Soukie’s Place
keeping track of random thoughts
The Internet is used by billions of people daily, for everything from instant messaging to on-line banking. Millions of dollars are transferred everyday so you would expect high security for these kinds of transactions. On-line banking sites and stores abound with images of locks and words like “Secure & Safe”. But to the surprise of many, the Internet is very insecure.
Keeping a journal has different connotations for different people. It could be old-fashioned and noble for one, practical and analytical for another, or stupid and pretentious for the next person. I used to be that next person.
What good is there in recapping the events of the day, laboriously putting down the details of all that transpired? I think the answer to this remains “not much.” But that is also not the best way of doing it. If you only wanted a record of what happened, a miniature camera could do a better job.
Sight is easily the most important sense we have, and not quite easily fooled with imitations. Although ‘3D’ seems to be all the rage nowadays (Was this article first published when intended I could not have this reference. But I am going to leave James Cameron’s new landmark film alone, and get a closer look at HDR photography with examples taken by Steven Richards — happy birthday, man!), even if we turn a blind eye to the stereoscopic nature of vision, the other eye still packs enough powers to put TVs and pictures to shame.
The history of the World Wide Web is very recent, so the web standards are changing. Unfortunately, the changes do not happen as fast as might be expected from such a new medium.
Before discussing html 5, it will be useful to clarify the terminology. Give me one minute, and I promise the sentence “html is a language for writing www pages that are transferred using http over the Internet” will make sense if it has not. The middle section will tell you an interesting tidbit or two about the less-known areas of the Internet in as much time, and the last section will finally explain why html 5 is a good thing.
Starting an article with a disclaimer is bound to discourage the readers but I want to avoid it being misinterpreted. (Which might happen anyway.) My opinions are, of course, subjective, the observations cannot be applied in general, and a light-hearted (rather than a sociologically-scientific) frame of mind is recommended.
I am going to discuss the cultures I know: Czech and American. Now here is the first problem: While you can pretend that the 10 million Czechs living in the area of roughly the size of South Carolina share a common culture, with the 300 million Americans of different ethnicities and origins living across an area 40 times larger than the whole United Kingdom, there is not much to define one culture apart from the language and TV programs.
One would assume that computers advance every human endeavor. Consider the art of typography and layout: Computers and internet have changed these completely. But in many ways, not for the better. In the hands of a professional, the results of using quality digitized fonts and desktop publishing can be excellent. But large quantities of text that surround us (e-mail, web pages, flyers, restaurant menus) are less fortunate.