Welcome to the beta of the new saila.com. Send in your bugs.
Standard bitterness; Safari hacks; Movies for Me
Not sure when everything got so nasty…
At some point, the idea of supporting Web standards became a black-and-white issue. Too many are willing to vilify the work of others (and sometimes the authors themselves) unless all of the following are done:
- the page validates,
- it’s sent as with the “correct” MIME type,
- uses CSS for layout,
- is semantically marked-up,
- and is accessible.
Now with people being publicly ridiculed and insulted for trying to expand on an interesting idea, it’s only a matter of time before a someone is murdered with an ice pick in Mexico.
(Yes, that previous sentence is a bit over-the-top, but the Web standards crowd seems to be splitting into the same bickering camps too often found on the political left.)
Given the tone of the times, I should berate Mark Pilgrim for not mentioning that I was the one who “discovered” the Language Pseudo-Class Filter months ago! Instead, I’ll link to his piece on Safari 1.1 hacks, and urge you to read about them. Why am I doing this? Because:
- I don’t care about the credit — it’s about spreading knowledge not growing the ego,
- that’s the beauty of the medium,
- he confirmed it works in Safari 1.1.
First puretracks.com offers us Canadians a U.S.-like online music store, now Movies for Me
is offering us a Netflix-like service. Essentially, for $25 you get three movies sent to you. Return them whenever, and get more. Shipping and handling is free. You can sign-up for a free trial now. If I had a DVD player hooked-up to the TV, I’d sign-up (via TechStuff.ca).
Michael:
Actually, I think the political parallel is an illuminating one. In that area you can get in just the same way the influence of abstract reasoning that has lost touch with practice. I'll quote Michael Oakeshott on the character of the "Rationalist":
"He is not devoid of humility; he can imagine a problem which would remain impervious to the onslaught of his own reason. But what he cannot imagine is politics which do not consist in solving problems, or a political problem of which there is no 'rational' solution at all. Such a problem must be counterfeit. And the 'rational' solution of any problem is, in its nature, the perfect solution. There is no place in his scheme for a 'best in the circumstances', only a place for 'the best'; because the function of reason is precisely to surmount circumstances."
http://www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/oakeshott-rationalism-politics?embedded=yes&cumulative_category_title=Michael+Oakeshott&cumulative_category_id=Oakeshott
He also says, "Two other general characteristics of rationalist politics may be observed. They are the politics of perfection, and they are the politics of uniformity"
This is likewise illuminating. If some people's fervently-held views of "What should be done" were followed as closely as they would like, uniformity is precisely what you'd have. All websites would be alike.
I don't think the resemblance here is accidental. It is a product of a certain state of mind. But I wouldn't push it too far. Web design, complex as it is, is far simpler than social life, and I think the *broad outlines* of where we need to go are fairly clear. It's just we need to be aware of people who, first, interpret it all too narrowly, and, secondly, want it all NOW even in circumstances where it may not be appropriate.
Nov. 24 2003 at 3:03 PM EST
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MikeyC:
Nov. 24 2003 at 8:46 PM EST
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Craig Saila:
Nov. 25 2003 at 8:43 AM EST
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Lars:
To PPK's defence (not that he needs it, seeing as he's quite capable of defending himself, but still..) he did change his initial post for the better after feedback in ALA's comments thread, but kept the original post as a reference. That's the way to go I think. Other than that, I can to some extent agree with PPK's criticism of the article, albeit for slightly different reasons I think: personally I don't care much about being given credit either, but the spread of knowledge needs to be traceable for other purposes, including verification and comparison. Having a "development tree" means other developers can decide for themselves where to start, what to change, etc.
Besides, it seems PPK was more upset with what the author or editor did with "his" original material than the lack of proper credit.
Anyway, it's too bad they couldn't settle this between themselves. I think Heilmann's original intent got lost somewhere in the process, which is a shame because it was a good one.
Nov. 26 2003 at 8:39 AM EST
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