Talking heads and closeups are never going to be in the the top and bottom of a 4:3 SD frame, unless the camera operator and producer don't know what they're doing. It's called the overscan area (check out this diagram).
It is the manufacturer's fault. Look, everything we use today is complex technology, and potentially dangerous--air conditioners, microwaves, even AC power itself. Driving a car involves, as a matter of necessity, sending a couple tons of steel hurtling around the city at speeds up to 65 mph. On the other hand, it's much harder (if still possible) to accidentally kill people by writing letters, chatting, drawing charts, etc., unless the product you're using is so terribly designed as to make it easy to fuck up. Unfortunately, that's the state of most software today. That doesn't mean it has to be that way.
How come 16:9 TVs don't just display 4:3 material by cropping off the top and bottom of the image to transform it into 16:9, then scaling it up to fill the screen, thereby preserving aspect ratio? If my calculations are right, scaling up to fill the horizontal width would only require ditching the top and bottom 3/32ths of the picture. Stuff in this area on a SD television image is supposed to be non-essential stuff, anyway, in order to allow overscan.
I've always thought that slavishly reading manuals and onscreen displays is the mark of a boring, unadventurous person. You know the type. Linear thinkers. Squares. Crew cuts with toothy grins.
But seriously, the onscreen displays should be laid out so that it's intuitive where you need to go to achieve what you want to achieve. Actually, in this case, I don't see why an OSD should be necessary at all, in a perfect world.
Remember, though, the fault lies not with her--this is just another case of bad software design. A well-designed product shouldn't be hard for its target audience to use, and to use safely. (FWIW, Linux and OS X are far from blameless, either.)
Animation. The app jumps to the edit you've asked to undo, then fades it out smoothly, perhaps with a dust cloud to signify "poof, it's gone." I'm not kidding--this would really help, if done tastefully, in a nonobtrusive manner.
My other suggestion, which I actually prefer, would be to avoid revealing IP addresses at all. Wikipedia's insistence on showing the IPs of unregistered users is obviously due to the fear of untrackable vandalism, but I think the vandalism problem stems rather from something more fundamental in the Wikipedia model. To suggest so, alas, would be heresy.
"...generally don't have a static IP, so it's not like the IP address is all that identifying. Even on broadband..."
Sure, but even then, registration affords you even more anonymity. If you're trying to hide, you can only stand to gain by registering. Let's be clear: Registered users are MORE anonymous than "anonymous" contributors. This is severely broken.
Either registered users should have their IPs appended to their edits; or no IPs should be visible at all, registered or unregistered.
I considered that, but it occurred to me that every article is in the process of being edited fifty different ways by fifty different people. The process is more rapid, and more visible, for high-traffic articles, but the same argument would hold that there may be errors introduced into low-traffic pages, e.g. within the last 12 months, that nobody (who's noticed) has had time to correct yet (because very few people have, in fact, noticed).
Basically, what you're saying is that Wikipedia doesn't scale. That's unfortunate. I'm unsure how it can be fixed, but it's an interesting problem.
How about making the IP addresses visible for every edit, not just for (supposedly) anonymous contributions? As things stand, a registered user is less traceable than an unregistered user, simply because the latter leaves a trail with his or her IP address publicly visible, while the former may have many other aliases. Thus it's a little misleading to call unregistered contributors "anonymous," since registered usernames actually provide greater anonymity both for mischief and for good.
I think appending the IP address in parentheses to each username would go a long way towards fixing the balance, like so:
(cur) (last) -- 2:40 PM, Monday, December 5, 2005 -- pomo monster (127.42.29.101) -- minor edits
"Anonymous" Wikipedia accounts are actually less anonymous than registered users. As an anonymous user, your IP is visible for tracking across the site and tracing to your physical location; but you have the ability to create as many username sockpuppets as you want.
As a formerly prolific contributor, I never really understood how registration was helpful for anything but tracking people who want to be tracked.
This article has recently been linked from a high-traffic Internet site. All prior and subsequent edits are noted in the page history.
This, to me, is the clearest sign yet of Wikipedia's untenability. Isn't the project predicated on the belief that more eyeballs make an article better, not worse?
Perhaps the problem is that high-traffic pages attract all the vandals and trolls. But even so, according to Wikipedian doctrine, any suspect edits on a high-traffic page should be discovered and corrected quickly enough to be of negligible impact. Why, then, the need for Template:High-traffic?
If anything, Wikipedia should include a Template:Low-traffic to warn that fewer eyeballs make an article less reliable. That there exists only Template:High-traffic as a minor concession to reality suggests myopia at best, and a willful doublethink at worst.
Not a design defect, then, so much as shitty design. It's a fucking power brick. Nobody expects a power brick to overheat when it's just sitting there on carpet. Or do you actually read the manual to find out how to plug in all your AC adapters?
Stupid design decisions that engineers expect "RTFM" to solve: Par for the course at the Ballmer School of Design and Fine Arts, Redmond, WA.
Even then, word on the street is, if you call Apple and speak to a representative, they'll let you redownload all your past purchases, with an admonishment never to do it again.
Drop shadows are terribly overused nowadays, but they can be enormously helpful sometimes to emphasize elements or set them apart from busy backgrounds, e.g. captions over a photo. text-shadow is already a property in CSS2, and they're considering adding a "glow" or "outline" to the next recommendation.
Firefox doesn't support text-shadow (or, totally apropos nothing, display: inline-block for that matter), but Safari does, and tastefully applied, it's great to have around. Why IE doesn't pair its proprietary filters to standard CSS properties like these is beyond me.
Seriously, dude. You want your brain surgeon to spend time learning C++, or practicing procedure? Or do brain surgeons have nothing useful to say about computing, no valid suggestions for improvement? I don't get this attitude--or maybe I understand it, but it just seems so fucking patronizing and full of contempt for the world at large that I don't like to assume anyone actually thinks that way.
The problem with "RTFM" is that manuals are mostly for linear thinkers. Who the hell reads them? Some people just learn better through exploration, and some applications (like MPlayer) don't reward that. The best UIs, like the best women, are those that reveal themselves to all comers.
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Actually, Ashton Kutcher has "BUY PEPSI" etched on his corneas in 2-pt. Helvetica. Not that you'd know the difference, at least not consciously.
Talking heads and closeups are never going to be in the the top and bottom of a 4:3 SD frame, unless the camera operator and producer don't know what they're doing. It's called the overscan area (check out this diagram).
It is the manufacturer's fault. Look, everything we use today is complex technology, and potentially dangerous--air conditioners, microwaves, even AC power itself. Driving a car involves, as a matter of necessity, sending a couple tons of steel hurtling around the city at speeds up to 65 mph. On the other hand, it's much harder (if still possible) to accidentally kill people by writing letters, chatting, drawing charts, etc., unless the product you're using is so terribly designed as to make it easy to fuck up. Unfortunately, that's the state of most software today. That doesn't mean it has to be that way.
How come 16:9 TVs don't just display 4:3 material by cropping off the top and bottom of the image to transform it into 16:9, then scaling it up to fill the screen, thereby preserving aspect ratio? If my calculations are right, scaling up to fill the horizontal width would only require ditching the top and bottom 3/32ths of the picture. Stuff in this area on a SD television image is supposed to be non-essential stuff, anyway, in order to allow overscan.
I've always thought that slavishly reading manuals and onscreen displays is the mark of a boring, unadventurous person. You know the type. Linear thinkers. Squares. Crew cuts with toothy grins.
But seriously, the onscreen displays should be laid out so that it's intuitive where you need to go to achieve what you want to achieve. Actually, in this case, I don't see why an OSD should be necessary at all, in a perfect world.
With you 100%. I peel the labels off everything I buy. Grandma's body was found facedown by the medicine cabinet.
Remember, though, the fault lies not with her--this is just another case of bad software design. A well-designed product shouldn't be hard for its target audience to use, and to use safely. (FWIW, Linux and OS X are far from blameless, either.)
Animation. The app jumps to the edit you've asked to undo, then fades it out smoothly, perhaps with a dust cloud to signify "poof, it's gone." I'm not kidding--this would really help, if done tastefully, in a nonobtrusive manner.
My other suggestion, which I actually prefer, would be to avoid revealing IP addresses at all. Wikipedia's insistence on showing the IPs of unregistered users is obviously due to the fear of untrackable vandalism, but I think the vandalism problem stems rather from something more fundamental in the Wikipedia model. To suggest so, alas, would be heresy.
It was a good error--"backside" means "arse." :-)
Now lemme see if I can butcher this phrase I learnt: "Du ar så amskralig att jag kissar i mina kalsonger nar jag ser det."
"Downside." Trust me. You mean "downside."
"...generally don't have a static IP, so it's not like the IP address is all that identifying. Even on broadband..."
Sure, but even then, registration affords you even more anonymity. If you're trying to hide, you can only stand to gain by registering. Let's be clear: Registered users are MORE anonymous than "anonymous" contributors. This is severely broken.
Either registered users should have their IPs appended to their edits; or no IPs should be visible at all, registered or unregistered.
I considered that, but it occurred to me that every article is in the process of being edited fifty different ways by fifty different people. The process is more rapid, and more visible, for high-traffic articles, but the same argument would hold that there may be errors introduced into low-traffic pages, e.g. within the last 12 months, that nobody (who's noticed) has had time to correct yet (because very few people have, in fact, noticed).
Basically, what you're saying is that Wikipedia doesn't scale. That's unfortunate. I'm unsure how it can be fixed, but it's an interesting problem.
How about making the IP addresses visible for every edit, not just for (supposedly) anonymous contributions? As things stand, a registered user is less traceable than an unregistered user, simply because the latter leaves a trail with his or her IP address publicly visible, while the former may have many other aliases. Thus it's a little misleading to call unregistered contributors "anonymous," since registered usernames actually provide greater anonymity both for mischief and for good.
I think appending the IP address in parentheses to each username would go a long way towards fixing the balance, like so:
(cur) (last) -- 2:40 PM, Monday, December 5, 2005 -- pomo monster (127.42.29.101) -- minor edits
"Anonymous" Wikipedia accounts are actually less anonymous than registered users. As an anonymous user, your IP is visible for tracking across the site and tracing to your physical location; but you have the ability to create as many username sockpuppets as you want.
As a formerly prolific contributor, I never really understood how registration was helpful for anything but tracking people who want to be tracked.
Perhaps the problem is that high-traffic pages attract all the vandals and trolls. But even so, according to Wikipedian doctrine, any suspect edits on a high-traffic page should be discovered and corrected quickly enough to be of negligible impact. Why, then, the need for Template:High-traffic?
If anything, Wikipedia should include a Template:Low-traffic to warn that fewer eyeballs make an article less reliable. That there exists only Template:High-traffic as a minor concession to reality suggests myopia at best, and a willful doublethink at worst.
Not a design defect, then, so much as shitty design. It's a fucking power brick. Nobody expects a power brick to overheat when it's just sitting there on carpet. Or do you actually read the manual to find out how to plug in all your AC adapters?
Stupid design decisions that engineers expect "RTFM" to solve: Par for the course at the Ballmer School of Design and Fine Arts, Redmond, WA.
"Your itunes purchase is authorized to the machine you bought it on. You cannot copy it to another machine."
Tip: Quit babbling about things of which you're ignorant.
Even then, word on the street is, if you call Apple and speak to a representative, they'll let you redownload all your past purchases, with an admonishment never to do it again.
Yeah, that whole foot-in-mouth thing. Sucks, huh? :-)
He did neglect to turn "goat-rendering" into an adverb (it should have been "goat-renderingly awful", so I guess we can still fault him on that.
Well, well, what d'you know: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=169842&cid=141 55078
I hope he's just trolling.
Careful whose illiteracy you're so hasty to imply. He presumably means "goat-rendering" in the sense of rendering fats (definition 1a here).
If ads in the offline world bother you so much, you might as well just rip your eyeballs out now.
Drop shadows are terribly overused nowadays, but they can be enormously helpful sometimes to emphasize elements or set them apart from busy backgrounds, e.g. captions over a photo. text-shadow is already a property in CSS2, and they're considering adding a "glow" or "outline" to the next recommendation.
Firefox doesn't support text-shadow (or, totally apropos nothing, display: inline-block for that matter), but Safari does, and tastefully applied, it's great to have around. Why IE doesn't pair its proprietary filters to standard CSS properties like these is beyond me.
Seriously, dude. You want your brain surgeon to spend time learning C++, or practicing procedure? Or do brain surgeons have nothing useful to say about computing, no valid suggestions for improvement? I don't get this attitude--or maybe I understand it, but it just seems so fucking patronizing and full of contempt for the world at large that I don't like to assume anyone actually thinks that way.
The problem with "RTFM" is that manuals are mostly for linear thinkers. Who the hell reads them? Some people just learn better through exploration, and some applications (like MPlayer) don't reward that. The best UIs, like the best women, are those that reveal themselves to all comers.