Chris Phillips over at Curb Cut Learning has a rant, which I agree with, that HTML is better than PDF for accessibility. In fact, I go further than he does, HTML is already good enough for most people. Maybe professional printing houses still need PDF or MSWord but John Public, who merely wants to print [...]
In contrast to yesterday’s entry, let’s mention the Cassini space probe. The Cassini-Huygens Mission is already returning great data from Saturn and its moons and in a few days will assume parking orbit for four years worth of exploring! Let’s imagine the expense of sending humans to do something like this. Staggering, eh? Robots are [...]
Short Answer: It’s only suborbital. It’s just an exotic, jet-powered joyride for rich people. Long answer: Look, if purely private funding built something like a space elevator, then I’d be impressed, then I’d say NASA, ESA and the RKA need to close up shop. But that’s not gonna happen. Even if Bill Gates and Paul [...]
My news aggregator handed me a Slashdot article about terraforming Mars and other planets. One of the points raised was that terraforming, while possible, would be very slow and expensive, taking thousands of years before a stable biosphere was achived. Perhaps nanotechnology might speed this up a bit but re-engineering a planet, moving its orbit, [...]
We’ve all seen it. These processes have been facts of life ever since the Industrial Revolution began. One could argue that it all started with agriculture and domestication. We were doomed as soon as we developed language and harnessed fire. It happens over and over again. Some group of bright sparks somewhere invents processes to, [...]
So let’s assume it’s the End Times, the Wrath of Gods has decended upon us heavily in the form of flesh-eating ghouls rampaging in the streets. The question is asked, “If zombies attack, how long before the power grid fails?” Of course the question is rather silly, perahaps only for escapist horror movies, but it [...]
The amount of spam I get through my business account, which is exposed to spambots, is fairly small, about 37 spam a day. The amount of spam I get through my personal account, which is hidden yet visible in a clever way, is far less, at most 6 each day. This totals to about 35 [...]
So my news aggregator captured an essay from Juicy Studios about how people with learning and cognitive disabilities got shortchanged by the WAI. After reading it, I have to say that Mr. Leitch is a little too confrontational. It is true that for some people with illiteracy, dyslexia or other learning disabilities, the Web is [...]
Often I have a hard time explaining my politics to people. Or more factually, I’d rather avoid explaining my politics to people because I often find some point where I disagree with them. Or more exactly, I often find that my ideas fall apart and fail to conform with reality. Or, perhaps because I am [...]
By way of Stephen’s Web comes Quality Tips for Webmasters, a short list of simple yet powerful ways to improve your site accessibility, usability and ease of maintanence. Neat, energy efficent gadgets (by way of Metafilter.) From the starving, yet well nourished, mice department: reseach may have isolated the molecular link between eating and aging. [...]