WebMink

Geography quiz [SocioPolitico]

Try this quiz:
You are in a place that threatens women who breast-feed in public with arrest and humiliation.
This same country will take your child away from you, apparently without recourse, if you take photographs of your child showing either you or them naked, regardless how innocent the situation.
The chief justice in this country is so offended by female nudity that he had the statue of Justice draped in a cloth.
Which country are you in? Is this an Islamic republic?

Answer: First story - Second Story (both via the Interesting People list) - Third story (thanks, Noel).

Note that the second story is accompanied by another that illustrates the values of the community involved.

posted at 1:35 AM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |

Friday, April 25

No Mercy [WebTech]

A group of which I am a part (ironically in an organisation with "open" in its name) insists on conducting its discussions as word-processing files attached to e-mail messages, and the consequence is that no-one can readily 'mine' the information in the discussion lists. The solution would be to use XML file formats rather than undocumented binary ones, but you'll recall that was deemed unneccessary by spokepeople and engineers from Microsoft at the formation of the OASIS Open Office XML Format Technical committee because Microsoft were going to support the use of arbitrary schemas in their next version of Office.

Even assuming this self-serving 'defence' was valid, it turns out that the features in question will not be available as a standard part of Office and consequently the binary lock-in continues unabated. I wonder if Tim Bray is still a keen supporter now it's clear the XML feature is not intended for the masses?

In his article "At Microsoft's Mercy", Kendall Grant Clark considers the exclusion from consumer and office editions of Office 2003 of the XML schema feature Microsoft's spokespeople cited as the excuse not to join the OASIS working group. The conclusion he comes to that this exclusion is "likely not to be as harmful to as many relevant parties as it might first appear" may be fair enough for the hard-core XML document community he represents, but for the rest of us the betrayal is huge. We continue to live in a world where all our know-how is locked into binary files in an unknown format. If our documents are our corporate memory, Microsoft still has us all condemned to Altzheimers.

posted at 1:00 PM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |

Thursday, April 24

Lions and Tigers and Monkeys and Wolves [PhotoTravel]

One thing I did do was take everyone (except Tim, who's skiing in Switzerland) to visit Longleat Safari Park in Wiltshire, a Great British Tradition when it comes to holiday entertainment. We joined a huge snake of cars through large paddocks containing the aforementioned critters. I enjoyed myself tremendously and took hundreds of photographs of animals, mostly managing to avoid including the cars and crowds. I'll somehow restrict myself to two here ;-)

posted at 2:56 PM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |

Return from the Grave [MetaBlog]

Well, in the 21 days since I lasted posted anything here, only one person commented. So is it worth writing here? Certainly Andrew doesn't seem to think so, but he and I have agreed to differ on things before so maybe I'll try again. Where have I been? Well, I spoke at Linux on Wall Street and at an event in Boston, I visited my office in Menlo Park to make sure it was still there and then I came home for Easter. Nothing earth-shattering, but no muse either.

posted at 2:45 PM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |