Day: July 16, 2002

Enough? No, but necessary

The Guardian: IRA statement apologizing for “30 years of murder.” The statement directly addresses the fact that the IRA’s terror campaign caused “deaths and injuries” to “non-combatants” as well as “grief and pain” to “combatants.”

While the statement is questionable from a standpoint of historical accuracy (thirty years ago, you can be damned sure that the IRA wanted to injure or kill whoever it had to, “combatant” or not, to make its point–this is the essence of terrorism), it says volumes about where the IRA is today. That is: engaging in a peace process, coming to terms with the interests of the other parties in that process, and trying to put the legacy of violence aside despite continued terror from groups like the “Real IRA.” Or, more cynically, dealing with the reality of a massive anti-terrorism war fought by the US and the UK following September 11, and accordingly changing with the times.

But that possibility shouldn’t overshadow the significance of this release. It doesn’t come close to absolving the IRA of past actions, but it’s a necessary move to build credibility as they head away from that legacy toward a more sustainable drive for peace.
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Amazon follows Google, becomes a dev platform

Now this is cool: Amazon rolls out a free web services suite for developers. Browsing the documentation indicates that they provide a SOAP interface and an “XML over HTTP” interface that takes a URI as the call and returns an XML doc as the response. Cool tricks: “enable your Web site visitors to add products to Amazon.com shopping carts, wedding registries and wishlists directly from your site”; XSLT transforms at Amazon, meaning Amazon will return the result of your query in the format you supply; integration with Amazon’s associates program (earn money off your webservice? a unique idea)…

This opens some interesting opportunities. If I become an Amazon associate and embed my associate ID in a tool like iTunes2Manila, is it ethical for me to keep associate revenue that is generated by people who use my script on their website? Probably not, but it’s a fun thought… 🙂
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Hey, let’s all violate the DMCA!

24-Hour Drive-Thru: Elcomsoft Vs. Adobe, The Sequel. I think this is one of those occasions where a good loud outcry about the inadequacies of Adobe’s DRM technology may yet prompt them to come up with a better product, enabling librarians like Jenny and consumers like us to be able to check out eBooks through our libraries.

And yet, of course, discussing the problem is potentially a DMCA violation, because we’re discussing how to circumvent encryption technology. Never mind our intent: to help consumers. From 24-Hour Drive-Thru’s article:

When consumer publications like Consumer Reports test locks, the most important thing they do is try to break in. They send locksmiths to go to work on the locks, they get out the boltcutters on padlocks, and report which ones are broken into most easily and which ones do the best to stand up under attack. Nobody thinks there’s anything sinister about that—everybody can see the practical value. And yet when you try to do the same thing for computer technology, you’re a criminal.

Indeed, this very Weblog entry may well be a felony under the DMCA. I’ll let you know what day to watch out for me on “Cops.”

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Accessibility: relative font sizes

Mark Pilgrim: Using relative font sizes. I should be pointing to one of Mark’s articles every day. This is just one of the thoughtful, well written articles on the state of designing web sites for accessibility in 2002. It offers a good mix of audience justification for taking the trouble to make your pages resizable (“if people can’t read your words, what’s the point?”) and technical details, including stylesheet tricks that prevent Netscape 4 and Mac Opera 5 from choking on CSS syntax they don’t understand.

Of course, I haven’t had time to implement his suggestions yet. Next on my list…

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Straight back to 1989

I never cease to be amazed at how quickly a song can take you back. I loaded the changer this morning with a mix of new CDs and ones that had been in storage for two years. The first song to come up? REM’s “World Leader Pretend” from 1989’s Green. Instantly it’s fall in Newport News, September 1989. I’m a senior in high school, newly confident about my place in the world and arguing about REM with my friends Rob and Matt at Patrick Henry Mall.

Incidentally, it appears that Chris Heschong is World Leader Pretend, according to Google.
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