Category: Tech

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A lot of web developers have forgotten the lessons of IE6, and just as they used to build desktop websites coded only for one engine, now they’re coding mobile sites specifically for Webkit, even when other browsers would be perfectly capable of rendering the designs they want.

This is exactly the sort of thing that gave IE6 such a stranglehold on the web for so many years (and as much as we’d like it to be, it’s not dead yet), with Netscape/Mozilla and Opera completely marginalized until Firefox managed to break through. It’s not quite so bad because two companies are driving WebKit (Apple & Google) rather than just one (Microsoft), but let’s try to learn from history this time around instead of repeating it.

Call for action on Vendor Prefixes – The Web Standards Project

The Web Standards Project is a grassroots coalition fighting for standards which ensure simple, affordable access to web technologies for all.

Originally posted on Google+

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Imagine that a group of people who don’t drive much, don’t understand how cars work under the hood, and have never studied traffic engineering decide that they’re going to stop speeding by requiring that cars automatically slam on the emergency brake and lock the controls the moment they exceed the speed limit — or the moment someone reports that the car has exceeded the speed limit.

Note that I didn’t say anything about turning the engine off, or putting it in neutral. Or only doing so in places where the speed limit is properly posted. Or worrying about whether there’s a car behind them that will have to slam on their own breaks to prevent a pile-up. Or actually checking that the car really is speeding before acting on the report.

Now imagine that criticisms and objections raised by actual drivers, the auto industry, traffic engineers, highway planners, and city planners are all dismissed as speeder propaganda.

That’s basically what’s going on with the “anti-piracy” bills being discussed in the House (SOPA) and Senate (PIPA/Protect IP).

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After a list of companies publicly supporting SOPA (the censor-the-internet-in-the-name-of-stopping-piracy bill) went public last week, the complaints started rolling in…but the biggest target, at least in the circles that I frequent, was GoDaddy. People organized a boycott, transferred their business elsewhere, and GoDaddy eventually reversed course, but it was too late to stop a massive outflow of customers.

But why was GoDaddy such a target? And for that matter, why did so many people follow through, rather than just rant about it on the internet?

I think there are several reasons.

  1. The tech industry is mostly opposed to the bill on technical reasons. Pick a random hosting provider and chances are they’re officially against it. That made GoDaddy stand out in a way that a random movie studio doesn’t.
  2. They provide a service, not content, and there are many competitors who provide the same kind of service. (And it seems like they all came out with discount codes to encourage people to switch to their company.) With content, you can choose to read a book from another publisher, or watch a movie from another studio, but if you want to watch a particular movie, you can’t get it somewhere else. There are lots of comics publishers out there, but if you want to read Spider-Man, you can only get it from Marvel.
  3. Public opinion of GoDaddy was already low. For some it was their sexist ad campaigns. For some it was the CEO bragging about shooting elephants. For some it was their incessant email marketing, or focus on upselling unneeded services to people who didn’t understand what they were, or the fact that their website is such a %^$^@#%& pain to use. They’re cheap, and they’re well-known, which means a lot of people used them…but they weren’t that well-liked. Supporting SOPA ended up being the last straw.

As a result, you had a company that was tolerated at best painting a target on themselves, and a relatively easy way for people to vote with their wallets and not actually give anything up other than the time and money needed to make the transfer.

Full disclosure: I used to have about 10 domain names registered through GoDaddy, plus a few at DreamHost and one at Network Solutions. (Yes, Network Solutions.) GoDaddy was annoying, but cheap, and it was easier to renew than move. This week I consolidated them all at DreamHost, where I’ve had my websites hosted for the past year. DreamHost is offering a discount code for new customers who want to switch: SOPAROPA. I don’t get anything for telling you that, but if you sign up and list me (kelson – at – pobox – dot – com) as the person who referred you to DreamHost, I’ll get credits that I can apply to my hosting bill.

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Klout’s methodology confuses me. When I first signed on with two profiles — one personal, the other for Speed Force — they classified my personal profile as an “explorer,” and Speed Force as a “specialist.” This makes sense to me. Speed Force also had a higher score for quite a while (it certainly has a bigger audience on any given network).

Sure, there were oddities like their conviction that I was influential about Washington DC rather than DC comics, or Reading Pennsylvania rather than, well, reading, and so on. But at least the overall classifications made sense.

Recently, that’s flipped. My personal profile is scored as having more influence, which I guess makes sense because it’s associated with more social networks (Flickr, Google+, etc.) and I actually do interact more through my personal profiles, especially on FB.

But the weird thing: Now my personal profile is a “specialist,” while Speed Force, which I use exclusively to discuss comics and plug blog posts about comics, is a “socializer.” Huh? Did I post too much about SOPA or something?

Notes: 1. Originally posted on Google+. 2. Klout was a service that tracked your social media influence across multiple networks. You could link Twitter, Facebook, Google+, etc. to one Klout account and it would try to analyze how you interact with other people on all those networks.

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If you live in the US and you use the Internet, you need to know about this. There are two proposed laws, SOPA and Protect IP, that would set up a system to block access to websites deemed to be “infringing,” in the name of stopping piracy. Of course, “infringing” could refer to the actions of one user on a large site, like, say, Facebook or Wikipedia. Imagine if someone at Warner Bros. filed a complaint about someone’s fan art on DeviantArt, and the government blocked access to the entire site. Sort of like shutting down an entire mall because one shopper was accused (not even proven!) of wearing a counterfeit Rolex.

Of course, once a system like this is in place, we all know it’ll never be abused, right?

And that’s not even getting into the technical implications of the bills, which would put an extra burden on tech startups and actually undermine efforts by the US government itself to make the internet more secure.

████, the ████ ████ █████ ██████ the ████████ ██████ the US in the ████ of ████████ ██████ (█████ it ██████’t), isn’t ████ yet. In ████, it’s █████ to a ████ ████ ████.

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Just yesterday, I had no idea there was going to be a lunar eclipse this morning. Then I skimmed an article somewhere and got the impression it was only going to be visible on the east coast, And then I read about it on Bad Astronomy and realized I had it backward. Not only would I be able to see part of the eclipse, but I’d be able to see the moon in totality! All I had to do was get up early in the morning and find a place with a clear view of the western horizon. I considered driving down to the beach at 5am, but thought I’d start out by seeing how visible it was from home. As it turns out, I should have gone to the beach to start with, but I had some good viewing before I left.

So I set my alarm, woke up at 5am (plus the snooze button), and went out to see what I could see. To my surprise, I actually had a decent view of the partially-eclipsed moon from across the street. It was about half-covered at this point (as shown in the first photo above). So I stayed out there for a few minutes deciding what I wanted to do, went back in to have some coffee and breakfast, then went back out shortly before 6 to watch as the umbra covered the disc the rest of the way. I found it interesting that it didn’t look particularly reddish this time, just brown.

Awesome viewing, though it was clear the moon would dip below the roofs of the houses soon. I needed a less obstructed view.

As soon as the moon went into totality, I went back inside, woke up Katie just enough to let her know I was going, tossed the rest of my coffee in a travel mug and hightailed it down to the beach. Continue reading →

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Here’s another comment spammer whose software plugged in every phrase on its generic comment list instead of picking one at random. Notice how vague these tend to be, so that they could easily apply to almost any post on almost any site.

If you see any of these comments show up on your blog, chances are good that it’s a spammer trying to get a backlink to their shady site, not someone who actually wants to contribute to the conversation.

(Originally cross-posted from LOL Spam)

Continue reading →