brett's logjam

Slashdot: Jon Johansen found not guilty. Well, at least for now.

Aaron Swartz:

Did you buy a CD, casette, or vinly album from a retailer between 1995 and 2000? If you did, then you can get the music companies to write you a check for $20.

Simply fill out the online claim form to get your piece.

Today, Apple announced Safari, a new OS X browser based on the KHTML engine. Reactions:

• JWZ: Apple Says “Fuck You” to Mozilla. Jamie has his de-weaselizer handy, too.
• Mark Pilgrim: A review and tips for web designers, done with typical Pilgrim thoroughness.
• Mena Trott: An initial reaction. “Safari looks neat, but is it neat enough to switch (at least while it is still in beta)?”
• Matt Haughey: Safari Pitfalls.
• Ben Hammersley: Safari is almost shit.
• Scott Andrew LePera: KHTML Class Reference.

I can promise I’m not going to switch to Safari anytime soon.

Then again, I don’t have a Mac. (Some promises are easy to keep.)

From: AlterNet: Top Ten Conspiracy Theories of 2002:

For about thirty minutes after his chief of staff told him that America was under attack, George W. Bush continued to sit in an elementary school classroom listening to a second-grader tell a story about a pet goat. He did a marvelous job of looking completely unsurprised. Meanwhile, four hijacked jumbo jets were able to fly off-course across several states without encountering any opposition from the most powerful and responsive air force in the world.

Mark Pilgrim writes about semantic obsolescence and the latest changes to the XHTML standards:

I know, I know, XHTML 2.0 isn’t meant to be backwardly compatible. But damn it, I’ve done everything the W3C has ever recommended. I migrated to CSS so I can work better with the browsers and handheld devices of the future, then the browsers and handheld devices of the future come out and my site looks like shit. I migrated to XHTML 1.1 and it bought me absolutely nothing except some MIME type headaches and (I am not making this up) Javascript incompatibilities. I migrated to semantic markup that has been around for 10 fucking years and they go and drop it. Not deprecate it slowly over time, mind you, but just fucking drop it. Which means that, after keeping up with all the latest standards, painstakingly marking up all my content, and validating every last page on my site, I’m still stuck in a dead end.

Find me another site that is as semantically rich (other than Joe Clark, who is years ahead of me). Hell, find me another site that even uses XHTML 1.1. (Even the W3C home page only uses XHTML 1.0.) I bought into every argument the W3C made that keeping up with standards, validating, and using semantic markup now would somehow “future-proof” my site and provide some mystical “forward compatibility”. How about some fucking payoff now? How about some fucking compatibility?

Standards are bullshit. XHTML is a crock. The W3C is irrelevant.

I’m migrating to HTML 4.

Mark has every right to be angry. Not only has he walked his talk with the work he’s invested into his site, he’s shown others how to do it as well, which is more than can be said for many. He’s put his time and money where his mouth is.

And now, much of that work is going to be obsolete in XHTML 2.0. Thank you, come again!

This reminds me of jwz’s rant on markup:

Now, there’s nothing wrong with trying to make your web pages look good to the largest number of people. But it’s a matter of priorities: if you place a higher value on the layout than on the meaning, then you don’t value your words very highly. So why should I? If you tell me that I’m not allowed to look at your page at all unless I can display it in what you consider the “proper” manner, then you’re telling me that your popup windows and flaming yellow borders are more important than your ideas.

AutoWeek:

The point of Hy-wire is to begin exploring the ways in which cars might become more appealing. One is that a fuel cell in your car might supply electric power to your home, or your campsite, or your business. Another is that the body is designed to be interchangeable.

Sweeet! (Via /..)

Unfortunately, it is 7-2 in favor of the Sonny Bono Act. Full coverage at /..

Lawrence Lessig on losing the Eldred case:

I will always be grateful to Eric Eldred, and our other plaintiffs, for putting his faith in this case. I will always regret not being able to meet that faith with the success it deserves.

What the Framers of our constitution did is not enough. We must do more.

Zeldman, on XHTML 2:

The new spec appeared needlessly complex (too hard for humans). It smashed existing conventions for no reason I could see. Where earlier markup specs had gently discouraged outdated methods, the thing called XHTML 2 burst roaring out of smoke and flame, a scaly hellspawn wielding a bloody butcher’s axe.The W3C seemed to have abandoned the notion that the web could move forward without breaking what we already know and use. Standards had been a lie. The sky was falling.

One day I realized XHTML 2 was not coming soon to a browser near me.

Next day I realized the sky was not falling.

W3C does have a problem, but it can be fixed.

Isn’t there some sort of rule about the inverse relationship of the busyness of one’s life and the density of weblog posts?

A paraphrased email conversation:

Kelly: “I am not a Campbell and I don’t really want to be a Campbell, although I have a lot of Campbell friends.”

Me: I particularly like:

“It’s important for children not born yet that they will never have this thing about being a Campbell.”

Scotland has weird issues.

Bud: They need to have Kim Jung Il pay them a visit. Then they’d have something serious to worry about. “McTavish Clan Heads Vaporized by Thunderball Fist.”

Now, that’s a headline.

Let’s say you’re at freezing at home this weekend, browsing the web. You know what you should do? Go read a few nice introductions to Mozilla. There’s the Mozilla Starter Guide:

So you’ve just downloaded the latest Mozilla and you want to know what makes Mozilla the best browser out there? This page should give you a good idea of some of the features that Mozilla has that set it apart from the rest of the pack.

From there, you can take a look at A Guide to Mozilla 1.0. And when you’re done with that, try 101 things you can do in Mozilla.

Too bad Mozilla doesn’t come with a space heater.