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Messages - markham
31
Other software / Re: Opera 12 (release) breaks Nao's Footnotes Mod in SMF
« on June 17th, 2012, 10:41 AM »
Yes I did validate the (SMF) page with several footnotes and no errors specific to those were found.
32
Other software / Opera 12 (release) breaks Nao's Footnotes Mod in SMF
« on June 17th, 2012, 09:56 AM »
Everything was fine until I replaced the latest Opera 12 beta with the release version and now footnotes are not being displayed correctly. I should add that this affects SMF and not Wedge where footnotes continue to be displayed as they should.

Specifically:
  • The numeric link to a footnote is not superscripted
  • No horizontal rule immediately above the footnote 
  • The footnotes themselves are not in "smaller" text and the table cells seem to have "middle" vertical alignment
It is as if Opera is ignoring all the footnote CSS and the reason I think that they continue to work in Wedge may be because Wedge is serving browser-specific CSS. I have compared the HTML for both SMF and Wedge pages where footnotes are used and there's no discernable difference in the CSS statements.

Is there anything I can do to fix this?
33
The Pub / Re: The Cookie Law (in the UK at least)
« on June 15th, 2012, 08:31 PM »
Quote from godboko71 on June 15th, 2012, 07:55 PM
Well as silly as this law may be and how it may not affect me now. I am all for the handling in core. If its based on what ever law is most stringent it means most will comply everywhere. I can't see how asking a user is it okay if I put cookies on your computer is in any way infringing on freedom of speech.

DNT is a fairy good concept but it still requires work of site owners not sure what all the hoopla about this is TBH. Sure the people making these laws are ignorant to how technology works, but at the end of the day nothing to scary yet,
Both the Cookie Law and DNT share one thing in common: the onus is on the site owner and/or his software supplier to ensure compliance.

I agree that a Wedge implementation should take the strictest case - but how far do you want to go along that road? The UK, for example, requires a single affirmative action to accept all the cookies that a site serves but other EU members may require a per-cookie acceptance. The other point is, do you combine DNT with ECL so that if a user has DNT enabled and accepts cookies from your site, do you prevent him receiving tracking cookies you would otherwise serve, or cause to be served?[1]
 1. I believe you should.
34
The Pub / Re: The Cookie Law (in the UK at least)
« on June 15th, 2012, 06:17 PM »
Quote from Arantor on June 15th, 2012, 03:01 PM
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But there is new legislation being introduced by the government which may require sites to retain information that can be used to more closely identify users should they engage in anti-social behaviour such as cyber-bullying[1] and that would almost certainly require UK-based/owned Forums to register,
Yay, more legislation from lawmakers who don't understand the workings of the law. For example, the recent ruling in favour of the lady who was bullied on Facebook. What are the odds the people who were bullying were feeding FB fake data?
Speaking as someone whose daughter was a victim of cyber-bullying a few years ago, I have absolutely no sympathy with those who are made accountable for their actions. If it was fake data, then more fool them for posting it, knowing it was false and untrue.

Libertarians please note, this has nothing to do with "freedom of speech" but everything to do with accountability. Just because the internet provides a cloak of anonymity, some misuse that to publish things that they wouldn't otherwise be able to.
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My argument stands IMHO, this is still a threat to freedom of speech ...
Just how is the Cookie Law a threat to freedom of speech, nend?
35
The Pub / Re: The Cookie Law (in the UK at least)
« on June 15th, 2012, 12:03 PM »
Quote from Arantor on June 15th, 2012, 12:35 AM
Apart from the fact that the ICO considers SMF's (and Wedge's) cookies beyond what is reasonable, (putting aside the privacy implications of Who's Online) the fact that the registration agreement is only barely acceptable and that in the UK, officially forum owners are actually supposed to register with the ICO for being data controllers... yes, apart from those tiny details, it's fine.

Go back and read the letter I sent them and their response. Even though I actually pointed out to them that SMF's default registration agreement does mention cookies.

Oh, and SMF's registration agreement etc. definitely does not extend to the likes of Google Analytics, which are so far beyond what is acceptable without work that it isn't even funny.
Actually I'm not so sure about that as things are right now. The advice I've been given suggests that log-in names, email and IP addresses can be stored without having to register as a Data Controller. But there is new legislation being introduced by the government which may require sites to retain information that can be used to more closely identify users should they engage in anti-social behaviour such as cyber-bullying[1] and that would almost certainly require UK-based/owned Forums to register,
 1. Similar legislation is also being proposed in the US and the Philippines but with different aims in the latter case where there will be a definite affect on the freedom of speech.
36
The Pub / Re: The Cookie Law (in the UK at least)
« on June 14th, 2012, 09:09 PM »
Quote from Kindred on June 14th, 2012, 08:19 PM
However (and to address markham's point) "requiring" this crap because of some illusion that this involves privacy in any way shape or form is complete BS.
This law wasn't created out of a whim. Bureaucrats didn't have a brainstorming session and suddenly decide to legislate about the deployment of cookies. This law originated in Denmark, a country whose citizens are very protective of their privacy and who were (rightly) concerned about the power certain internet companies had acquired through tracking users' movements around the internet and selling that information. That'd be the likes of Google, Microsoft, Facebook et al.

Admittedly the implementation of that law is not ideal in that it - and DNT - place the responsibility for compliance with the site owners. It would have been far better to have made it a requirement of the browser (as DNT will be) but they would have faced certain difficulties there: of all the browsers in common use, only one originates from within the EU, Opera. As requiring browser producers to incorporate it wasn't a realistic option, they went for the next best thing.
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To address his other points...  yes, these people are stupid. It has very little to do with their knowledge of how the internet works. They would be stupid, even if they did understand it... the fact that stupid people get to make such stupid laws just emphasizes the point.
So everyone, in your eyes, is stupid? That's a rather arrogant and patronising statement to make about people who visit my sites, your sites and everyone else's sites. Are they stupid because they want to retain one of their few remaining rights, that of privacy? Or perhaps they're stupid to browse the internet when they could go to a public library to get information and do their shopping in real shops rather than online. Or do you just have a low opinion about everyone else?
37
The Pub / Re: The Cookie Law (in the UK at least)
« on June 14th, 2012, 08:13 PM »
Yup and you can deploy as many first and third-party cookies as you want provided you inform the user what they are, their use and get his/her permission first.

I've had our implementation in place for over a month and there's been no adverse affect on visitor numbers. In fact, our membership is increasing at a faster rate since deployment[1] and I have received several messages thanking us for our concern about our users' rights to privacy.

I agree completely about the need to conduct a cookie survey as site owners need to identify the source and usage of every cookie likely to be served.

If you have Adsense-served advertisements on your site, you may not realise this but there are circumstances where Adsense will serve four (or sometimes five) cookies into your site's folder in the user's Browser cache. One scenario guaranteed to cause this is if the user clicks on the small icon in the top-right corner of an advertisement - this opens a new page to allow the individual setting of Adsense options. From memory, they all have the prefix "GoogleAdsense" followed by "__utma" (etc) and have the same persistency as their Analytics counterparts. Adsense also serves other cookies which are stored in the Google folder including "rememberme".
 1. I can't state categorically that our Cookie Law provisions are solely responsible and recognise there may be other valid reasons for that.
38
The Pub / Re: The Cookie Law (in the UK at least)
« on June 14th, 2012, 07:37 PM »
Quote from Kindred on June 14th, 2012, 07:22 PM
it is all about stupid people who don't understand how the internet (or computers, in general) work.
It might surprise you to know that not everybody is as computer-literate or internet-savvy as you may be but that certainly doesn't make them stupid.

When I read posts such as yours, I really do wonder if those who are opposed to laws to protect privacy aren't putting their personal prejudices and bank balances before their site users' rights to privacy - and, incidentally, your own right to privacy since I'm quite certain you visit web sites that you don't own or control.
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I will not be implementing the SMF version of this, regardless of what the US does...If they feel like coming after me, I'll take them to court over it (and I'll win, guaranteed)
Words are cheap and it's easy to say when there is no legislation in place. But will you be quite so gung-ho about this issue when (not if) similar laws are enacted in the US? If you really have deeper pockets than a Federal Prosecutor, then perhaps you should donate some of your cash to the US Government to reduce the trillions of dollars of debt :P
39
The Pub / Re: The Cookie Law (in the UK at least)
« on June 14th, 2012, 07:02 PM »
Quote from Nao on June 14th, 2012, 06:52 PM
I'll just say that once again -- cookie laws are done to give some juice to lawyers so they can attack bigger anti-privacy companies. They're not made to piss off people who have a forum, even those who think it's a smart idea to run Google Analytics (the agony!) on it.
So it's basically safe...
And if you ever receive an official notice about it -- then it'll be time to implement that in Wedge.
I appreciate that France hasn't yet enacted the required legislation and therefore the issue of Cookies won't be uppermost in your mind. However, if Wedge doesn't have built-in provisions to comply with that law, what are you going to say to prospective Wedge users whose sites are owned by, or operated from, countries that have enabled that law?
40
The Pub / Re: The Cookie Law (in the UK at least)
« on June 14th, 2012, 06:54 PM »
Quote from nend on June 14th, 2012, 06:31 PM
You know its little stuff like this that get these movement groups going. The governments only have themselves to blame and if the US does try to implement this law I hope these groups take my government down. I love my country but I hate how its being run into the ground when we have more important issues at hand then the internet.

It's not the entire government but quite a lot in there that don't know anything about the internet or computers. There the old ones that believe change can break things, when it only makes things better. They rather listen to their own uneducated opinions then listen to the ones that know.

You know I am tired of it, if a revolution ever did break out I will be one of the ones dismantling this countries sorry government.
It is pressure from the privacy protection groups that brought about the "Do Not Track" proposal and that places the responsibility of preventing tracking cookies (and other tracking mechanisms) firmly on site owners. That proposal will very likely be enacted in the US - possibly with a variant of the EU Cookie legislation. It will effectively mean that when serving a page, you must actively prevent the serving of any tracking mechanism if that browser setting is enabled.
41
The Pub / Re: The Cookie Law (in the UK at least)
« on June 14th, 2012, 06:41 PM »
Quote from nend on June 14th, 2012, 06:19 PM
Setting cookies are no different then RFID's, how is it they are trying to frown on one and not the other. IMHO this law is BS and I still believe if any consent should be done it should be done on the client end and not the server.
In the case of RFIDs embedded into machine-readable Passports, this was a requirement originally imposed by the US Department of Homeland Security which required machine-readable Passports to be used by all non-US citizens when entering the US. When you apply for a Passport, you are made aware that it will contain a chip encoded with all your personal details and your application is conditional on you accepting that.
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We are delivering content, we shouldn't be responsible for figuring out these stupid cookie laws. What we are going to do soon read a 1,000 page manual of all the laws of the internet just to set up a personal webpage. Talk about some real treats to freedom of speech.
I don't see the connect between the Cookie Law and threats to freedom of speech. The Cookie Law is all about protecting an individual's privacy.

Just to make you feel even hotter "under the collar", the European Commission is likely to issue a new Directive one day quite soon to strengthen the existing privacy and data protection laws. I have seen a draft of the new proposals which includes mention of the use of local storage and web beacons as well as conventional and flash cookies as means to track internet users.
42
The Pub / Re: The Cookie Law (in the UK at least)
« on June 14th, 2012, 06:22 PM »
Quote from Norodo on June 14th, 2012, 05:23 PM
Seriously, fuck this. This can be a plugin. Most of us don't really give a shit about UKs rampant idiotic laws. Sorry for the harsh language, but stupid legislation annoys me to no end. At least make this "feature" toggleable. I don't like cluttering stuff just to please buerocratic imperialistic dimwits.

Cheers.

PS: I mean no disrespect to the English people, you're all grand.
Umm, it's not exactly a UK law but rather a Europe-wide one which has, in fact, been around for the last ten years[1] but has only recently been implemented by three member nations so far. The rest of the EU has a limited amount of time to introduce the required enabling legislation. As Arantor says, similar provisions will very likely be enacted in the US and other first world nations will follow. Even the Philippines, a third world country, is to introduce cookie legislation among a range of other computer and internet-related measures ordered by the President recently.

Having had to do an implementation, I agree that it really should not be in the form of a plug-in.
 1. If my memory serves!
43
The Pub / Re: The Cookie Law (in the UK at least)
« on June 12th, 2012, 09:36 AM »
Quote from Arantor on June 11th, 2012, 11:04 PM
Well, that's maddeningly unhelpful, because they're not covering as to whether our cookies are or are not intrusive. They're all first-party cookies, however, so that's something to be thankful for!


1. We can't realistically mandate users accepting cookies before entering the site (because it excludes search engines entirely), so we will need to investigate the ECL type mod that Emanuele and feline worked on, simply because it's something we will need to look at doing.

2. Accepting cookies via registration allows for the extended cookie, however we should probably be explaining to users a bit more.

3. I'm thinking a general privacy policy (perhaps even user-editable) should be available in the forum. I'd argue for that regardless, actually.

4. The person writing the reply doesn't really understand what I'm talking about anyway.

5. It's not clear about the whole who's online issue, but that it would be covered by the privacy policy generally to log that.


I still think dropping sessions for guests would save a lot of hassle all around, even though it makes who's online only useful for registered members and up.
I have just completed an implementation of ECL for a British-owned Forum for expats and visitors to the Philippines. Although the site is currently hosted in the US, its owner intends moving it to an ISP in the UK shortly. You are very welcome to visit the site, Live in the Philippines Forum, and see how I've implemented the regulations and take away and use any ideas.

My implementation goes a bit further than Emanuele's mod:
  • I require the visitor to positively accept cookies. Implied consent by virtue of registration is, I believe, a tad dangerous[1], the Registration Agreement is probably far too long (out of necessity) and few bother to read it in any case.[2]
  • I do specifically check the user-agent and known spiders such as Google's, Microsoft's and Baidu's are given a "free pass" and not subjected to accepting cookies (how would they?!!)
  • LiPF's main menu normally appears as a fixed "box" at the top of the window and does not scroll out of sight. This was implemented for usability reasons but it is hidden[3]  unless and until cookies are accepted.
  • Almost all actions are blocked until cookies are accepted. The forum can be browsed but that's about it.
  • There's a dynamic block towards the bottom of the right-hand column labelled "You and Cookies" which informs the user which cookies have been set and also provides the means of deleting all the site's (including third-party) cookies as an option.
  • The site respects "Do Not Track" and will not permit the setting of any tracking cookies (eg Google Analytics' which the site uses) if this option is detected. This means we have a two-layered approach to cookie handling.
  • There is an option to use geoLocation to determine if the visitor is from within the EU but has been disabled upon taking your advice on this matter. (There's also the problem of IPv6 which the geoLocation mod has no knowledge.)
It's not the prettiest of implementations but it is effective; Javascript and CSS are "black arts" as far as I am concerned! It would be far better if the initial cookie acceptance dialog was coded in Javascript in a similar fashion to the "confirm()" dialog, but alas, that's beyond my limited capabilities.


Mark
 1. and was announced after I had completed the implementation in any case
 2. The current Registration Agreement is also available post-registration under the "About Us" menu option
 3. It would have been cleaner and likely more satisfactory to use the menu item's "show" property but this would only work for menu items that are coded in Subs.php and not for those that are added by integration.
44
The Pub / Re: The Cookie Law (in the UK at least)
« on June 5th, 2012, 09:41 AM »
Quote from Arantor on June 4th, 2012, 03:48 PM
And that doesn't actually apply to us at all, as it happens.

A single Wedge install is not one-of-multiple first party websites. It does apply to the likes of Google Analytics of course and is by far a better solution than this bloody shambles.

The only time it would really come into play is for analytics type plugins for adding GA etc.
What we have are two quite separate but related provisions, one of which is law and the other may be in future. So I'm wondering how Wedge will handle this. In my somewhat simplistic view, basic cookie handling should be a core function and, out of the box, an admin can enable either Cookie Law and/or Do Not Track handling. Along with that would be a hook that plug-in authors could/should use to determine whether cookies can be set: the plug-in can call the integration hook with either "tracking" or "non-tracking" as its parameter and get a boolean response as to whether it can set the cookie.

There are wider questions such as: does a Do Not Track setting override a user's acceptance for cookies on a given site or should websites honour that setting regardless? My personal view is that it should as the user has already made the choice not to be tracked.

I really don't think we can count on the ICO's "impled consent" provision being around for too long, possibly a year if that.
45
The Pub / Re: The Cookie Law (in the UK at least)
« on June 4th, 2012, 09:43 AM »
IE 10 which is included in the Windows 8 Preview, has Do Not Track set "on" by default and follows the W3C 2011 Draft Submission for its implementation - which is the same as used by Firefox[1]. The Submission is quite unequivocal:
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Websites that track users across multiple first-party websites must check for the presence of the Do Not Track user preference. If a website detects that this preference is enabled, it must disable any tracking code or collection of data that can be used for tracking purposes, regardless of the level of identification of the user.
 1. "DNT: 1" in the HTML header.