natehoy (1608657): "When the labeling started, it was "this product contains nuts" and even though I giggled when I saw it on a bag or jar of actual peanuts or peanut butter, it made sense to me."
I purchased a box of drawing pins / thumb tacks the other day... there is a label on the bottom of the packet: "Warning: Contains functional sharp points".
Really? Well that's good -- because they wouldn't be much use without them. Do some people really buy tacks and then get surprised that sharp points are involved?
The nut warnings become even funnier when the peanut butter gets labeled with: "May contain nuts". May? It better damn well contain nuts!:)
Inconclusive. Even amongst a single "race" there are significant differences in skin tone. Just looking at the UK (and excluding folks who would be seen as Asian or Indian, etc) you'll find a range from extremely pale (seen often in conjunction with red hair) through to quite olive tones (often seen in Wales), and similar tonal ranges exist among all of the other "races".
More studies would have to be done to prove anything much. Among other things I'd want to know:
* how much difference in skin tone before there is a measurable behavioural difference.
* what are the results using lighter and darker non-natural colours (e.g. light and dark blue, light and dark green).
* what about changing height or hair colour but leaving the rest of the avatar the same?
It's an interesting study, and an interesting data point. But I think stating that "there is racial bias" is over-reaching the results.
Ohio Calvinist:I feel like the problem with Legos today is all the commercial tie ins, like StarWars and Spiderman. One of the greatest strengths, I feel, of the older Legos were that they were a set genre, but the unverse' story was largely untold. It was up to me, and my imagination to decide "why" the diffrent castle factions were at war.
My six year old -- who is a huge fan of Lego and Harry Potter -- recently had Harry, Ron, and Hermione racing around in scratch built space ships (despite us having Star Wars Lego as well), as well as a scratch built TARDIS. I'm not entirely sure what the three were doing in space, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't part of Rowling's canon.:-)
Nah, just leave an invisible message for the version 4 users (invisible that is to any browser that can handle CSS) pointing them to their choice of free, modern, standards compliant browsers.
Let's be fair -- I run Win 98 at home, but Netscape 4.7... only when testing web sites.:)
Although Applets offer all of the interactivity a rich web app needs, there is an advantage in using native browser capabilities over plugins -- it simplifies your tech stack and reduces some of the overhead of version checking. From experience I can assure you that you'll only know that your java app will work consistently if you are certain of the flavour and version of plugin being used; you need fairly good tech stack control for this, and the IT departments of clients will continue to helpfully upgrade plugins even when they're not asked to.:)
Market perceptions may be a factor too -- when your clients are telling you that applets are a "bad thing" (which on the internet they certainly can be; on an intranet they can be quite good), and that they are old technology, then you are really fighting an uphill battle.
Averaging might not be all that useful as different sites have very different audiences. IE usage at Slashdot will be very different from that at cnn.com and different again from Sourceforge, etc.
Trending may be more useful; looking at stats for the same sites, the same user population segment, over time
January stats from TheCounter.com, which looks like it might offer reasonable stats for a range of fairly "general" sites, shows IE6 + IE5.x = 88% This is down from IE usage mid-2004 at the same site (93%), a usage level that had been fairly consistent for the 6 months previous.
Looking at the trending for the past three years on W3Schools, which its more technical user population, shows a drop in IE usage from 86.8% in Jan 2002, through two years of relatively little change to 84.1% in Jan 2004 and then a steady drop over 2004 until 69.7% in Jan 2005.
Sourceforge shows a drop from 74.8% in Jan 2004 to 58% in Jan 2005.
IE usage is falling at different rates (and from different heights) at different sites, but the overall trend is downward. There may have been a time when IE had 95-99% use on some sites, but that appears to be in the past.
YFTMV (Your Firefox Theme may vary), but on the default at least in Windows, and with the window maxed, the Back button is flush with the left hand side of the screen and so benefits from directional restraints that satisfy Fitt's Law; I can throw my pointer left across the screen and then slide up the left wall to the back button.
It could be better if the most used buttons were at the extreme top of the window, but the Windows standard (and often used elsewhere) is to have a titlebar in that valuable real estate.
Slashdot Mirror
And who are you going to trust enough to buy their direct brain interface?
The Apple iMind? All shiny, but locked down and proprietary...
The MSBrain? With that unfortunate "blue scream of death"... :)
Would rather depend. Shuttle or Nano... maybe. Classic... not so much. :)
natehoy (1608657): "When the labeling started, it was "this product contains nuts" and even though I giggled when I saw it on a bag or jar of actual peanuts or peanut butter, it made sense to me."
I purchased a box of drawing pins / thumb tacks the other day... there is a label on the bottom of the packet: "Warning: Contains functional sharp points".
Really? Well that's good -- because they wouldn't be much use without them. Do some people really buy tacks and then get surprised that sharp points are involved?
The nut warnings become even funnier when the peanut butter gets labeled with: "May contain nuts". May? It better damn well contain nuts! :)
Apart-height? :)
Inconclusive. Even amongst a single "race" there are significant differences in skin tone. Just looking at the UK (and excluding folks who would be seen as Asian or Indian, etc) you'll find a range from extremely pale (seen often in conjunction with red hair) through to quite olive tones (often seen in Wales), and similar tonal ranges exist among all of the other "races".
More studies would have to be done to prove anything much. Among other things I'd want to know:
* how much difference in skin tone before there is a measurable behavioural difference.
* what are the results using lighter and darker non-natural colours (e.g. light and dark blue, light and dark green).
* what about changing height or hair colour but leaving the rest of the avatar the same?
It's an interesting study, and an interesting data point. But I think stating that "there is racial bias" is over-reaching the results.
Ohio Calvinist: I feel like the problem with Legos today is all the commercial tie ins, like StarWars and Spiderman. One of the greatest strengths, I feel, of the older Legos were that they were a set genre, but the unverse' story was largely untold. It was up to me, and my imagination to decide "why" the diffrent castle factions were at war.
:-)
My six year old -- who is a huge fan of Lego and Harry Potter -- recently had Harry, Ron, and Hermione racing around in scratch built space ships (despite us having Star Wars Lego as well), as well as a scratch built TARDIS. I'm not entirely sure what the three were doing in space, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't part of Rowling's canon.
Nah, just leave an invisible message for the version 4 users (invisible that is to any browser that can handle CSS) pointing them to their choice of free, modern, standards compliant browsers.
:)
Let's be fair -- I run Win 98 at home, but Netscape 4.7... only when testing web sites.
Although Applets offer all of the interactivity a rich web app needs, there is an advantage in using native browser capabilities over plugins -- it simplifies your tech stack and reduces some of the overhead of version checking. From experience I can assure you that you'll only know that your java app will work consistently if you are certain of the flavour and version of plugin being used; you need fairly good tech stack control for this, and the IT departments of clients will continue to helpfully upgrade plugins even when they're not asked to. :)
Market perceptions may be a factor too -- when your clients are telling you that applets are a "bad thing" (which on the internet they certainly can be; on an intranet they can be quite good), and that they are old technology, then you are really fighting an uphill battle.
Averaging might not be all that useful as different sites have very different audiences. IE usage at Slashdot will be very different from that at cnn.com and different again from Sourceforge, etc.
Trending may be more useful; looking at stats for the same sites, the same user population segment, over time
January stats from TheCounter.com, which looks like it might offer reasonable stats for a range of fairly "general" sites, shows IE6 + IE5.x = 88% This is down from IE usage mid-2004 at the same site (93%), a usage level that had been fairly consistent for the 6 months previous.
Looking at the trending for the past three years on W3Schools, which its more technical user population, shows a drop in IE usage from 86.8% in Jan 2002, through two years of relatively little change to 84.1% in Jan 2004 and then a steady drop over 2004 until 69.7% in Jan 2005.
Sourceforge shows a drop from 74.8% in Jan 2004 to 58% in Jan 2005.
IE usage is falling at different rates (and from different heights) at different sites, but the overall trend is downward. There may have been a time when IE had 95-99% use on some sites, but that appears to be in the past.
YFTMV (Your Firefox Theme may vary), but on the default at least in Windows, and with the window maxed, the Back button is flush with the left hand side of the screen and so benefits from directional restraints that satisfy Fitt's Law; I can throw my pointer left across the screen and then slide up the left wall to the back button.
It could be better if the most used buttons were at the extreme top of the window, but the Windows standard (and often used elsewhere) is to have a titlebar in that valuable real estate.