This is a very interesting read about the right of a poster to remain anonymous on the internet. A recent ruling required disclosure of anonymous posters’ identies because their conduct amounted to libel per se.

Am I the only one to see the irony of statements like this:

“But when lawyers for Klehr Harrison demanded to know the identities of the anonymous commentators, lawyers for Pantelidis refused to turn them over, arguing that disclosure of their identities would violate their constitutional right to engage in anonymous speech.”

Wait, they aren’t anonymous if their identies are known to someone. They may be undisclosed authors, but they aren’t anonymous. If they were anonymous, then you couldn’t disclose their identity.

The judge in this case required disclosure of identies of people allegedly defaming a law firm.

I have long believed that this was not possible in web design. I today find this from the W3C suggesting maybe it is possible — or going to be possible? I find their content to be near impossible to unravel and understand. What is proposed? What actually exists? What is the latest post on something? Anyway, this particular post is dated in 2001. I am guessing it was a proposal that failed and that absent scripting this is an impossible task. Can anyone prove me wrong and show me an example where it is working?

I would like to use it for example where I have a growing list of items. I want an equal number of items in each column. I can code a script to see how many items I have at a given time, divide by the number of columns and do the job. How much nicer if it could all just flow and when you add an extra couple of items, the html/css knows what to do?

I look forward to your comments.

Don

I probably would not bother to even mention this “flap” about the Washington Post shutting down comments on it’s articles had it not apparently escalated into a KERFUFFLE! Now I know about an East Midlands Folk Band and a Brittish phrase I had never heard before.

I am amazed that someone like the Washington Post doesn’t have a karma type of filter in place on it’s comment posting to autopass on most comments and only force the questionable ones to moderation. What is even more interesting is that the whole point of their enterprise is to create views of advertisements. They actually got something drawing readers — and instead of selling premium advertisements to support the viewings (now there is an idea if the editer wasn’t quite so old school) — they shut of the viewerships participation thus reducing the number of people coming to visit.

So I learned a new word and I learned that the editor of that paper ain’t all that sharp.

This site has one of the nicest horizontal drop down menu implementations I have seen lately. It is a simple, clean implementation with multiple layers to it and it is done in CSS. I like it.

Ebay has decided to create a store of sorts where you can list items for immediate purchase. The store will be called Ebay Express. The purchasing experience is intended to be like a more traditional internet storefront. It appears that buy now items will be included “automatically” for preferred sellers, meaning those with less than 98% positive in selling, and with over 100 feedback ratings, according to and email from Bill Cobb, the president of Ebay North America, sent to all registered users.

Ebay in the same announcement indicated a lowering of many fees on the site, and an increase of only one.

There is an upcoming Town Hall Meeting at Ebay where Mr. Cobb and other Ebay personnel will attempt to answer questions about Ebay and listen to input on what they can do better. Frankly the one thing I find most frustrating is that there really is no effective way to respond to a negative comment because you can leave a phrase or two at the last minute and the other side is deprived of an opportunity to respond. Also, I think they should allow you to decide to keep auctions open for a set period of time to extend the auction in an effort to avoid sniping.

I am more and more gravitating to like sites that aren’t all squares and rectangles. I dislike flash in web design for the most part (perhaps with the exception of using it for advanced navigation buttons or something more simple). Coder’s working with images and CSS are starting to break the rectangle mode with more and more frequency. Here is just one example I happened on today: http://offshoretechnolabs.com/. In the current design, they use white and some lightening like bolts to break the mold. Notice also that the tab buttons and the right navigation background appear to not be simple rectangles with 90 degree corners.

Our site is of course … very square. Should we redesign it? It is functional as is … so is it worth the time. Those are today’s questions.

The United States has requested numerous records of searches looking to see what is being requested by users on the search engine. Google, to it’s credit I think, is opposing that move vigorously in an effort to protect the privace of it’s users, and in the interest of protecting Google’s own marketing information. The reason the government wants the information is because it is challenging the rejection of The 1998 Child Online Protection Act that intended to require you to log in before you can see “objectionable material”.