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In a short interview with the San Jose Mercury News, Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, touts the W3C's HTML 5 standard, which was finally published last week after eight years of work. Sir Berners-Lee sees HTML 5 as advancing the Web as the central platform for delivering Internet content and applications, to mobile devices as well as PC users.
Q. How do you use the Web? Are there any sites or services that you use regularly?
A. We do all our work at the W3C on the Web — everything. We have a mantra: If it's not on the Web, it doesn't exist. When discussing things in a meeting, everything we do, the minutes of the meetings, it's always on the Web.
Some other quick takes on HTML 5 are here.
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Berners-Lee on HTML 5: If It's Not on the Web, It Doesn't Exist
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The fashion wears out more apparel than the man.
-- William Shakespeare, "Much Ado About Nothing"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 02 2014, @11:39AM
During the dot-com boom especially there was concern about "The Digital Divide" which was the problem that low-income people, or whole nations, when those nations were not as economically well-off as the industrialized ones, could not afford the Internet infrastructure, purchase of computers and so on.
But today, in 2014, living in the quite prosperous Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington metropolitan areas, I've met a great many people who tell me they don't use computers because they don't want to.
One such is a Clark County, Washington Deputy Sheriff. I expect he uses computers on the job, but only because he has to. When he's off work he does not use computers in any way. He does not own any manner of computing device and does not have Internet service into his home.
I am quite distressed about this as it is increasingly the case that there are things one cannot do without the use of computers or the Internet, sometimes very important things.
A particularly egregious example is that while one registers to vote in California, if one fears that one might be attacked by a stalker, one can only request that one's contact information be removed from the public voter registration record by visiting a certain website. Why isn't there a checkbox on the registration form for that, or a paper form that one could mail in?
When I was volunteering for a presidential candidate back in the day, the registrar of voters gave us a hardcopy of the home addresses as well as most of the telephone numbers of the county's registered voters.
(Score: 2) by fnj on Sunday November 02 2014, @01:07PM
Are you telling me this bird brain does not own a fucking smartphone?
I know a lot of old people who will not use computers even to stay in contact via email and such. They are all old people. Not just chronologically over 60, but hopelessly old in their mentality. Old is what you make it. I am 67, but I have something like 20 computers in my home. I program and administer servers not just because it's my background and enjoyment but because you have to keep mentally active. For some people it's doing crosswords. For others it's programming and studying history in depth.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 03 2014, @04:48AM
Now I do have a computer, I myself am into computers.
But actually most people I know don't own smartphones.
The phone I've got set me back $12.99. It makes really good voice calls. That's all I really want it for.
I am planning to buy an iPhone sometime soon, but only for the development of Apps. I expect I'll keep using my $12.99 phone for actual calls.
The people I discuss, who don't use computers because they do not want to, are not all old people. Most of them are younger than me (I am fifty).
(Score: 2) by meisterister on Sunday November 02 2014, @09:24PM
You want to know something? I can see why. To be blunt, computers kind of suck. You basically get for hundreds if not thousands of dollars, a machine that frequently breaks, gets attacked by people who may not even be in your country (keep in mind that this is to a first time user who doesn't really know that the internet is full of terrible people), and isn't significantly better for tasks that someone is particularly skilled in. For just about every person who doesn't either have to do heavy number crunching or content production, computers offer no real benefit.
I can write letters on a typewriter, make copies with a photocopier and distribute them via mail. Does that involve paying monthly tribute to the local internet monopoly? No. Does it involve using some black box proprietary software (which most people use)? No. Does it take a bit longer? Yes, but the other way isn't really worth the cost.
Don't get me wrong, I love my computers and am involved in a field that uses them heavily. It's just that I see where people like this are coming from and really don't blame them for it, especially when asshats are out there clogging their web pages with Javascript and Flash (which is pretty much the only reason people stay on the upgrade treadmill at all now).
(May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.