The Web Standards Project issues

The Web Standards Project issues its opinion on the W3C RAND fiasco: Remember your Charter and Mission.

Coool! Meryl reviewed our book.

Coool! Meryl reviewed our book. Glad you liked it, Meryl--we're pretty happy with it ourselves.

New links here: Web-Seitz, Greg

New links here: Web-Seitz, Greg Rushton, and fozbaca.org. I guess all I need to do to get linked to is disagree with darn near everyone else in the web community.

In the all-your-nuts-in-one-basket department, here's

In the all-your-nuts-in-one-basket department, here's The New Republic's Idiocy Watch, dedicated to the dumbest and most outrageous comments made after the 9/11 attack.

I've received some feedback about

I've received some feedback about the RAND post below, and I want to clarify a thing or two: the W3C isn't in charge of granting patents. It doesn't have the power to take away patents. Requiring members to relinquish patents is more likely to drive away members. And I agree with y'all that most (if not all) software patents are pure idiocy--but that's an issue for the Patent Office, not the W3C.

I'm getting a lot of

I'm getting a lot of questions about where I stand on the W3C patent mess. If you don't know what I'm talking about, there's good info here, here, and here.

I seem to be the odd one out, but from the reading I've seen, I think that the W3C RAND (reasonable and non-discriminatory) proposal is the best of a bunch of bad choices.

Huh? Isn't that against what everyone else is saying?

If you declare that no one on the W3C can use the patents that they already have, well, it's too late for that. That should have been done when the W3C was formed.

Here's a scenario: the W3C says that all patents by members relating to the web must be royalty free (usually abbreviated RF). The next day, Microsoft resigns its membership. The day after that, it announces that it's no longer going to allow free access to its patent on CSS, and announces that Netscape and Opera need to either remove CSS support from their browsers or pay an exorbitant price per downloaded copy. What happens to the web then?

If you think that I'm just picking on Microsoft, feel free to substitute, for example, Adobe and SVG in the paragraph above. Or any one of the multitude of other patents already owned by W3C members.

You've got the 800 pound gorilla at the table now. Is the best approach to kick him out, or to try to work with him?

I should have blogged this

I should have blogged this sooner. Last week I watched the new Star Trek series, Enterprise, with our son Sean. On the show, the captain, played by Scott Bakula, has an adorable beagle puppy that rides on the ship. The next day, Sean came up to me and said, "I'm worried about Enterprise. I just know that sooner or later, there's going to be an episode where the dog saves the ship!" After I picked myself up off the floor, I congratulated him for understanding how TV works. Pretty good for a 13 year old.

jean has a new front

jean has a new front page. jean has some new blog entries. jean has a new book. jean's having an art exhibit (and party).


Go, jean!

Wow... I thought that sites

Wow... I thought that sites like this had gone the way of the dodo. It's 100% Flash--and if you don't have the latest version, all you get is this page. It's companies and sites like this that give Flash its bad reputation.

For giggles, check out where (assuming you can see the site) they brag about how it only took them three weeks to create this monstrosity.

BTW, they're hiring. They're looking for someone who's "very familiar with hand-coded HTML, graphic optimization, photo batching/color correction, flash production, technical knowledge of multiple PC/MAC environments, good portfolio, shows lots of drive/self starter, banner optimization and building experience," For all this, they're willing to pay the princely sum of $10/hour... in San Francisco.

I saw a small ceramic

I saw a small ceramic statuette of this last week, and I didn't want to describe it to Tom, 'cause you can't really believe it without seeing it... although I'm not really sure that I want to actually own one.

Yes, normally I wouldn't kick

Yes, normally I wouldn't kick someone when they're down. But when the person in question is the rabidly right-wing telebimbo/columnist Ann Coulter, I'll make that exception. You may recall that after 9/11 she wrote a couple of articles that were particularly foul, bordering on psycho, which I will not repeat here. In fact, she was just canned by her biggest outlet, the National Review Online. Now, we discover the column that got away (scroll down to the 9/19 entry).

I made lots of changes

I made lots of changes today to my Macintosh Web Software on a Budget page. If there's anything I missed, please let me know.

Some people believe in coincidences.

Some people believe in coincidences. Some think that everything is dictated by fate. I'm generally in the first group. So to me it was a cool coincidence that Dori came home from last week's Ojai trip with an art piece from Brian Andreas, the artist behind StoryPeople. Brian is Ellen's husband, and Ellen and my former wife Betty were in the LA production of Les Miserables. Dori didn't know that I knew Brian; she just liked the piece. Brian and Ellen are great people; it's nice to be reminded of them.

A follow up to the

A follow up to the previous post: the guy running the project went on a cleanup binge and threw away a bunch of stuff, including all the links that this site had. So, please go tell 'em again who's our twin?