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Privacy

Cambridge, Mass. Moves To Nix Security Cameras 366

An anonymous reader writes "Citing privacy concerns, the Cambridge, Mass. City Council has voted 9-0 to remove security cameras scattered throughout the city. 'Because of the slow erosion of our civil liberties since 9/11, it is important to raise questions regarding these cameras,' said Marjorie Decker, a Cambridge city councilor. Rather than citing privacy, WCBVTV is running the story under the headline 'City's Move To Nix Security Cams May Cost Thousands.'"

Comment Re:So basically (Score 1) 217

I was going to read you post, but I encountered a "Oh noes!" and my LOLCAT detector kicked in and I immediately discount anything you have to say because of that.

"Oh noes!" has nothing to do with lolcats. It was mostly just a sarcastic way to mock the idiot who was trying to claim that using trivial things like alt tags were a huge cost and burden to a website developer.

If you would like to be taken seriously, be serious.

I was being serious. The fact that you have a 1 second attention span isn't my problem.

Being "cute" or 7eet in writing is akin to saying "like" every third word when speaking.

I was being neither cute or "1337" in my post.

I originally hoped that email and the web would be the savior of The English Language as reading and writing properly were falling by the way side. I was sadly, sadly mistaken.

Awww, poor baby. I'm really going to lose many hours of sleep lamenting your extraordinary burden.

Comment Re:So basically (Score 1) 217

Designing a "good" website takes a lot of time.

Well yes, it does. Just as coding a "good" program, a "good" OS, etc takes a lot of time. The whole point is that these basic standards that the W3C puts out for accessibility are no more effort than what would be put in if you were just designing the website properly from the beginning. Outside of things like "1.2 Time-based Media: Provide alternatives for time-based media." pretty much everything in that list is just them reiterating good practice conventions for the web that people should have been following for years anyway. The only reason to not follow pretty much anything in that list (with a few exceptions) is basically due to sheer laziness as most of them are trivial to implement.

Comment Re:So basically (Score 1) 217

I don't know. I don't expect other people to be competent or to cater to my specific needs or preferences, so I like being able to fix things for myself.

Following the standard convention of alt tags on images isn't asking to have someone cater to anyone's specific needs or preferences, it's just good practice that any web coder should have been following for years.

Comment Re:So basically (Score 1) 217

Why do we have to care.

Because designing to these standards makes decent web pages for everyone to use not just the disabled? If you don't care about making good websites, then I guess you have no reason to care.

Why on earth every business and person on the face of the planet must spend extra time, effort and/or money to create the illusion for you that all people are equal is bullshit.

This is rather amusing because the same thing could be said for why for should any business or person spend any extra time, effort and/or money to create a web page that works in Firefox or Opera when they can just take the easy route and avoid the W3C standards and just code for IE. In fact, to follow this logic why should anyone follow any standards at all? All that just does is requires businesses and people to spend extra time, effort and/or money to follow them. Is there anything actually in that list that I posted that is really all that unreasonable to follow other than if you are a completely lazy website coder? Pretty much all of those things are them asking you to follow conventions that any decent website designer/coder should be doing anyway. Pretty much anything in that list is beneficial to everyone regardless of if you have a disability or not.

Coding a web page properly and coding a web page so that a colorblind moron that is deaf, mute and without any fingers and only understands Latin are not the same thing.

Actually in many cases just simply coding to the normal W3C standards, which are basically mostly just reiterated in their accessibility standards list, is enough to make it far easier for anyone disabled to use your website.

Comment Re:That's so easy I could do it! But I didn't. (Score 1) 217

The GP can do their own fucking homework. I'm not going to go fire up the emulators and run through SNESRen. I'm not some AC dipshit's bitch.

So basically despite claims of "tons" and "lots" of SNES games not loading you can't even name a single game? That leads to the only natural conclusion was that you were being hyperbolic and just making shit up.

If I had made a list, I probably would have provided it. But I have better things to do. I can come here and rant, for example, which is more amusing.

No one was asking you to make a list. Just for you to provide 1 or 2 examples because we are curious. I'm sorry if you get so hostile over polite questions but I think that's your own character flaw.

Comment Re:So basically (Score 1) 217

So to back up my point lets go to the W3C Web Accessibility standards and see exactly what they list and let's see if such things are actually require such a huge cost to implement.

Text Alternatives: Provide text alternatives for any non-text content so that it can be changed into other forms people need, such as large print, braille, speech, symbols or simpler language.

Oh noes! An alt tag! Such a difficult thing to implement. Not only does this benefit disabled people but it also helps people who still use Lynx or other text based browsers who aren't disabled. The extra time spent on this is a few seconds at most.

1.2 Time-based Media: Provide alternatives for time-based media.

Oh noes! You might have to provide a link to a transcript of the media. While this can sometimes be a bit of a tedious process in most cases it's not as many websites have content that averages maybe a few minutes in length.

1.3 Adaptable: Create content that can be presented in different ways (for example simpler layout ) without losing information or structure.

Oh noes! Using CSS properly! Again, people should be doing it this way anyway and the only loss by having to put in this extra effort is the loss of subpar designs. Again, this doesn't just benefit disabled people.

1.4 Distinguishable: Make it easier for users to see and hear content including separating foreground from background.

Oh noes! Text should be of a color that sets it apart from the background! Oh noes the horror of not being able to put grey text on a black background! Again, this is a trivial thing to do and is also beneficial even to those of us who don't have poor vision and don't want to get eyestrain reading your shitty web page.

2.1 Keyboard Accessible: Make all functionality available from a keyboard.

Oh noes! This means using HTML controls and links! Again, another trivial thing to do.

2.2 Enough Time: Provide users enough time to read and use content.

Oh noes! One might have to put a checkbox or something else that allows people to be able to change or turn off session limits on viewing content. Again, trivial to implement.

2.3 Seizures: Do not design content in a way that is known to cause seizures.

Oh noes! One can't design web pages with annoying flashing content! I don't know of any person who would think this is a bad thing.

2.4 Navigable: Provide ways to help users navigate, find content and determine where they are.

Oh noes! Designing pages that aren't cluttered and so people can actually easy navigate and use them. This just boils down to actually designing things properly and should be a negligible cost to any decent web page designer. One doesn't have to be disabled to benefit from not having to attempt to use over-cluttered pages.

3.1 Readable: Make text content readable and understandable.

Oh noes! You actually have to make sure the content you put on your website isn't gibberish or in some sort of weird alignment or other such stupid things that dumbass website makers do because they think it's cool looking.

3.2 Predictable: Make Web pages appear and operate in predictable ways.

Oh noes! You actually have to make your website actually work in the way that makes logical sense based on the way it was designed. Oh the horror!!!!

3.3 Input Assistance: Help users avoid and correct mistakes.

Oh noes! This is as simple as doing things like highlighting fields if a user missed a required input in a form. Trivial and useful for not just disabled people.

4.1 Compatible: Maximize compatibility with current and future user agents, including assistive technologies.

Oh noes! Designing your web page to standards and avoiding using deprecated features in your web page. How horrible it would be if more people actually were properly coding their web pages.

Comment Re:So basically (Score 1) 217

A negligible. At the cost of not being able to use the money elsewhere for a much more effective advantage.

Actually it's not. In most cases, designing your websites to accessibility standards actually makes your websites easier to use for everyone and almost always have cleaner designs.

So in the end, it's actually a loss.

Loss of what? Subpar website designs? I don't really think that's much of a loss of anything.

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