Well, actually it is exactly what I like to see, I know that I can convert PAL to NTSC effectively and am quite happy to see these archives available. If I have a need for any of the archives in a production I know exactly where to turn, and would be willing to pay any licensing fee's. My comment above was directed specifically to the lack of any licensing information regarding the still's available from the site. These would also be highly useful in a variety ways, yet there is no concrete information regarding their use. In their defense they may have been so focused on the use of the video/film assets that they failed to realize that the stills are a valuable asset for re-use as well.
Producing any professional work without having clear licensing can be suicidal, so the still images on their site are off-limits as it were.
I applaude their achievement, and hope that more US based archives take their lead. However I would much rather see even a more restrictive, but concrete licensing posted clearly.
"Now you are here you can preview items from the entire 3500 hour British Pathe Film Archive which covers news, sport, social history and entertainment from 1896 to 1970.
"You can also license higher resolution copies of the same items for PowerPoint Presentations and Web Publishing, or simply buy a still from the item for private use.
"Requests for other rights or formats should be addressed to archive.sales@itn.co.uk
Just type in what you are looking for above and within minutes you could own a little piece of history!"
Their FAQ sortof addresses the allowable uses of the previews:
"What am I allowed to do with my free Preview Files?
"They were made available on-line principally as an educational resource. We hope that they will stimulate an interest in modern history amongst younger people, and help older generations to understand the 20th century in a broader context.
"We encourage users to share Preview Files that they download with colleagues and friends around the world via e-mail. We would ask that this is not achieved by publishing Preview Files on-line. The only instance where we feel this might be appropriate is within a closed user group in an educational environment.
"Above all we would like users to enjoy discovering the past through our wonderful archive, and would hope that in return the images downloaded are not misused in any way."
Really specific there, one would think they could come up with a slightly more defined policy.
On the site that handles sales of British Pathe assets they specifically state that:
"The British Pathe archive is perhaps the world's most famous newsreel collection. Spanning the period 1896-1970, the collection comprises 3,500 hours and contains some of the most iconic images ever caught on camera. The entire archive has been remastered and fully digitised. It is now possible to view every second of this outstanding collection online through this web site and there is absolutely no charge for this facility.
"Unfortunately, British Pathe material is not available for license to companies based in North America or other NTSC territories."
Of course that is for the actual footage, no help with licensing for the still images though. A great archive and it will be an excellent resource for many. Hopefully they can clarify the use of the preview still images though.
...before these two signed on. Well actually Skypes is not anyhting really impressive VoIP anyways. and SIPPhone's main attractor is it is an all in one SIP device as opposed to a router that a phone gets hooked to, and that they are not operating with month to month fee's- buy the hardware and your done. Of course though they are not a telco or any for of carrier but more a directory service (411) and hardware retailer. Maybe he fully expects that he can make enough profit from each sale then bugger out at the right moment when having some minimum form of month to month is needed. In the meantime there are a number of VoIP systems and companies that have been around for a while now. Vonage, Lightspeed Communications and others. They have been in the markets now for at least a year, and have been picking up speed steadily. Enough so that in a number of states the PUC's are itching to regulate and apply regulatory fees to them. Luckily the Fed courts have so far seen the light and said no. Oh and yes they are standards based, in fact they use a number of standards including SIP just like the SIPPhones...in fact the SIPPhones should be able to be used with Vonage or a similar company, of course getting one of those comapnies to support it might be a different story.
You would have to pay me to use a standard phone companies services for telephony anymore.
No, it was not intended to say one should not trust Kevin because he works for MS. If that had been the case I would have not put it in the title and then used something along the lines of:
A hack who works for M$
The fact that he is a psychologist for Microsoft isn't neccessarily what is important. In fact those are his qualifications not dis
I thought it interesting that he delivered a talk just a few days after the story appeared on/. to a highly respected typogrphy convention. I look forward to hopefully seeing a transcript of his talk.
Actually he is a Pschologist who works for Microsoft on issues of user interface, and specifically onTrueType and connected technologies. He was at ATypI as a representative of Microsoft, and as a cognative psychologist. I meant no slant is calling him a Microsoft Psychologist. In point of fact it was simply a short and efficient method of communicating that Kevin is a cognative psychologist who works for Microsoft and was making a presentation as a representative of Microsoft, based on research both from his Doctoral and his continuing job functions at Microsoft.
Not everyone here means Evil when they say Microsoft, even if they don't in general like Microsoft. If I had meant Evil I would have used the proper/. symbology - "Micro$oft" or the generally accepted alternative "MicroShaft"
I respect that they care enough about UI and useability issues to employ a wide range of extremely smart individuals, many recognized in their respective fields, in specialties not generally associated with Computer Science and sfotware publishing.
I just updated my personal site with my take on the situation, but in summary:
Reading is an extremely complex function. Typography, cognitive psychology and physiology have all made excellent contributions to understanding the process, but as yet we still do not empirically know exactly how reading functions. Word shape - both the external outline and the internal contrast - do affect legibility and reading, but it can be shown that the letter -> phoneme -> word hypothesis is a major factor as well. I believe that the reality is that reading is mix of the models. The physiology of reading is fairly well documented, we focus at a point and "read" in a span of 4-6 letter spaces left and 12-16 letter spaces right of the focus point. The focus scan time is reportedly 50-200ms. In that space we read the word shape and the letter forms simultaneously. When we recognize the word shape, from memory or by context, we discard the rest and move on. Otherwise we assemble the letters into phonemes and awords using context and experience. If that fails we rescan the word and if need be switch to a serialized reading of the individual letter forms to constuct the phonemes and word. This is most common with extremely long compound words and completely foreign words.
All the research I have seen has shown the focus times to be in the range of 50-200ms, from what you have seen is this correct?
Although I am not expertly qualified in these fields, I was trained and have worked in typography, and my wife was trained in linguistics and early education. Our personal experience points to a much more complicated model than what any of the recent stories openly allow for. I really would like to see a transcript of Kevin's presentation at ATypI, as he supposedly tore down and supported aspects of each of the three most common hypotheses of reading, but he supports the parallel letter recognition -> phoneme -> word model as the accurate one. I want to see if or how he meshes the models, as I feel that that is more likely what is happening for most readers.
I believe not only how you learned the language but also what type of learner (visual vs. auditory etc) you are can have a large impact on how you actually read and recognize and translate the symbols on a page or screen. I do believe that word shape (external outline shape and internal whitespace and contrast) are critical to reading, of course my training may prejudice me towards that belief. In typography there are many techniques that can be employed to destroy legibility of words and passages of text without destroying individual letter legibility. Similarly there are highly effective techniques which subtly (or not so subtly) change the word shape and internal word contrast to force a reader to slow down, many times with an increase in retention.
I don't, however, discount letter -> phoneme recognition hypotheses entirely either. My "guess" would be that we mix those two models. Reading the word shape and the letter forms simultaneously. When we recognize the word shape, either by memory or by context, we move on. Otherwise we assemble the letters into phonemes and words, again using context and experience as a guide. If that fails we switch to a serialized reading of the letters of the word, this being most common for extremely long words, and completely foreign words.
What I think is amazing is the speed that this occurs at for most people.
'There are many, maby factors to consider in "readability".'
and the issue of fonts affecting readability. However from my training and experience, along with research I have seen from physiology and psychology studies into the how of reading and reading comprehension, I would not agree that there is no such thing as word shape. An example, perhaps overly simplistic but I believe still relevant for our purpose, of the existence of wordshape and it's relevance to our reading would be to look at many toddlers, unfamiliar with spelling, who can in fact recognize and name many words even when printed in widely differing sizes and fonts. They have learned the shape of the word, and minor variances in those shapes do not affect their recognition of the shape.
Linguistics, typography, phsycology and physiology have all studied reading and reading comprehension...all of them have valuable insight, and most of the materials I have seen agree on a few basic points:
context is important
we do not read letter by letter
word shape is recognized during a relatively short focal time on each word
If you have evidence to the contrary, especially regarding the existence of word shapes and it's relevance to typography and reading, I genuinely would like to see it.
As I explained in more detail on my site as this was spreading, if you destroy the shape it doesn't work, there are a number of factors working together here (that I know about...which does not include phonemes and the semantics of consonants): our eyes scan the entire word as a shape, actually we recognize the shape - predominantly from the top half of the word shape - as long as it is not an overly long word 16-22 or so letters max, this happens in an extremely short span of time 50-200ms for average readers fluent in the language, we skip 1,2 and many 3 letter words entirely, some word shape variation can be present. When we read the word shape and context fill in the blanks remarkably well. Many of these issues lead to typographical rules such as:
Don't set long pasages of text in ALL CAPS or even SMALL CAPS-it makes every word a box that has to be speled out letter by letter.
whenyou do set a word in all caps or small caps, give extra letter spacing to facilitate quick, accurate individual letter recognition
if you want to slow down the reader through a particular passage use italics, otherwise use it sparingly to higlight or cite.
Use proper word and line(leading) spacing to faciltate smooth eye movement and easy reconition of word shape,
for reading text use serif over non serif faces, although a good non-serif is still better than a bad serif typeface. The reason is that the serifs of a good serif face help define both the letter shape and add extra information to better define the word shape.
more detail and some links to other sources...
is part of the problem with the "scrambled text" claim. It is a neat trick and it does work as long as the majority of the words do not have the internal word shape destroyed by major shifting of letters. But then again this is old hat to most typographers (IANAT)...in fact just using all italics in a long section of text is enough of a word shape change to slow down most readers, and has often been used by typographers for a long time to great effect.
His post was interesting and relevant to what you said...
I'm not advocating this policy for every site, but for my particular case (where we are handling extremely sensitive data, namely credit reports), it does make sense. It's a vertical market application. Our users are interested in the web site working, and working correctly.
Now you say that security is not an issue...which is it? You are undermining your own arguments considerably. And as for being a vertical market application, you may have considerably more freedom in setting compatibility req's such as specifying IE5/6, but as your original post didn't mention this...
Slashdot Mirror
Well, actually it is exactly what I like to see, I know that I can convert PAL to NTSC effectively and am quite happy to see these archives available. If I have a need for any of the archives in a production I know exactly where to turn, and would be willing to pay any licensing fee's. My comment above was directed specifically to the lack of any licensing information regarding the still's available from the site. These would also be highly useful in a variety ways, yet there is no concrete information regarding their use. In their defense they may have been so focused on the use of the video/film assets that they failed to realize that the stills are a valuable asset for re-use as well. Producing any professional work without having clear licensing can be suicidal, so the still images on their site are off-limits as it were. I applaude their achievement, and hope that more US based archives take their lead. However I would much rather see even a more restrictive, but concrete licensing posted clearly.
Their FAQ sortof addresses the allowable uses of the previews:
Really specific there, one would think they could come up with a slightly more defined policy.
On the site that handles sales of British Pathe assets they specifically state that:
Of course that is for the actual footage, no help with licensing for the still images though. A great archive and it will be an excellent resource for many. Hopefully they can clarify the use of the preview still images though.
...before these two signed on. Well actually Skypes is not anyhting really impressive VoIP anyways. and SIPPhone's main attractor is it is an all in one SIP device as opposed to a router that a phone gets hooked to, and that they are not operating with month to month fee's- buy the hardware and your done. Of course though they are not a telco or any for of carrier but more a directory service (411) and hardware retailer. Maybe he fully expects that he can make enough profit from each sale then bugger out at the right moment when having some minimum form of month to month is needed. In the meantime there are a number of VoIP systems and companies that have been around for a while now. Vonage, Lightspeed Communications and others. They have been in the markets now for at least a year, and have been picking up speed steadily. Enough so that in a number of states the PUC's are itching to regulate and apply regulatory fees to them. Luckily the Fed courts have so far seen the light and said no. Oh and yes they are standards based, in fact they use a number of standards including SIP just like the SIPPhones...in fact the SIPPhones should be able to be used with Vonage or a similar company, of course getting one of those comapnies to support it might be a different story. You would have to pay me to use a standard phone companies services for telephony anymore.
No, it was not intended to say one should not trust Kevin because he works for MS. If that had been the case I would have not put it in the title and then used something along the lines of:
A hack who works for M$
The fact that he is a psychologist for Microsoft isn't neccessarily what is important. In fact those are his qualifications not dis
I thought it interesting that he delivered a talk just a few days after the story appeared on /. to a highly respected typogrphy convention. I look forward to hopefully seeing a transcript of his talk.
Actually he is a Pschologist who works for Microsoft on issues of user interface, and specifically onTrueType and connected technologies. He was at ATypI as a representative of Microsoft, and as a cognative psychologist. I meant no slant is calling him a Microsoft Psychologist. In point of fact it was simply a short and efficient method of communicating that Kevin is a cognative psychologist who works for Microsoft and was making a presentation as a representative of Microsoft, based on research both from his Doctoral and his continuing job functions at Microsoft. Not everyone here means Evil when they say Microsoft, even if they don't in general like Microsoft. If I had meant Evil I would have used the proper /. symbology - "Micro$oft" or the generally accepted alternative "MicroShaft"
I respect that they care enough about UI and useability issues to employ a wide range of extremely smart individuals, many recognized in their respective fields, in specialties not generally associated with Computer Science and sfotware publishing.
I just updated my personal site with my take on the situation, but in summary:
Reading is an extremely complex function. Typography, cognitive psychology and physiology have all made excellent contributions to understanding the process, but as yet we still do not empirically know exactly how reading functions. Word shape - both the external outline and the internal contrast - do affect legibility and reading, but it can be shown that the letter -> phoneme -> word hypothesis is a major factor as well. I believe that the reality is that reading is mix of the models. The physiology of reading is fairly well documented, we focus at a point and "read" in a span of 4-6 letter spaces left and 12-16 letter spaces right of the focus point. The focus scan time is reportedly 50-200ms. In that space we read the word shape and the letter forms simultaneously. When we recognize the word shape, from memory or by context, we discard the rest and move on. Otherwise we assemble the letters into phonemes and awords using context and experience. If that fails we rescan the word and if need be switch to a serialized reading of the individual letter forms to constuct the phonemes and word. This is most common with extremely long compound words and completely foreign words.
All the research I have seen has shown the focus times to be in the range of 50-200ms, from what you have seen is this correct?
Although I am not expertly qualified in these fields, I was trained and have worked in typography, and my wife was trained in linguistics and early education. Our personal experience points to a much more complicated model than what any of the recent stories openly allow for. I really would like to see a transcript of Kevin's presentation at ATypI, as he supposedly tore down and supported aspects of each of the three most common hypotheses of reading, but he supports the parallel letter recognition -> phoneme -> word model as the accurate one. I want to see if or how he meshes the models, as I feel that that is more likely what is happening for most readers.
I believe not only how you learned the language but also what type of learner (visual vs. auditory etc) you are can have a large impact on how you actually read and recognize and translate the symbols on a page or screen. I do believe that word shape (external outline shape and internal whitespace and contrast) are critical to reading, of course my training may prejudice me towards that belief. In typography there are many techniques that can be employed to destroy legibility of words and passages of text without destroying individual letter legibility. Similarly there are highly effective techniques which subtly (or not so subtly) change the word shape and internal word contrast to force a reader to slow down, many times with an increase in retention.
I don't, however, discount letter -> phoneme recognition hypotheses entirely either. My "guess" would be that we mix those two models. Reading the word shape and the letter forms simultaneously. When we recognize the word shape, either by memory or by context, we move on. Otherwise we assemble the letters into phonemes and words, again using context and experience as a guide. If that fails we switch to a serialized reading of the letters of the word, this being most common for extremely long words, and completely foreign words.
What I think is amazing is the speed that this occurs at for most people.
- context is important
- we do not read letter by letter
- word shape is recognized during a relatively short focal time on each word
If you have evidence to the contrary, especially regarding the existence of word shapes and it's relevance to typography and reading, I genuinely would like to see it.Don't set long pasages of text in ALL CAPS or even SMALL CAPS-it makes every word a box that has to be speled out letter by letter.
whenyou do set a word in all caps or small caps, give extra letter spacing to facilitate quick, accurate individual letter recognition
if you want to slow down the reader through a particular passage use italics, otherwise use it sparingly to higlight or cite.
Use proper word and line(leading) spacing to faciltate smooth eye movement and easy reconition of word shape,
for reading text use serif over non serif faces, although a good non-serif is still better than a bad serif typeface. The reason is that the serifs of a good serif face help define both the letter shape and add extra information to better define the word shape. more detail and some links to other sources...
is part of the problem with the "scrambled text" claim. It is a neat trick and it does work as long as the majority of the words do not have the internal word shape destroyed by major shifting of letters. But then again this is old hat to most typographers (IANAT)...in fact just using all italics in a long section of text is enough of a word shape change to slow down most readers, and has often been used by typographers for a long time to great effect.
I'm not advocating this policy for every site, but for my particular case (where we are handling extremely sensitive data, namely credit reports), it does make sense. It's a vertical market application. Our users are interested in the web site working, and working correctly.
Now you say that security is not an issue...which is it? You are undermining your own arguments considerably. And as for being a vertical market application, you may have considerably more freedom in setting compatibility req's such as specifying IE5/6, but as your original post didn't mention this...