Why did no one tell me that the layout of comments form was seriously messed up?
Oh well, I’ll fix it over the weekend.
Update – Fixed, in so much that nothing overlaps anymore. A poke in the HTML reveals what an un-semantic mess my template has become as it’s been tweaked and twisted over the years. Time for a clean start perhaps.
Once upon a time (around about the turn of the millenium) I indulged in a bit of world building and created a minor power for the fictional universe where Ground Zero Games’ wargames Full Thrust, Dirtside and Stargrunt. This was the Interstellar Democratic Republic – an attempt at creating a left wing power that went beyond “commies in space”.
One thing I wanted to do with the IDR was create a socialist inspired economic system that wasn’t simply a copy of sytems that had existed historically. What I came up with was a simple mechanism: the state is a partner in all businesses, the size of their partnership is in direct proportion to the size of the business.
So, small businesses basically have a mostly silent partner who takes a small cut of the profits and who can be turned to for advice (not much different to tax and small business advisors in the real world) but as the business graws this partner starts to have more and more influence, until the really big organisations end up being state run.
It sounds great, small businesses get to operate more or less as they do under neo-liberalism but big businesses are all nationalised.
The devil is in the detail, for starters how do you define the “size” of a business – turnover, profits, employees? And there would be the same scope for corruption that there is in the neo-liberal system – just as businesses in the real world fiddle the numbers to lower their taxes so would businesses in this system fiddle the numbers to lower the state’s control.
Watching the news over the past few weeks, I have to wonder, was I on to something? Is putting big corporations under partial (or total) state control the only way to stop them running out of control?
pensiveOpera Software have been busy (sadly not busy fixing the problems Opera browser has with Gmail) and have released the findings of MAMA – a huge study into what the web looks like at the code level. I love this sort of study, but I am a huge geek.
This made me laugh out loud, from the part of the survey looking at whether HTML validates:
Authoring feature used Criteria used to match Quantity validating Total quantity using technology Percentage validating IIS Web Server Detection of “iis” string in HTTP header Server field 24,743 883,854 2.80% Apache Web Server Detection of “apache” string in HTTP header Server field 110,834 2,347,328 5.38%
Pages served from IIS are nearly half as likely to validate as pages served from Apache. Is anyone surprised by that finding? Is it due to the difficulty of making ASP (classic or .NET) output valid code or is it due to the mindset of the typical ASP developer?
cynical“At this time, support for is available only when running on Windows with the latest Firefox browser or Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or greater.”
I find it quite hard to believe that the service will work okay in IE 5.0 (released in 1999!) but not in nine years newer browsers like Opera 9.5 and Safari 3.
Has it been tested at all in Opera?
Depending on the response I get I may reveal which site the original message came from.
1 rare, large Star Wars miniature via eBay, @ £9.70
1 OOP painted HLBS Dinosaur miniature via eBay, @ £13.10
2 packs of Knights of the Old Republic Star Wars CMG miniatures via Orcs Nest, @ £8.99 each
A Magical Society: Ecology & Culture, RPG supplement via sale at Forbidden Planet, @ £0.99 Bargain! 
Total: £41.77
Total for the quarter: £34.05 + £52.63 + £41.77 = £128.45. Well over budget. 