Memo to webdesigners

When designing forms, give some thought to their intended function. For instance, if designing a form like this for people to report scams, what would be a reasonable cap for a field labelled 'Comments, copies of emails etc'?"

(a) 500 characters, or
(b) More than 500 characters?

(Before answering, you may want to count how many characters are contained just in the headers of a typical scam email.)

#2: When placing a length cap on a form field, ask yourself when potential users would like to be informed of that cap. Do you think that would be:

(a) After writing up a description of the attempted scam, pasting in full message with headers, and hitting 'submit', or
(b) Before writing up a description of the attempted scam, pasting in full message with headers, and hitting 'submit'?

Scoring: If you answered 'b' to both of the above questions, congratulations! You may be competent to design a website.

If you answered 'a' to either of the above questions, please bang your head against a large solid object. Possibly your computer, since you evidently don't deserve to have one. HTH. HAND.

Memeage

Did this one a while back, but there are a lot of new people on my friends list since then... re-ganked from sapia. People who've played before are welcome to play again.

I want everyone who reads this to ask me 3 questions. Ask me anything you want, I will answer honestly.* Then go to your journal, copy and paste this allowing your friends (including myself) to ask you anything.

*Passwords and credit card numbers might be pushing it, though.

Hostage tactics

Chicago Tribune:

A military intelligence analyst who recently completed duty at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq (news - web sites) said Wednesday that the 16-year-old son of a detainee there was abused by U.S. soldiers to break his father's resistance to interrogators.

The analyst said the teenager was stripped naked, thrown in the back of an open truck, driven around in the cold night air, splattered with mud and then presented to his father at Abu Ghraib, the prison at the center of the scandal over abuse of Iraqi detainees.

Upon seeing his frail and frightened son, the prisoner broke down and cried and told interrogators he would tell them whatever they wanted, the analyst said...

( Read more... )