Someone above complained about extensions being a bit "staid." I think this one looks like it has some definite potential. I may have to fool around with it a bit.
Catch cancer from one hour of exposure? Researchers are still trying to figure out if the people who use their cell phones for several hours every day are at an increased risk of cancer. We're talking about over a thousand hours a year for some people. One more hour is negligible if you're worried about cancer, and if you're talking about people who are only low users (probably a good idea, because if an effect does occur, there might not be a detectable difference in regular users), it's not even worth the ink to write it into the release from liability agreement, because they're such a long ways away from the threshold other people have been exposing themselves to for years. And those people who did so back in the analog days did it at a much higher intensity.
What bugs me about the email tax, and I'm sorry to fall back on a cliche debate term, there's some definite slippery slope potential. For now those who pay bypass the filter. A lot of spam still gets through these filters, however, so the next obvious step is to add more rules to the filters. Pretty soon, as you proposed, the only way to send email is to pay your 0.1 cent, but since spam filters are generally pretty good about filtering out bot spam, paying to pass the filters actually could increase their success rate at getting into people's inboxes to the point where it's worth paying that tiny fee. More so for hand-crafted spam, which obviously accumulates slower.
And I'd wager there would be no cost savings from your ISP. The extra layer of billing penny fractions to billions of email accounts, even handled as a tree structure (consumer 1 > mail provider 1 > mail provider 2; consumer 2 > mail provider 2 > mail provider 1...back and forth ad infinitum), would eat up all the revenue.
No, it's not sinister, but it's misguided. I'm counting on the consumers to weed this one out. AOL has further decreased the likelihood of me every subscribing to their services with this move.
Tis true! And if you want any other form of economic system, you still have to accept the consequences of that.
As far as global competition here in the Pacific NW, there's been a lot of frustration from the timber industry, dairy industry, and pork producers since NAFTA took effect as Canada has been beating us on price with those imports. Loggers threw a fit when the shingle mill in my hometown started buying cedars from British Columbia, but they weren't able to compete against imported shakes unless they did.
Because the improvement would be very small. Hybrids offer an improvement over regular gasoline engines primarily due to the relatively high efficiency of electric motors at low RPM's compared to gas engines at low speeds. This helps them a lot with stop and go driving. Diesels develop better torque at low RPM's, giving them the same advantage. At highway speeds however, diesels remain roughly on par with gasoline engines, and hybrids offer little improvement except for acceleration. Perhaps after hyrbid technology advances further and comes down in cost, it will be worthwhile to create diesel hyrbids.
While Europa remains a high priority for science missions, NASA has been re-evaluating the JIMO mission and concepts that have been proposed for Europa landers, and the latest opinion is that the scope of these missions would make them too costly for the amount of information returned. Additionally, JIMO relies too heavily on technology still in development for Griffin's comfort.
Among the casualties in the budget, released last month...
Also released last month, if I remember right, another slashdot article talking about said budget. Sorry, but I'm too lazy and slashdot's search feature is too crappy for me to look it up.
Griffin and the shuttle program manager have both been very emphatic that further launches will not happen if they don't believe the work done since the last launch has appreciably reduced the risks, which are already low. "They only have 3 to spare" is irrelevant in asking whether or not to launch unless you don't have a good idea what is going to happen.
Just for kicks, I'll flog the dead horse one more time and look briefly at the numbers. The shuttle has flown 114 (?) times and had two catastrophic failrues. The first was thoroughly addressed in the 1980's and there are no indications that it is any longer a problem (assuming politics don't get in the way). The second has been looked into extensively. Two specific sources of large pieces of foam loss have been identified in two flights and eliminated. A gazillion other smaller improvements have been made, too. Now 15 final flights are planned. Even before the latest improvements are taken into consideration, statistics favor a safe conclusion of the shuttle program. Now we have the choice of letting them rust in their hangars, or launching, re-evaluating, and getting the remaining projected use out of them if it's safe.
I guess they've lowered the bar enough that even the Shuttle program can slither over it.
Is it really necessary to have trolling comments in submitted articles? Such a comment might be appropriate if the article discussed ways NASA is cutting corners on preparing for the next launch (a shaky contention) or even possibly if it was yet another journalist noting that the space shuttle is not the best solution for space access (largely irrelevant, now that the shuttle is being retired). Instead, however, the article is regarding the shuttle manager's optimism that NASA could probably launch 3 missions before the end of the year if Discovery's next flight goes ok. He goes on to reaffirm, however, that they won't launch if they disover more problems.
To all the slashdot trolls: In the interest of being politically correct, I will attempt to appreciate your reluctance to accept the humility of comparing your opinions to real world facts and events before asserting your expertise via your keyboard and hitting the submit button, but I still think you're stupid.
Tables lock in a layout. With CSS positioning, you can change the layout with changing code inline with your content. Tables also can limit the fluidity of a layout (how well does it respond to changes in browser capability...this affects accessibility). They also take a lot of code and usually some complex nesting/spanning. These are the big reasons in my mind, but other people have brough up some other good reasons you can google up pretty easily.
I've heard a lot of people generically say "tables are for tabular data." I was always taught never to define a term with itself and I think that proposal is slightly off, anyway. Tables really are for showing correlations between content in rows and columns. I would contend that aligning labels and fields for forms into rows and columns is a legitimate use. It is also possible, however, to control them vertically with paragraphs, although the default of aligning material of different sizes inside a single box to the bottom of the box may make this somewhat confusing, and there is no column control in this scheme.
Oh, I want to pay attention, but I'm easily distracted. I'm not going to kid myself on that point. Chances are if you're in class instead of back in bed, you want to learn, but paying attention to some professors is really tough to do. Giving myself fewer implements of distraction helps. You don't have to spend thousands of dollars per year on college to have the opportunity to not pay attention to someone.
Talking about distractions, however, isn't really the point. No one has come up with a good reason why laptops should be required at a school. Having a laptop wouldn't have done squat for me while studying engineering, and I'm skeptical that it would do enough for anyone else that they should be required. In fact, I think having a desktop worked out better overall.
However, I can type way faster and easier than I can write, therefore laptops win for me.
Quick, type sigma = E * epsilon the same as one would write it.
So laptops work well for you, but why bother requiring them for people who would be better served by a pencil and paper? I don't know of any good way to take notes or work through sample problems on a computer for most of my classes. Microsoft equation editor is handy for reports, but it takes 5 minutes to type out something relatively simple like the energy equation, and forget drawing simple graphs or diagrams on the fly, inline with your lecture notes on the computer. Why not just let me spend my money on a desktop computer and take advantage of improved ergonomics and upgradeability and not bother with batteries? School administrators love shiny things and don't seem to understand that what's good for them isn't always good for others.
Laptops also offer more distractions. I won't make assumptions about everyone, but I know I have trouble not getting distracted when I sit down in front of a computer.
CAD programs have been increasing in their graphical demands along with the increases in available power. My computer at work is new this year, but running IronCAD with a 40 MB assembly really bogs it down. It's not gonna kill me, but it is annoying when everytime I change my view, it spends 5 seconds redrawing it.
I suspect we're on the same wavelength here, but I'll say it anyway. Creationism is not a scientific theory, which is part of the problem I, a devout Catholic, have with Intelligent Design.
My bigger problem is the fact that, as a theological concept, ID is empty and vain. It attempts to promote the idea that we are created by God, without any desire to learn more. That defeats the purpose of theology (theo-logos: knowing God). Given that ID fits neither science nor theology (does not directly address how, does not ask why), it is vain to promote it in either field. If people really think religion should be discussed in public schools, and I personally do think it should, the best place is as a general overview in the context of either social studies or philosophy. Ultimately, though, the school is not the place for evangelization.
The designer is supposed to understand that. Constraining, loading, selecting mesh types, and interpreting results is somewhat specialized, though, which is why the FEA work is often done by seperate people than the original design work in the first place. Simplifying the meshing process saves effort for those who do both modeling and FEA, but not in offices where one engineer does the model, and another does the FEA. Also, drafters are generally concerned soley with geometry, rather than analysis, so it's common to have a drafter design a part, and an engineer verify it.
I do think this interesting for those who do both, however. From my own experience with ANSYS, it's rather a pain in the butt to make modifications to parts, especially since the modelling tools in ANSYS do not lend themselves well to undoing steps or changing existing features. It's very common to build a model in other CAD software, then import the model into an analysis program like ANSYS. One thing that concerns me though, is that you might end up with a screwy mesh near the interface of modified and unmodified sections of a part that could improperly effect the analysis. I would hope they would've thought of this somewhere in their 35,000 lines of code, however.
I was the student rep on a technology adivisory committee my senior year, and one of the things the Nursing dean tried to push through was requiring all students have laptops. It turned out the main motivation was a standardized test the nursing students had to take by computer, and it was tough to arrange it with the small labs we had available. Some professors wanted to use them in lectures, too, but the main thing was the nursing school. Financial aid would be made available for one purchase during undergrad.
It took some vocalizing, but with a little bit of feedback from other students, I was able to convince them that requiring laptops for everyone was needless, when only a limited set of students would benefit from them. They had a vision of recruitment brochures showing students browsing via wireless while drinking coffee on the quad, whereas I had visions of science students trying to take notes and not be able to keep up with their professor because Microsoft Equation Editor is tough to use, or engineering seniors trying to do CAD with a 4 year old integrated graphics card, batteries dying during lectures, and no more computer labs to send students to when viruses crashed their personal computer because they won't run windows update (hello, the blaster patch came out two years ago!).
In the end, they figured out how ridiculous it was to force laptops into circulation, and that they were not the optimum solution for everything (gee, I thought people only bought desktops because they were cheaper...). Instead, financial aid is available up to a set limit for a one-time computer purchase of the student's choice. Sadly though, I don't doubt that some future student on that committee, this year or later on, will face the question of mandatory laptops and think it sounds like a great idea.
Whew...you barely save yourself with your disclaimer at the end.
As far as science proving Creation is bunk though, it hasn't and it can't. No matter what mechanism you come up with for the evolution of the universe, you never scientifically find a means that necessarily exludes God from creating it and not being bound by its laws. It's kind of an interesting property of omnipotence. Of course, neither do I expect to see science proving the existence of God. For that and various theological reasons, intelligent design is empty, but the loosely associated idea of Creation is not.
I haven't seen any comments on this yet, but my first thought on reading the summary was that this would make censorship of content on the internet(s) a lot easier. If you don't play by the rules, then their ICANN-equivalent can pull your domain registration.
...why 5.1 surround sound is adequate for most homes.
Adequate is a rather silly word here. The mono speaker on the front of the TV is adequate. Two stereo speakers with a little more boom are nice, and five speaker surround sound is fun, but definitely exceeds the minimum requirement of allowing the viewer to hear what's going on. It's not really about whether 5.1 is adequate, but whether 6.1 or 7.1 is overkill. Can the viewer hear enough difference to justify the extra cost and work of figuring out speaker locations? I'll bet more often than not that they can't.
The pencil story is false, but based on fact. Basically, NASA (and the Russians) used pencils for a while, but didn't like have pencil dust or broken leads floating around the capsules. Some guy came up with the design on his own and started selling them to NASA and they worked. The Russians started using them too.
This is very true, and mainly for that reason, I tend to be pretty forgiving of a few mistakes here and there. Then there's the snowball effect of the validator. For example, if you forget to end an anchor tag, then you might have a dozen errors follow on the validator because it thinks you're trying to wrap the next couple divs or paragraphs inside an anchor. It's really only one error, but it looks like a lot.
I think the main reason to use BB code in forums has more to do with protecting the integrity of the layout and making things easier for users than validation (especially given how few forums validate). Previously, I had been using striptags (php) on my personal site to control the html my friends could use (they go looking for ways to cause trouble), but by switching to BB code, I can control it even more. For example, parsing for emoticons to insert smilies ensures the img tag always refers to the proper directory, and by using [QUOTE] instead of blockquote, I can assign easily assign a class to provide consistency. Plus, there's no way I could my mom to use an alt tag if I taught her how to use HTML to insert smileys.
Oh, I just said that on slashdot didn't I? I'll never live down admitting to using smiley's on my personal website...
Interesting...although that's 4.0 transitional, which is technically compliant, but it's really intended as a stopgap or a stepping stone from the primieval 90's HTML goo to Strict adherence. That still puts Microsoft ahead of a lot of other sites, though.
Not related to the topic, but when I tried to validate http://slashdot.org/ at W3C's validator (http://validator.w3.org/), the validator responded that slashdot.org returned "403 Forbidden" error. Can anyone answer why this is so?
Here's a validation link that someone above posted. It would appear that Slashdot feeds a gag page to any request that fits the profile of a robot.
Ok, validation isn't everything, and passing the validator is not 100% confirmation that your page is valid, but just for kicks (and to see if the best of web 2.0 passes the basics of web 1.0), let's pass their list through the W3C's HTML Validator and see what we get (links go to the validator results
Photos Flickr.com - HTML 4.01 Transitional - 15 errors.
No need to use end tags if you don't use a start tag. Meta Keywords...does anyone still pay attention to those?
Video vimeo.com - HTML 4.01 Transitional - 41 errors.
Use your alt attributes and remember that td's should be nested inside tr's.
Social Bookmarking Del.icio.us - XHTML 1.0 Strict - 21 errors.
Actually a decent attempt. They went with a strict declaration and didn't use tables for layout.
Digg - XHTML 1.0 Transitional - 3 errors
Really close. Fix those links and and get rid of that "disabled" attribute. Where'd they find that one?
Newreaders/RSS www.bloglines.com - XHTML 1.0 Transitional - 137 errors.
Yikes. Yes I think the colspan attribute is cool, too, but not that cool. Give it a rest.
Start Pages www.netvibes.com - XHTML 1.0 Strict - 13 errors
They were doing so well with the strict declaration...but then that rotten cellpadding attribute snuck in...and width...and border.
Collaboration/Word Processors www.writeboard.com - XHTML 1.0 Transitional - 12 errors
Not bad. Time to advance to Strict, I think.
Maps/Directions Google Maps - XHTML 1.0 Strict - 101 errors
Google! How could you?!? Of all the sites to use deprecated elements under a Strict declaration! I feel betrayed.
Local Directories Google Local - Not Found The requested URL/local/ was not found on this server
Chat/IM Meebo - DOCTYPE DECLARATION was not recognized or missing - 2 errors
Come on. That's sooo 1990's. Actually, it gave me a declaration, so perhaps its malformed or they don't give one to robots.
Buzzword Sites - What? Like I could let a name like Design Technica off that easy. Design Technica - This Page is not valid (no Doctype found)! - 38 errors
Ouch! Same story. I see one in the source, but the validator doesn't accept it. Tables
Hmmm...everybody tried xhtml except designtechnica and meebo. Targeting mobile browsers, I guess? Nobody passed. There were a few non-table-based layouts, but that was offset by a lot of use of deprecated elements. It looks like web 2.0 is about as ready as IE 7.
Hmmm, I may have just thought of my next PHP project...sorry, I meant to say I envision the development of a standards-based approach to maximizing the utilization of impression-centric terminology, and I intend to take the initiative in making this technology available to the underprivileged marketing managers of the world.
Slashdot Mirror
Someone above complained about extensions being a bit "staid." I think this one looks like it has some definite potential. I may have to fool around with it a bit.
Catch cancer from one hour of exposure? Researchers are still trying to figure out if the people who use their cell phones for several hours every day are at an increased risk of cancer. We're talking about over a thousand hours a year for some people. One more hour is negligible if you're worried about cancer, and if you're talking about people who are only low users (probably a good idea, because if an effect does occur, there might not be a detectable difference in regular users), it's not even worth the ink to write it into the release from liability agreement, because they're such a long ways away from the threshold other people have been exposing themselves to for years. And those people who did so back in the analog days did it at a much higher intensity.
What bugs me about the email tax, and I'm sorry to fall back on a cliche debate term, there's some definite slippery slope potential. For now those who pay bypass the filter. A lot of spam still gets through these filters, however, so the next obvious step is to add more rules to the filters. Pretty soon, as you proposed, the only way to send email is to pay your 0.1 cent, but since spam filters are generally pretty good about filtering out bot spam, paying to pass the filters actually could increase their success rate at getting into people's inboxes to the point where it's worth paying that tiny fee. More so for hand-crafted spam, which obviously accumulates slower.
And I'd wager there would be no cost savings from your ISP. The extra layer of billing penny fractions to billions of email accounts, even handled as a tree structure (consumer 1 > mail provider 1 > mail provider 2; consumer 2 > mail provider 2 > mail provider 1...back and forth ad infinitum), would eat up all the revenue.
No, it's not sinister, but it's misguided. I'm counting on the consumers to weed this one out. AOL has further decreased the likelihood of me every subscribing to their services with this move.
Tis true! And if you want any other form of economic system, you still have to accept the consequences of that.
As far as global competition here in the Pacific NW, there's been a lot of frustration from the timber industry, dairy industry, and pork producers since NAFTA took effect as Canada has been beating us on price with those imports. Loggers threw a fit when the shingle mill in my hometown started buying cedars from British Columbia, but they weren't able to compete against imported shakes unless they did.
And on a more serious note...
While Europa remains a high priority for science missions, NASA has been re-evaluating the JIMO mission and concepts that have been proposed for Europa landers, and the latest opinion is that the scope of these missions would make them too costly for the amount of information returned. Additionally, JIMO relies too heavily on technology still in development for Griffin's comfort.
Also released last month, if I remember right, another slashdot article talking about said budget. Sorry, but I'm too lazy and slashdot's search feature is too crappy for me to look it up.
Griffin and the shuttle program manager have both been very emphatic that further launches will not happen if they don't believe the work done since the last launch has appreciably reduced the risks, which are already low. "They only have 3 to spare" is irrelevant in asking whether or not to launch unless you don't have a good idea what is going to happen.
Just for kicks, I'll flog the dead horse one more time and look briefly at the numbers. The shuttle has flown 114 (?) times and had two catastrophic failrues. The first was thoroughly addressed in the 1980's and there are no indications that it is any longer a problem (assuming politics don't get in the way). The second has been looked into extensively. Two specific sources of large pieces of foam loss have been identified in two flights and eliminated. A gazillion other smaller improvements have been made, too. Now 15 final flights are planned. Even before the latest improvements are taken into consideration, statistics favor a safe conclusion of the shuttle program. Now we have the choice of letting them rust in their hangars, or launching, re-evaluating, and getting the remaining projected use out of them if it's safe.
To all the slashdot trolls: In the interest of being politically correct, I will attempt to appreciate your reluctance to accept the humility of comparing your opinions to real world facts and events before asserting your expertise via your keyboard and hitting the submit button, but I still think you're stupid.
Tables lock in a layout. With CSS positioning, you can change the layout with changing code inline with your content. Tables also can limit the fluidity of a layout (how well does it respond to changes in browser capability...this affects accessibility). They also take a lot of code and usually some complex nesting/spanning. These are the big reasons in my mind, but other people have brough up some other good reasons you can google up pretty easily.
I've heard a lot of people generically say "tables are for tabular data." I was always taught never to define a term with itself and I think that proposal is slightly off, anyway. Tables really are for showing correlations between content in rows and columns. I would contend that aligning labels and fields for forms into rows and columns is a legitimate use. It is also possible, however, to control them vertically with paragraphs, although the default of aligning material of different sizes inside a single box to the bottom of the box may make this somewhat confusing, and there is no column control in this scheme.
Oh, I want to pay attention, but I'm easily distracted. I'm not going to kid myself on that point. Chances are if you're in class instead of back in bed, you want to learn, but paying attention to some professors is really tough to do. Giving myself fewer implements of distraction helps. You don't have to spend thousands of dollars per year on college to have the opportunity to not pay attention to someone.
Talking about distractions, however, isn't really the point. No one has come up with a good reason why laptops should be required at a school. Having a laptop wouldn't have done squat for me while studying engineering, and I'm skeptical that it would do enough for anyone else that they should be required. In fact, I think having a desktop worked out better overall.
So laptops work well for you, but why bother requiring them for people who would be better served by a pencil and paper? I don't know of any good way to take notes or work through sample problems on a computer for most of my classes. Microsoft equation editor is handy for reports, but it takes 5 minutes to type out something relatively simple like the energy equation, and forget drawing simple graphs or diagrams on the fly, inline with your lecture notes on the computer. Why not just let me spend my money on a desktop computer and take advantage of improved ergonomics and upgradeability and not bother with batteries? School administrators love shiny things and don't seem to understand that what's good for them isn't always good for others.
Laptops also offer more distractions. I won't make assumptions about everyone, but I know I have trouble not getting distracted when I sit down in front of a computer.
CAD programs have been increasing in their graphical demands along with the increases in available power. My computer at work is new this year, but running IronCAD with a 40 MB assembly really bogs it down. It's not gonna kill me, but it is annoying when everytime I change my view, it spends 5 seconds redrawing it.
I suspect we're on the same wavelength here, but I'll say it anyway. Creationism is not a scientific theory, which is part of the problem I, a devout Catholic, have with Intelligent Design.
My bigger problem is the fact that, as a theological concept, ID is empty and vain. It attempts to promote the idea that we are created by God, without any desire to learn more. That defeats the purpose of theology (theo-logos: knowing God). Given that ID fits neither science nor theology (does not directly address how, does not ask why), it is vain to promote it in either field. If people really think religion should be discussed in public schools, and I personally do think it should, the best place is as a general overview in the context of either social studies or philosophy. Ultimately, though, the school is not the place for evangelization.
The designer is supposed to understand that. Constraining, loading, selecting mesh types, and interpreting results is somewhat specialized, though, which is why the FEA work is often done by seperate people than the original design work in the first place. Simplifying the meshing process saves effort for those who do both modeling and FEA, but not in offices where one engineer does the model, and another does the FEA. Also, drafters are generally concerned soley with geometry, rather than analysis, so it's common to have a drafter design a part, and an engineer verify it.
I do think this interesting for those who do both, however. From my own experience with ANSYS, it's rather a pain in the butt to make modifications to parts, especially since the modelling tools in ANSYS do not lend themselves well to undoing steps or changing existing features. It's very common to build a model in other CAD software, then import the model into an analysis program like ANSYS. One thing that concerns me though, is that you might end up with a screwy mesh near the interface of modified and unmodified sections of a part that could improperly effect the analysis. I would hope they would've thought of this somewhere in their 35,000 lines of code, however.
I was the student rep on a technology adivisory committee my senior year, and one of the things the Nursing dean tried to push through was requiring all students have laptops. It turned out the main motivation was a standardized test the nursing students had to take by computer, and it was tough to arrange it with the small labs we had available. Some professors wanted to use them in lectures, too, but the main thing was the nursing school. Financial aid would be made available for one purchase during undergrad.
It took some vocalizing, but with a little bit of feedback from other students, I was able to convince them that requiring laptops for everyone was needless, when only a limited set of students would benefit from them. They had a vision of recruitment brochures showing students browsing via wireless while drinking coffee on the quad, whereas I had visions of science students trying to take notes and not be able to keep up with their professor because Microsoft Equation Editor is tough to use, or engineering seniors trying to do CAD with a 4 year old integrated graphics card, batteries dying during lectures, and no more computer labs to send students to when viruses crashed their personal computer because they won't run windows update (hello, the blaster patch came out two years ago!).
In the end, they figured out how ridiculous it was to force laptops into circulation, and that they were not the optimum solution for everything (gee, I thought people only bought desktops because they were cheaper...). Instead, financial aid is available up to a set limit for a one-time computer purchase of the student's choice. Sadly though, I don't doubt that some future student on that committee, this year or later on, will face the question of mandatory laptops and think it sounds like a great idea.
Whew...you barely save yourself with your disclaimer at the end.
As far as science proving Creation is bunk though, it hasn't and it can't. No matter what mechanism you come up with for the evolution of the universe, you never scientifically find a means that necessarily exludes God from creating it and not being bound by its laws. It's kind of an interesting property of omnipotence. Of course, neither do I expect to see science proving the existence of God. For that and various theological reasons, intelligent design is empty, but the loosely associated idea of Creation is not.
I haven't seen any comments on this yet, but my first thought on reading the summary was that this would make censorship of content on the internet(s) a lot easier. If you don't play by the rules, then their ICANN-equivalent can pull your domain registration.
The pencil story is false, but based on fact. Basically, NASA (and the Russians) used pencils for a while, but didn't like have pencil dust or broken leads floating around the capsules. Some guy came up with the design on his own and started selling them to NASA and they worked. The Russians started using them too.
This is very true, and mainly for that reason, I tend to be pretty forgiving of a few mistakes here and there. Then there's the snowball effect of the validator. For example, if you forget to end an anchor tag, then you might have a dozen errors follow on the validator because it thinks you're trying to wrap the next couple divs or paragraphs inside an anchor. It's really only one error, but it looks like a lot.
I think the main reason to use BB code in forums has more to do with protecting the integrity of the layout and making things easier for users than validation (especially given how few forums validate). Previously, I had been using striptags (php) on my personal site to control the html my friends could use (they go looking for ways to cause trouble), but by switching to BB code, I can control it even more. For example, parsing for emoticons to insert smilies ensures the img tag always refers to the proper directory, and by using [QUOTE] instead of blockquote, I can assign easily assign a class to provide consistency. Plus, there's no way I could my mom to use an alt tag if I taught her how to use HTML to insert smileys.
Oh, I just said that on slashdot didn't I? I'll never live down admitting to using smiley's on my personal website...
Interesting...although that's 4.0 transitional, which is technically compliant, but it's really intended as a stopgap or a stepping stone from the primieval 90's HTML goo to Strict adherence. That still puts Microsoft ahead of a lot of other sites, though.
Ok, validation isn't everything, and passing the validator is not 100% confirmation that your page is valid, but just for kicks (and to see if the best of web 2.0 passes the basics of web 1.0), let's pass their list through the W3C's HTML Validator and see what we get (links go to the validator results
PhotosFlickr.com - HTML 4.01 Transitional - 15 errors.
No need to use end tags if you don't use a start tag. Meta Keywords...does anyone still pay attention to those?
Video
vimeo.com - HTML 4.01 Transitional - 41 errors.
Use your alt attributes and remember that td's should be nested inside tr's.
Social Bookmarking
Del.icio.us - XHTML 1.0 Strict - 21 errors.
Actually a decent attempt. They went with a strict declaration and didn't use tables for layout.
Digg - XHTML 1.0 Transitional - 3 errors
Really close. Fix those links and and get rid of that "disabled" attribute. Where'd they find that one?
Newreaders/RSS
www.bloglines.com - XHTML 1.0 Transitional - 137 errors.
Yikes. Yes I think the colspan attribute is cool, too, but not that cool. Give it a rest.
Start Pages
www.netvibes.com - XHTML 1.0 Strict - 13 errors
They were doing so well with the strict declaration...but then that rotten cellpadding attribute snuck in...and width...and border.
Collaboration/Word Processors
www.writeboard.com - XHTML 1.0 Transitional - 12 errors
Not bad. Time to advance to Strict, I think.
Maps/Directions
Google Maps - XHTML 1.0 Strict - 101 errors
Google! How could you?!? Of all the sites to use deprecated elements under a Strict declaration! I feel betrayed.
Local Directories
Google Local - Not Found The requested URL
Chat/IM
Meebo - DOCTYPE DECLARATION was not recognized or missing - 2 errors
Come on. That's sooo 1990's. Actually, it gave me a declaration, so perhaps its malformed or they don't give one to robots.
Buzzword Sites - What? Like I could let a name like Design Technica off that easy.
Design Technica - This Page is not valid (no Doctype found)! - 38 errors
Ouch! Same story. I see one in the source, but the validator doesn't accept it. Tables
Hmmm...everybody tried xhtml except designtechnica and meebo. Targeting mobile browsers, I guess? Nobody passed. There were a few non-table-based layouts, but that was offset by a lot of use of deprecated elements. It looks like web 2.0 is about as ready as IE 7.
...I didn't read it.
Is there a validator where we can check?
Hmmm, I may have just thought of my next PHP project...sorry, I meant to say I envision the development of a standards-based approach to maximizing the utilization of impression-centric terminology, and I intend to take the initiative in making this technology available to the underprivileged marketing managers of the world.