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030528 19:44 Web development: accessibility

More on the problems of assigning accesskeys across browsers and platforms - and countries. (via wai-ig)

So while it seems that Accesskeys is a great idea in principle, implementation brings with it the possibility that it either will not be available to all users, or that the keystroke combination encoded within the web page may conflict with a reserved keystroke combination in an adaptive technology or future user agent.

030524 18:31 Victims of capitalism

According to my sister, who lives in the former East Germany, lots of East Germans got killed on the tree-lined roads when they first got hold of western cars after reunification and couldn't handle them properly.

030523 23:39 Web development: accessibility

Accesskey standards. Well, wouldn't that be nice? (via Joe Clark on wai-ig)

030523 23:36 Civil liberties

US isolationism continues: U.S. to Fingerprint Most Foreign Visitors.

Because border security sometimes comes down to on-the-spot decisions, Hutchinson said, "the more we are able to identify people and assess them based on their individual traits, the less dependent we are on broad, general categories such as national origin."

Ooooh. Well that sounds much more thought through, doesn't it? So what exactly do they mean by 'individual traits'?

That's the outside taken care of, now to the inside: Barcoding humans - The era of implanting people with identity chips is up on us.

030521 23:36 Intellectual property : patents

Here's some good IP news, for a change: The W3C will ensure that standards for the web will remain based on royalty free technologies. (via /.)

Many participants in the original development of the Web knew that they might have sought patents on the work they contributed to W3C, and that they might have tried to secure exclusive access to these innovations or charge licensing fees for their use. However, those who contributed to building the Web in its first decade made the business decision that they, and the entire world, would benefit most by contributing to standards that could be implemented ubiquitously, without royalty payments.

Aah, those glory days! After all that shoulder slapping they do, however, sneak this bit in:

The policy includes a process (section 7.5.3) by which W3C may chose, after considerable deliberation, to include technologies not available according to the defined royalty-free terms.

030517 17:15 Browsers

Mozilla Firebird 0.6, Mozilla's 'browser-only' variant - formerly know as Phoenix, is available.

030517 14:56 Internet / Media

Lawrence Lessig predicts the end of the free (as in 'speech', not 'beer') Internet (or at least the end of the Internet that techno utopians and liberals dreamt of) because of relaxed media concentration restrictions. Of course, the rest of us realized this when we first heard the word 'e-commerce', and then again when AOL and Time Warner merged.

At the same time that media concentration restrictions are being removed, such that 3 companies will own everything, so too are neutrality restrictions for the network being eliminated, so that those same three companies — who will also control broadband access — are totally free to architect broadband however they wish. "The Internet" that is to be the savior is a dying breed. The end-to-end architecture that gave us its power will, in effect, be inverted. And so the games networks play to benefit their own will bleed to this space too.

Update 030518: [de] Telepolis Artikel zum Thema Medienkonzentration in den USA.

030516 00:24 Web development

New toy! New toy! Just came across this bookmarklet that lets you play with a site's stylesheet on the fly. It's called 'test styles'. It pops up a little window and all CSS you specify there gets immediately applied to the webpage you're looking at. Works on the whole site as long as that window stays open. Great fun. Erm, and a really useful tool, of course.

[click for large version]

030515 23:21 Intellectual property

More patent madness news: Verisign granted DNS lookup patent.

030515 22:11 Web development

XHTML 2 looks less scary now. This one I like:

XHTML 2 defines a new element, nl, specifically for navigation lists.

030514 23:43 Scifi

This is exactly what i mean when i talk about worrying trends in Scifi being a reflection of the current state of mind. I love Firefly (Cowboys in Space, as i call it) but i find the return to stricter hierarchies after decades of almost consensus seeking very worrying. Still, at least on Firefly they do generally have very little respect for these hierarchies.

Having said that, read Top 10 Things I Hate About Star Trek anyway. It's really funny.

Rule by committee.

Here's the difference between Star Trek and the best SF show on TV last year:

Star Trek:

Picard: "Arm photon torpedoes!"
Riker: "Captain! Are you sure that's wise?"
Troi: "Captain! I'm picking up conflicting feelings about this! And, it appears that you're a 'fraidy cat."
Wesley: "Captain, I'm just an annoying punk, but I thought I should say something."
Worf: "Captain, can I push the button? This is giving me a big Klingon warrior chubby."
Giordi: "Captain, I think we should reverse the polarity on them first."
Picard: "I'm so confused. I'm going to go to my stateroom and look pensive."

Firefly:

Captain: "Let's shoot them."
Crewman: "Are you sure that's wise?"
Captain: "Do you know what the chain of command is? It's the chain I'll BEAT YOU WITH until you realize who's in command."
Crewman: "Aye Aye, sir!"

030514 22:37 Comix

I laughed so loud my boyfriend fell off his chair. But don't read that, start here, where the story begins with a jar of 'distilled Usenet bitterness'. In case you want to know where that came from, start even earlier with the coffee story.

030512 19:56 War

The Memoryhole: Associated Press Puts Violent Words in Iraqi Protesters' Mouths. 'We'll kick you out' turns into 'We'll kill you'.

030510 19:59 Internet

I'm a bit late on this one but i'll post it anyway. This Register article from April 18 talks about how the mobile phone is taking over from the Internet as the possible social and equalizing commons, about these idealistic early predictions for the Internet and why they haven't come true.

"A lot of cyber-idealists thought the Net was becoming our new common space. That hasn't happened. Nasty teenagers, spammers and greedy corporatists have made common turf on the Net either too expensive, hostile or annoying for most people to spend much time on," wrote a poster on Kuro5hin this week.

030509 18:39 Literature

After reading William Gibson's Pattern Recognition, I'm worried that Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver will be a similarly disappointing experience.

The noose lies on the woman's grey head like a crown. The executioner pushes it down. Her head forces it open like an infant's dilating the birth canal.

Is this what we have to expect from Neal Stephenson now, unoriginal metaphors?

Honestly, Pattern Recognition was awful but that might not necessarily be an objective statement. I was disappointed by his writing but it was mainly the story I didn't like. The world of advertising is something I am absolutely not interested in. And there's not a lot of the good old Neuromancer geek stuff in there. The main character uses a Hotmail account. How uncool is that?!

I don't think I wanted to hear about the exploitation of subcultures and communities for the sake of commercialism. The book is certainly spot on, but it's an uncomfortable topic I just don't want to think about. It certainly describes the present very well, with the Internet being just part of the backdrop, but it's not what I want from William Gibson.

030509 18:21 Browsers

Mozilla 1.4 beta has been released. Nothing to write home about this time, except... this looks like something that will prove handy:

Image blocking/disabling is now more flexible and users can "view image" to see blocked or not loaded images.

030507 23:29 Space

Beautiful : London from the ISS.

030507 00:00 Geeks

Slashdot poll : Favorite Shutdown Method?. Mine at the moment is 'Press button on box'. Although... 'favorite' is probably the wrong word.

030506 23:34 Intellectual property / Health

Slashdot : SARS Researcher Files Preemptive Patent Application.

CP Press is reporting that the B.C. Cancer institute has filed a defensive patent application to ensure the information remains in the public domain.

030506 23:10 SciFi

In tune with the marching boots of its originators Enterprise goes where no man has gone before - ever: War. Contains spoilers, but who cares? I don't anymore.

030505 16:10 War

Since the Independent has decided to make its articles subscription based, we'll just have to go somehwere else for Robert Fisk articles. This site doesn't have all the articles in full either but it provides a way of finding other places where they were published.

In his latest article 'So he thinks it’s all over...' he warns that America might be creating the terrorist it is alledgedly looking for:

The Americans, [Rumsfeld] said, still had "to root out the terrorist networks operating in this country". What? What terrorist networks? And who, one may ask, are behind these mysterious terrorist networks "operating" in Iraq? I have a pretty good idea. They may not actually exist yet. But Donald Rumsfeld knows (and he has been told by US intelligence) that a growing resistance movement to America's occupation is gestating in Iraq.

In the meantime, Iraq is being sold off to the highest bidder (US firms only, of course):

Without waiting for any "interim" government to take such decisions, the US Agency for International Development has invited American multinationals to bid for everything from road rebuilding to new text books.

030504 01:51 Geek humour

Bush to Play 'Neo' in Fourth Matrix Movie

In The Matrix IV: Re-Elected, an older Neo continues his fight against a machine that saps the energy of the people, keeps them dependent and creates an artificial reality so convincing that the people don't realize they're really slaves.

Some very strange comments on that page further down.

030503 16:22 Intellectual property

O'Reilly adopts Founders' Copyright, which means that O'Reilly books published under this licence will pass into the public domain after 14 or 28 years. Tim O'Reilly says:

...the original copyright balance has been distorted to tip heavily in favor of creators and publishers. The 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act increased the copyright term to the author's life plus seventy years, yet only a few works are still in active use over that length of time.

030503 15:43 Computing anywhere

That's gross. I would never touch a keyboard in a toilet. Must be a joke. Imagine an off-his-face festival goer in a green glowing portaloo that feels like it'll take off into space any minute, discovering a screen and a keyboard right in front of him. Wow, contact with the outside world. I think I'll stay here for a little while. The people cueing outside will love it. Ah, they thought of that already:

To address this problem, the iLoo will be outfitted with a plasma display and waterproof keyboard outside the box, so that those waiting in line can check their Hotmail accounts.

Update 030514: It's not a hoax, but it won't happen either.

030503 15:15 Browsers

Five lines of HTML will crash IE. A Secunia Security Advisory recommends that IE users best stop browsing the internet immediately. Well, what they say is: don't view untrusted HTML documents. There's more good advice, which is far more realistic: use another browser.

030502 22:44 P2P

File-swapping tools are legal.

While the ruling in no way validates the legality of downloading copyrighted music online, it would shield companies providing decentralized file-swapping software such as Gnutella from liability for the actions of people using their products.

030502 22:22 Economy

The Guardian: With pot and porn outstripping corn, America's black economy is flying high.

Marijuana, pornography and illegal labour have created a hidden market in the United States which now accounts for as much as 10% of the American economy...

030502 22:14 Science

[de] Telepolis: Unendlich viele Weltenblasen und Doppelgänger - Das Konzept der Multiplen Universen hat sich unter Kosmologen mittlerweile etabliert.

Vielleicht stört uns an der Vorstellung der Multiversen auch nur die simple Tatsache, dass unser aller Einzigartigkeit damit radikal in Frage gestellt wird. Gift für die Eitelkeit ist das.

[en] Scientific American: Parallel Universes - Not just a staple of science fiction, other universes are a direct implication of cosmological observations.

030502 20:19 SciFi

Great Enterprise news: T'Pol gets a new catsuit. Maybe they'll give her some new boobs too. Oh, and they give away most of the season finale plot. So don't bother.

"What we are about to do is a first for STAR TREK," Berman tells TVG. "In the past, our captains have had the general mission to explore outer space and, in the case of Voyager, a mission to find a way back home. But there has never been a Trek series built around a specific mission and specific stakes-in this case, the very future of mankind."

No, never!

030502 15:40 End of free

No more Anonymous Coward first posts on Slashdot then? On its homepage you're now greeted with:

The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!

Who cares? It's been a while since /. were the quickest.

030501 22:28 Literature

Found in William Gibson's Pattern Recognition, about Russia:

"... People had time, in those days. The system was collapsing under its own weight, but everyone had a job, often a pointless one, very badly paid, but one could eat. People valued friendship, talked endlessly, ate and drank. For many people it was like the life of a student. A life of spirit. Now we say that everything Lenin taught us of communism was false, and everything he taught us of capitalism, true."

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