youngian

I read an interesting analogy in an article (which I have since lost and so cannot give credit) about accessibility: Oxo, the kitchen tools company, started by designing tools for people with arthritis. Having designed tools with nice soft rubber grips and large handles, they discovered that non-arthritic people really liked the tools as well, and now Oxo is sold at your local Target (and they are probably raking in cash).

This is why standardized writing tests hold a special place in my bitter heart - they codify the fear of deviation and require you to spew mediocre crap - as long as it's mediocre crap spelled correctly with a topic sentence in each paragraph.

Like I said, Google Maps is my yardstick - anything less complicated than that should be built to work without Javascript. It might work slightly different and be a little less pretty, but there's no reason it can't work.

The only exceptions are Google Maps or anything equally as rich. And I do mean equally as rich.

Technically, yes, this article is correct. The Gravatar FAQ even discusses this issue, IIRC. But in practical usage, I can't imagine how this would prove important.

I don't want to be the pedant who says "you should have read the privacy policy before you signed up," but you should just assume that any site like this is going to do all sorts of shady things with any information you provide, until you find evidence to the contrary. This kind of paranoia is absolutely called for on the web.

A couple specific gripes:

* That hammer analogy is just awful. A paper representation of a hammer loses all functionality of a hammer. A paper representation of a website loses very little. Also, which would be worse - to draw a hammer for someone and have them say "why does the claw not have a space in the middle for a nail?" or to have them say that after you've spent a month creating your prototype?

* "According to studies by J.Nielsen, users don’t scroll... None-the-less, users scroll more than ever..." ...and so clearly Nielsen doesn't know anything. Except he has long since stated that his original scrolling findings are not nearly as true any more. Times changed and users started scrolling. Anyone repeating that trope is just out of date. Anyone like, say, this post.

Obviously it's not as mature a field as, say, medicine, but refusing to believe that any of the results are at all valid is just being wilfully ignorant.

It's true that we've become obsessively focused on global warming as of late, although I would place at least as much blame on the media for that. In the past couple years, though, some groups have been doing a better job of saying "BTW clean energy will also create jobs and improve our national security." The WE campaign is one such example.

These scientists were out of line, but I can understand how they ended up there. The "drill baby drill" crowd pounces on every bit of academic debate and builds a little strawman to agree with them. "I think your model is flawed" becomes "global warming doesn't exist," and "what about the impact of the xxx effect" becomes "global warming doesn't exist" and "we're missing some data for this period" becomes "global warming doesn't exist."

If every bit of your research gets twisted and misreported like this, it's easy to see why you would start talking about how to hide data and skew the facts to leave no room for doubt. Presenting a flawless, united, impenetrable front would seem like the only way to make any real progress. Not saying what they did was right, but the motivation is there.

I totally beat you to the punch on this one :D

My opinion is that focussing our hatred on M$ in this case is treating a symptom. Let's fix the patent system so that this kind of idiocy isn't possible or necessary.

There are lawsuits flying every which way over absurd things the patent office has granted patents for - so if you hold the patent for something ridiculous and widespread, you not only prevent someone else from getting it and suing you, but it's a bargaining chip when someone comes at you with another patent violation. They say "we'll sue you because we hold the patent on 'an electronic way to display text'" and you say "if you do that, we'll sue you because we hold a patent on 'a tactile alphanumeric input device.'" And so instead of a costly legal battle, you've won yourself a stalemate, with only the price of a few patent applications.

Not to say that this is an appropriate way for the system to function, and not that big companies shouldn't be lobbying to fix the patent system (I believe some of them are), but I feel like M$ is just playing the hardball they need to play to protect themselves.

* Writing it straight and counting on the recipient knowing me well enough to realize that it's sarcasm - can be seriously disastrous if I miscalculated.

* Markers like :P or :) - communicates my intent, but comes off as overly cheery, especially when used multiple times in the same email or post.

* Something obvious like <sarcasm> tags - kind of spoils the art of it all.

* Make my sarcastic claims so over-the-top that the recipient cannot help but realize I'm being facetious - usually works, but it's a broadsword where I usually prefer a shiv.

I have yet to figure out a solution that allows nearly the same range of sarcastic expression as I can achieve face to face.

(And yes, I really have expended a lot of effort trying to be sarcastic online)

ESR probably just made some assumptions about the capabilities of available parsing options that would be correct but for a few exceptional tools. Let's fault him for not checking his assumptions rather than name-calling about poor programming.