darph.plock

It is always surprising to me in just how many ways people can make even the most simple things hideously complicated. A blog is, by definition, a series of publications or posts ordered in a timely fashion. Newest first, oldest at the end of the row. One usually starts reading the newest piece and continues reading, progressing back in time with each post.

Now having 200 blog posts on one html site might be possible, but, I guess we all agree, is kind of inconvenient. After all, we’re not talking about the endless click orgies of modern news papers’ websites. Thus:

Enter pagination.

What kind of brain-pygmies on pixie-dust would call the pagination link that sends you to an earlier point in time “next page” and the one that leads you back to the top of the stack towards the newest posting “previous page”

Previous and Next in a blog makes no sense at all!

This confuses me every. single. time.

Call it “newer” and “older” for cryin’ out loud, after all, we’re talking about a time bar, not a book of pages. This is completely contradictory to how a book works anyway: “Next” pages go forward in time. (Unless, of course you tell a story backwards, but then still you’re progressing the story forwards, so my point still stands.)

Your blog is not a book. If I progress to the next page, I expect the next posting and not the previous one!

Jesus Christ! It’s not that hard!

Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung berichtet (via lawblog) über die Einführung von automatisierten Einreisekontrollen am Frankfurter Flughafen. Inhaber eines biometrischen Reisepasses können sich die Einreiseerlaubnis nun von einem emotionslosen Automaten bestätigen lassen, anstatt von einem gelangweilt bis genervt dreinblickenden Bundespolizeibeamten.

Das Vorgehen dazu ist geradezu kurios:

Der Reisende legt seinen Pass auf ein Lesegerät. Dann betritt er die Schleuse, in der er von einer Digitalkamera fotografiert wird. Ist der Pass echt und stimmen die biometrischen Daten darauf mit dem Foto überein, öffnet sich die Glastür, und der Fluggast kann einreisen. Ansonsten bleibt die Tür geschlossen, und der Passagier wird von Bundespolizisten nochmals überprüft.

Und das Ganze in 15 Sekunden, wie der Herr Wurm von der Bundespolizei versichert. Ich behaupte mal, daß da spätestens zur Urlaubszeit (achtung, schlechter Scherz) massiv der Wurm drin sein wird. Der Reisepaß ist zehn Jahre gültig. Genug Zeit, um sich zu verändern, auch wenn das jetzt in der Pilotphase kein Problem darstellen sollte. In meinem Fall hatten drei Monate gereicht, um den Beamten die Echtheit des Photos anzweifeln zu lassen. Brille und Bart.

Hat man sich im Urlaub einen Bart wachsen lassen? Die Bilderkennung wird gewiß versagen. Trägt man eine Brille, die man bei der Aufnahme des Paßphotos abnehmen mußte? Die Bilderkennung wird versagen. Hat man zwischenzeitlich eine andere Frisur? Die Bilderkennung wird versagen.

In all diesen Fällen wird also wieder der Beamte einschreiten müssen. Jetzt kann man davon ausgehen, daß der Beamte zu Stoßzeiten nicht gerade erst aus seinem Büro angestratzt kommen kann. Also wird er seinen Posten neben der Station einnehmen und aus Sicherheitsgründen wird davon auszugehen sein, daß es nicht nur bei einem Polizisten bleibt. Die Anlage ersetzt also niemanden. Selbst wenn die Anlage funktioniert, es könnte ja sein, daß ein Einsatz nötig wird. Die Anwesenheit von Sicherheitskräften bleibt zwingend notwendig.

Ich bin ja mal gespannt, ob irgendwann rauskommt, wie viel Zeit und Geld wirklich eingespart wurde (die Abschreibung der Anschaffung gar nicht mitgerechnet). Vermutlich eher weniger.

I ignored the HTML5-specification for the most part until now for several reasons. For one, in the holy religious war that is the endless discussion between HTML or XHTML I clearly stand on the side of the semantic and well-defined approach of XHTML. On the losing side, I might add, as the development of XHTML2 as been discontinued in favor of HTML5.

Mostly, this has been more of an emotional dispute. Whether you add trailing slashes on self-closing elements does not really matter, does it? But now that HTML5 is close to becoming actually used, it is time to take a look at it.

And oh boy, what a mess! HTML grew more or less organically. First being completely text-based and print-oriented, it had tags such as <b> to make text bold and <i> to make text italic. With time and the emergence of semantic web architectures, as it seems partly influenced by the „seperation of concerns“-philosophy of modern object oriented programming (see MVC), developers began to realize that „bold“ and „italic“ are just visual representations of concepts that go beyond reproduction of printed text on a screen. Screenreaders, that read text for the visually impaired, cannot read italic or bold text. The human voice does not have italic letters. What we can do, is alter the volume or pitch of our voice, to give words emphasis. XHTML was designed not only to introduce HTML-markup to the XML-realm (HTML is SGML and therefore a sister to XML) to increase its readability for machines, but also to clean up the language, and make it more semantic – in short to put meaning where there was only display. Something is <strong> and something has <em>-phasis – how you display it, is up to the client. Seems reasonable. Of course, in websites, <em> is typically printed in italic, but that’s because what we associate italicized text with that meaning, it’s not what the markup says how it should be printed. It’s in the CSS.

HTML5, which seems to have been designed by the Merkels of the W3C, completely ignores this approach and sinks back into the hole that is the print-centric HTML3. Yes, we have some nice new forms. But we also still have the iframe. But I want to concentrate on the text part here.

HTML5 has an <em>-phasis tag as well as an <i>-talic tag. Both have the same standard style sheet associated (font-style: italic). Both seem to convey exactly the same meaning, just that <em> actually is about meaning, while <i> is about visual representation.

I would like to repeat that, because it sounds vaguely important: HTML5 (re-)reintroduces the <i> tag with the expressed intent of marking text that should be printed in italic. How is that in any way semantic and what on earth does this have to do with markup?

The HTML5 Definition says:

The em element represents a span of text with emphatic stress.

This is good. It carries meaning. Whether this should be displayed as italic or pronounced in a squeaky voice is a matter of the client. And of the designer – after all, you might be inclined to design a site in which emphasis is to be displayed in big, red, visually screaming letters. It’s up to you as a designer: Use Markup for the meaning, use CSS for the visual representation.

But then the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group,  kind of shows us the finger by also defining an <i> tag:

The i element represents a span of text in an alternate voice or mood, or otherwise offset from the normal prose (content whose typical typographic presentation is italicized).

[…]

Some examples of spans that might use the i element include a taxonomic designation, a technical term, an idiomatic phrase from another language, a thought, a ship name, or some other prose whose typical typographic presentation is italicized.

„Typical typographic presentation“ – really? So, what if I have <em>-phasized in my markup? Isn’t that (deducted from the default style sheet of said element) typically italicized? Please, WHATWG, explain to me, how this carries any significance:

<p>This is <em><i>Spartaaaa!</i></em></p>

Are we really supposed to be writing markup like that? Why would we care about how something is typically printed? Yes, we care about it in our style sheets, but does the markup really need to know that? „Well, this part, it has some sort of significance, but, not really, coz it doesn’t deserve its own tag, like, you know, a definition or an abbreviation.“

The definition of the <b> tag that marks text that is typically bold goes even one step further in its confusion:

The b element represents a span of text offset from its surrounding content without conveying any extra importance; for example, keywords in a document abstract, product names in a review, or other spans of text whose typical typographic presentation is bold text.

So, it’s bold. I put a visual clue on it, people shall recognize it. But it’s not important, nope, nope. Not important at all. Carries no meaning. I just wanted to put your attention to it for no reason at all. What are automated information aggregators and multimedia databases supposed to do with this information?

Well – if it’s important, use <strong>, if it’s not important, it does not need bold text. (Which context writes product names in bold anyway? I have ever only seen italicized text or having names put in „quotation marks“. But that is besides the point.)

Not only that the existence of the <i> and <b> tag makes no sense at all from a semantic point of view, the fact that they are closely linked to the semantic equivalents to <em> and <strong> will lead to an <strong><strong><b>epic</b></strong></strong> case of confusion among web monkeys: I am willing to bet a significant amount of money (let’s say a keg of beer) that more than half of all websites will confuse the two tag philosophies.

If people didn’t get the the difference between strict and transitional document declarations (look it up, if you have to) and still create new transitional websites (come on! it’s in the fucking DTD!), do you honestly believe they will get the difference? Do you really think this makes anything easier or better? If so, please explain the reasoning to me.

The HTML5 definition is completely botched – keeping the print-centric tags is backwards and plain stupid. I am surprised that we didn’t reintroduce the <u>-nderline-tag, for, you know, text that is typically underlined.

The new forms are nice and the <header> and <section>-tags are a smart addition. But don’t get me started on headlines. <h1> to <h6>? Are you serious? XHTML2 really had a smart, well-conceived and reasonable approach to nested sections and headlines. Yes, let the DOM and CSS figure the nesting out! This way I can use the same markup in my single entry page as well as in the archive listing (you know, blogs)! It’s smart, versatile and it works!

But no, for sake of backward-compatibility (really, guys, this is why Vista sucked!) we keep the old six-level-headline format.

HTML5 should not care about backwards compatibility: Make the browsers support two rendering options. Making HTML5 so that the old HTML4-crap validates totally misses the point of creating a new version in the first place. The popularity of the transitional document type shows that people won’t change their bad habits in web-design.

HTML5 was supposed to be clean and forward oriented, ready to support a semantic web architecture. It is not.

Er „lehne Folter strikt ab“, erklärte Schäuble weiter. Er werde aber Informationen von ausländischen Nachrichtendiensten, die helfen könnten, eine große Gefahr abzuwehren, „nicht deshalb ungenutzt lassen, weil nicht ganz so zuverlässig wie bei uns garantiert ist, dass sie rechtsstaatlich einwandfrei erlangt wurden“, sagte er und fügte hinzu: „Das wäre absurd.“

So sagt der Herr Schäuble laut Handelsblatt. Kein Problem. Bei unseren Verbündeten auf Kuba werden ja gerade Kapazitäten frei. Da kann man bestimmt günstig outsourcen.

Da ich in der WG der einzige bin, der regelmäßig dem Coffein-Konsum frönt, ich aber keine ganze Kanne saufe, steht hier eine schmucke, kleine Senseo New Generation und versorgt mich mit meiner täglichen, kleinen Dosis schwarzen Goldes.

Das heißt … so klein ist die Dosis dann doch nie, denn die schmucke, kleine Senseo hat(-te, denn sie kam heute Mittag zurück) einen Defekt, welcher sich dahingehend äußerte, daß mir regelmäßig die Kaffeetasse überlief, weil zu viel Wasser durch die Pads gejagt wurde. Aber das ist ja kein Problem, das Gerät war schließlich teuer genug, da können sich die Damen und Herren von Philips ruhig ein wenig bemühen.

Also flux den Support kontaktiert und wenige Tage später schickte man mir eine eigens für den Zweck des Rücktransports vorgesehene Transportkiste zu. Darin befand sich neben allerhand schützendes Füllmaterial auch ein Paket Filterkaffee. Damit ich weiter Kaffee trinken kann, während meine Senseo in Reparatur ist. Eine kleine Aufmerksamkeit, kostet nicht viel, ist aber einfach nett. Fand ich sympathisch.

Vier Werktage später halte ich die reparierte Kaffeemaschine wieder in der Hand. Das war flott. Finde ich auch sympathisch.

Besonders fesch finde ich aber diesen Satz aus dem Begleitschreiben:

Außerdem freuen wir uns, Ihnen eine neue zweijährige Garantie für Ihre Senseo Kaffeemaschine anbieten zu können.

(Auf die ganzen Markensymbole verzichte ich hier mal.) Das ist doch dufte. Es ist leider keine Selbstverständlichkeit, reparierte oder instandgesetzte Geräte mit einer neuen Garantielaufzeit zu versehen. So muß Service aussehen. Danke Philips.

Nicht so wie bei den Tante-Emma-Postläden, die mich bei der Sparkasse nebenan Geld holen lassen, weil man keine Kartenzahlung akzeptiert. Da läßt man mich 5 Euro Automatengebühr blechen, weil man 20 cent Transaktionsgebühr sparen will. Willkommen im 21. Jahrhundert, ihr vom Sparzwang zerfressene Deutsche Post, mit euren Wucherpreisen, die jeglicher Vernunft spotten. Dreizehn Euro für ein Päckchen! Ihr habt doch den Arsch offen!

Ich habe einen Gutschein für 1 (in Worten: Einen) Song aus dem iTunes-Store im Wert von € 0,99 erhalten. 

Welchen Song soll ich mir nun davon kaufen? (Beziehungsweise welche Lizenz, das urheberrechtlich geschützte Werk auf bis zu drei Abspielgeräten abspielen zu dürfen, das aber auch nur, bis irgendwann der Schlüsselserver sagt “nöö, ich mag nicht mehr”?)

… as we know it and I feel fine.

Tomorrow the Large Hadron Collider will go online and possibly destroy Earth and everything in its vicinity one way or another.

To put it in clear terms: Tonight is probably your last chance of getting laid. Have fun.

If it were to the discretion of a renown but here not named German retail chain, the Advent season began exactly yesterday.

Had to drag the One away from the cookie-stand by force as we were standing in front of them in light summer clothing.

I guess next week they will stock chocolate easter bunnies. Just in case.

You might get a message that my site might have been hacked. 

Yes, it has been. 

The problem is a general vulnerability on the side of my hoster, who has several servers affected and seems unable to fix this. Until they get rid of them pests or I find a new hoster (suggestions?), I will have to clean the index files periodically. Meanwhile I can only ask you to live with the warning. And to get a Mac to prevent unwanted infection. 

Thanks for you patience.

If you call me and have your phone number suppressed, so that I am not able to identify the caller, then chances are that I am not picking up.

If you call me, then I must assume that you call me for one of three reasons.

You call me to discuss a private matter. In that case you most likely know me personally and there is no point in shadowing your identity prior to me accepting your request for conversation.

Maybe you call me for matters business-related. How would you feel if someone wanted to talk to you about topics that, in one direction or the other, will result in the transfer of money, but does not want to disclose his identity to you? Does that sound credible to you? 

Both possibilities give you no reason to not disclose your caller-id. Therefore I must assume that your call has to do with either me winning something (highly unlikely) or you wanting to sell something to me (your succeeding in which is also highly unlikely) or you simply spamming me. 

If you want to talk to me, tell me who you are. Yes, I understand you desire for general anonymity, but aren’t you taking things a bit too far? If you actually have to call someonewho must not know who you are or what you phone-number is (and is certainly not me), then contact you carrier. He will explain to you the codes with which you can turn this feature on on a call-by-call basis. 

So whoever you are, who is trying to call me the past few days, please tell me who you are before me picking up. This also significantly increases the chance of me calling you back.

Thank you.