Author Archives: Pace Arko

Presentation, semantics and structure in markup

Smarter people than me have been thinking about the separation of presentation and structure in Web documents in the last week. Some of these arguments seem like angels dancing on pinheads. For me it’s simple. The goal should be to … Continue reading

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Installed the style switcher I promised.

There are still a few bugs to work out. For example, it’s not planting a cookie in my browsers. This needs to happen for the selected style to persist. I also have to install it for all the pages that … Continue reading

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Once again Hollywood fails to take a chance.

Okay. I just got wind that they are going to make a movie about a murder mystery in a future of ubiquitous robots. They’ve got the audacity to call it I, Robot. Now, I think it’s really cool that they’ve … Continue reading

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US Automobile Companies Look Stupid Again

When California passed its low-emission vehicle laws, I made a prediction: US auto makers would whine and drag their feet and then look really stupid as European and Asian car companies roared ahead with the necessary technology at competitive prices. … Continue reading

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The BBC reverses the polarity of the neutron flow

This just in from the Wire of Insanely Cool News, after a forteen year hiatus, the Beeb decides to revive Dr. Who. My aunt introduced this science fiction series to me, during an evening of watching KQED, way back in … Continue reading

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Verisign breaks the Internet

This news is a few days old but still important. Verisign, which owns Network Solutions, has added a wildcard record to the .COM and .NET top level domain DNS zones. What this means is that fighting spam is harder, e-mail … Continue reading

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Science fiction is very nearly dead

This might be news to some people, but science fiction, one of the major literary forms of the XX century, is dead. I say this a former, rabid fan of hard SF. SF really has nowhere left to go. Why? … Continue reading

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I don't believe in American exceptionalism

What is American exceptionalism and how come I don’t believe in it? Well there are probably a lot of people who will argue with my definition, but here it is: The United States is not merely unique, it is special, … Continue reading

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The hard road towards semantic purity

There were two articles on Web today that inspired a long story in me. One was about the implications of semantic Web design and the other was about Web accessibility and standards. For me, the tone of the articles was … Continue reading

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The opposite of solipsism

A solipsist, to oversimplify, is the ultimate skeptic. To a solipsist, empiricism is bogus. An independent reality cannot be logically proved to exist, and even the past could be an illusion that merely accounts for the present state of mind … Continue reading

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