Been a while since I did one of these. But Deliciousing and/or Magnoliating simply are not sufficient from time to time. Among other things, such links are much too obscure. They are leaves in a forest of trees. [continue with: B-links, April 14 →]

Or innards of ticket dispenser for parking.

Watch your head, though.

Update for Katieplayer readers

(2007.02.17)    I am not “on the wrong side of history” and I have nothing to apologize for when it comes to writing about Macintosh accessibility.

Chris Hofstader is a person living with blindness who used to be a senior vice-president at Freedom Scientific, makers of everyone’s favourite screen reader, Jaws (perverse official orthography: JAWS). He had the worst people skills of anyone I’d ever done business with bar none. I distinctly recall how many E-mails it took to be permitted to talk to him on the phone, and then the 45-minute screaming match that ensued as I attempted to persuade him to modify Jaws to work better with standards-compliant sites. The strange thing is that the screaming match was apparently a hazing ritual of some kind, as Hofstader spent the next year or so actually listening to me and answering my mail. I am not the only person who has had to negotiate with him by megaphone.

Anyway, Hofstader no longer works for the least responsive and helpful company in the industry since Quark. He is now doing what everyone else does, blogging. I had previously documented his “written direct testimony” in the Microsoft antitrust case. It was an apologia for Microsoft’s accessibility methods, which can be summarized as follows:

• Staff an entire department
• Claim that your APIs are sufficient
• Force adaptive-technology makers to reverse-engineer your software anyway because your APIs don’t work and your own software violates them
• Leave accessibility to the open market at high prices

Before I go on, let me ask a skill-testing question here: Do you believe your computer should be accessible by default or do you believe that accessibility should be something you pay extra for? Your answer will concisely illustrate your understanding of equality. At least we know where Hofstader stands. He’s on the wrong side of history, but puts up a good fight, particularly when the opponent, however he might define that, is Apple. [continue with: Fisking Chris Hofstader →]

The Creator’s Copyright Coalition (note the singular) is a Canadian organization attempting to advance the position of the creator, as opposed to the user and also as opposed to the corporation or “rightsholder,” in copyright law. The impression they leave is one of annoyance that “users” have hijacked the discussion of copyright reform outside the realm of corporations. There is of course an acknowledgement here or there that creators are also users, but if push came to shove, the Coalition appears to believe that their members can and will side with one camp, not the other.

An expression of a hardass creator perspective can be found in John Lorinc’s article “Copyright Reform: The Neverending Story” (Quill & Quire, April 2005, not onliné). [continue with: Pro-creator zealots →]

Or rather, IGA spits on your grave.

The second-rate supermarket chain IGA has this really awful aisle signage. (Have you ever visited a supermarket with even adequate aisle signage?)

That’s ITC Garamond for the aisle number and Novarese caps for the product categories. Oh, but wait, they didn’t leave enough room for those, so they have to scrunch the type. Think you could read that at a distance? (They also don’t know whether to use ampersand or slash to indicate “and.”)

Then you go two aisles over and things are worse.

Here they can’t get the signs updated from head office, so they just laser-print Times capitals and stick those sheets of paper on. (CHINESE FOOD? INDIAN FOODS [plural]?)

What happens if they have to use italic? They do know the capitals are upright, don’t they?

It is time to out Craig Parks as my copyright lawyer. Why? I’m helping him with a project.

Craig is conducting a study of the collective administration of copyright in Canada for the Department of Canadian Heritage. The topic, in case that phrase is not clear, is the nearly three dozen copyright collectives in Canada (like SOCAN and ADISQ).

He wants to hear from everyone within his terms of reference, so we created a Weblog. (I’m not part of the consultation, but I helped him out with the setup.)

Kooky fun fact: I’ve never had to handle as many acronyms as I did on the List of Collectives page. And no, life was too short to expand all of them.

Dig the roman capitals.