Don't you get tired of all those little 'valid' buttons claiming that the website you're visiting passes validation for protocol x,y, or z? Why should you care? It should be QA's responsibility to worry about whether or not the software validates to the applicable specifications, not yours. Unless of course it is the website owner's way of telling you that it's up to you to verify their code because they can't be bothered with it. Or perhaps for bragging rights. Either way I think it's a bit arrogant. "Hey, our pages aren't broken....". Who cares anyway? If they're broken, you won't be able to read 'em to find out that they aren't supposed to be broken.  So it kind of defeats the purpose. 

In fact, as I've found on this site, just because you're compliant on one day, you might not be tomorrow. I find it a little irresponsible that web specs are allowed to change without notice. That certainly wasn't the case when I was trying to write standards compliant software.

If, like me, you mostly find this amusing, I've got some buttons for you. Put 'em on your website.

Now you too can be compliant with all the latest acronyms. And you can ask your local admin - 'Are you GQX2.3 compliant? What about NORK2?' Huh? You will no doubt cause them a huge amount of emotional distress as they search the web to find out what is required to be GQX2.3 compliant. The nice thing is that your website is in fact compliant, so you can wear these badges with honor.

Give me a day or two and I might be able to come up with a NORK2 validator if you really want to mess with their heads. It will validate any page which has a nork valid image link on it and will fail with unspecified errors any page which doesn't. 

Syntax error on line 1. Illegal command 'DOCTYPE'.
Syntax error on line 2. Invalid or obsolete tag 'html'.  
Script type 'javascript' is not legal in NORK2. Please use 'carrotscript'
 or a transcendant document format instead.
'<title>' is deprecated in NORK2 without 'region=' specifier.
Action cancelled. Too many errors. 

...Isn't that wicked?

PS> In researching this article, I discovered what your local admin is going to discover, that even if they aren't NORK2 compliant, you can date a NORK girl; and they aren't anywhere near as ugly as Stalingrad babes.  They're also mostly Catholic, so you don't have to struggle with those pesky condoms. Isn't that the cat's meow? Details Here.

Family and friends are advised that I've now migrated all my existing photo albums from the old website. You will need an account here to access the photos. (Contact me after you've got the account so I can add you to the access list). The old password won't work anymore - and the old website is going away. 

I've also finally implemented Atom feeds. I know it's been an RFC for several months, but I already had one feed format so it wasn't a priority while I built the rest of the community site software.

But my RSS feeds won't validate if any articles have more than one attachment. There was a huge debate about this a couple of years ago. Dave Winer and Rogers Cadenhead seem to hold the view that the RSS 2.0 spec clearly states that an item can have at most one enclosure.

I've read the spec over and over - in fact every version of the spec. Nowhere is this spelled out. I can't even find the passages they claim 'imply' this limit. But face it, it's a very poorly written spec which Dave Winer grabbed from Netscape and made his own. He changes it whenever it suits him, and interprets it any way which suits his personal ambitions. Along the way teaming up with Adam Curry and 'inventing podcasting' (which also led to the protocol abortion we call iTunes). Dave also get very wealthy off of RSS during the dot-com crash, probably the only person besides the Google founders to get wealthy off the Internet during this period.

But RSS has run its course. It is now time to rid the Internet of everything associated with Dave Winer. He is a disgrace. RSS is a disgrace.  Upgrade all your feeds to Atom. It's a much better syndication format, clearly thought out - well defined and specified.

Just do it.

The Bush is defending some of the new NSA wiretap programs, stating that this isn't about monitoring what you or I are doing. But in fact, that's what is happening. Everything which goes through the telecommunications structure is being intercepted and filtered. Email, web traffic, phone calls. There are back doors and monitors in every conceivable place.

It is particularly telling in that the Justice Department is not able to review the program. The Justice Department! Seems nobody there has an adequate security clearance. Don't you find that a bit alarming?

It's only a matter of time. The remote control channel changer on your TV already has a little window with an IR detector on it. You would never know if the TV manufacturers replaced this with a CCD through a government mandated covert program. Since it also covers the IR spectrum, it would work just like a channel changer. Just like you expect it to work. Except it's also a webcam, feeding what's happening in your living room back to a monitoring post through your cable system (which coincidentally is also a high-speed internet line these days). The technology to do all of this exists today. All the microchips required to make this a reality are available off the shelf. The monitoring posts are already in place.  

And you would never know...