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Orb Designs Grafitti -- January 13 thru January 19, 2003
Welcome to Orb Graffiti, a place for me to write daily about life and computers. Contrary to popular belief, the two are not interchangeable. EMAIL - I publish email sometimes. If you send me an email and you want privacy or anonymity, please say so clearly at the beginning of your message..
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January 13, 2003 - Updates at 0745 EST
Good morning. It's been a busy weekend, a long and tiring week without my lovely Marcia. She flys home tonight. And some people just don't understand how to have a conversation without getting offended:
From: Pompous Git <[email protected]>
Subject: A misunderstanding perhaps...
Date: 13 Jan 2003 10:10:04 +1100
Brian wrote: "I read in an email somewhere over the last few days
that there are webmasters all over the place who by their site
design and tag use express CONTEMPT towards blind users of the
web."
Actually, I'm not quite blind yet! :-)
It's a fact of life that once one is "over the hill" -- that is
older than about 40 years -- one's eyesight declines. Most
over-forties have trouble reading 14 pt text printed on paper. I
don't know of any surveys done as regards on-screen display, but
the problem is worse, not better.
Many websites are designed such that the world's most common web
browser displays body text as small as 7 pt -- half the size for
ease of reading printed text. When that fact is brought to the
attention of the web-page designers, their response is almost
invariably one of the following:
* Get a "real" web browser (as if most users had any control over
the browser chosen for them by their sysadmins)
* Nobody else ever complained before
* Get a "real" computer (i.e. a Macintosh)
Given that it's just as easy to design web pages that do not
restrict the reader to particular web browsers/computer
platforms, I interpret the above responses as contempt for the
reader. I notice that your pages respond to IE's text size
command. How difficult was it for you to do that? Would you say
to a wheelchair-bound visitor who asked for an easier way into
your home than up the front steps: "Why don't you get some real
legs?". No, I don't think you would, I hasten to add.
Yes, the web is fundamentally a visual medium, but the words
therein are not the exclusive province of the sighted. HTML right
from version one point zero was designed to be
browser-independent, that is readable through text-to-speech,
braille-readers and other devices.
When I first started writing my blog, I had recently been stepped
through some basic Linux by a blind person using a braille
reader. He was the first Linuxen to listen to me and understand
what my problem was instead of calling me names. One of my best
friends is legally blind and relies heavily on his computer at
work. So right from the get-go, I decided to make my website at
least useable for the visually impaired. For reasons that should
be obvious, they appreciate it. And to be completely honest, it
has cost me nothing other than compliance with W3C Standards.
Jonathan Sturm
www.sturmsoft.com
The world's most famous Pompous Git according to Google!
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And yes, OK, but previously you didn't qualify what you wrote... That
is, if someone ASKS for access, and gets a contemptuous reply, well
sure, that's contempt. However, in the context of your first email, you
only said basically (and perhaps my memory fails, plus your original
email is long gone, from my perspective) that if you weren't accessible,
then you were contemptible. That seemed a bit extreme to me, which is
why I commented on it. Point in fact, I would imagine that my site is
mostly OK. But then I hand-code everything, with minimal tags and font
games, so all should be well. But I'd hesitate to tar all non-compliant
sites with the broad brush.
When it *really* comes down to it, if I really didn't care to go to the
effort to make my site accessible, then why should it be my problem? I
know and understand and am sympathetic towards many sorts of
disabilities. However, this is my place. Since I'm not a regulated
source (that means the greenie-weenies and politically correct crowd
can't get in my shorts, yet!!), I really can do anything I want. Why
should me doing what I want in my place be regarded as anything BUT
that? It's not to do with you, or Joe that can't see, or Betty with a
hearing problem - I do this for me.
For a commerce site, it's a business decision. If what they do brings in
15% more dollars from the crowd that is fully sighted and browser
compliant, vs. a less visually stimulating but accessible site that (A)
brings in less money and (B) costs more money to construct because
you're trying to please two masters, then their decision is "simple"
too. Maybe not pleasant or nice, but I happen to believe that a person
can do what they like, and live with the consequences of their choices.
For another example, it's possible that your house may never have been
built here in the States. Too many regulatory agencies and too many
meddlesome neighbors would have broken your wallet and your spirit. I
think that's wrong, too.
But then, it's like checking your work in more than just IE - it's a lot
of work, for very little return, as 90-95% of the browsing public uses
ONLY that browser. I happen to make sure that my stuff renders in
Konqueror. Oddly, that means that some stuff that's truly WC3 compliant,
renders fine for me, but not in NS or IE. Heh.
OK, enough from me. Later, my friend.
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Up to this point, the exchange of email was private, and I thought civil, if thought provoking. Note that this spills onto the Daynotes backchannel mailing list, all of a sudden... My comments are interspersed, in italic, through his post.
From: Pompous Git <[email protected]>
Cc: Daynotes Gang
Subject: RE: A misunderstanding perhaps...
Date: 13 Jan 2003 16:42:52 +1100
Brian
I didn't "tar all non-compliant sites with same brush". Not in
this post. Not in the post you were commenting on.
{And I did put in the disclaimer: your original email is gone and perhaps my memory fails}
My email to you pointed out that you were already doing what I
believe should be the minimum for all of us: that is following
the W3C Standards and Guidelines. Why you find that offensive is
a puzzlement.
{I found nothing offensive, said I found nothing offensive. I don't understand nor care where that's coming from. You're weird, I think}
<sarcasm> Of course you are correct that all shops should be free
to discriminate against whoever they wish in the name of profit,
be they Roman Catholics, the disabled, or niggers. Moral values
have no monetary value whatsoever! </sarcasm>
{Sarcasm is a fine tool, not best used as a bludgeon. You missed mine, of course, or perhaps found it offensive <grin>}
I have had it with The Daynotes Gang. Some of you are just too
petty for words! Please remove me from the portal.
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And what I find odd about all of this is that this was coming onto the
list from what was a non-list thread, and what I thought was a simple,
if provocative conversation. I found nothing offensive in what Mr. Sturm
wrote, yet he says I am finding things offensive, and that I am petty. I
disagree, but have no energy for this.
I agree with Jerry's sentiment. I wish that people had thicker skins.
But if wishes were fishes...
I can't very well honor Bob's request, and not Jon Sturm's, though. Come
back when you want, Jon. I know that Jerry and others will value your
input from time to time, so keep an eye on their sites and drop them a
line when you have the time.
If he wants off of the mailing list, too, I'm sure that Jon can
unsubscribe himself.
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I am happy to entertain thoughts on how I might have expressed the thoughts I was having without being so "offensive". Frankly, I am befuddled and saddened by this. It must be Monday, eh?
Top / Email Brian
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January 14, 2003 - Updates at 0730
Good morning. I've only just started and already I'm late. But that's all to the good, since extra snuggle time in the morning is due both of us following Marcia's return from business travel. Her plane got in early, the carousel started up just as we approached, and her two suitcases were in the first twenty pieces or so out. That was one rockin' airport experience! When we got home, Sally did a big happy dance for Marcia, and licked faces many times. Much merriment ensued. Marcia wants everyone to know she's back and posting (real soon now).
I tracked into an article at Advogato about bots crawling from a site called "crawler918.com". In short, it appears that this crawler is run by a firm of IP specialists called NameProtect, that it violates convention by ignoring robots.txt, and is trawling through your disk looking for actionable items. Do you need to allow this? Nope, the Advogato article talks about that, and how to block these jerks, too.
I've got a busy day running today, and I'd best be going. Have a good'un, folks.
Top / Email Brian
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January 15, 2003 - Updates at 1000
Sorry for the delay. It snowed a little last night, and I wanted to get an early start out the door in case traffic was slow and/or hairy. It was both. Some ice on the roads and a few idiot drivers made for a number of unplanned lane closures. Now I'm here in Rockville with a to-do list as long as Hagrid's arm, so I need to get back to work. Have a lovely day.
Top / Email Brian
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January 16, 2003 - Updates at 0700
I'm still thin on the ground. I spent most of yesterday fighting assorted crypto-bits onto an E450 running Slowaris 8 (aka SunOS 5.8, and what's up with THAT???). The Sun-supplied patch to add /dev/random capability won't apply, plain won't apply. We couldn't google anything that indicated other people having our particular problems. It's possible that this patch requires the entire recommended Solaris 8 patch set, but then that's a 72 meg compressed file, containing LOTS of changes. The customer is justifiably loathe to patch a system that does all of it's other functions just fine. So we eventually went out and found the third-party patch that people were using before Sun finally realized that they needed a /dev/random (just April of last year, mind you). That applied just fine. Then I was able to complete the openssl and openssh package installs - that's working great, as of when I left last night. Today is Apache with mod_ssl. Wooo.
Some fun things Linuxish for your eddification, now. Holden Aust informs me that SuSE 8.1 happily detects and installs Connexant-based WinModems...
...And, what do you know, my favorite distro, SuSE 8.1 (which you will shortly have), comes with the Conexant driver included - when you chose the software to be installed, you search for "modem" and check the checkbox, then continue with the install. When you get to the point where you configure the modem, it won't show the modem as being installed but it is, because if you continue on with the ISP setup, you will discover, once the KDE desktop comes up, that the Kinternet icon is waiting for you, just to the left of the time and the linmodem is already configured as dev/modem, and it works like a champ!
Greg tells me that the latest Gentoo-sources kernel tree incorporates the patches necessary to use ATAPI CD burner drives directly, without the kludge of tricking the system into believing they're SCSI devices first. This change is also supported by the latest cdrecord and gcombust releases. I'll be doing some testing on this shortly.
Now to work with me. Have fun, and help me hope that the snow holds off until I'm well home tonight.
Top / Email Brian
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January 17, 2003 - Updates at 0725
Good morning. TGIF, but there's snow on the ground from last night. It's less than predicted, for the first time this season, only about an inch or two. So in a moment here, I'm going out to shovel the driveway and head back up to Rockville. I spent yesterday fighting with various versions of Apache, trying to get SSL capabilities added properly. The mod_ssl version that can be added as a binary package... well, I never got that working right. With Apache-SSL, we were able to get the browsers to pull the certificate, but then some error was making the SSL part not work right - connection terminated.
I knew it was a configuration problem, but I didn't know what. So I rebuilt the environment here, and walked through the steps slowly, slowly. With a nudge here and there from Greg about which resource I might find useful to read, in order to have Apache-SSL get going serving both plain http and https connections (Something neither of us had done before - the *EASY* way is to use two separate instances of Apache. I say that's wrong!). Wooo - Last night about 2100 I got it working.
I got it wrong yesterday, having not understood what Greg was saying about ATAPI burners. So here's the truth from the man's own fingertips:
From: Greg Lincoln
Subject: atapi and cdrecord
Date: Thu, 16 Jan 2003 08:05:18 -0500
Yow.
BTW, that cdrecord ATAPI thing is not related to a specific kernel. It
is a feature in cdrecord and should work with any kernel that supports
ATAPI. (I think even 2.0.x does that, 2.2.x and above certainly)
No gentoo patches needed.
And finally, for the moment, big thanks go out to my friend Holden Aust, who's sent me a copy of KFOG's Live From The Archives 9, the SF radio station's CD to benefit area food banks. It arrived last night, along with a batch of other discs and burned Linux ISOs of SuSE for me to experiment with. Yay! Now, get out there and have a safe and fun Friday. I'll be sure to do the same.
Top / Email Brian
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January 18, 2003 - Updates at 0939
Good morning. My first order of business today is to send out a shout of thanks to Bob Thompson for bringing to my attention by both post and subscriber email that APC is recalling some 2.1 million UPS units in the Back-UPS CS family.. You guessed it, the new APC I bought and installed for Marcia while she was on business travel is among the affected units. The good news is that their instructions are clear, and it's an easy registration, receive and return process. The bad unit here has the battery dismounted (for installation in the replacement), and in about a week or so, I should have the new unit to put into service. Then I pop the old one into the shipping box, slap on the UPS label, and drop it off at the nearest UPS shipping point. In the meantime, I've pressed her old APC back into service. That one doesn't have as much smarts in it, and the battery is fading a bit. It's still good for something, though. I'll find it a home around here. So, once again, thanks, Bob!
My friend Moshe Bar is going to be speaking on the topic of OpenMosix at the February meeting of SVLUG. Now of course I can't be there, but we got some face time with Moshe late last fall, if you recall. However, if you live in the SF Bay Area, or going to be there on February 5, then check it out. SVLUG is a large, dynamic group, and Moshe's a lively, intelligent and erudite speaker.
On tap for today is a whole bunch of "I dunno", as yet. So here are some dog pictures to tide you over. Unfortunately, unlike the Thompson's Malcom, our Sally doesn't build computers, steal or shred paper, do growly face-licks, or any other items that are visually exciting. Sally just naps. Not only that, her napping is contagious - look what happened to her friend Ebony when he came to visit...
For those of you that keep up with the postings of my Lovely Marcia, she's been back at her computer for a few days now, and has a batch of new posts as well as reprise reports on some of her business trip. Now I must figure out what to do with myself for the day. There are many options, but if I don't pick one and get started, I'll never finish.
Top / Email Brian
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January 19, 2003 - Updates at
Good morning. It has stayed cold enough that the little bit of snow that fell last Thursday evening is still mostly around, in time to provide a minimal base for the snow that's supposed to be here today and tomorrow. We left California for what? Oh, right, Marcia's job and relatively reasonable home purchase prices. Okay. Really, it's not that bad - I'm really rather enjoying myself out here in a number of ways. Not everything is to my liking, but the world wasn't made for me alone, and there would be drawbacks just about anywhere. The grass is greener where it rains, and that's always the truth.
I installed SuSE 8.1 Professional on Gryphon yesterday. Now he triple-boots: Gentoo, Red Hat, and SuSE. I'll note that the installation is reasonably competent. It picked up the ether NIC, the ATI video, the sound chip. It did not pick up the screen or the modem. Red Hat got all but the modem. I'm not surprised - nobody's got the modem - this is a new revision of an Intel chipset, and there's no drivers for some functions. Even the sound can be dicey. Oh, and it's still KDE 3.0.4. I'm running in the 3.1rc series with Gentoo, and it's much nicer and faster than 3.0x. For a newbie, SuSE will probably install quickly and easily without many hassles. I'm told that it picks up Conexant winmodems (and maybe Lucent as well). But I don't have any of those to test against, so I'll go with the word of the reports, since they're a trusted source: Holden. More on SuSE later, perhaps.
Let's take a little reality break now, with the fine folks of CMP, in this case wrapped in the body of one Doctor Dobb, a gentleman who keeps a Journal of some repute. I would like to share with you some of the "Bidness Process" features that the CMP people think up in their hallucinagen riddled excuses for a mind. [Disclaimer: I am a current subscriber of Dr. Dobb's Journal, and used to live in the same geographic area as Michael Swaine]. The newsstand price of Dr. Dobb's is $4.95 US. That makes for an annual purchase rate of just shy of $60. With real subscription discounts, that drops to some $35 annually, or just about $3 an issue. Now pay attention here, because we're headed into the NewMath zone. In the February 2003 issue, there are 16 distinct items (counting the editoral, letters, and Swaine's Flames, but not advertisements). Let's work with the the cover price, shall we? That means that, on average, I would pay approximate thirty one cents for any one article, on the newsstand. Drop that by 40% for a real subscription, and round it to a whole nineteen cents. Now, this is for articles printed with proper ink on real paper from freshly killed trees (Dr. Dobb's is a glossy). There are real distribution costs associated with this physical object I hold in my hand. And the magazine is much thinner than once it was. Fewer ads make it thinner once, and less ad revenue cuts into the article-paying-for part of the magazine trade, making it thinner once again. So good, so far. Now it's time for the fun.
How much do you suppose that I'm going to pay CMP for Dr. Dobb's content, online on the web, from the current issue. Limit your guess to the per item cost, please, as I don't want any cardiac cases showing up in my email. Five bucks is what CMP wants. All for the convenience of viewing the article in a browser, an item that has a fixed distribution cost - one web wonk to put the content into the CMP database, once... the same content that went to the printer. Now, I'll be fair. The editorial and Swaine's Flames items are FREE right now, on the site (here's a link to the secure page where you can decide how much money to spend). So let's say that I am an on the go, mobile kind of guy who would rather pay for his content online, rather than carry a bit of dead tree around. Two factors mitigate in favor of an online medium: Convenience, and searchability. So to buy the whole magilla, I pay CMP $70 dollars for the content that appears in the current issue, content that when printed on a dead tree, costs me $4.95.
Hey, when I have the magazine, how long do I have it for? Forever? Not likely, as paper degrades, information degrades, I degrade. Let's say I keep a repository that lasts through one or two moves - call it several years. How long do you suppose that I have access to the online content? According to the entry page, a whole 72 hours. Do you suppose that they believe that some people don't understand that 72 hours equals 3 days? I mean, really, 72 is a big number.
Ground Control to CMP, wake up and smell the burning insulation in your little capsule. How about a one-time charge that gives someone the ability to access all of the content of that issue online for as long as he likes. You can even charge a little more than the print cover price for ease of access and searchability. The only bright spot for your current program is that the list of names you gaffle up from people who sign up for this particular little con game are a highly qualified list of potential buyers of Viagra and Weight Loss products online, and they'll probably help some widow from Nigeria extract her ill-gotten gains from an account there to an account here for a reasonable cut of the take. Surely you can resell these names for some serious gelt.
Have a lovely Sunday. We're off to Costco and the grocer's before the weather breaks.
Top / Email Brian
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Visit the rest of the DAYNOTES GANG, a collection of bright minds and sharp wits. Really, I don't know why they tolerate me <grin>. My personal inspiration for these pages is Dr. Jerry Pournelle. I am also indebted to Bob Thompson and Tom Syroid for their patience, guidance and feedback. Of course, I am sustained by and beholden to my lovely wife, Marcia. You can find her online too, at http://www.dutchgirl.net/. Thanks for dropping by.
All Content Copyright © 1999-2003 Brian P. Bilbrey.
