You shouldn't be using DTDs any more. Validation is better achieved with RelaxNG, and you shouldn't use them for entity references because then non-validating parsers won't be able to handle your code.
For those document types that already use DTDs, either you ship the DTDs with your application, or you cache them the first time you parse a document of that type.
The Netscape DTD issue was caused not by the DTD being unavailable, but by some client applications not being sufficiently robust. You shouldn't be looking at the hosting to solve the problem.
Since you asked for only a single instance, then yes, look at useit.com, which consists of - wait for it - plain text.
Yes, look at useit.com. Specifically, look at the explanation for why the site is so plain. One of them is a remnant of older days (it's a decade-old design) and one of them is because it's his personal website and he isn't an artist. He explicitly says that the website doesn't follow his recommendations! I don't see how his website design is advocating no graphics and a monochrome colour scheme.
You know what? I don't like his site either. I've said as much in the past. And as you can see, even he says that his site could be better. But he's clearly chosen to maintain his website as a personal project, not as a showcase. As such, expecting him to comply with advice he gives to multi-discipline web design teams when he isn't even a professional web designer or working on it full time is unreasonable.
I'm not going to go digging through articles to prove a point, but I'll thank you to not accuse me of blindly repeating someone else's opinion.
Well I'm sorry, but I didn't think it was likely that you had actually read any of his work and still held those beliefs about him. To be honest, I still don't,
especially when you won't point to anywhere where he actually advocates what you suggest. I took ten minutes to "go digging through articles" and found loads of places where he advocates using graphics.
his message seems to me to be that if you tip the scales 100% toward usability, you'll strip out the design and stick with plain text.
Then you haven't been paying attention. Counter-examples:
I agree that unnecessary graphic elements can get in the way of your message, but his solution is usually to remove *all* graphic elements and stick with plain dark text on a light background.
No it isn't. That's largely a myth propagated by bad designers who resent being told that they are over the top, the odd line here and there in an article taken out of context, and people like you, who seem to repeat the myth without having read his actual opinions. It's true that he used to make a bigger deal out of the graphics issue, but that was a decade ago, when download speeds were a fraction of what they are now and had a much bigger impact on the user.
Try reading his books and articles. He's actually quite reasonable when you listen to what he actually says instead of the ridiculous straw-man people have him confused with. He typically presents the issue as a trade-off between what designers want to do when they get carried away, and the consequences it has on the end-user. And he backs it up with actual data from actual studies.
Can you actually point to a single instance of him saying that all graphic elements should be removed and a monochrome colour scheme should be used? I've seen him say that overuse of graphics and use of graphics without a purpose are bad, which often get exaggerated to "Nielsen says don't use graphics", but he's rarely as inflexible and dogmatic as his critics would have you believe.
What does Web 2.0 have to do with people neglecting the basics of good design? As far as I can tell they have always done that.
It's a story that reoccurs every few years when a new technology comes along. Somebody comes up with a new technique/technology/approach, and gets a lot of attention because it's quite useful. Then the hype engine goes into overdrive, PHBs start putting it on job advertisements, and people get book deals. A multitude of copy & paste monkeys buy the books, get the jobs and apply that technique/technology/approach to everything they see, with no understanding of when it's actually useful. The industry gets flooded with a bunch of one-trick ponies.
This happened with frames, JavaScript, Java, Flash, DHTML, ActiveX, Ajax, and now it's "Web 2.0"'s turn. Eventually, the field will settle down and there won't be quite so many fanboys around — they'll either broaden their skills and get a clue, their business will fail, or they will get fired. And then things will be relatively stable until the next big thing comes along.
So I guess you're right, this is an ongoing problem, but it's still news when the cycle starts again.
This is some BBC guy, their version of good design probably = "Flash and shinny buttons with special effects and blinking links". I actually prefer the basic and simple looks of a basic MoinMoin wiki or a simple blog -- the less flash and crap the better, just the information.
This is Jakob Nielsen, the usability expert who regularly gets flamed for advocating more spartan designs and fewer distracting special effects. You're approximately 100% wrong about what he thinks "good design" is.
Maybe the Windows 98 Active Desktop has a chance of being successful now that always-on Internet connections are vastly more common. There was another technology built into Internet Explorer 4.0 that also died from lack of use. It was called "channels", and was very similar to RSS. Yet today, RSS and Atom are wildly popular. Sometimes the technology doesn't need to change if the world does.
I don't think that Hotmail was ever number 1 in online email.
Assuming you mean webmail, then yes, HoTMaiL most certainly was number one at one time. It was practically synonymous with webmail. That's why Microsoft bought it.
It's more than usually the case.. if something is in the public domain, you don't need a license.
Yes, but as Vain Gloria points out, Creative Commons offers a public domain dedication too. In common usage, the term "Creative Commons works" include those works that have been dedicated to the public domain using the CC dedication.
Read the fucking article.. it's one click away..
Read my fucking comment. The article seems confused. It says "uncopyrighted" in the headline, but keeps talking about licenses in the body.
The article and summary seem to be treating "Creative Commons" and "copyright free" as synonyms. This is not the case. "Creative Commons" is an umbrella term for a number of different licenses and a dedication to the public domain. It's entirely possible (and usually the case) that Creative Commons works are copyrighted and not in the public domain.
Does anybody know if they are really dedicating the footage to the public domain, or are they using one of the more restrictive CC licenses?
That's the only sensible course of action here, but I would add: do NOT do something illegal on behalf of your employer
Ditto. An old boss of mine was a bit of a bully, and one day he called me into a private meeting and asked me to break into an ex-employee's server to see if they'd copied any of our code (it was actually quite likely). I told him point blank that I wouldn't be doing it and suggested he talk to a solicitor about the suspected copyright infringement. His response? "Oh. Um, okay." It's the quickest I ever saw him back down on anything by miles.
The thing is, they already know they are in the wrong and are sticking their neck out by asking you to do it. It would take a real psychopath to attempt to force you into it after you refuse. Normal people, even nightmare bosses, are going to back down immediately.
I've worked with Molly and hold her in the greatest respect. I'm also thoroughly jaded about MS browser announcements and never believe a word anymore. One of these positions will have to shift with the release of IE8, and I'm very curious which it will be.
Why do you think they hired her? They already have plenty of people who know the W3C specifications inside out and backwards, hell it was core members of the Internet Explorer development team that helped write the W3C specification. Ignore the spin; they don't need anybody to help them "bring standards to Microsoft".
No, the trouble Microsoft has is that they are a developer-oriented business, and they completely and utterly burned their bridges with web developers years ago. They lost all trust, and no amount of platitudes will help them get trust back, or even merely stop them being the object of ridicule and hatred. They could put every single developer at Microsoft to work on Internet Explorer, make it conform to every W3C specification ever written, and release it all as open source, and still web developers would hold a grudge against them.
So they brought in somebody well-respected in the community, to act as a bridge between the developer community and Microsoft. Web developers are sat at one end of the bench, Microsoft at the other, and Molly is in the middle. Web developers talk to Molly, Microsoft talks to Molly, and she repeats everything to the other party, even though all three parties know full well that they are all within earshot of each other.
Have you ever seen an adult use a sock puppet to talk to a child because the child doesn't want to talk to the adult? It's the exact same thing. Molly is the sock puppet, and Microsoft is treating the web developer community like children. I'm sure Molly is doing something useful at Microsoft, but her primary use to them is as a PR tool. And judging from your comment, it's working.
One could argue that the overhead IE creates for developers is a good thing for really, really good web developers - it increases billable hours threefold and makes those of us talented and experienced enough to write solid code for IE *AND* all other platforms and push our less-able competitors out of the high-paying market.
It's slowly pushing me out of the market, not because I'm unable to cope with Internet Explorer's shortcomings, but because I'm sick of wasting time working around bugs instead of putting my valuable time to good use creating things.
You seriously think that work for the sake of work is a good thing?
berated Microsoft for not complying with W3C standards and requested that they comply with a non-W3C one.
And what is wrong with that? The W3C aren't responsible for JPEG, that was standardised by ISO. Does that mean that web browsers shouldn't implement JPEG?
You are talking like there is a wall between the W3C and the rest of the world, where implementing a non-W3C technology means that you must inevitably throw away W3C stuff. This is nonsensical. You can implement W3C specifications and non-W3C specifications simultaneously just fine,and this has been the norm for as long as the W3C has existed.
I don't think it's fair to hold IE to impossible expectations.
Huh? You are talking about something that the OP already pointed out was already implemented by the other browsers. How is keeping up with everybody else an impossible expectation?
Please, why are you linking to kooks like Infowar? Here is the original article, which they conveniently don't link to. Compare and contrast. Infowar:
Imagine a place where if you say something considered by the authorities to be suspicious a team of agents is dispatched to your location to detain and question you.
Of course, the lip reading technology isn't even in existence yet, let alone any kind of government plan to use it or secret police squad. From the original article:
Richard Harvey, a senior lecturer in computer vision at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, is embarking on a three-year project that will collect lip-reading data.
It's just hype to promote a new research project. Infowar seeks out anything that can possibly be used for bad purposes, and spins it out of all recognition. It's a site run by a paranoid kook, not a legitimate news source.
This is precisely the bizarro economics used to justify these nationalistic monstrosities; trickle-down economics at its worst.
This isn't "bizarro economics", this is perfectly reasonable. Lots of people coming into your country from elsewhere and spending their money on local goods and services increases the amount of money a country has. Spending lots of taxpayers' money on local goods and services does not decrease the amount of money a country has. Doing the latter to encourage the former is a profitable activity for a country.
Worse, for those people living in the state/province/country but not in the immediate jurisdiction, the benefits are even less
You are arguing against the position that this kind of deal would be uniformly good for all taxpayers. I never said that. Your original statement was "Why anyone bothers with this nationalistic jingoistic drug-fest is quite beyond me." I explained how the country as a whole can profit from a major international tourist attraction.
To meet one gross over-generalization with another, you mean besides keeping the copyright holders in business so that they can continue to produce content?
The more the copyright holders lose business, the more pressure is on them to seek out more reasonable business models. The way you talk, it's like if the RIAA members go out of business, nobody will be making music any more. In reality, they have such a stranglehold on the market, if they go out of business, that leaves huge opportunities just waiting to be exploited.
Just because the RIAA forms the majority of the market today, it doesn't mean that they are synonymous with the market. Putting the RIAA out of business doesn't reduce the demand for music, it merely gives major market opportunities to everybody else.
Yep, the entertainment industry gives at least twice as much to Democrats as they do to Republicans. Since 1990, they've given $137,219,474 to Dems, and $63,574,385 to Repubs.
So basically, what you are saying is that Republicans are cheaper to bribe? </facetious>
Quit trying to make this a "my team is better than yours" issue. Halivar was saying that both Republicans and Democrats are corrupt, and he was right.
The cognitive dissonance among sheltered/. basement-dwellers that this post is going to cause will be funny.
You're just paraphrasing "I know I'll get modded down for this but...", except doing it in an insulting manner. You know, you could have posted the same information without the insults, so why do it?
my dad saw some ad's on the site that he was interested in, and clicked on.
This is against the Adsense terms and conditions, and they mention it in big, bold letters when you sign up, if I remember correctly. Forget the speculation about "sudden exposure", your dad broke the rules and was kicked out for it.
Why anyone bothers with this nationalistic jingoistic drug-fest is quite beyond me.
Money. All those tourists coming to watch the Olympics spend money on hotels, restaurants, tourist attractions, souveniers, etc. Everything a hundred thousand foreigners spend during a couple of weeks now belongs to the host country, and what's more, they'll go back home and tell their friends what a nice city you have, and maybe come back again themselves as well. The four billion people watching on television might be tempted too.
There bringing the whole show to Vancouver in 2010, and we the local taxpayers are on the hook for all the cost overruns. Most of us won't be attending anyways, so the whole thing is a real joke on the unlucky souls who get to foot the bill.
Yes, but most of the money that is spent remains in the local economy, so even though the taxpayer might lose out superficially, the country as a whole profits.
There is no such thing as security when you have physical access to the device.
Not necessarily. Encrypt the data using some sort of biometric hash of the fingerprint. Don't store the hash or fingerprint at any time. When you need access to the data, you need your fingerprint.
To get around this, you need to either obtain the fingerprint hash, or compromise the device, return it to its owner, and then obtain it again afterwards.
Yeah, whoever heard of men working long, inflexible hours? They get to go home early because they have penises, right?
Seriously, if women are quitting the IT industry because of discrimination, that's one thing. But leaving because they don't want long, inflexible hours? Tough. Men have to put up with it. Why shouldn't women?
Slashdot Mirror
You shouldn't be using DTDs any more. Validation is better achieved with RelaxNG, and you shouldn't use them for entity references because then non-validating parsers won't be able to handle your code.
For those document types that already use DTDs, either you ship the DTDs with your application, or you cache them the first time you parse a document of that type.
The Netscape DTD issue was caused not by the DTD being unavailable, but by some client applications not being sufficiently robust. You shouldn't be looking at the hosting to solve the problem.
Yes, look at useit.com. Specifically, look at the explanation for why the site is so plain. One of them is a remnant of older days (it's a decade-old design) and one of them is because it's his personal website and he isn't an artist. He explicitly says that the website doesn't follow his recommendations! I don't see how his website design is advocating no graphics and a monochrome colour scheme.
You know what? I don't like his site either. I've said as much in the past. And as you can see, even he says that his site could be better. But he's clearly chosen to maintain his website as a personal project, not as a showcase. As such, expecting him to comply with advice he gives to multi-discipline web design teams when he isn't even a professional web designer or working on it full time is unreasonable.
Well I'm sorry, but I didn't think it was likely that you had actually read any of his work and still held those beliefs about him. To be honest, I still don't, especially when you won't point to anywhere where he actually advocates what you suggest. I took ten minutes to "go digging through articles" and found loads of places where he advocates using graphics.
Then you haven't been paying attention. Counter-examples:
No it isn't. That's largely a myth propagated by bad designers who resent being told that they are over the top, the odd line here and there in an article taken out of context, and people like you, who seem to repeat the myth without having read his actual opinions. It's true that he used to make a bigger deal out of the graphics issue, but that was a decade ago, when download speeds were a fraction of what they are now and had a much bigger impact on the user.
Try reading his books and articles. He's actually quite reasonable when you listen to what he actually says instead of the ridiculous straw-man people have him confused with. He typically presents the issue as a trade-off between what designers want to do when they get carried away, and the consequences it has on the end-user. And he backs it up with actual data from actual studies.
Can you actually point to a single instance of him saying that all graphic elements should be removed and a monochrome colour scheme should be used? I've seen him say that overuse of graphics and use of graphics without a purpose are bad, which often get exaggerated to "Nielsen says don't use graphics", but he's rarely as inflexible and dogmatic as his critics would have you believe.
It's a story that reoccurs every few years when a new technology comes along. Somebody comes up with a new technique/technology/approach, and gets a lot of attention because it's quite useful. Then the hype engine goes into overdrive, PHBs start putting it on job advertisements, and people get book deals. A multitude of copy & paste monkeys buy the books, get the jobs and apply that technique/technology/approach to everything they see, with no understanding of when it's actually useful. The industry gets flooded with a bunch of one-trick ponies.
This happened with frames, JavaScript, Java, Flash, DHTML, ActiveX, Ajax, and now it's "Web 2.0"'s turn. Eventually, the field will settle down and there won't be quite so many fanboys around — they'll either broaden their skills and get a clue, their business will fail, or they will get fired. And then things will be relatively stable until the next big thing comes along.
So I guess you're right, this is an ongoing problem, but it's still news when the cycle starts again.
This is Jakob Nielsen, the usability expert who regularly gets flamed for advocating more spartan designs and fewer distracting special effects. You're approximately 100% wrong about what he thinks "good design" is.
Don't worry, Bush will be along shortly to double-un-re-de-ban it (no backsies!) any second now.
At least that's what you'll think until the twist at the end!
Maybe the Windows 98 Active Desktop has a chance of being successful now that always-on Internet connections are vastly more common. There was another technology built into Internet Explorer 4.0 that also died from lack of use. It was called "channels", and was very similar to RSS. Yet today, RSS and Atom are wildly popular. Sometimes the technology doesn't need to change if the world does.
Assuming you mean webmail, then yes, HoTMaiL most certainly was number one at one time. It was practically synonymous with webmail. That's why Microsoft bought it.
Yes, but as Vain Gloria points out, Creative Commons offers a public domain dedication too. In common usage, the term "Creative Commons works" include those works that have been dedicated to the public domain using the CC dedication.
Read my fucking comment. The article seems confused. It says "uncopyrighted" in the headline, but keeps talking about licenses in the body.
The article and summary seem to be treating "Creative Commons" and "copyright free" as synonyms. This is not the case. "Creative Commons" is an umbrella term for a number of different licenses and a dedication to the public domain. It's entirely possible (and usually the case) that Creative Commons works are copyrighted and not in the public domain.
Does anybody know if they are really dedicating the footage to the public domain, or are they using one of the more restrictive CC licenses?
Ditto. An old boss of mine was a bit of a bully, and one day he called me into a private meeting and asked me to break into an ex-employee's server to see if they'd copied any of our code (it was actually quite likely). I told him point blank that I wouldn't be doing it and suggested he talk to a solicitor about the suspected copyright infringement. His response? "Oh. Um, okay." It's the quickest I ever saw him back down on anything by miles.
The thing is, they already know they are in the wrong and are sticking their neck out by asking you to do it. It would take a real psychopath to attempt to force you into it after you refuse. Normal people, even nightmare bosses, are going to back down immediately.
Won't somebody please think of the great-grandchildren!?
Why do you think they hired her? They already have plenty of people who know the W3C specifications inside out and backwards, hell it was core members of the Internet Explorer development team that helped write the W3C specification. Ignore the spin; they don't need anybody to help them "bring standards to Microsoft".
No, the trouble Microsoft has is that they are a developer-oriented business, and they completely and utterly burned their bridges with web developers years ago. They lost all trust, and no amount of platitudes will help them get trust back, or even merely stop them being the object of ridicule and hatred. They could put every single developer at Microsoft to work on Internet Explorer, make it conform to every W3C specification ever written, and release it all as open source, and still web developers would hold a grudge against them.
So they brought in somebody well-respected in the community, to act as a bridge between the developer community and Microsoft. Web developers are sat at one end of the bench, Microsoft at the other, and Molly is in the middle. Web developers talk to Molly, Microsoft talks to Molly, and she repeats everything to the other party, even though all three parties know full well that they are all within earshot of each other.
Have you ever seen an adult use a sock puppet to talk to a child because the child doesn't want to talk to the adult? It's the exact same thing. Molly is the sock puppet, and Microsoft is treating the web developer community like children. I'm sure Molly is doing something useful at Microsoft, but her primary use to them is as a PR tool. And judging from your comment, it's working.
It's slowly pushing me out of the market, not because I'm unable to cope with Internet Explorer's shortcomings, but because I'm sick of wasting time working around bugs instead of putting my valuable time to good use creating things.
You seriously think that work for the sake of work is a good thing?
And what is wrong with that? The W3C aren't responsible for JPEG, that was standardised by ISO. Does that mean that web browsers shouldn't implement JPEG?
You are talking like there is a wall between the W3C and the rest of the world, where implementing a non-W3C technology means that you must inevitably throw away W3C stuff. This is nonsensical. You can implement W3C specifications and non-W3C specifications simultaneously just fine,and this has been the norm for as long as the W3C has existed.
Huh? You are talking about something that the OP already pointed out was already implemented by the other browsers. How is keeping up with everybody else an impossible expectation?
Hey! If we outlaw hammers, only outlaws will be able to put shelves up!
Please, why are you linking to kooks like Infowar? Here is the original article, which they conveniently don't link to. Compare and contrast. Infowar:
Of course, the lip reading technology isn't even in existence yet, let alone any kind of government plan to use it or secret police squad. From the original article:
It's just hype to promote a new research project. Infowar seeks out anything that can possibly be used for bad purposes, and spins it out of all recognition. It's a site run by a paranoid kook, not a legitimate news source.
This isn't "bizarro economics", this is perfectly reasonable. Lots of people coming into your country from elsewhere and spending their money on local goods and services increases the amount of money a country has. Spending lots of taxpayers' money on local goods and services does not decrease the amount of money a country has. Doing the latter to encourage the former is a profitable activity for a country.
You are arguing against the position that this kind of deal would be uniformly good for all taxpayers. I never said that. Your original statement was "Why anyone bothers with this nationalistic jingoistic drug-fest is quite beyond me." I explained how the country as a whole can profit from a major international tourist attraction.
The more the copyright holders lose business, the more pressure is on them to seek out more reasonable business models. The way you talk, it's like if the RIAA members go out of business, nobody will be making music any more. In reality, they have such a stranglehold on the market, if they go out of business, that leaves huge opportunities just waiting to be exploited.
Just because the RIAA forms the majority of the market today, it doesn't mean that they are synonymous with the market. Putting the RIAA out of business doesn't reduce the demand for music, it merely gives major market opportunities to everybody else.
So basically, what you are saying is that Republicans are cheaper to bribe? </facetious>
Quit trying to make this a "my team is better than yours" issue. Halivar was saying that both Republicans and Democrats are corrupt, and he was right.
You're just paraphrasing "I know I'll get modded down for this but...", except doing it in an insulting manner. You know, you could have posted the same information without the insults, so why do it?
This is against the Adsense terms and conditions, and they mention it in big, bold letters when you sign up, if I remember correctly. Forget the speculation about "sudden exposure", your dad broke the rules and was kicked out for it.
Money. All those tourists coming to watch the Olympics spend money on hotels, restaurants, tourist attractions, souveniers, etc. Everything a hundred thousand foreigners spend during a couple of weeks now belongs to the host country, and what's more, they'll go back home and tell their friends what a nice city you have, and maybe come back again themselves as well. The four billion people watching on television might be tempted too.
Yes, but most of the money that is spent remains in the local economy, so even though the taxpayer might lose out superficially, the country as a whole profits.
Not necessarily. Encrypt the data using some sort of biometric hash of the fingerprint. Don't store the hash or fingerprint at any time. When you need access to the data, you need your fingerprint.
To get around this, you need to either obtain the fingerprint hash, or compromise the device, return it to its owner, and then obtain it again afterwards.
Yeah, whoever heard of men working long, inflexible hours? They get to go home early because they have penises, right?
Seriously, if women are quitting the IT industry because of discrimination, that's one thing. But leaving because they don't want long, inflexible hours? Tough. Men have to put up with it. Why shouldn't women?