this page convey important information beyond what is in each image's alternative text, add a LONGDESC attribute.
Blow it out your art-school-ability-test ass, Bobby. A picture is worth a thousand words, and I'm not going to make people wait while I repeat all 1000 of them in text.
4. If you can't figure out any other way to make a page accessible, construct an alternate version of the page which is accessible and has the same content.
That's what the Alt tag is for, *if* I decide to use it. That's also why I took the picture, so I wouldn't have to write a Flaubert novel describing each image on my page. I pity any art museums, and the poor schmuck who has to interpret Mapplethorpe online for ADA compliance.
5. If this table contains data in rows and columns (i.e. a spreadsheet), have you identified headers for the table rows and columns?
If I'm using tables for visual layout, which I am, it's because the HTML I'm allowed to use doesn't allow me put things in the visual place I want them without it. TH tags (describing nothing, in centered, underlined/italic text) would blow my layout. And the use of tables for layout (as opposed to DHTML layering, or frames) is already a concession to usability I had to make in light of the tech of my audience.
That was the "Priority One" list of Bobbyisms.
Here beginneth Priority Two:
1. Style sheets should be used to control layout and presentation wherever possible.
2. Mark up quotations with the Q and BLOCKQUOTE elements.
3. Did you avoid using movement where possible?
4. Make sure that headings are nested properly.
5. Make sure that text, image, and background colors contrast well and that color is not used as the sole means of conveying important information.
6. Have you provided a linear text alternative for all tables that lay out content in parallel, word-wrapped columns?
7. Use relative sizing and positioning (% values) rather than absolute (pixels).
Finally, a summary of Priority Three:
1. Links that are in an image map should be duplicated in text elsewhere on the page - I had about 5 of those, and it's a valid criticism.
2. Use the ABBR and ACRONYM elements to denote and expand abbreviations and acronyms. I'd never used those tags before, but it sounds like a hell of an idea, especially for a government agency.
3. If this table is used to display data in rows and columns (i.e. a spreadsheet), have you provided a summary of the table? Again, referring to my use of tables as layout.
4. Etc., etc.
As you can see, it's a big job to comply with ADA, and the bigger your site, the bigger it gets.
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Somehow, I don't think that Alt Tags are the end of it.
Even then, Alt tags can get in the way of the rollover effect we were trying to perpetrate. What are they going to do, sue us for rollovers?
If this holds, what the standards for accessibility should and do end up being is going to be a major point of contention for a long time to come.
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I meant, AOL having to comply with ADA. ADA naturally complies with itself.
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Where I work (as a web designer), we've known for about 4 months that as an arm of the Federal Government, we'd have to comply with ADA. To put it plainly, I'm not worried about it. We should be able to do it easily.
Our compliance has to do with the Electronic Freedom of Information Act, which says (in a nutshell) that we've got to make all of our public information available electronically, whether it's running an FTP site, mailing people disks and cartridges, or (what's been easiest for us) running a web site.
Since we have to reach out to every citizen we can anyway, I don't mind having to do it. We're operating under a base user standard of Netscape/IE 3, and even that could go down, so it's not like we're pushing the envelope anyway.
That being said, I know full well that our compliance with ADA and America On-Line's compliance with ADA come from separate premises, and I can't say I agree with ADA having to comply with ADA electronically. Instead, I'd rather see technology rise to the occasion to give the blind an opportunity to see AOL pages (and other private pages) as close as possible to how they actually exist on the Web.
That way, we all move forward with technology, and we help to stem the tide of Web TV, proprietary HTML, and all of the other "advances" that actually hold us back.
As much as I'd like (like many others) to stick it to the big, bad, monopoly ISP with the draconian AUP, this actually hurts EVERYONE. AOL is not a provider of public information. They're a private company, and there's no EFOIA hanging over their every move like there is at my shop.
If ADA can apply to AOL's website, it can apply to any other company, and like it or not, a piece of tech's potential for filthy lucre to be made from it (for a company) is a large indicator of whether something survives. If in the midst of developing VRML, for example, people who used it for real-estate home tours had to check themselves every minute for access to the blind, I promise you there would be no real-estate home tours online.
As another example, how fun would gamespot.com be in ADA-compliant mode? What about the game companies themselves? Must Quake 3 now have an option to aurally describe each environment before it ships?
And that leads to the crux of my argument against: a significant and unassailable portion of the Web, even of computing in general, is visual. Blindness, by definition, means the inability to accept visual data. You do the math.
This makes about as much sense as deaf people suing radio stations for ADA non-compliance.
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It seems like that annoying "Yah-hoooo-ooo" yodel that tags their commercials would be more fitting if sung through a gag, like the guy in the icon for this thread:
Uah-hmmmm-mmmf...
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There's another point to make re: moderation, and whether it meets the guidelines of censorial conduct.
Moderators get a finite number of points - 5. Therefore, it is impossible for them to "censor *everything* they find objectable," if there are more than 5 such posts. If it's physically impossible for the moderator to accomplish the task, they can't be held liable.
I'm almost sure, too, that the number of moderator points slashdot gives out isn't even close to the number of objectable posts that make it onto Slashdot in total. Even if CmdrTaco tweaked the Slashdot software to introduce bunches more moderation, it still takes labor (i.e., willing bodies), and time that does not exist on Slashdot, that is, the moderator time to keep up with (and make progress on) the tide of crap.
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Even if they'd have done that, that old, crackable system is still burned onto millions of discs, and they're all available at your friendly neighborhood content provider, the video store. That's a lot of Disney flicks to steal.
Second, your premise assumes that MoRE should be interested in helping the nice multi-national megaconglomerates [who presumably represent the people]. That doesn't strike me as realistic.
In fact, I'd tend to think that groups such as this exist to subvert the profit of companies they perceive as evil (not that anyone in this community would know anything about that, based on their dealings with the Open Source Software movement). I don't gather from the article that MoRE is setting up to become your one-stop shopping center for bootleg Meg Ryan flicks. They hacked DVD, probably (if I had to guess) mostly for it's own sake.
Turn the argument around for a second, like this: OK, I know the analogy breaks down somewhat, but the kernel is this: the same mindset from which MoRE came to hack DVD, probably prevents them from acting in the manner you described as correct.
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