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Engineering? http://astro.sfasu.edu/News/uploads/Engine-Earring.jpg

Yes, but Hawking thinks it applies. The linked article is from a while ago.

If you don't have a Masters degree or equivalent in a physical science, then you are absolutely not qualified to interpret any climate data or its validity, so stop trying.

Excuse me sir, but your logical fallacy is showing.

"Anyone" huh? So what now I'm a nobody? There are plenty of people out there that go to great lengths to switch back to a black background. Take a look at the VIM colour schemes people create.

You missed my point. I was referring to people who must context switch constantly in a single work session between a paper medium and a white on black computer screen. These people would easily suffer from eye strain. The consistency of the same color scheme on both paper and the computer screen is appreciated in such scenarios and these scenarios are very common.

I'm not sure what you're looking for in substantiation.

Evidently not, because your reply had absolutely nothing to do with what I asked for. I stated that your original argument implies that if printing black paper with white text were equally as cost effective as printing white paper with black text, then the black paper with white text would be the overwhelming majority preference by most people. You must substantiate that implication.

Cite your own sources ... Why should I spend the time and effort digging up references for you?

Since you're the one asserting that the vast majority of all the content on the internet has picked the incorrect color scheme (a not generally accepted position), the burden of proof lies on you, the asserter.

However, I'll bite.
- Here is a survey indicating black on white as the clear preference: http://hubel.sfasu.edu/research/survreslts.html (it is interesting to note that white on black does well too because the higher the contrast, the better. The ZernBurn folks could learn a thing or two from this.)
- Here are two substantiations demonstrating a preference for black on white in order to match surrounding light level as I've previously argued: http://www.office-ergo.com/setting.htm and http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200608/light_text_on_dark_background_vs_readability/ (I'm citing the article, not the Digg discussion)

Oh gimme a break and stop being so dishonest. You can't get more personal that suggesting tht someone is happy with an inferior solution because they're a basement dweller with no social skills.

It's called a joke, as was spelled out in my original post. It's also a very common one on Slashdot. Since your account is older than mine and has many more posts than mine, I'd assumed you'd be familiar with it. I'd invoke the similar "you must be new here" joke at this time as well, but you might get irrationally offended by that too. ;)

That at least makes you a liar for suggesting I'm alone.

I never suggested you were alone. I suggested you are in the vast minority. Which you are.

I'll tell you what. Here's just one. Count the number of dark colour schemes.
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~maverick/VimColorSchemeTest/index-pl.html

Which proves what exactly?

Fuck off ... Hypocrite ... It's on Digg so it should be right at your level ... If it gives you such pleasure being a childish troll, I pity you.

All those ad hominems and you're calling me a troll? Don't you find that the least bit ironic?

...and as a link http://hubel.sfasu.edu/research/Oxford.html...

It's a study from some folks at Stephen F. Austin University. They studied average time elapsed to find and process a particular piece of information on a screen rather than the strain it produced. Making information easier to see may clearly speed productivity, which is a good thing.

They also studied textured vs. plain backgrounds besides three different colors of background (gray, blue, yellow). The most important sentence in the synopsis would appear to be:

In general, the plain backgrounds led to faster search times than did the medium-textured backgrounds, and the blue backgrounds led to slower and more variable search times than the grey or yellow backgrounds.

Hopefully we don't find that the fastest color scheme is the worst on the eyes. Also, it's worth noting that they don't appear to change the foreground color, so these results may have to do with the combination of colors as much as the background colors by themselves.

Note: I'm not the AC that posted the URL. I'm just expanding on what was already there.

The few scientific studies I've found on readability indicate that there is no color scheme that significantly enhances readability -- I would think readability would only be part of the issue regarding the eye strain problem.

So, what about making your own bias light for your monitor? That will _definitely_ reduce eye strain.

For a scholarly work on the subject, see http://hubel.sfasu.edu/research/AHNCUR.html

Here are two small studies that may answer some of your questions.

http://hubel.sfasu.edu/research/survreslts.html
"Recently, internet users assisted Dr. Lauren Scharff and student Alyson Hill of Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, with a survey designed to measure the readability of various text/background color combinations. Below is a summary of the results of this survey and a discussion of the research project which was designed to study this topic further."

"The survey of readability of different color combinations showed the following trends (see above figure). Not surprisingly, certain foreground/background color combinations were rated more highly than others."

The references cited in this article may lead you to some additional relevant information.

http://hubel.sfasu.edu/research/AHNCUR.html
"Readability Of Websites With Various Foreground/Background Color Combinations, Font Types And Word Styles"
Department of Psychology
Stephen F. Austin State University 1997

"As predicted, significant main effects and interactions were found for font type, word style, and color combination. For example, plain text is consistently responded to more quickly than italicized. These main effects suggest that one can make general recommendations to screen display designers. However, the significant interactions highlight the fact that there is no one color combination, font type, or word style to use, but rather all conditions affect one another."

Here are two small studies that may answer some of your questions.

http://hubel.sfasu.edu/research/survreslts.html
"Recently, internet users assisted Dr. Lauren Scharff and student Alyson Hill of Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, with a survey designed to measure the readability of various text/background color combinations. Below is a summary of the results of this survey and a discussion of the research project which was designed to study this topic further."

"The survey of readability of different color combinations showed the following trends (see above figure). Not surprisingly, certain foreground/background color combinations were rated more highly than others."

The references cited in this article may lead you to some additional relevant information.

http://hubel.sfasu.edu/research/AHNCUR.html
"Readability Of Websites With Various Foreground/Background Color Combinations, Font Types And Word Styles"
Department of Psychology
Stephen F. Austin State University 1997

"As predicted, significant main effects and interactions were found for font type, word style, and color combination. For example, plain text is consistently responded to more quickly than italicized. These main effects suggest that one can make general recommendations to screen display designers. However, the significant interactions highlight the fact that there is no one color combination, font type, or word style to use, but rather all conditions affect one another."

According to this study, green on yellow is the best color scheme in the most conditions.
Although the study is kinda dated, I believe it still applies.

Green on yellow, right?

I found this study that found that green text on a yellow background is the easiest to read:
http://hubel.sfasu.edu/research/AHNCUR.html

They only tested for dark colors on light background and not light colors on dark background so I wonder if it really is the case that green on black is the best or if other color combinations are actually better. I know this doesn't have anything to bear on the aesthetic appearance of a website, but I thought it was interesting. I mean look at Jacob Nielson's site and how ugly a supposed usability expert's site is.

No reason to be facetious. That was the quote from TFA and there is real science behind the superhighway or whatever you want to call the gravitational assist network found by Martin Lo for slow, low energy transfers.

I'm not screaming chicken little, though I think it is the kind of thing where you don't really know the risk until you spend the money to investigate. Like these guys did. Last week astronomers found a huge number of the nearby galaxies are all pointed the same way, who would have imagined that. So I am not afraid per se but it would not be irrational to be afraid given we know so little.

Anyway FYI the most recent extinction level event of which I am aware was 13 years ago. In March 1994 as you probably remember a train of 1-2 kilometer diameter fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy struck Jupiter. The biggest one according to this link was a 6 MILLION megaton blast, 600 times the world's arsenal it says. Luckily Jupiter must catch most of the maverick objects. You remember how Sandia National Laboratory modeled the blast in advance (correctly IIRC) using their nuclear weapons simulator? Just because the dinosaur killer was so long ago and the crater is so big you don't see it from the ground doesn't mean these things are old news. I submit that we ought to spend as much monitoring objects in the solar system that we spend on say, pop music.

There's tons of research that black text on a white background is easiest to read. My (biased) quote:

...the most readable color combination is black text on white background; overall, there is a stronger preference for any combination containing black. The two least readable combinations were red on green and fuchsia on blue. White on blue and red on yellow were ranked fairly high, while green on yellow and white on fuchsia were ranked fairly low. All others fell somewhere between these extremes.

Also, in every color combination surveyed, the darker text on a lighter background was rated more readable than its inverse (e.g. blue text on white background ranked higher then white text on blue background). [From a study by Dr. Lauren Scharff and student Alyson Hill of Stephen F. Austin State University.]

So I'd ask how much power savings do we trade for optometrist bills.

But you can choose your own (biased) answer from the list if you Google "readability text color studies" and check out the 1 million+ results.

Also fixed-width is very important too. It's harder to read wide columns.

Public Viewing Session

The observatory will be open to the public on Friday, October 28th at 8:00pm weather permitting.
Venus shines brightly in the west-southwest just before sunset. It's second in brightness only to the moon after sunset. After night falls, you'll find Mars rising in the east. Mars is closest to Earth this week and next! It's shining brilliantly at magnitude -2.2 in Aries near the Taurus border. It rises fiery yellow-orange in the east-northeast in twilight, blazes high in the eastern sky by 10 p.m., and moves over to the west by dawn. And it's rising earlier every day. In a telescope Mars is 20 arcseconds wide. For a couple of weeks it remains essentially as large as when at its very closest on the night of October 29th. Check out recent amateur images of the planet including its dust storm here: http://skyandtelescope.com/observing/objects/plane ts/article_1612_1.asp

SFA OBSERVATORY NOTES http://www.physics.sfasu.edu/observatory/obs.htm

The SFA Observatory's viewing sessions are intended for visitors of all ages and are free of charge. Since these are outdoor events, poor weather conditions may force a cancellation. The current weather report can be found here. To reach the SFA Observatory dial 936-569-0102 and for maps and directions http://www.physics.sfasu.edu/observatory/tour_form .html. We have free SFA Star Charts that you can download and print http://members.cox.net/astro7/SFAStarCharts.html. To see what's up in the sky see this Week's Sky at a Glance.

For larger groups please email me in advance so that I can have additional help available.
In addition to our public viewing session at the SFA Observatory you may also want to attend a planetarium show on a Friday night. Here's the planetarium schedule: http://www.physics.sfasu.edu/planetarium/index.htm

Public Viewing Session

The observatory will be open to the public on Friday, October 28th at 8:00pm weather permitting.
Venus shines brightly in the west-southwest just before sunset. It's second in brightness only to the moon after sunset. After night falls, you'll find Mars rising in the east. Mars is closest to Earth this week and next! It's shining brilliantly at magnitude -2.2 in Aries near the Taurus border. It rises fiery yellow-orange in the east-northeast in twilight, blazes high in the eastern sky by 10 p.m., and moves over to the west by dawn. And it's rising earlier every day. In a telescope Mars is 20 arcseconds wide. For a couple of weeks it remains essentially as large as when at its very closest on the night of October 29th. Check out recent amateur images of the planet including its dust storm here: http://skyandtelescope.com/observing/objects/plane ts/article_1612_1.asp

SFA OBSERVATORY NOTES http://www.physics.sfasu.edu/observatory/obs.htm

The SFA Observatory's viewing sessions are intended for visitors of all ages and are free of charge. Since these are outdoor events, poor weather conditions may force a cancellation. The current weather report can be found here. To reach the SFA Observatory dial 936-569-0102 and for maps and directions http://www.physics.sfasu.edu/observatory/tour_form .html. We have free SFA Star Charts that you can download and print http://members.cox.net/astro7/SFAStarCharts.html. To see what's up in the sky see this Week's Sky at a Glance.

For larger groups please email me in advance so that I can have additional help available.
In addition to our public viewing session at the SFA Observatory you may also want to attend a planetarium show on a Friday night. Here's the planetarium schedule: http://www.physics.sfasu.edu/planetarium/index.htm

Public Viewing Session

The observatory will be open to the public on Friday, October 28th at 8:00pm weather permitting.
Venus shines brightly in the west-southwest just before sunset. It's second in brightness only to the moon after sunset. After night falls, you'll find Mars rising in the east. Mars is closest to Earth this week and next! It's shining brilliantly at magnitude -2.2 in Aries near the Taurus border. It rises fiery yellow-orange in the east-northeast in twilight, blazes high in the eastern sky by 10 p.m., and moves over to the west by dawn. And it's rising earlier every day. In a telescope Mars is 20 arcseconds wide. For a couple of weeks it remains essentially as large as when at its very closest on the night of October 29th. Check out recent amateur images of the planet including its dust storm here: http://skyandtelescope.com/observing/objects/plane ts/article_1612_1.asp

SFA OBSERVATORY NOTES http://www.physics.sfasu.edu/observatory/obs.htm

The SFA Observatory's viewing sessions are intended for visitors of all ages and are free of charge. Since these are outdoor events, poor weather conditions may force a cancellation. The current weather report can be found here. To reach the SFA Observatory dial 936-569-0102 and for maps and directions http://www.physics.sfasu.edu/observatory/tour_form .html. We have free SFA Star Charts that you can download and print http://members.cox.net/astro7/SFAStarCharts.html. To see what's up in the sky see this Week's Sky at a Glance.

For larger groups please email me in advance so that I can have additional help available.
In addition to our public viewing session at the SFA Observatory you may also want to attend a planetarium show on a Friday night. Here's the planetarium schedule: http://www.physics.sfasu.edu/planetarium/index.htm

Serifs DO help reading on paper because the "little thignies" (serifs) that extend perpendicular to stroke ends help the eye denote where the stroke actually ends. And it also helps greatly to differentiate different letters, such as capital "i", lower-case "l" and the digit one, a thing impossible to do in a (otherwise beautiful) font like "Gill Sans".

Thank you for the review of chapter 1 of the typography textbook. However, if you turn to chapter 2, I believe you may find some surprises...

The conventional wisdom that serifs are far superior for blocks of text has been challenged by several recent studies. This was the first article I found on-line in a quick search, and seems to cite several relevant studies if you're interested.

You might also like to know that since adults generally read by recognising word shapes rather than individual letters, the fact that some sans-serif faces barely distinguish a capital I and lowercase l makes surprisingly little difference to the readability (as opposed to the perceived legibility) of a body of text. In fact, extra features as found on, say, a serifed letter C can actually make the word shapres harder to distinguish than the sans-serif equivalent, reducing clarity in word forms and ultimately compromising reading speed.

"One of the great things about flies is that you can get them to come to you," he said. Hence the downside of the fully autonomous robot: it will have to use sewage or excrement to attract the flies and is bound to smell appalling.

Hello, McFly! I think our photosynthetic brethren figured out the solution to this problem a few gazillion years ago. The answer is flowers!

It sounds like these researchers are already taking this behemoth as their example. Great: I, for one, welcome our new Giant Corpse Flower overlords. But why not jump forward a few million years? A rose by any other name, you know.

On the other hand, nobody cares if the robot eats house flies. Butterflies might be another thing altogether. Won't someone please think of the Butterflies?

Some random "web development" site

Scroll down a bit to get to the chars per line bit

All of these basically agree that more than 80 chars per line is quite hard to read.

We live nearby, so I took the kids to Nacogdoches to see the huge flower. On Saturday (7/10), the plant (named Jack, as previously noted) was 4'10" and had started to slow down. We and Dawn (the research assistant) noticed that Jack was starting to ooze a bit of fluid, and Dawn speculated that the Big Event was about to occur -- the oozing may have been some overflow from the chemical cocktail brewing inside.

Sunday, Jack's frills began to open, and by Monday night, he/she was in bloom. We're not making the drive again, but the pictures are great. Here's a link to the photo gallery (let's see how their IS department holds up):

jackpics.htm

The best thing about driving to Deep East Texas to see the flower: there's no crowds, no lines, no big-city hoopla (I'd have never known if it weren't for Slashdot). Just you, the researchers, a rather rickety greenhouse, and a very, very large plant.

At Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, TX is also preparing to bloom. SFASU Arboretum

> "Pain requires concious attention"

But then there is phantom limb pain, which is in no way connected to one's objective reality.

It's been done.

You are approved, biatch. - Mad G Money Thug

4. Ants in space "Yet if not for the Librarian Ants, all of us might still be living on Earth today..."

Xephem (a planetarium and analysis program for linux) is very cool because it can both pull the sky from your LX200 telescope or by replacing the telescope driver with a perl script, it can download part of the sky from an online database, after which you can do realtime image processing on it.

It can also match stars in the sky to stars in the database. So far I have only been able to pull down large segments of the sky at once, but as soon as I can clear the disk space I'll be trying some other pieces of software to try and download smaller pieces of the sky. Starry Night also downloads DSS (Digital Sky Survey) images I believe.

NASA Skyview service
Multimission Archive
StarView
Software for different platforms (or check freshmeat.net)
Serious scientific platforms/data
Skyview (available at IPAC) is available as linux binary and installs quickly at 10mb. It lets you do image analysis with text commands. I have not used it a lot myself.
AstroWeb