Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with transparency

How can I work towards more consumer transparency?

Vidamond — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:33:30 -0800

How can I work towards more consumer transparency? So I have wondered many times why the government (I'm in Germany right now but I think this question applies elsewhere as well) does not make it easier for consumers to distinguish between "good" and "bad" products. By good I mean a product that is produced as environmentally friendly as possible.

Wouldn't it just be logical that each product in the grocery (or really every other store) is labelled extensively with the following information:

-more specific nutrition facts than currently
-where exactly every single subgredient comes from
-what the net carbon dioxide balance is
-how much water was used to produce the product
-probably other relevant information that I'm forgetting right now

Of course the information could be summarised in a table with one bigger overall environmental rating.

So for instance if I'm standing in the fruit section of the supermarket I would be able to see with a glance that the apples from Chile need ten times the ressources to be available here in the shelf than the German apples (of course this example is kind of obvious).

My best guess would be that there is huge lobby resistance against better labeling.

But I'm pretty sure others have thought of this before, so I was wondering if you guys knew of any consumer organization that wants such an "eco-label", too. I know there are many that support better labelling, but I haven't heard of any organization that wants the carbon dioxide and the water-usage label.

If there is anything like what I have in mind out there, I would love to get involved and help bringing more transparency to our stores.
Thanks a lot.

What is the name and who is the author of this science fiction short story about a Utopian Transparent Society

y2karl — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 12:20:03 -0800

After looking everywhere and which a way, I am at a loss. I am looking for a short story with a near future high tech anarchy as background-- something that resembles David Brin's concept of The Transparent Society, Utopian Version, where every body knows everybody else's business--as opposed to, say, Police Surveillance State On Steroids Big Time where Big Brother knows your business and location as in 1984 meets The Minority Report. The story itself in part recounts the life of a young man coming of age in a world where the revolution is over and everyone's life is an open book in document and real time--in this world, teenage men have to find spaces under culverts or abandoned warehouses to stage their fights and duels as all else is on camera, being recorded and provided then to everyone else's examination.

At more than one point, the youth confides in an old man on a park bench. An old man who is a veteran of the recent Revolution, who can remember the penultimate moment of said Revolution as being there when the mountain fortresses of Zurich are breached and battle is joined hand to hand with the Gnomes in the caves beneath their vaults. Or something like that.

As part of the story's later action, said old man/war veteran on the bench draws out his younger companion in conversation and then later posts, to the local or universal public access channel, a not unsympathetic documentary about this youth, his life and his loves, along with supporting documentation and points of view from the all encompassing public record. Which is, as I recall, profoundly embarrassing to this sensitive young man.

The story ends with the report of death of this young man in a duel--which occurs offstage in every sense, at an undisclosed location without camera or microphone, and which is to that young man the only place in the world where a person could be free. Or so I recall now.

No doubt, some of you have had the answer since the opening paragraph but I have yet to find the story of which I speak. And it was a nominee, if not winner, for best short story or novella or something in some year or another. I forget which. I only read it once-- damn, where was I ? The dentist ? --and now I can't find hint not mention of it. Woe is me. Hope me please. What is the title and who wrote it ? I want to re-read it and see how my memory of it compares to the real thing.

I'll be pissed if it's Brin, btw...

Private university governance principles and practices?

lunit — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 10:10:00 -0800

Are private universities non-profit institutions? What standards of transparency/accountability [to the student body and/or public] are they required to uphold? Examples of governance models? I'm interested in the governance of private universities. If private universities are non-profit institutions, are they subject to the same accessibility requirements as NGOs?

What minimum standards of transparency and accountability are their respective boards or "Corporations" required to uphold? [e.g. publicly posting contact information for trustees, agendas, public meetings, any rights to call "executive" or "closed" sessions, publicly posted budgets, annual reports, minutes, etc.]

What standards of transparency and accountability to the student body do private universities uphold in practice? Do you know of any universities whose highest governing bodies have particularly transparent or accessible governance policies? Particularly inaccessible? I'm interested in theory, but especially in concrete examples.

What are the standards or norms for how private universities' board trustees are selected and whom is selected? Are these selection processes subject to any sort of democratic decision-making? Are there any private universities with students that sit on university boards?

Thank you!

Honesty v. Mystery v. Good Faith v. Transparency

Anonymous — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 19:45:39 -0800

I'm really confused about how and when to bring up your level of interest in relationships. Background: I dated three different girls and they both fell in love with me, and stayed in love with me for a while and I was oblivious to it, and eventually I broke it off, and all three felt I used them. One of them started taking Zoloft because she was depressed about it. And I felt guilty for years that I was a serial heart breaker and so I didn't date. Then I developed new policies, but I don't think I'm getting it right.

This is how these new policies of being upfront and honest have played out:

Scenario 1: I was good friends with a girl and then I started to develop feelings for her. And I felt like I should be honest and so I took her out to dinner and told her that. I didn't ask her what she felt, I just felt I had to tell her because I didn't want to have a friendship under false pretenses. But then she criticized me (and so did my friends) for the move. She said something like, well, that sort of killed the mystery. And my friends said, "you revealed too much."

Scenario 2: I slept with a girl three nights in a row, and I felt things were getting hot between us and I knew I didn't want anything long-term out of us, and so I told her that. She said I was being presumptious, but I felt like I was sparing her heart break. My friends said maybe I was too quick.

Scenario 3: I've been sleeping with a girl for two weeks now, we're boyfriend/girlfriend. I tell her, "okay, I'm really into you, but I don't want anything long-term." She gets mad for a bit, then says, "okay, fine. But I'd rather pretend you never said that." I guess I'm okay with that, but I'm confused because it seems like she's screwing herself over.

I don't understand what is the "good" way to deal with this. On the one hand I feel that people are telling me to just date, have sex, pretend you're in love, and if you're done, you're done. On the other hand, I see all the suffering and emotional turmoil this causes when one person knows they're not in love and the other one clearly is, and nobody says anything. Or is it just that nobody likes downgrades, whether through breakups or otherwise, and you'll just have to bite the bullet whenever. I had one girl even tell me that I was too honest.

I'm looking for some good principles about this issue. I not even sure what the issue is named. Honesty v. Mystery v. Good Faith v. Transparency?

I cho-choose you

about_time — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 04:56:05 -0800

I am a member of an academic committee that handles award nominations. Our job is to chose which of many internal applicants may apply for an external award. Often such awards accept just 1 or 2 applicants from a single organization. What is the most transparent and fair process for making such decisions? Alternatively, what are problems you've faced on similar committees? In terms of transparency, I am looking for a process that allows us to say ahead of time "here are the rules by which we will make all decisions" and then afterwards "here are the decisions we made in this particular case and why". The people who are submitting applications are my peers, that is, I can't simply say "I'm the boss, that's why". I'm also concerned with bruised egos from saying, "X is better than you."

I don't need suggestions for a full process from me-fi, just some rules or vague suggestions for what you think is important. For example, "If it is the last year that someone is eligible for an award, they receive a preference" as some awards are early career awards.

Thanks for you help.

Color algebra: How do I pick a color F will make known color C against known background B at opacity N?

weston — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 16:39:31 -0800

Color algebra: Given a color C, how do I pick a color F that will be color C when against background color B at opacity N? How would I do the same thing for a color multiplication? I'm guessing one can start by treating each color as an RGB or CMYK vector, but I'm more than a little fuzzy on exactly what these operations mean and therefore how to invert them to pick F.

If context matters in defining the operations, practically I'm concerned with whatever Illustrator CS and Fireworks 8 mean by the terms, but I'm interested in general observations as well.

How do I make cheap slide captions?

klaatu — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 13:18:46 -0800

I'm after for a cheap solution to create very (very) basic captions and turn them into slides for a clunky carousel projector. Lo-fi is the aesthetic - it's for a theatre show. I have plenty of slide mounts from doing similar a few years ago, but then that involved a mounted camera, and developing slide film, which is now harder and expensive. Digital-to-slides via the print shop is also more than I want to spend. Is there a very good reason why I can't use OHP transparency film and just laser them, and then break out the scissors?

How do I know if my elected representatives are doing a good job?

cmiller — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 18:35:51 -0800

How can I, a US citizen, be more informed about my lawmakers' decisions and whether they're doing a good job? I have an example that I wonder about intensely, today's Senate Intelligence Committee meeting. I think the telecom companies who helped the government wiretap us without warrants should be held responsible. The Bush administration doesn't. The Senate has a bill in review that gives retroactive immunity to any criminal activity by the telecom companies.

I'm lucky that one of my senators,Bill Nelson (FL), is on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which met today "in a closed session" to review that very bill. I called his office yesterday to express my ideas and explain why it's a bad idea to let telcom off the hook.

Well the committee meeting is over and another senator managed to put a serious road-block in front of the bill, but I want to know what my senator did to stop it, if anything. But, how?

Is there some effort like what the UK has in They Work For You . com, but for US citizens? How can that huge mess at Capital Hill be less opaque to us common men? How can I know whether my representative is worthy of my vote?

Tips on creating a transparent gif with white content?

mattydavy — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 15:31:09 -0800

Any hints on creating a transparent .gif that uses solely white content? I'd like to consider myself reasonably familiar with adobe photoshop but this one has got me stumped. I'm creating a personal website and my "logo" is supposed to be white with transparency so you can see the background image behind it. I can't seem to save it properly under adobe photoshop using the save for web function, it just comes out very aliased and blocky (although, it is transparent). How do I avoid this blockiness?

My logo file is here.

Thanks for any help!

Matt.

Breakdown; go ahead and give it to me.

viewofdelft — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 14:15:39 -0800

Where can I find a breakdown of government contracts given to nonprofits? I'm looking for only the government contracts collected by nonprofits. Unfortunately for my research, IRS 990 forms do not separate out government contracts from other forms of program service revenue.

Does anybody have any idea where I might find this data? At this point, I'd settle on incomplete data from any year going back to the 1980s or 90s.

The Open Secrets website (referred to another AskMefite in this question) contains only information regarding corporate recipients of government contracts.

Video transparency/opacity solution?

Chorus — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 06:54:36 -0800

Help me watch anime while I work [aka video transparency/opacity solution?] I spend 5+ hours daily in front of a Word doc.

I'd like to be able to set the Word window to say 50% transparency and have a video file running behind it - so I can watched subbed anime while I work. [Productive, ahn?]

Google fu turned up the program Vitrite which works in making the Word window transparent. Unfortunately when I play a video file [either full screen or maximized] and place the 50% transparent window in front of it, the video output turns black. The sound still works fine, though, and when I alt/tab back into the video player, the video stream is perfect again. I get this black screen problem with all my media players when I try them with Vitrite: VLC, Media Player Classic, Zoom Player, Real Player, Quicktime... so I'm guessing it's an issue with Vitrite. I've tried many different video files/formats too [avi, ogg, etc]

Other searching has led me mostly to Mac programs. Does anyone have a solution to this? I really need something to watch while I'm typing and a second monitor is out of the question. Tiling the windows so half the screen is Word and the other half is say VLC is a stopgap measure at the moment, but I'd really like to get this transparency setup right.

Low-tech exhibit projection at a mock trial

Saucy Intruder — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 21:06:09 -0800

I need some low-tech advice on displaying exhibits at my upcoming mock trial. My current inventory:
- About twenty exhibits, each printed on 8.5x11 paper
- One overhead projector
- Access to a standard-size laser printer
- Law-student-size budget

We're using the courtroom on a Saturday, and don't have access to any court staff or personnel in order to track down various equipment. I am told that the rooms are wood-paneled and don't have a white surface for projection. Aside from this, I won't know what courtroom I'll be in until I show up. They are all different sizes, some cavernous, some tiny.

Given this, what is a low-cost, but professional-looking solution for displaying exhibits? A projector screen + tripod will run me at least $100; the tripod alone runs $40. Transparencies are 75c each at Staples and blow-ups of the paper exhibits run a couple of bucks apiece. I really can't afford to buy a bunch of expensive crap that I'll never use again. So I'm looking for creative solutions that utilize existing space in a room of unknown dimensions with optimal cost.

If you figure this out, I will not only mark yours best answer, I will give you a big hug and tell you that you have saved my day.

Windows Transparency Problems

RustyBrooks — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 19:38:11 -0800

OK, so I figured out, through lots of painful browsing of MSDN, how to make windows (partially) transparent, and also how to chroma-key windows. And it works great, but only in windows 2000. In windows XP it works only in certain cirumstances. Need windows programmer to help me... Here's the basic code snippet, where title and red/green/blue are defined upstream of this.

HWND hwnd = FindWindow(NULL, title);
COLORREF crkey = RGB(red, green, blue);

SetWindowLong(hwnd, GWL_EXSTYLE, GetWindowLong(hwnd, GWL_EXSTYLE) | WS_EX_LAYERED);
SetLayeredWindowAttributes(hwnd, crkey, alpha, LWA_COLORKEY | LWA_ALPHA);

This is like textbook, out of the windows example pages.

* It works on windows 2000
* It works on windows XP, EXCEPT it seems that I can only do it to windows that are NOT related to main application that is running the code above. That is, I can pick, say, my email window and make it transparent, but not another toplevel in my application.

I actually suspect that it may be a problem with how me/windows is "finding" the window. That first line where I get the HWND, I suspect that maybe it is not finding the window, under windows XP, if it's part of my application. The windows MSDN pages indicate that a different method is used if the window is/is not part of the application, so I suspect that may be the source of the problem.

I'm a unix programmer, doing this in windows out of necessity and I am in way over my head. I either need a better way to "find" window handles, or I need a way to verify whether FindWindow is finding anything, or if it's finding the "right" window.

The C code above is in a module, called by a scripting language called Tcl/Tk, so I don't really have low-level access to the toplevel windows in other ways (that is, I'm not explicitly creating them myself)

Smart Windows transparency?

krisjohn — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 18:55:45 -0800

Are there any Windows utilities out there that use transparency in an intelligent way? There are some Windows programs that use all-or-nothing, GIF-style transparency to shape their window. There are some that use the same percentage of transparency across their entire window in order to fade out, either in general or when they're not active. There are utilities that can apply both of those examples to existing programs.

But no one seems to use proper alpha channel transparency to, for example, allow things to show through the background, but still have completely opaque text. A telnet client or even web browser that fades out the background at maybe 50%, but leaves the text and other forground objects at 100% would be great for being able to see what's going on behind the top window without making text unreadable. Does anyone know any Windows programs that use what I guess could be called "dynamic alpha channels" in this way?

(Note; There are some utilities that fake it by showing only the background wallpaper in the background of a window. I'm not after these.)

PDF conversions with css.

mystyk — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 21:21:31 -0800

PDF from html with extensive css. How do I resolve my formatting issues? I'm doing conversion of an extensively css2 controlled web page into pdf. It has to be from a web page because of the extent of the dynamic content. Specifically, I'm having multiple issues.

First, I'm trying to get transparency to work in the images I put into the pdf, when it appears fine in the browser. I haven't found any evidence of support for .gif or .png in any of my searches. I really don't like the idea of having to get my php code to dynamically combine the layers and turn it to a single .jpg file.

Second, I can't get any web page background images to display once converted. As far as I can tell, it doesen't matter if the background is hard-coded to the element or exists in my .css file. I need the background to make it more professional, as this is being developed for military reasons.

Third, occasionally the .pdf will only produce the first page, and it is directly linked to the amount of css control in use, although I can't seem to find the individual factors causing this. Can you help me track it down?

Is there a way to tint an entire web page a certain colour?

DyRE — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 00:00:17 -0800

Is there a way to tint an entire web page a certain colour? As in, not actually altering the images and other content to be tinted that colour, just for the content to look that way when viewed on that page. It sounds to me like something that could be done with CSS but I'm really not sure. Google's results aren't turning up quite what I'm looking for, although maybe I just suck at finding the right words for this query.

Word to PDF distiller.

ParisParamus — Sat, 16 Oct 2004 12:25:29 -0800

Word to PDF Distortion Filter
I'm distilling a bunch of Word Files which contain tables, over which I am superimposing "semi-transparent" light gray text boxes. When these pages are distilled, the resulting .PDF displays the gray text boxes as "varigated," i.e., having bands of light and dark gray.

Does any kind stranger know if there is some setting I can adjust to make this go away? Thanks!

Photoshop Gradients

gsteff — Tue, 23 Mar 2004 13:16:10 -0800

Photoshop gurus: I've got a rectangular photo, which I plop down in the middle of a colored background. I'd like to create a smooth transparency gradient in the photo with respect to the background (more transparent at the top, opaque at the bottom). How would one do this?

(Specifically, I'm contructing a header image for a website... the top of the header is a solid color, with logo, etc. in it, while the bottom of the header is the photo. I'd like the solid area to dissolve into the photo).

Thanks- if anyone ever needs PHP/Postgresql advice, let me know!

How can I make Internet Explorer correctly implement full alpha transparency?

signal — Sun, 14 Mar 2004 19:41:44 -0800

Is there any easy to implement, close to 100% reliable, HTML, CSS, JS or whatever -hack to make IE correctly implement full alpha transparency in PNGs? It would make the life of this web developer much more happy and carefree.