- Background images decrease readability due to visual interference.
- It's my understanding that sans-serif fonts (i.e. Arial, Verdana) are easier to read on screen than serif fonts (like the one you are currently using). The reverse is true for printed matter.
- The full text of the caption doesn't need to be a link. That's almost unreadable at the font size on blue background, with the underlining increasing interference.
- Having your sub-contents for each chapter in a blob of text makes it harder to scan. Vertical/bulleted organization is easier.
And some suggestions:
White or yellow text on a black or dark blue background, or black or navy text on a white background have the highest readability. If you do light on dark, make sure you have a printable version because some default browser settings don't print backgrounds, leaving you with blank printed pages(!)
Use cascading style sheets, allowing you to mess around liberally with formatting until you're happy. This also makes it easy to do a printable version.
Having the Table of Contents on a home page, with each chapter in a sub page is nice if you are reading through the book sequentially, but makes it slightly more cumbersome to jump around. Some other sites that present information like this use frames and have the ToC running down the left side of the screen. This may or may not include ways to expand/collapse submenus.
I would include the Home/Back/Forward buttons at the top and bottom, but the ones at the bottom may go best ABOVE the references, rather than below. Far fewer people are going to be interested in the references than in the main text.
I don't think HBO cares a lot about their commercials, as they're mostly commercials for other HBO shows, and not paid advertising...
In truth, I think for HBO (in terms of making viewers happy) PVRs are a GREAT thing. The only downside of the great HBO programming is that because there are no commercials, you can't step away from the show without missing some action. You can't pause The Wire for a bathroom break, can't stop the Sopranos for a quick trip to the microwave...
The current drawbacks of all current PVRs that aren't produced by the cable/satellite companies, are that as far as I can tell, PVRs cannot decode premium ("encrypted"?) digital cable channels. I could be wrong, but if I hooked a Tivo up w/ digital cable, I'd have to route though the cable box first and tune with the cable box, which sucks for any kind of pre-recording of shows when you aren't around to tune them...
While the photo on the BBC article shows a "backpack" with hard wings sticking out of it, the description (especially that of his legs getting tangled in the rear wings) sounds more like a "Birdman" type suit.
Popular Science did a great article on gliding/sky diving with wings featuring the Birdman suits. Read it here.
This article has some good info that helps answer comments made below about diving with wings not really being free-fall, but in fact being a form of gliding.
I didn't see those later links, but they help demonstrate a couple of points:
1: This isn't a black and white issue. The DNC list is not all good, and not all bad. Both bad people and good people are going to be hurt, but a lot of people are going to be spared from what some consider a major annoyance, if not an invasion of privacy and waste of their time.
2: This issue is pretty symptomatic of a whole lot of the complex issues of privacy, government regulation, and capitalism, and the increasing way that American government is failing the poor and uneducated.
Although high school and college students made up a good portion of the workers at the 2 telemarketing companies I worked for (in high school and college, natch!) another, possibly even larger chunk, was made up of low income, low-educational level single parents. According to this article quotes statistics (granted, provided by the DMA) claiming that 60% of their employees are women, 25% are single mothers, 33% are minorities, 5% are disabled.
From my experience, I think those stats are more or less accurate. While a lot of students work telemarketing jobs for a summer or a year or two, people who stay with a company for several years are more likely to fall into the categories above.
As a progressive, those are the kind of people you don't want to see put out of work. And if you're conservative, you don't want ANY people back on welfare.
Personally, I'm not a fan of the calls. CallerID doesn't do a good enough job of blocking them, and I would never buy anything from them anyway. I also don't feel very sorry for the corporations who will lose "50% of their business." So, I'm on the list. But I don't think much for the chances of the newly unemployed, with "compassionate conservatism" looking out for them.
I was listening to a spokesperson from the Economist on BBC this morning, defending the Economist's involvement. She mentioned that there was a $100 limit (per bet, i believe?)
So, no one is going to make millions blowing up buildings...
1: Create a set of "Rosetta Stone" data by taking thousands of recorded phone calls to customer service/operators, etc. 2: For each call, track what the customer service rep/operator typed into their computer terminal.
The result would be natural language voice-recognition that would probably achieve a high degree of accuracy because it would be limited in scope (e.g. asking for a credit line increase, reporting a lost card, checking your balance, etc.) and be based on real queries from real customers.
Since the biggest majority of calls are for very simple problems (I forgot my password is the most common tech support call we get) this should be pretty useful.. you could probably automate "Level 1 Tech support"!
If a company can justify dozens of 5-10 minute cigarette breaks for its smoking employees, then I think that prayer and mediatation breaks are completely reasonable, at least from a "time away from the computer screen" point of view.
However, if I shared an office with someone who insisted on praying out loud, burning incense, or chanting while I was either deep in a programming problem or on an important phone call, that might be a problem. Having a "meditation" space (like the non-sectarian chapels in hospitals, for example) for prayer, meditation, etc. seems to be much more beneficial than a dedicated "smokers area".
However, if you instead have a situation where prayer/meditation is carried out in a public place, and is potentially distracting, I think that management and HR would be the last to react, being gun-shy of any potential discrimination lawsuits. Instead, employees who are distracted or bothered would be liable to start complaining first.
Slashdot Mirror
- Background images decrease readability due to visual interference.
- It's my understanding that sans-serif fonts (i.e. Arial, Verdana) are easier to read on screen than serif fonts (like the one you are currently using). The reverse is true for printed matter.
- The full text of the caption doesn't need to be a link. That's almost unreadable at the font size on blue background, with the underlining increasing interference.
- Having your sub-contents for each chapter in a blob of text makes it harder to scan. Vertical/bulleted organization is easier.
And some suggestions:
White or yellow text on a black or dark blue background, or black or navy text on a white background have the highest readability. If you do light on dark, make sure you have a printable version because some default browser settings don't print backgrounds, leaving you with blank printed pages(!)
Use cascading style sheets, allowing you to mess around liberally with formatting until you're happy. This also makes it easy to do a printable version.
Having the Table of Contents on a home page, with each chapter in a sub page is nice if you are reading through the book sequentially, but makes it slightly more cumbersome to jump around. Some other sites that present information like this use frames and have the ToC running down the left side of the screen. This may or may not include ways to expand/collapse submenus.
I would include the Home/Back/Forward buttons at the top and bottom, but the ones at the bottom may go best ABOVE the references, rather than below. Far fewer people are going to be interested in the references than in the main text.
The PDF is from a 2002 conference and the link is thus months out of date and no longer allowing a free trial. ;-(
From the PDF:
Use this logon to scan any binary free for blackhat attendees for the next 60 days...
http://www.hbgary.com/freeblackhat/
Now the people who sound like they know what they're talking about can actually try it out and prove it ;-)
I don't think HBO cares a lot about their commercials, as they're mostly commercials for other HBO shows, and not paid advertising...
In truth, I think for HBO (in terms of making viewers happy) PVRs are a GREAT thing. The only downside of the great HBO programming is that because there are no commercials, you can't step away from the show without missing some action. You can't pause The Wire for a bathroom break, can't stop the Sopranos for a quick trip to the microwave...
The current drawbacks of all current PVRs that aren't produced by the cable/satellite companies, are that as far as I can tell, PVRs cannot decode premium ("encrypted"?) digital cable channels. I could be wrong, but if I hooked a Tivo up w/ digital cable, I'd have to route though the cable box first and tune with the cable box, which sucks for any kind of pre-recording of shows when you aren't around to tune them...
A couple of the pictures show him with his chute open and the wings still on.
Image here.From the Sky news article: "The 22 mile crossing took Baumgartner just six minutes and 20 seconds"
Also, it seems they were measuring diagonal speed and not horizontal speed for some of these more inflated numbers
While the photo on the BBC article shows a "backpack" with hard wings sticking out of it, the description (especially that of his legs getting tangled in the rear wings) sounds more like a "Birdman" type suit.
Popular Science did a great article on gliding/sky diving with wings featuring the Birdman suits. Read it here.
This article has some good info that helps answer comments made below about diving with wings not really being free-fall, but in fact being a form of gliding.
I didn't see those later links, but they help demonstrate a couple of points:
1: This isn't a black and white issue. The DNC list is not all good, and not all bad. Both bad people and good people are going to be hurt, but a lot of people are going to be spared from what some consider a major annoyance, if not an invasion of privacy and waste of their time.
2: This issue is pretty symptomatic of a whole lot of the complex issues of privacy, government regulation, and capitalism, and the increasing way that American government is failing the poor and uneducated.
Although high school and college students made up a good portion of the workers at the 2 telemarketing companies I worked for (in high school and college, natch!) another, possibly even larger chunk, was made up of low income, low-educational level single parents. According to this article quotes statistics (granted, provided by the DMA) claiming that 60% of their employees are women, 25% are single mothers, 33% are minorities, 5% are disabled.
From my experience, I think those stats are more or less accurate. While a lot of students work telemarketing jobs for a summer or a year or two, people who stay with a company for several years are more likely to fall into the categories above.
As a progressive, those are the kind of people you don't want to see put out of work. And if you're conservative, you don't want ANY people back on welfare.
Personally, I'm not a fan of the calls. CallerID doesn't do a good enough job of blocking them, and I would never buy anything from them anyway. I also don't feel very sorry for the corporations who will lose "50% of their business." So, I'm on the list. But I don't think much for the chances of the newly unemployed, with "compassionate conservatism" looking out for them.
I was listening to a spokesperson from the Economist on BBC this morning, defending the Economist's involvement. She mentioned that there was a $100 limit (per bet, i believe?)
So, no one is going to make millions blowing up buildings...
1: Create a set of "Rosetta Stone" data by taking thousands of recorded phone calls to customer service/operators, etc.
2: For each call, track what the customer service rep/operator typed into their computer terminal.
The result would be natural language voice-recognition that would probably achieve a high degree of accuracy because it would be limited in scope (e.g. asking for a credit line increase, reporting a lost card, checking your balance, etc.) and be based on real queries from real customers.
Since the biggest majority of calls are for very simple problems (I forgot my password is the most common tech support call we get) this should be pretty useful.. you could probably automate "Level 1 Tech support"!
If a company can justify dozens of 5-10 minute cigarette breaks for its smoking employees, then I think that prayer and mediatation breaks are completely reasonable, at least from a "time away from the computer screen" point of view.
However, if I shared an office with someone who insisted on praying out loud, burning incense, or chanting while I was either deep in a programming problem or on an important phone call, that might be a problem. Having a "meditation" space (like the non-sectarian chapels in hospitals, for example) for prayer, meditation, etc. seems to be much more beneficial than a dedicated "smokers area".
However, if you instead have a situation where prayer/meditation is carried out in a public place, and is potentially distracting, I think that management and HR would be the last to react, being gun-shy of any potential discrimination lawsuits. Instead, employees who are distracted or bothered would be liable to start complaining first.