mako writes "The FSF just announced the results of a meeting it held on software freedom and network services. They are hailing the launch of a new group called Autonomo.us to follow up on these issues and the publication of the Franklin Street Statement on Freedom and Network Services which lays out a set of recommendations and guidelines for protecting freedom for software as a service."Update 22:07 GMT by SM: Corrected language incorrectly crediting FSF with creating Autonomo.us.
How is that broken? Loads of sites use that rather then using text. And honestly, anyone who isn't using Lynx can see the images just fine. I fail to see how using images suddenly breaks a website.
Drag your mouse over the text to highlight some, so that you can copy it to your clipboard. No worky. Also, notice that a few bytes of text loads faster than image.
They went to some trouble to make the text still really be there; the images are all loaded by the stylesheet to replace the text. So it's not quite as bad as, say, a typical flash site. But it's still really stupid, and in an unnecessary way. Imagine they had not done this image stuff: the website would be just as good
They went to some trouble to make the text still really be there; the images are all loaded by the stylesheet to replace the text. So it's not quite as bad as, say, a typical flash site. But it's still really stupid, and in an unnecessary way. Imagine they had not done this image stuff: the website would be just as good, except also better, with no downside. .
Except you know that the fonts are rendered 100% perfectly.
Actually, no, you don't. If the user has a screen bigger or higher res than you expect, then the fonts are rendered incredibly small and unreadable. If the user had a screen smaller or lower res than you expect, then the fonts are rendered large and pixellated. And if the user's RGB subpixels aren't the physically laid out as you predict (i.e. he's using a CRT when you expect an LCD, or using an LCD when you expect CRT), then your sub-pixel anti-aliasing is wrong too, and makes it even harder to read.
This only applies to a single resolution. So on a zomg-hueg resolution what you see is a nutshell on top of a football, a postage stamp in the middle of an A4 sheet.
I remember back in the nineties when scalability across resolutions was a desirable goal of web design. I guess it didn't stick.
You are correct - most modern web browsers will view images fine. However screen readers and other accessibility programs can't - admittedly they should read the 'alt' text instead, but a quick look at the FSF website doesn't show any alt attributes for there nice paragraph images...
This may be a bit off-topic, but my initial response to the headline was, "That's pretty clever, but I'm surprised someone hadn't already registered it." It seems like every word ending with a "us" got bought a while back when people first figured that whole thing out.
So out of curiousity, I went looking to see what was at some of those websites. They're all ad pages-- nothing is at any of them, really. It's a sad state of affairs with DNS that there has been such a land-grab and so many domains are taken by people whose only intention is to put up some filler ad pages in the hopes that someone might happen along.
Eh, anyway, it's nice to see someone got ahold of one and are using it for something.
They're not "taken by people whose only intention is to put up some filler ad pages in the hopes that someone might happen along."
They're there simply to sell for a profit in case someone wants to come along and use that name. It's a big business, right up there with buying potential misspellings of popular domains and putting up ads for their competitors.
Yeah, I know. I just mean that the only content they put up are some ugly ad pages, and they have no intention of doing anything else with the domain (as far as putting up content).
And yes, it's all big business. But it kind of stinks that the DNS system has been abused in this way. I'm not sure what you do about that-- but anyway, like I said, this is all off-topic. I just think it's kind of sad that when I see the headline, "FSF Helps Launch Autonomo.us To Focus On Freedom In Network Services", my fi
Better domain names are just around the corner -- the ICANN is about to release just about any "dot" you can think of. Once that happens, domains like.us will be forgotten quickly, replaced by more memorable names. (Like.coke,.pepsi, et cetera.)
Speculators are a part of every emerging market or trend and are almost never healthy but oddly may be necessary to an extent. I think our economy may actually count on the "almost never" faction...nice for the gamblers out there, eh? I suppose most of those end up getting taken by bigger speculators, and only a scant few of the big ones turn out to be legitimate and/or successful businesses -- almost everyone loses. This trend goes waaaay back and is very broad.
Your mistake is in assuming that the user is a passive consumer. This would seem to be just your conforming to the ideas pushed by the proprietary software industry, which has sought for the past four decades to make the users of their products as passive and helpless as possible.
Your other mistake is in assuming that because far less than one percent of users make noises about wanting to modify the source code of whatever, that 99% don't want to.
The interesting thing is, though: why would you want the FSF to not make noises about things like this? Would you perhaps like all users to be passive and helpless? Or is this an "open source"-like compromise proposal, where the FSF makes exceptions to their principles in exchange of vaguely defined and ultimately useless "credibility".
So what you're saying is that despite the lack of any evidence that a significant percentage of users want to modify source code, it might still be true.
I agree, it might, but given the fact that most users don't have the technical skill to modify code and there's no evidence that they wish to start hiring software consultants, I'd say the more probable truth is that they don't care.
I think you are missing something, and that is that the ability to modify the source code is the means not the end. If you don't have this ability, then you are subject to vendor lock-in, which is something most people in businesses do understand irrespective of whether they are geeks. You have no second source (something else they understand). Something that may be critical to your ability to compete is under the control of a single external organisation (and you can bet they understand this one). It doesn't matter to a business that they can't modify the code, it matters that more than one company is competing to do it for them, giving them lower prices (something else they understand).
Of course you're assuming that the fact that an application is open source means it will be available and supported from different sources. This is not necessarily the case.
Most software isn't mission critical for a business. If it is, it's more likely to be developed internally so that competitors won't have it available.
Your mistake is in assuming that the user is a passive consumer. This would seem to be just your conforming to the ideas pushed by the proprietary software industry, which has sought for the past four decades to make the users of their products as passive and helpless as possible.
On the contrary, I believe that users of the popular so-called Web 2.0 web services (the services mainly being targeted by this "freedom" campaign) are indeed active, not passive consumers; they upload videos and pictures, form gro
Alaska based company Craptaculo.us is launching its website in a self-deprecating campaign against all websites which try to cleverly use the TLD suffix to create a new word. Craptaculo.us feels that del.icio.us is enough already, thank you.
First on Craptaculo.us' radar are:
http://fung.us/ [fung.us] - website about eating strange mushrooms and the wild tales that people share. eating mushrooms is bad. http://co.ck/ [co.ck] - needs no explanation http://gu.ru/ [gu.ru] - complete lying bastards, they're not good at ANYTHING
Thanks to the FSF for supporting the summit that eventually led to Autonomo.us and the Franklin Street Statement, even if FSF isn't endorsing them yet.
I'm really surprised at the near total lack of on topic comments on this post. Not even any generic anti-FSF flames or calling Autonomo.us luddite. So everyone agrees that this activity is a good thing? (I'm biased [gondwanaland.com].)
Inaccurate. (Score:5, Informative)
This group is seperate from the FSF.
The FSF news story explains that.
Re:Inaccurate. (Score:5, Funny)
So it's autonomous then?
Parent
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Yeah.
The Firehose story [slashdot.org] is more accurate.
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The title I submitted was accurate. (Score:2)
Sooo... (Score:4, Funny)
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Drag your mouse over the text to highlight some, so that you can copy it to your clipboard. No worky. Also, notice that a few bytes of text loads faster than image.
They went to some trouble to make the text still really be there; the images are all loaded by the stylesheet to replace the text. So it's not quite as bad as, say, a typical flash site. But it's still really stupid, and in an unnecessary way. Imagine they had not done this image stuff: the website would be just as good
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They went to some trouble to make the text still really be there; the images are all loaded by the stylesheet to replace the text. So it's not quite as bad as, say, a typical flash site. But it's still really stupid, and in an unnecessary way. Imagine they had not done this image stuff: the website would be just as good, except also better, with no downside. .
Except you know that the fonts are rendered 100% perfectly.
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
Actually, no, you don't. If the user has a screen bigger or higher res than you expect, then the fonts are rendered incredibly small and unreadable. If the user had a screen smaller or lower res than you expect, then the fonts are rendered large and pixellated. And if the user's RGB subpixels aren't the physically laid out as you predict (i.e. he's using a CRT when you expect an LCD, or using an LCD when you expect CRT), then your sub-pixel anti-aliasing is wrong too, and makes it even harder to read.
If
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This only applies to a single resolution. So on a zomg-hueg resolution what you see is a nutshell on top of a football, a postage stamp in the middle of an A4 sheet.
I remember back in the nineties when scalability across resolutions was a desirable goal of web design. I guess it didn't stick.
GNU/Blinux? (Score:1)
And honestly, anyone who isn't using Lynx can see the images just fine. I fail to see how using images suddenly breaks a website.
What web browser is better than Lynx, w3m, or Links for people who are blind or hard of sight, such as people who use GNU/Blinux [leb.net]?
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They do have alt attributes in their image tags, you know. That makes all the difference in the world for sight-restricted people.
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Try turning off CSS is your browser - you'll notice that there's a perfect text version supplied.
Good domain name (Score:4, Insightful)
This may be a bit off-topic, but my initial response to the headline was, "That's pretty clever, but I'm surprised someone hadn't already registered it." It seems like every word ending with a "us" got bought a while back when people first figured that whole thing out.
So out of curiousity, I went looking to see what was at some of those websites. They're all ad pages-- nothing is at any of them, really. It's a sad state of affairs with DNS that there has been such a land-grab and so many domains are taken by people whose only intention is to put up some filler ad pages in the hopes that someone might happen along.
Eh, anyway, it's nice to see someone got ahold of one and are using it for something.
You mean domain squatters? (Score:4, Informative)
They're there simply to sell for a profit in case someone wants to come along and use that name. It's a big business, right up there with buying potential misspellings of popular domains and putting up ads for their competitors.
Parent
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Yeah, I know. I just mean that the only content they put up are some ugly ad pages, and they have no intention of doing anything else with the domain (as far as putting up content).
And yes, it's all big business. But it kind of stinks that the DNS system has been abused in this way. I'm not sure what you do about that-- but anyway, like I said, this is all off-topic. I just think it's kind of sad that when I see the headline, "FSF Helps Launch Autonomo.us To Focus On Freedom In Network Services", my fi
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Speculators are a part of every emerging market or trend and are almost never healthy but oddly may be necessary to an extent. I think our economy may actually count on the "almost never" faction...nice for the gamblers out there, eh? I suppose most of those end up getting taken by bigger speculators, and only a scant few of the big ones turn out to be legitimate and/or successful businesses -- almost everyone loses. This trend goes waaaay back and is very broad.
-Matt
Great goals; less than great name (Score:1)
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Autonomous isn't that hard to spell.
And there's a link from fsf.org - so, I think even the morons as you call them will be able to spell that.
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Reverse Psychology (Score:3, Funny)
Up to this point, there hasn't been a single Anonymous Coward to post on a thread that's about anonymo.us
Splendid!
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Autonomo.us
No, u (Score:4, Insightful)
Your mistake is in assuming that the user is a passive consumer. This would seem to be just your conforming to the ideas pushed by the proprietary software industry, which has sought for the past four decades to make the users of their products as passive and helpless as possible.
Your other mistake is in assuming that because far less than one percent of users make noises about wanting to modify the source code of whatever, that 99% don't want to.
The interesting thing is, though: why would you want the FSF to not make noises about things like this? Would you perhaps like all users to be passive and helpless? Or is this an "open source"-like compromise proposal, where the FSF makes exceptions to their principles in exchange of vaguely defined and ultimately useless "credibility".
Parent
New flash: not everyone thinks like a geek (Score:3, Insightful)
So what you're saying is that despite the lack of any evidence that a significant percentage of users want to modify source code, it might still be true.
I agree, it might, but given the fact that most users don't have the technical skill to modify code and there's no evidence that they wish to start hiring software consultants, I'd say the more probable truth is that they don't care.
Re:New flash: not everyone thinks like a geek (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
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Of course you're assuming that the fact that an application is open source means it will be available and supported from different sources. This is not necessarily the case.
Most software isn't mission critical for a business. If it is, it's more likely to be developed internally so that competitors won't have it available.
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On the contrary, I believe that users of the popular so-called Web 2.0 web services (the services mainly being targeted by this "freedom" campaign) are indeed active, not passive consumers; they upload videos and pictures, form gro
In a related story... (Score:5, Funny)
Alaska based company Craptaculo.us is launching its website in a self-deprecating campaign against all websites which try to cleverly use the TLD suffix to create a new word. Craptaculo.us feels that del.icio.us is enough already, thank you.
First on Craptaculo.us' radar are:
http://fung.us/ [fung.us] - website about eating strange mushrooms and the wild tales that people share. eating mushrooms is bad.
http://co.ck/ [co.ck] - needs no explanation
http://gu.ru/ [gu.ru] - complete lying bastards, they're not good at ANYTHING
More to come.
This is a really good step... (Score:2)