They'd back Xiph's codecs (Ogg Vorbis for audio, Ogg Theora for video) instead of reinventing the wheel yet again. This is how MS would play the open format game, not someone who can actually be believed when they talk about supporting open, well, anything.
But, this is Sun... they're opposed to making smart moves.
I change away from the default white background on nearly everything.
I've picked up a lot of typography knowledge over the years as a web developer, but I won't be able to cite any sources here.
Palettes that are easy to read on paper may not be as easy on a screen, and vice versa. Black/white and white/black cause more eye strain than a combination that has slightly less contrast.
Serif fonts are easier to read on paper, but sans-serif fonts are easier to read on screen.
If you are actually reading (rather than coding or other activities), the ideal line length is between 2 to 3 alphabets (52 to 78 characters).
Line height is important: if blocks of text degrade from lines into a "word find" puzzle, increase the line height (rarely an issue with variable width fonts).
Remember that a pixel is not an absolute physical measurement. Large monitors usually have a resolution much greater than the famed 72 dpi. All modern operating systems have ways to adjust for the actual screen resolution. My 19" CRT at 1600x1200 is actually at 113 dpi.
Using a blue background color on screen comes from the fact that blue caused less wear on early phosphorus laden CRT screens, not because of any benefit to the viewer. I Don't think this is true with modern hardware.
Find a color calibration utility and adjust your monitor's brightness and contrast to fit your room's lighting. Most modern video card drivers include calibration tools.
Don't hesitate to increase your font size, which will probably reduce eye strain all by itself.
PS. Don't change the Windows background to black, or any other dark color, or even try to invert the light/dark colors very much. I tried this once, and much of the UI text became invisible because the classic windows interface palette is not used consistently by windows itself nor by some expensive win32 software (ie, Photoshop). Many strings in various software are hard coded to the default windows palette.
The superdelegate mechanism was created in 1984, I believe. It just hasn't mattered until now. Even still, the Democratic party needs to read this page and adjust it's primary process accordingly.
I don't know what happened in Michigan, but the State legislature (R controlled) and governor (R) of Florida allowed the Democratic primary to be moved up with the support of all but 3 of the democrats in the legislature. If anyone threw Florida's voters anywhere, their state officials threw them out in the garbage.
Didn't we learn the integration lesson from MS and IE (and Word, and Outlook, and Media Player, and...)? Does Mozilla somehow think they won't run into most of the same issues because they're not also an OS vendor, or because they're not Microsoft?
Tolkien deliberately wrote in an "antiquated" manner in order to make the stories seem authentically old, as he was inventing an ancient history. He also had no intention of publishing his works, as far as I can recall. The Hobbit was a sidebar in the Great Story, and LOTR was requested by Allen & Unwin as "more about Hobbits" (obviously only the first and last few chapters fulfill this).
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. The only problem I had was identifying Turin through his numerous name changes. I also thought there could have been more about Nienor, but Tolkien was never adept at, nor probably as interested in, female characters.
For the record, I've read the Silmarillion cover to cover three times, and have never had any issues with Tolkien's archaic style.
How many of the 20 top grossing movies of 2007 were not adaptations, remakes, or franchise installments? How many actually involved original creative development?
For that matter, how many were over-hyped drivel titled "[adjective] Movie" or starring Will Ferrell?
Outside of mind bogglingly huge government fines, which MS seems willing to endure, there's no business reason for MS to actually want interoperability with anything or anyone. If they publish their API's, they open the door for competitors to make inroads, and possibly expose themselves to legal risk based on their past behavior. Once win32 software can run at least as well outside of Windows as it does on Windows, then Windows becomes irrelevant: that's their biggest fear. Their second fear is FOSS developers competing and winning against their products and their partners'.
Any API or documentation that MS publishes has been internally determined to have low or no risk to them. If they published everything, there would be a completely FOSS Windows clone started within months, and the outcome would be similar to how Linux overcame the commercial Unix flavors.
This action, like so many before, is a meaningless charade to make them appear cooperative.
Sweeps months (the viewing periods that set advertising rates for the following months) are November, February, and May.
The strike began in November, when there were still enough episodes produced to keep the air schedules full. With nothing produced since then, there's nothing to save the current sweeps period, and the ads rates will probably slip. If production doesn't resume soon, May sweeps could be even worse.
At this point, I think the writers have the upper hand. I'm sure the studios/networks have been talking to the advertisers to minimize potential losses (that could last until this December), but the only real way to prevent ad revenue losses is to get new shows on air ASAP.
Hillary claiming to be a force of change makes me laugh. After more then a year on the campaign trail, she still can't bring herself to say her vote to authorize military action in Iraq was a mistake. Now she wants to force everyone to buy health insurance? Isn't home owner's and car insurance enough of a burden? The insurance companies are the problem, they should be non-profits where people are forced to buy insurance. Her 1994 health insurance plan did get implemented: ask any military person about TriCare.
Obama on the other hand hasn't been part of the national political establishment for the past 15 years, so when he speaks of change it's at least somewhat believable.
Edwards went the popularist route, which never flies with the parties, sadly.
Kucinich is the most correct candidate, but he also threatens the status quo the most.
When the delegates are counted tomorrow, I predict Obama will end up with a slight edge over Billary, which will be a huge boost for him. Hillary will continue to falter in the later states and Obama will get the nomination, because by the convention, the Dem party will have realized just how unelectable she is (and at least some of the superdelegates switch to him).
I don't believe it's in Hillary's nature to accept a VP position, so so Edwards is Obama's likely choice. Those two can bring the Democrats out of their dementia.
I'm also pulling for some combination of Al Gore, Joe Biden, and Chris Dodd as cabinet members.
No version of IE supports XHTML's correct mime type. XHTML "failed" not because people didn't want to use it, or didn't understand it, but because the majority browser didn't support it. So XHTML is served with the mime type IE does understand, and this is a practical, if far from ideal, compromise. The problem lies with the browser(s), not the users or developers.
I'd rather have a spec that is perfect and correctly implemented than a perverted one that still won't be correctly implemented.
To (hopefully) anyone who understands and advocates XHTML and CSS, HTML5 is a tragic mistake. I can't believe TBL is supporting this garbage. It brings back some (but not all: <i> and <b>, but not <u>) presentational tags and gives them worthless definitions. It's full of concessions to lazy/unskilled developers. It makes XML compliance optional. It's full of niche tags which are so narrowly focused (aside, dialog) that they're almost certainly doomed to lousy browser support. It doesn't address the current inadequacies of forms. It has tons of design flaws and inconsistencies.
Until there are consequences for not following the standards, it doesn't matter what the W3C does: People will continue to make pages and sites that are "just good enough", and browsers will continue to render what they want how they want. In the past, now, and for the foreseeable future, there's no incentive for anyone to do things right other than ego.
I don't get it. The people designing this stuff are supposed to be experts in the field, yet they seem hell bent on force feeding everyone this drivel. If their true goal is the hurl the web into chaos, then they will certainly succeed.
I would tell Congress that I will veto every bill that comes across my desk until bills covering these issues are passed:
A constitutional amendment imposing Congressional term limits: 2 terms in the Senate, 4 terms in the House
Abolishment of corporate personhood
Eliminate Corporate lobbying, period
Make election day a national holiday, electronic voting illegal, and election tampering an act of treason
Restoration of Habeas corpus
Then I would leave the podium and start making phone calls: to begin the process of letting Iraq settle into a more natural state of 3 separate nations, and how to get our troops home.
Office is one of the things that keeps businesses coming back, willing to pay for more abuse. After 11 versions of subtle incompatibilities, you'd think some of them would realize that they're being played.
After Office, kill Exchange. Most businesses consider email so critical that they freak when email is down for a couple of minutes, and don't care that the protocols tolerate this. When they can have a Free, more stable, feature for feature Exchange replacement that doesn't need constant maintenance, they'll stop buying that crap.
I think about usability when I buy, but then I have some understanding of usability, unlike the average buyer.
Example: when I switched mobile carriers a while ago (from Tard-Mobile to Sprint), I passed on the RAZR because the keys were smaller than I wanted and the keypad had no tactile feedback (completely flat, not even a raised dot on the 5 key, iirc).
Form must follow function. When the process is reversed, the result is almost always less than intuitive, practical, comfortable, or any combination.
Good interfaces are self documenting and closely resemble the control target, which wasn't done in the case of your friend's refrigerator and oven.
I doubt most companies have dedicated usability teams, preferring to take a reactive approach of letting such issues surface in focus groups, then deciding if addressing them is feasible. Notable exceptions are Apple and probably Nintendo.
AOL bought Netscape as bargaining power against MS, but then never actually used it that way. Instead, they mistreated what is arguably the most well known brand from the early days of the net in ways that only AOL could. Any other company would have built up Netscape. AOL lets it rot, then bastardizes it with every hare-brained scheme they can think of (dialup ISP, frankenbrowser, lame Digg knockoff), each further damaging the brand. The only smart thing AOL did that had anything to do with Netscape was to create the Mozilla foundation.
Now AOL is just as weak, having abandoned their walled garden, missed broadband altogether, and their only relevant public service is AIM, which has taken off to such a point that they simply aren't capable of killing it, no matter how incompetent they are.
Rest in peace, Netscape. Your long suffering at the hands of your caregiver is at an end.
(Why do I suspect zombie Netscape will rise from the grave in a year or so, when some new executive needs a name for a new pet project? BRAAAAIINNSSS 11.0, now with 250 gazillion free hours of shambling!)
Years ago I read that Ford has a majority stake in the 3rd largest marketing firm in the country (but I can never remember the name of it), which explains why Mustangs appear in everything. Is there any other explanation why a performance car based on a platform that debuted in 1978 could survive the next 26 years on its own merits? (Yes, I know the 1994 Mustang was "all new", which structurally amounted to a new roofline, increased length and width, and crossmembers added between the front seats, not a complete re-enginering.) Before the Probe came out, Ford was seriously considering it as the replacement for the Mustang.
What would have made the most sense is a Pontiac Solstice. GM has left Pontiac in a kind of limbo, the marque could use some positive exposure. Unfortunately, Knight Rider has picked up some cheese factor over the years, and I bet someone high up in GM management (Bob Lutz?) declined for just that reason.
Slashdot Mirror
They'd back Xiph's codecs (Ogg Vorbis for audio, Ogg Theora for video) instead of reinventing the wheel yet again. This is how MS would play the open format game, not someone who can actually be believed when they talk about supporting open, well, anything.
But, this is Sun... they're opposed to making smart moves.
I change away from the default white background on nearly everything.
I've picked up a lot of typography knowledge over the years as a web developer, but I won't be able to cite any sources here.
PS. Don't change the Windows background to black, or any other dark color, or even try to invert the light/dark colors very much. I tried this once, and much of the UI text became invisible because the classic windows interface palette is not used consistently by windows itself nor by some expensive win32 software (ie, Photoshop). Many strings in various software are hard coded to the default windows palette.
The superdelegate mechanism was created in 1984, I believe. It just hasn't mattered until now. Even still, the Democratic party needs to read this page and adjust it's primary process accordingly.
I don't know what happened in Michigan, but the State legislature (R controlled) and governor (R) of Florida allowed the Democratic primary to be moved up with the support of all but 3 of the democrats in the legislature. If anyone threw Florida's voters anywhere, their state officials threw them out in the garbage.
Is if ISO contracted Diebold, er, I mean, Premier Election systems, to tally the votes. This is the most ludicrous thing I've seen since 2000.
Didn't we learn the integration lesson from MS and IE (and Word, and Outlook, and Media Player, and...)? Does Mozilla somehow think they won't run into most of the same issues because they're not also an OS vendor, or because they're not Microsoft?
Let apps be apps, let OSes be the OSes.
The Acid tests are test cases used to assess a browser's web standards support.
Yet, in the explanation of the incorrect rendering at the IE blog, AciveX is invoked, with some excuse about cross-domain security.
ActiveX has absolutely nothing to do with Web Standards.
This leads me to believe that MS plans to keep playing the Internet game by their rules for a while yet.
Tolkien deliberately wrote in an "antiquated" manner in order to make the stories seem authentically old, as he was inventing an ancient history. He also had no intention of publishing his works, as far as I can recall. The Hobbit was a sidebar in the Great Story, and LOTR was requested by Allen & Unwin as "more about Hobbits" (obviously only the first and last few chapters fulfill this).
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. The only problem I had was identifying Turin through his numerous name changes. I also thought there could have been more about Nienor, but Tolkien was never adept at, nor probably as interested in, female characters.
For the record, I've read the Silmarillion cover to cover three times, and have never had any issues with Tolkien's archaic style.
How many of the 20 top grossing movies of 2007 were not adaptations, remakes, or franchise installments? How many actually involved original creative development?
For that matter, how many were over-hyped drivel titled "[adjective] Movie" or starring Will Ferrell?
Hollywood is out of ideas. Period.
AV industry is Black Eye for Microsoft.
Outside of mind bogglingly huge government fines, which MS seems willing to endure, there's no business reason for MS to actually want interoperability with anything or anyone. If they publish their API's, they open the door for competitors to make inroads, and possibly expose themselves to legal risk based on their past behavior. Once win32 software can run at least as well outside of Windows as it does on Windows, then Windows becomes irrelevant: that's their biggest fear. Their second fear is FOSS developers competing and winning against their products and their partners'.
Any API or documentation that MS publishes has been internally determined to have low or no risk to them. If they published everything, there would be a completely FOSS Windows clone started within months, and the outcome would be similar to how Linux overcame the commercial Unix flavors.
This action, like so many before, is a meaningless charade to make them appear cooperative.
"Yahoo! is our search strategy now. We've spent years trying to find a paper clip with a junkyard crane magnet, and we've failed."
...from a perspective not saturated by fear is to revert to the policies and procedures in place on September 10, 2001
The Crashtastic Four!
(Apologies to Marvel Comics)
Ask and ye shall receive.
Sweeps months (the viewing periods that set advertising rates for the following months) are November, February, and May.
The strike began in November, when there were still enough episodes produced to keep the air schedules full. With nothing produced since then, there's nothing to save the current sweeps period, and the ads rates will probably slip. If production doesn't resume soon, May sweeps could be even worse.
At this point, I think the writers have the upper hand. I'm sure the studios/networks have been talking to the advertisers to minimize potential losses (that could last until this December), but the only real way to prevent ad revenue losses is to get new shows on air ASAP.
The given reasons (August 2006 Heathrow plot) for the liquids restrictions are bullshit. The real reasons are highly classified.
Hillary claiming to be a force of change makes me laugh. After more then a year on the campaign trail, she still can't bring herself to say her vote to authorize military action in Iraq was a mistake. Now she wants to force everyone to buy health insurance? Isn't home owner's and car insurance enough of a burden? The insurance companies are the problem, they should be non-profits where people are forced to buy insurance. Her 1994 health insurance plan did get implemented: ask any military person about TriCare.
Obama on the other hand hasn't been part of the national political establishment for the past 15 years, so when he speaks of change it's at least somewhat believable.
Edwards went the popularist route, which never flies with the parties, sadly.
Kucinich is the most correct candidate, but he also threatens the status quo the most.
When the delegates are counted tomorrow, I predict Obama will end up with a slight edge over Billary, which will be a huge boost for him. Hillary will continue to falter in the later states and Obama will get the nomination, because by the convention, the Dem party will have realized just how unelectable she is (and at least some of the superdelegates switch to him).
I don't believe it's in Hillary's nature to accept a VP position, so so Edwards is Obama's likely choice. Those two can bring the Democrats out of their dementia.
I'm also pulling for some combination of Al Gore, Joe Biden, and Chris Dodd as cabinet members.
No version of IE supports XHTML's correct mime type. XHTML "failed" not because people didn't want to use it, or didn't understand it, but because the majority browser didn't support it. So XHTML is served with the mime type IE does understand, and this is a practical, if far from ideal, compromise. The problem lies with the browser(s), not the users or developers.
I'd rather have a spec that is perfect and correctly implemented than a perverted one that still won't be correctly implemented.
To (hopefully) anyone who understands and advocates XHTML and CSS, HTML5 is a tragic mistake. I can't believe TBL is supporting this garbage. It brings back some (but not all: <i> and <b>, but not <u>) presentational tags and gives them worthless definitions. It's full of concessions to lazy/unskilled developers. It makes XML compliance optional. It's full of niche tags which are so narrowly focused (aside, dialog) that they're almost certainly doomed to lousy browser support. It doesn't address the current inadequacies of forms. It has tons of design flaws and inconsistencies.
Until there are consequences for not following the standards, it doesn't matter what the W3C does: People will continue to make pages and sites that are "just good enough", and browsers will continue to render what they want how they want. In the past, now, and for the foreseeable future, there's no incentive for anyone to do things right other than ego.
I don't get it. The people designing this stuff are supposed to be experts in the field, yet they seem hell bent on force feeding everyone this drivel. If their true goal is the hurl the web into chaos, then they will certainly succeed.
I would tell Congress that I will veto every bill that comes across my desk until bills covering these issues are passed:
Then I would leave the podium and start making phone calls: to begin the process of letting Iraq settle into a more natural state of 3 separate nations, and how to get our troops home.
Just to clarify, the Fairness Doctrine was abandoned by the FCC in 1987. It was adopted in the 1930's to govern bias in radio broadcasts.
I personally consider the day the Fairness Doctrine died to be the same day Fox News was conceived. The gestation period lasted nine years.
Office is one of the things that keeps businesses coming back, willing to pay for more abuse. After 11 versions of subtle incompatibilities, you'd think some of them would realize that they're being played.
After Office, kill Exchange. Most businesses consider email so critical that they freak when email is down for a couple of minutes, and don't care that the protocols tolerate this. When they can have a Free, more stable, feature for feature Exchange replacement that doesn't need constant maintenance, they'll stop buying that crap.
I think about usability when I buy, but then I have some understanding of usability, unlike the average buyer.
Example: when I switched mobile carriers a while ago (from Tard-Mobile to Sprint), I passed on the RAZR because the keys were smaller than I wanted and the keypad had no tactile feedback (completely flat, not even a raised dot on the 5 key, iirc).
Form must follow function. When the process is reversed, the result is almost always less than intuitive, practical, comfortable, or any combination.
Good interfaces are self documenting and closely resemble the control target, which wasn't done in the case of your friend's refrigerator and oven.
I doubt most companies have dedicated usability teams, preferring to take a reactive approach of letting such issues surface in focus groups, then deciding if addressing them is feasible. Notable exceptions are Apple and probably Nintendo.
AOL bought Netscape as bargaining power against MS, but then never actually used it that way. Instead, they mistreated what is arguably the most well known brand from the early days of the net in ways that only AOL could. Any other company would have built up Netscape. AOL lets it rot, then bastardizes it with every hare-brained scheme they can think of (dialup ISP, frankenbrowser, lame Digg knockoff), each further damaging the brand. The only smart thing AOL did that had anything to do with Netscape was to create the Mozilla foundation.
Now AOL is just as weak, having abandoned their walled garden, missed broadband altogether, and their only relevant public service is AIM, which has taken off to such a point that they simply aren't capable of killing it, no matter how incompetent they are.
Rest in peace, Netscape. Your long suffering at the hands of your caregiver is at an end.
(Why do I suspect zombie Netscape will rise from the grave in a year or so, when some new executive needs a name for a new pet project? BRAAAAIINNSSS 11.0, now with 250 gazillion free hours of shambling!)
Well then, it this case it was Ford.
Years ago I read that Ford has a majority stake in the 3rd largest marketing firm in the country (but I can never remember the name of it), which explains why Mustangs appear in everything. Is there any other explanation why a performance car based on a platform that debuted in 1978 could survive the next 26 years on its own merits? (Yes, I know the 1994 Mustang was "all new", which structurally amounted to a new roofline, increased length and width, and crossmembers added between the front seats, not a complete re-enginering.) Before the Probe came out, Ford was seriously considering it as the replacement for the Mustang.
What would have made the most sense is a Pontiac Solstice. GM has left Pontiac in a kind of limbo, the marque could use some positive exposure. Unfortunately, Knight Rider has picked up some cheese factor over the years, and I bet someone high up in GM management (Bob Lutz?) declined for just that reason.