CSIRO, Australia's governmental science organisation, is to host the local W3C office. There's a short, uninformed and generally poor summary at ABC News and an official press release at CSIRO.
Can Drupal not handle certain URLs? I cannot paste the actual CSIRO link without error.
Note the elements in both press releases that summarise Australian government attitudes to science and technology:
- Basic research is a waste of time. Only applied research matters.
- If it makes money and involves corporations, so much the better.
- But this is all about free and open standards...so how do we make money...
- ...now we're confused. Just what is the point of all this?
- Ah wait, Team Australia. It's the Web with an Australian twist (don't get me started on Sensis).
- Hang on, the Web is by nature global and unbounded. Now we're confused again.
Well, I'm sure it will be great, but you can't trust the media or even the CSIRO press office to give you any useful information about what it means.
Comments
The CSIRO has won a bid to
I agree, it is a bit cringe worthy. Hosting the office, which was previously at the DSTC, will not put Australia in any central role for defining standards for the web. In fact the W3C doesn't actually define standards, it offers recommendations. And the process of developing those recommendations is done at an international level.
The W3C office in Australia is (I believe) more of an outreach program for the W3C. Maybe, just maybe there really is a problem with Australia being isolated from the rest of the world. I know that may seem like an insane notion given this the year 2005 and we have cable TV, the Internet yadda yadda yadda. But how much of that information is trustworthy for decision makers in Australia ? What I mean is how often do decisions get made on the basis of information gleaned of the Internet and mailing lists ? In my limited experience with "higher level" political types it is all done on the basis of face to face recommendations from colleagues...
Oh well...