| 07:25 | <jgraham> | So, did I miss anything exciting? |
| 10:08 | <hsivonen> | Philip`: I think the "other computer" I should have is a Netgear ReadyNAS |
| 10:08 | <hsivonen> | it's expensive, but not as expensive as another computer with RAID |
| 10:09 | <hsivonen> | and it's relatively not so expensive considering how much time I lose annually to recovering from HFS+ problems and how many disks I need to buy in order to enable those recoveries |
| 10:10 | <Philip`> | Why would the other computer need RAID? |
| 10:10 | <Philip`> | since it's just for backup storage, and doesn't need especially high reliability and uptime and everything |
| 10:10 | <hsivonen> | Philip`: if the disks aren't in sync all the time, I need to merge file systems manually upon failure like I'm doing now |
| 10:11 | <Philip`> | If they're not in sync, you can just lose a few hours of work and it won't be the end of the world :-) |
| 10:12 | <hsivonen> | well, I could also consolidate my current external non-backup disks to an NFS RAID |
| 10:12 | <hsivonen> | I'm not sure if getting a RAID NAS is crazy, but yesterday I sure regretted that I hadn't bought one a year before |
| 10:14 | <hsivonen> | after all, juggling 6 external disks at around 100 euros a pop plus time doesn't make the cheap way so cheap after all |
| 10:39 | Philip` | finds it hard to juggle more than three disks at once, and then he still tends to drop them onto the floor quite often |
| 10:41 | <hsivonen> | where does Eclipse on Mac store its indent prefs? |
| 10:46 | <Philip`> | Maybe in the workspace project directory's .settings/org.eclipse.jdt.core.prefs file? |
| 10:46 | hsivonen | starts eclipse to see if everything is intact |
| 10:54 | zcorpan | added <input type> values to http://simon.html5.org/html5-elements |
| 10:56 | <Philip`> | zcorpan: It might be nice if those lists could be sorted alphabetically |
| 10:56 | <Philip`> | (possibly as a user-choosable option, since it's also nice to have the non-alphabetic semi-logical order) |
| 10:57 | <zcorpan> | Philip`: right now it's in the spec's order |
| 10:57 | <zcorpan> | Philip`: if you write a javascript that sorts the lists i'll be happy to include it :) |
| 11:02 | zcorpan | decides to use the quotation marks in markup instead of in css |
| 11:02 | <Philip`> | Hixie: Could you add an HTMLOListElement.sortKey = function (li) { return key for automatic sorting of list items } feature so that I can just wait a few years and then implement html5-elements list sorting for zcorpan with minimal effort? |
| 11:06 | <zcorpan> | Philip`: i'm not sure it's less effort -- you'd have to write lots of testcases for such a feature |
| 11:06 | <Philip`> | zcorpan: That makes it somebody else's problem |
| 11:06 | <Philip`> | since it's too boring a feature for me to write test cases myself |
| 11:07 | <zcorpan> | fair enough :P |
| 11:11 | <hsivonen> | how's this "DRE" different from DRM? |
| 11:12 | <Lachy> | hsivonen, have you considered getting a drobo and droboshare for your NAS? |
| 11:13 | <Lachy> | hsivonen, what's DRE? |
| 11:15 | <Philip`> | hsivonen: http://lessig.org/blog/2003/04/a_respectful_quibble_with_the.html - "DRE is [...] DRM minus the management. A DRE system simply enables an efficient way for people to say what freedoms they are enabling." |
| 11:31 | <Lachy> | "Our CC licenses expressly state that you can't use our technology with a DRM system that does not adequately protect "fair use."" - I didn't know that. |
| 11:32 | <Lachy> | but I wonder what that means for Amazon, who's selling a DRM-infected ebook of Lessig's own Free Culture |
| 11:32 | Philip` | wonders how many people who use CC licences ever actually read what they say |
| 11:33 | <Philip`> | MIT/BSD licences have the quite significant advantage that you can read them |
| 11:33 | <Lachy> | most people would just read the human readable versions |
| 11:34 | <Lachy> | I tried reading the legal stuff once, but it's difficult to understand |
| 11:48 | <hsivonen> | Lachy: according to www-style EOT is DRE--not DRM |
| 11:49 | <hsivonen> | Lachy: I don't know what a drobo is |
| 11:50 | <hsivonen> | Lachy: this thing? http://www.drobo.com/Products/BeyondRAID.html |
| 11:50 | <hsivonen> | Lachy: it looks like the OS X kernel would run a HFS+ file system in that case. correct? |
| 11:51 | <hsivonen> | I don't want a lot of space. I want to get rid of HFS+ and to move file system cache management to a different kernel that doesn't die along with OS X. |
| 11:52 | <hsivonen> | Lachy: the "human readable" versions don't mention important things like the TPM ban. |
| 11:53 | hsivonen | wonders if EOT constitutes banned TPM from the CC point of view... |
| 11:58 | <zcorpan> | Philip`: sort feature implemented |
| 11:59 | <Lachy> | hsivonen, yeah, that's the drobo |
| 12:01 | <hsivonen> | Lachy: Its seems that Drobo + DroboShare + disks is more expensive than ReadyNAS NV+. (and even a ReadyNAS Duo might suffice for me) |
| 12:02 | <hsivonen> | Lachy: thanks for the pointer |
| 12:04 | <Lachy> | The claims that EOT is DRE is bogus, because it has an enforcement mechanism built into it. So it's definitely DRM |
| 12:04 | <Lachy> | even if the encryption isn't particularly effective |
| 12:14 | <Lachy> | Wow, the arguments in this are rather pathetic. http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2008Nov/0046.html - His argument for claiming that plain TTF/OT files don't meet the needs of developers is based on wanting to give into the demands of the font foundries |
| 12:15 | <Philip`> | I assume there are technical arguments for using the EOT format rather than OpenType (e.g. to allow compression, to make useful metadata easily readable without parsing the whole file, to express digital rights, etc), but has anyone suggested any non-DRM purpose for the XORing? |
| 12:15 | <Lachy> | the fact is the, technologically, plain TTF/OT files do meet the needs of developers. |
| 12:15 | <Lachy> | s/is the/is that/ |
| 12:19 | <Philip`> | Lachy: It's not much good being technologically satisfactory if there are other practical (social, legal, etc) problems |
| 12:20 | <hsivonen> | how do I detect the existence of os.symlink in Python the right way? |
| 12:20 | <Philip`> | like how it's no good for HTML5 to tell UAs that they must support Theora - maybe the technology is fine and it does exactly what developers want, but it's never actually going to work |
| 12:22 | <Philip`> | hsivonen: Detecting whether the method exists in the os module or not? |
| 12:22 | <hsivonen> | btw, did the open source release of Android include an H.264 decoder? was there any legal stuff about its patent status and Apache License 2.0? |
| 12:22 | <Philip`> | If so: 'symlink' in dir(os) |
| 12:22 | <hsivonen> | Philip`: right |
| 12:22 | <hsivonen> | Philip`: thanks |
| 12:22 | <Philip`> | or try: os.symlink(...); expect AttributeError: ... |
| 12:29 | <hsivonen> | aaargh. is the shutil module Windows-incompatible? |
| 12:30 | <Philip`> | It shouldn't be |
| 12:30 | <Philip`> | Is there some particular part that's a problem? |
| 12:32 | <hsivonen> | http://pastebin.mozilla.org/570525 |
| 12:33 | <hsivonen> | looks like the /*.* bit comes from shutil |
| 12:33 | <hsivonen> | or is ..\\ the offending part? |
| 12:34 | <Lachy> | hsivonen, is the h.264 decoder in Android covered by the Apache licence too? |
| 12:35 | <hsivonen> | Lachy: I don't know |
| 12:35 | <Philip`> | hsivonen: What is the src passed to shutil.copytree? |
| 12:36 | <hsivonen> | os.path.join("..", "syntax"), os.path.join(buildRoot, "local-entities", "syntax") |
| 12:36 | <hsivonen> | so src is os.path.join("..", "syntax") |
| 12:38 | <hsivonen> | returns "..\\syntax" on Windows and "../syntax" on OS X |
| 12:40 | <Philip`> | Looks like os.listdir is adding the /*.* |
| 12:40 | <Philip`> | and it returns that error message if ..\syntax doesn't exist |
| 12:41 | <Philip`> | (It does seem to handle both \ and / correctly) |
| 12:42 | <hsivonen> | aaah, right. In the non-symlink case, I need to resolve the first path against the second |
| 12:42 | <Philip`> | If ..\syntax doesn't exist, that could be the problem :-) |
| 12:43 | <hsivonen> | yeah :-) |
| 12:43 | <Philip`> | (Do you have to have two separate code paths, rather than doing the non-symlink thing on every platform?) |
| 12:44 | <hsivonen> | I'm probably going to remove the whole thing in due course. I just want to unblock other people working on Windows ASAP. |
| 12:44 | <hsivonen> | also, I don't want to copy stuff on non-Windows |
| 13:14 | <jgraham> | FWIW I think doing is foo in dir(bar) is explicitly bad practice |
| 13:14 | <jgraham> | s/is/if/ |
| 13:18 | <zcorpan> | Hixie: "URL" in the <input> summary table should point to #url-state instead of #url |
| 13:23 | <hsivonen> | jgraham: what's the right way? |
| 13:27 | <jgraham> | hsivonen: I think using try: except: or hasattr(os, "symlink") is the right way |
| 13:29 | <hsivonen> | jgraham: thnks |
| 13:29 | <hsivonen> | now I've dealt with the symlink issue |
| 13:30 | <hsivonen> | next it appears that javac behaves differently on Windows |
| 13:30 | <hsivonen> | sigh |
| 13:33 | <hsivonen> | Hmm. if users can deal with an English or Castellano browser UI, why is the file upload button so bad? |
| 13:34 | <zcorpan> | hsivonen: because it's in the rendering viewport and hence the author's responsibility to get right |
| 13:35 | <zcorpan> | users mostly just interact with what's in the rendering viewport and the back button |
| 13:35 | <zcorpan> | and the close button |
| 13:35 | <hsivonen> | fair enough |
| 13:49 | Philip` | forgot about hasattr |
| 14:23 | <hsivonen> | aargh. the windows quoting bug strikes again |
| 14:23 | <Lachy> | what's the windows quoting bug? |
| 14:24 | <hsivonen> | Windows does crazy things with quoted string in the argument to Python os.system() |
| 14:50 | <hsivonen> | what ever happened to the historical posix compliance of Windows NT... |
| 14:51 | <hsivonen> | it's sad how many crazy differences and bugs there are compared to unix platforms |
| 14:51 | <jcranmer> | you need to have the Unix subsystem installed |
| 14:56 | <hsivonen> | I'd prefer it to behave in a normal way by default |
| 14:58 | <Philip`> | Windows' POSIX system is kind of parallel to its Win32 subsystem, and if you use one then you can't use the other, and most people want to use Win32 |
| 14:58 | <jcranmer> | Microsoft wouldn't :-) |
| 14:58 | <Philip`> | (or at least that's what I think I've heard) |
| 15:03 | Philip` | recently heard people complaining how Windows' directory change notification system sometimes gives you the long filename when a file is created and the short (8.3) name when it is deleted, and once it's deleted it's too late for you to do the short->long name conversion to work out which file it was so it's impossible to tell |
| 15:04 | <Philip`> | so it's constantly irritating trying to write code and finding all these weird cases that are there for backward compatbility :-( |
| 15:04 | <jcranmer> | short names must die |
| 15:05 | <jcranmer> | most of Windows' eccentricities must die, in fact |
| 15:06 | <Philip`> | (Then again, the FAM directory change notification system on Linux is (seemingly fundamentally and unavoidably) prone to deadlocks, so that's no fun either) |
| 15:15 | <Hixie> | zcorpan: as far as i can tell, it does |
| 15:18 | <hsivonen> | why is it that people assum commercial foundries wouldn't sell fonts for Web use if there was an unserved market there ready to use someone else's fonts as an alternative? |
| 15:20 | <Philip`> | Probably because they talked to commercial foundries, who said "we won't sell our fonts for Web use" |
| 15:22 | <hsivonen> | I guess that leaves a business opportunity for new foundries |
| 15:22 | <Lachy> | I wonder why font foundries consider selling fonts for web use any different from existing companies that sell stock photos for web use |
| 15:23 | <Hixie> | why is it that people care, is what i really want to know |
| 15:23 | <Lachy> | because we'll be stuck with DRM encumbered crap like EOT |
| 15:24 | <hsivonen> | Lachy: the explanation I've heard is that photos are usually used in a different way from fonts and synthetizer samples |
| 15:25 | <hsivonen> | Hixie: care about what? |
| 15:26 | <Philip`> | Lachy: If you copy a stock photo I've used on my site, you're not getting much more value from it than I am; but if you copy a font I've used, you can use it for lots of new text or for a giant logo, so it's much more useful to you, which makes it a different situation |
| 15:27 | <Philip`> | (E.g. I might pay some amount for the photo/font that's proportionate to the value I'm getting from it, but you might copy the font and get a lot more value and the poor font company won't have received any compensation for that at all) |
| 15:30 | <Philip`> | Also, stock photos will usually be resized and recoloured and shaded and shaped and munged to fit the site's design, which prevents anyone from copying the original version that was sold |
| 15:31 | <hsivonen> | I wonder if there are video producers who approve of .flv in Flash because a random Windows user can't play .flv but disapproves of .mp4 in Flash because it plays with QuickTime |
| 15:33 | <Philip`> | There seem to be people who disapprove of both because you can save them to disk and play them in reasonably common tools like VLC (I guess?), and instead use Flash's proprietary not-yet-reverse-engineered streaming protocol instead |
| 15:36 | <Hixie> | hsivonen: care about supporting the font foundries as if they were charity cases |
| 15:36 | Philip` | wonders why people haven't complained much about the BBC iPlayer displaying unfair favouritism towards the iPhone, by providing programmes as standard downloadable MP4 to it but not to any other MP4-capable device |
| 15:41 | <takkaria> | Philip`: but the BBC know that there are tools available to get the MP4 files, and they're not doing anything to stop them |
| 15:41 | <Lachy> | Philip`, people complain about the iPlayer restrictions all the time |
| 15:42 | <jcranmer> | "Foundries will adapt, just like music labels have adapted," |
| 15:42 | <jcranmer> | I don't think the music labels have quite adapted yet |
| 15:42 | <jcranmer> | they're adapt/ing/, but adapt/ed/... |
| 15:43 | <Lachy> | jcranmer, they almost have. Hopefully by next year, we'll see more stores worldwide with DRM free music |
| 15:44 | <Hixie> | jcranmer: the only remaining bastian of DRM is iTunes, and that has more to do with hurting apple than the usual reasons for DRM |
| 15:44 | <jcranmer> | Lachy: contact me again when the RIAA stops randomly selecting people to sue for copyright infringement |
| 15:44 | <Hixie> | that has nothing to do with DRM |
| 15:44 | <jcranmer> | it deals with piracy; separated by at most one degree of freedom |
| 15:45 | <jcranmer> | maybe I should just shut up |
| 15:45 | <Lachy> | the RIAA's sue-their-customers strategy is a seaparate problem |
| 15:45 | <Hixie> | i have problems with copyright too, but those are unrelated to the problems with DRM |
| 15:46 | <Hixie> | DRM could exist even if there was no copyright |
| 15:46 | <Hixie> | and would be evil |
| 15:46 | <Hixie> | copyright isn't evil, it's just a societal decision that i happen to disagree with |
| 15:47 | <jcranmer> | I would say that copyright is A Good Thing™ if done right, but the present incarnation is not an example of `doing right' |
| 15:48 | <jcranmer> | although patents are much more broken than copyrights in this day and age |
| 15:49 | <Lachy> | the problems with DRM are made worse by horrible copyright laws, like the DMCA and its equivalents in other countries, which impose severe penalties for circumvention |
| 15:50 | <hsivonen> | It sucks that being able to buy an iPlayer subscription is limited to people living on a particular set of islands |
| 15:50 | <takkaria> | you can get a subscription? I did not know that |
| 15:50 | <jcranmer> | IIRC, doesn't the EU have less stringent laws on the matter than the US? |
| 15:51 | <hsivonen> | takkaria: well pay for the BBC fee/tax/whatever-it's-called |
| 15:52 | <Lachy> | hmm, this discussion reminds me that I really need to finish and post my blog entry about all these restrictions |
| 15:52 | <hsivonen> | I had wished that the French culture proponents in France had realized that they could spread their stuff more effectively than the Americans spread theirs if the French didn't do DRM |
| 15:53 | <hsivonen> | but, sadly, the EU is as crazy as ever when it comes to DRM and copyright |
| 15:55 | <Lachy> | that's because the governements are increasingly financed and influenced by rich organisations wanting to push their own agenda |
| 16:01 | <jcranmer> | ... sorry I brought up this OT discussion |
| 16:01 | jcranmer | goes and sits in the corner |
| 16:24 | <Philip`> | takkaria: They did a fair amount to stop those tools at first - it became more than just a token effort of checking the UA string |
| 16:25 | <Philip`> | and they only seem to have stopped once they reached the point where it was no longer possible to distinguish an iPhone UA from a custom-made Ruby/etc UA |
| 16:26 | <Philip`> | hsivonen: You don't have to pay the licence fee to (legally) use the iPlayer - the licence fee is only required for live broadcasts |
| 16:29 | <Philip`> | (though I'm not quite sure how it legally works in the cases where the BBC has live streaming video (e.g. of important news) on their web site) |
| 20:55 | <phroggy> | so there was a big discussion on the mailing list about whether classes have semantic meaning, and it was pointed out that the original purpose of the class attribute was exactly that. But I just don't get it. The only meaning of classes is 1) in the developer's own mind, and 2) presentational. What good are semantics if the semantic meaning isn't really accessible? |
| 20:57 | <phroggy> | what I mean by that is, in order to ascribe semantic meaning to a particular class, it takes an intelligent human looking at the source code and trying to understand the intentions of the author. People talk about how semantic markup allows e.g. search engines to better understand the content, but classes don't help with that at all, because their interpretation can't be automated. |
| 20:57 | <phroggy> | the only automated thing you can do with classes is apply presentational styles as defined by CSS. |
| 20:58 | <phroggy> | comments? |
| 21:28 | <Lachy> | phroggy, classes are also useful for scripting and for use in situations where there is some agreement between the author and consumer about the meaning of the class names |
| 21:29 | <Lachy> | microformats effectively provide such an agreement for a set a class names |
| 21:30 | <mpt> | The original purpose of the <div> element was semantic, too |
| 21:32 | <Lachy> | it is a little semantic, it just doesn't have much meaning beyond conveying a little structural information |
| 21:42 | <phroggy> | I confess I've failed to read up on microformats. What's the basic idea there? |
| 21:46 | <Lachy> | phroggy, http://microformats.org/get-started/ |
| 21:46 | <Philip`> | phroggy: The idea is that I can write <span class="vcard"><span class="fn">Mr Blobby</span></span> and then people will be able to follow the microformat parsing rules to determine that that's a name |
| 21:46 | <phroggy> | hmmmm, interesting. |
| 23:08 | <justben> | Minor issue with html5lib CSS sanitizer. Anyone here who can accept a patch? |
| 23:12 | <justben> | Well, assuming someone will see this sooner or later in logs. One of the regexes backtracks horribly if it's passed a long css string. |
| 23:12 | <justben> | Sample at http://ben.lateralfricative.net/patches/html5lib/css-sanitizer-re-tweak/evil-table.html.gz |
| 23:12 | <smedero> | hrm, well probably jgraham or Philip` I suppose... but I imagine you could just create a new issue on the google project and attach the patch. http://code.google.com/p/html5lib/issues/entry |
| 23:13 | <justben> | Alas, that appears to require a google account, and my brain is about full up on web accounts right now. |
| 23:13 | <justben> | Anyway, I've got a tiny patch at http://ben.lateralfricative.net/patches/html5lib/css-sanitizer-re-tweak/css-sanitizer-re-tweak.patch.gz that eliminates some backtracking. |
| 23:14 | <justben> | On my computer it reduces the processing for evil-table.html from ~45mins to ~2secs. |
| 23:15 | <justben> | I don't hang around here typically, but I'm xmpp: and mailto:ben⊙ln if anyone wants to talk about it. |
| 23:27 | <justben> | Cheers! |