So, say you’re an idiot and you’re concerned about Google’s Gmail privacy. But I repeat myself. Say you are such an idiot and you are in the California Assembly. Well, you get the drill.

Anyway, one such Einstein is sponsoring a bill to block Google’s new E-mail service in California. Hmmm…is it because she’s merely an idiot, or is she corrupt? I would dearly love to look at a list of her contributors. I expect to see Microsoft on there, possibly Yahoo.

Two massive problems with this:

First, you are free to choose from other e-mail services that are free (though also ad-supported). So if privacy is a problem, there are ready-made solutions without the wire Mommy getting involved.

Second, Google anonymously parses ads already with its AdSense technology, and I can assure you that programmers on a deadline and with performance limitations don’t hold on to that data…and guess what–any of these free e-mail services that you use store the e-mails on…wait for it…their server, where they can search and read it to their heart’s content without you even knowing.

Yeah, that’s right. You’ve given up your privacy long before Google used a program to parse it to give you ads in its database that contain similar keywords.

Take a look on many popular blogs and you’ll see that lots of people are voluntarily putting this technology on their sites…and the results are sometimes hilarious.

Update: Thanks to Jason Lefkowitz, I am now able to correct the sex of the legislator and determine that she may be an idiot, but she’s taking money from Microsoft. Though she’s mainly the bitch of the health insurance industry, she’s doing Microsoft’s monopoly work for them.

Further Update: Boy, she’s evil. From that same document: RECORDING INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA, INC. $1,500.00

She hasn’t met a monopoly or price-fixing cartel she doesn’t like!

Craig Newmark over at Marginal Revolution wonders whether Microsoft isn’t getting bashed for what it fails to bundle as well as what it bundles. The idea is that security software should come with Windows, but that would be bundling.

At the end of the post, Craig wonders:

I think the primary reason is that Microsoft was surprised by the extent of the problem, similar to how it was surprised in the mid 90s by how rapidly and deeply the Internet caught on.

But it sure would be hard to prove that.

Yes, it would–especially given that they’ve claimed to make Security Job 1 for the last two years, and that was after considerable bashing/warning/advising from the tech community.

The problem isn’t that MS fails to include an antivirus package and a firewall in Windows by default (though MS doesn’t prevent a PC manufacturer to do so, unlike bundling alternate Web browsers or media players). It’s that what they currently bundle is configured so insecurely.

The common thread of most of the recent worms has been a dependence on Outlook, which is bundled with Microsoft’s other monopoly, Office. Outlook will trigger an included script even when you don’t preview or open the message but merely highlight it. Windows also allows scripts and programs to make changes to the operating system without notifying you.

None of this is true on alternate operating systems or even mail clients. I could go on about the inherently insecure settings and features of Windows, but that’s been well documented elsewhere. Let’s just conclude by saying that bundling isn’t the problem, and if they’ve missed the boat on security, they haven’t displayed the kind of catchup rush that they did with the Internet.

So with some gracious help from Jason Lefkowitz, I’ve fixed the IE 6 problem noted below.

Just so you know what it was in case you don’t think to yourself, “Self, instead of spending two hours on this, I’m going to spend 15 minutes putting in a two-column table and be done with it,” I outline the problem and solution here.

The problem is if you have a div floated over another, and only in IE 6. If the div that is floated over has a background-color, that background color will cover everything in that non-floated div until IE is forced to redraw the screen (such as by covering it with another window or selecting the invisible text).

The solution is to take the background-color out.

Jason points out that this is Bill Gates’s fault, not WaSP or Zeldman’s. Technically, no, but here’s a case where I was on several other deadlines, and this weird issue comes up and sucks up two hours of my day as I debug it. Now, debugging is part of life, but a quick solution would have been to take the two columns of layout and plunk them in two table cells. That would have taken me 15 minutes to restructure the page and test in the applicable browsers.

Given the structure of the code it actually would have been the same on assistive devices, though a cell phone might have had more problems with it. Still, if we get sufficient cell phone traffic, I’ll just put up a WML version of the relevant information. So far, nary a one has been identified.

In this case, I didn’t even care what the thing looked like in NS 4, I just wanted it to work in IE 6 and Mozilla. That’s it, really, all I cared about. But doing it the “right” way cost me time I didn’t have.

The reason I spent it? Because that was how the code had been conceived originally, and I wanted to stay true to that. Also Jason helped, which basically goaded me into not just giving up on it. Had he not, there’d be one more table in existence today.

So — my problem is not with “Standards” per se, but rather unreasonable application of them when the tradeoffs just don’t work in their favor. Don’t expect to see me often going to these lengths. When in doubt, I will go with what works for the vast majority of my audience and keep my projects from going over budget.

When the browser market is such that doing away with tables for layout is more efficient, I will happily do so. It’s just not there yet, pace Zeldman.

I’ve been in an argument on a discussion list with a CSS Zealot. They’re the kind, like the Web Standards Project, or Zeldman, or even sometimes Eric Meyer who say that using W3C-approved code in a certain way is not just a superior technological or business choice, but a moral imperative. You are a Bad Person if you do not accept The Way.

Fittingly, one of the premiere sites for this sort of religous proselytizing (they make Mac advocates look like pussies, quite frankly–the only people they remotely compare to are the Stallmanesque GNU Cadres) is CSS Zen Garden, the Light and the Way.

It’s a nifty trick–some nicely structured markup, almost totally unlike anything you’d see in the real world of commercial Web development, that can be totally changed in look and feel through CSS ONLY. Oh, except for the buttload of images that no dialup connection could ever support (hmm…where’s the navigator.connectionSpeed property so I can detect that…gotta be in the docs somewhere).

But, admittedly, it’s a nifty trick, and a nice playground.

However, much as the Japanese government of 1934 had some un-Buddhist principles (or today for that matter), there are a couple of biases their rhetoric assumes you share if you are a Good and Right-Thinking Arya- I mean, Person.

Caveat and Disclaimer: The group is not monolithic, and here I publicize and sometimes even (hell, usually) exaggerate for comic effect the more extreme positions taken by the more extreme advocates. However I am trying to expose some contradictions, hidden value judgements, and distortions that the more adamant parts of the group make. I’ll leave it for someone more skilled and less pissed off than me to make the subtle, reasonable case. I’m here to blow it out of proportion so you can see the bits I’m talking about writ large–much like an actual assistive application.

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