I originally wrote this as a comment to a recent entry of Eric’s, but I decided to post it here instead:

First off, it’s Jon Postel, not John.

That said, I agree with Eric (and, surprisingly, Dave Winer). I think Postel’s idea was that you shouldn’t capriciously reject data that you knew perfectly well how to parse, not that you should bend over backwards to be bug-for-bug compatible with Internet Explorer.

For one thing, implementations that are too tightly restrictive in their input tend not to be very forwards-compatible: When we first implemented HTTP/1.1, there were problems with servers that expected every request to start with “HTTP/1.0”, and got upset with the newer version number. Likewise, some early Web browsers gave an error when they encountered a tag that they didn’t understand. <BLINK> obviously put an end to that…

That said, XML has very well defined extension and forward compatibility standards, and I support the idea of just not accepting invalid XML. It makes the job of both the client and the producer that much easier, assuming the producer is not human. And there lies the rub: XML was never designed to be written by humans, regardless of how much it looks like text. Unfortunately, humans seem to insist on writing it anyway, especially the XHTML and RSS variants.

I wonder if it wouldn’t be a good idea to have an Apache module that would filter the XML types through some sort of “strictifier” that made sure that everything that came out of the server was completely valid XML. It could come enabled by default… Maybe when I get a few extra round tuits.

A recent Slashdot comment proposes what I think would be a brilliant defense for Linux from SCO legal attacks: Linux is a parody of Unix.

A year ago, when we were moving to St. Louis, I went outside to show the movers which bicycles to take, and discovered that my bike’s seat had been stolen. One day before we moved. In St. Louis, we eventually got a new seat (including a saddle I really rather liked), and since we moved back to the Bay Area, I’ve been biking to the CalTrain station to get to work each morning.

On Monday, my bike seat was stolen again. Today, of course, I finally received in the mail the key to a bicycle locker at the train station.

I think Thompson must have been involved in the design of the Segway. I had occasion to try one out last week; according to their Web site, the Segway’s display “tells you only what you need to know, preserving Segway HT’s intuitive nature….The display transmits information by way of a face, the most basic and universal means of human communication.” When I first stepped onto the Segway, the face turned to a frown, the display flashed red, and the motor made a growling noise. It was very clear that the Segway was mad at me. However, I had no idea why, and it gave me no clue as to what I could do to make it happy.

Was it low on battery? Maybe. Did I have it in the wrong mode? Perhaps. Was it off-balance? Could be. I knew I was doing something wrong, but I had no idea what. So I turned it off and went back inside (I did try again later, and it worked okay; it’s a fun toy. Not worth $5,000, though.) In their quest to make the display “intuitive,” the Segway designers appear only to have succeeded in making the display useless.

Tomorrow, Laura and I drive off to Sun Valley, Idaho for a week of vacationing with my family. Both Mapquest and Yahoo! Maps agree that it’s about 790 miles (give or take). The routes are almost identical, but Mapquest says it will take us 14 hours and 23 minutes and Yahoo! Maps says it will take us 12 hours and 16 minutes. Obviously, Yahoo! expects us to drive much faster. I guess we’ll have to try and oblige.

In the mail today, I got a check from Charter Communications for $7.07, a refund for our partial last month of service in St. Louis. I also got a bill from SBC (for our partial last month of service) for $7.06. To wit, this means that I am one cent richer than I was before I read my mail!

For future reference: If I need any sort of fastener (screw, bolt, washer, pin, nut, whatever), it doesn’t matter that OSH is closer, and The Home Depot is bigger. They won’t have it. Go to Palo Alto Hardware. It’s my favorite hardware store; no matter what obscure screw or pin I’m looking for, they’ve always have it, and in sufficient quantity.

Friday morning, a van drove into the lobby of my building. Besides an armed driver, the van was loaded with toxic chemicals, and a package (addressed to Steve Jobs) containing a bomb. As the building was evacuated, I was asked to help, and I spent half an hour applying pressure to the wounds on the receptionist’s head and what was left of her arm, until the ambulance arrived.

Well, not really. But we did have a “mock emergency drill and building evacuation,” during which all of the above was simulated.

I unpacked the TiVo last night, and spent a good hour in Guided Setup reconfiguring it for our local cable and telephone setup. My TiVo Gripe Of The Day: Season Passes are channel-specific, which is fine, but it’s very frustrating when you move and find yourself with two dozen perfectly useless Season Passes, because NBC is now on KNTV instead of KSDK, etc…. It seems like a nifty feature would be if Guided Setup could notice “hey, you have a bunch of Season Passes for KSDK, which you no longer receive. Is there a local affiliate you’d like to switch them to?” As it is, I had to go through and make a new Season Pass for each program, re-enter the options and re-sort them, then cancel the old Passes. And since this is summer, and not every show has an episode airing in the next two weeks, there are some Season Passes that I can’t recreate right now. I can only hope I’ll remember to do it before I miss something.

The movers came and brought our stuff this afternoon. Our apartment, which Sunday was spacious and empty, is now full. Piles and piles of boxes, with the occasional piece of furniture. I suspect our to-do list for the next few weeks will include a lot of unpacking.

Amazingly, my Palm turned out to still have all of its data intact, over three weeks after it started refusing to power on. It’s happily charging now.

We won’t have DSL for a week or so yet, but the phone service is on, and I’m typing this over a speedy dialup modem connection. My computer picks up about four other wireless networks (they come and go) in range, but amazingly they’re all encrypted. I guess we have a lot of neighbors who are both savvy and a little security-conscious.

I managed to lock the keys in the trunk this morning. That was fun. Especially because I was trying to be in a hurry. Luckily, AAA was over in about half an hour and opened the car, and we were able to retrieve the keys from the trunk before the car’s alarm got too loud.

Fun, though.

This weblog is now on Pacific Time. Which is why this entry, which was written five minutes after the previous one, was also written two hours earlier. BEEP.

Laura and I took possession of our new apartment today. It’s very nice; the movers don’t show up with our stuff until Tuesday, so for now it’s empty (we’re staying at my parents’ right now, and will continue to do so for a few more days). We did go to Cost Plus and get some very nice patio furniture, though.

This whole three-day weekend thing is strange. I keep expecting to wake up and go to work, but there keeps being more weekend. It will be nice next week, once we start sleeping at the new place, to have a much shorter commute to Apple. Maybe I’ll even figure out how to make public transit work, and not have to drive at all. That will be nice.

Last January, when Steve Jobs introduced Keynote and iDVD 3 at the Macworld keynote, I wrote about how bored I was when he spent what seemed an interminable amount of time showing off the new themes in the two programs.

Flash forward five months: Yesterday, for the first time I used Keynote and iDVD 3. And what have I spent nearly every free moment on the Mac doing? That’s right: playing with themes. And showing them to anyone in range.

It turns out Steve was right, after all. Themes are cool.

I discovered this with Google today, when Laura called because she was stuck in traffic, and it appears incredibly useful. It shows all the current traffic “incidents” reported to the CHP (choose your location from the pop-up in the upper left), and lets you track their status. Everything the CHP dispatcher knows, you know.

In this case, it appears there was a “UPS TK VS BLK HOND OR MAZD.” Ouch. At 5:20, they got a tow truck and “ALL LANES OPEN”, although “TOW STUCK IN TRAFFIC” as of 5:41, so that doesn’t sound good. Also, I notice yet another accident at 92 and 35 at 5:36, and I can only hope Laura has gotten over the hill by now.

My brother’s coming into town tonight, and we’re supposed to have dinner with him and my aunt, so I’m hoping not to be too late…