[ILUG] Worst Irish website competition

[Michele Neylon :: Blacknight Solutions]

> Hey all,
> 	I was wondering if it would be fun to compile a list of
> "worst Irish website" from a GNU/Linux point of view.  There
> would be four categories
> * Government - waste of our money category,
> * Private companies - waste of their money category,
> * General - waste of time category,
> * Special worst tech website category.
> 
> The Government category would include all the county
> councils, RTE, Gardai, universities etc...
> 
> The Private category would include all websites owned by
> Irish companies, not limited to the .ie domain.
> 
> The General category includes Irish sites not in the previous
> two categories.
> 
> The Special category includes Irish tech companies, tech
> institutions (such as linux.ie) etc...

Why are you looking for the worst anyway? If the idea behind this "bit of
fun" is to promote OSS it would make a lot more sense to take a positive
viewpoint. If you want to go clobbering companies whose sites don't fit with
your definitions you are not going to achieve as much as you could achieve
through recognition of those who do.

> 
> What the sites would be marked on:
> * Firefox and Konqueror compatability:  This covers all the
> main GNU/Linux browsers.  I use Epiphany, which is based on
> Gecko, which we all know is the same rendering engine that
> Firefox uses.  If a site doesn't work in these browsers, it's bad.
> * links/lynx compat: It'd be nice if the site was usable
> through the venerable text browsers.
> * Documents: A website distributing documents in closed formats lose.
> Closed formats are MS Word, Powerpoint, Corel WordPerfect
> etc...  open formats are PDF, RTF, OASIS OpenDocument.

I'd agree with that, but not for the reasons you provide

> * Media: A website containing multimedia in a closed format lose.
> Closed media formats are WMA, Flash, Quicktime, RealAudio/Video etc...
> open formats are OGG Vorbis and Theora.  Mp3 is a half mark.

That's rubbish. We, for example, use Flash on our site to provide end users
with tutorials. According to your criteria we should be penalised for that,
yet you don't seem capable to offer a viable alternative.

> 
> Some people may argue that the documents and media
> classifications are incorrect as we can open MS Word and
> RealAudio/Flash on GNU/Linux.  My answer is that we don't
> have the MS Word spec, so it's not fully compatible.  In the
> case of RealAudio/Flash, one can download players for these
> formats on ia32 and amd64, but not on the other 14 or so
> platforms supported by the Linux kernel...thus they don't
> work under Linux just on Linux/ia32.

And which planet do you live on?
You are not going to either further yourself or OSS by trying to bludgeon
people into using completely open source formats.
Sure, it might be nice if people could use them, but if someone using a
linux laptop or desktop can view the site or open the file, surely that is
enough?

> 
> It's just a bit of fun in no way promoted by the ILUG
> mafia^H^H^H^H^Hcouncil of elders.  So at last...a thread to
> flame people who probably aren't listening...
> 
> Oh yeah, award the website a mark from 0 to 10.  10 for
> perfectly compatible (we shouldn't see any of these marks)
> and 0 for abysmal.

If you are looking for the worst then it would be more logical to do it in
the other order with 10 being the worst and 0 being neutral.



Mr Michele Neylon
Blacknight Internet Solutions Ltd
Hosting, co-location & domains
http://www.blacknight.ie/
Tel. +353 59 9137101
Fax. +353 59 9146970
http://www.blacknight.ie/specialoffers.html