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It appears there is still some controversy about those results:
controversy
Controversy is usually a good thing in science. It often means that there is an effect we don't entirely understand. In other words: There is a cool new effect, we don't entirely understand!!!

Judging from the difference in results coming from sources of differing bandwidth, it would appear that is an important factor. Which makes sense since this is essentially a resonance process.

Talks about the "myth", relying heavily on an article by Stan Liebowitz and Stephen Margolis, "The Fable of the Keys" (which is also available online). Among other things, the Liebowitz/Margolis piece "tells you plenty about the history of the typewriter--but what every economist should have concluded from it was that another example of 'locking in' had better be found. QWERTY simply will not do."

Among other things, there was one main study (conducted by the US Navy in 1944) that showed the Dvorak keyboard was superior to QWERTY, but the "experiments were conducted by one Lieutenant-Commander August Dvorak, the navy's top time-and-motion man, and owner of the Dvorak layout patent."

Yes, and No. According to the follow through article, the spacing out of the keys was an unexpected (feature / side effect):

The explanation for Norman and Rummelhart's factor C is that during a keystroke, the idle hand prepares for its next keystroke. Thus Sholes's decision to solve a mechanical problem through careful keyboard arrangement may have inadvertently satisfied a fairly important requirement for efficient typing.

[I wonder how many other /.ers read the little novel that the condensed history linked to, especially since it needs a copy-paste.]

An interesting article about how to calculate the ocean's depth was put together by Nathan Becker, a student at the University of Hawaii when the report was written in 2001.

Actually, that's not quite right. It looks like most of the arguments you're presenting were based on The Fable of the Keys by Liebowitz and Margolis.

As I pointed out when the topic came up last year, Leibowitz and Margolis are economists, and while their discussion of market externalities was correct, they don't quite represent the cognitive research on the Dvorak vs. Sholes (QWERTY) issue very accurately, or fairly.

A) Actual research does not support the efficiency gains of the Dvorak layout. The most-commonly-cited study in favor of the Dvorak layout was published by ... guess who ... Mr. Dvorak himself, and the science behind that study is deeply questionable.

The data entry industry did their own studies, which do not support the claimed efficiency boost of the Dvorak keyboard. Since they make more money if their data entry personnel type faster, they had every reason to conduct a fair and honest study of the two formats. They stuck with QWERTY.


Actually, the half-dozen or so well constructed lab tests comparing Dvorak to Sholes consistently show a 5-10% advantage for Dvorak (even Leibowitz and Margolis admit that Dvorak is somewhat faster). For a good overview of the research conducted on text entry, check out Jim Lewis's chapter "Keys and Keyboards" in the Handbook of Human-Computer Interaction.

The "data entry industry" study you're referring to is probably the Navy study mentioned in The Fable (and Lewis's chapter). Leibowitz and Margolis don't really describe the study correctly. This is in part due to the strange way it was conducted -- I'm away from my copy of it so I can't give a good description.

(On an unrelated note, it is pretty irritating to read Leibowitz and Margolis's character assassination of Dvorak. I once asked a well known economist about Stan Leibowitz and was told that his research seems to be too motivated by his political beliefs. I have no idea if that's true, and I would never use that as an argument to refute him in a peer reviewed article. Likewise, I think that the aspersions cast on Dvorak's reputation are a bit disingenuous and out of line for a scientific article.)

B) QWERTY is actually pretty damned good. The common urban legend about QWERTY being designed to slow typists down is just that, an urban legend. It is true that QWERTY was designed to reduce jamming on mechanical typewriters, but it did not do this by intentionally slowing typists down, as the legend claims.

Instead, it does this by ensuring that commonly-pressed pairs of keys are not next to one another (and in the days of mechanical hammers, this would also mean that the hammers were not next to one another). Conveniently, this means that successive keystrokes are likely to be pressed by alternate hands, which actually makes typing faster instead of slower.

Sort of right. Analyses of cross-hand keying do indicate that QWERTY is pretty good, but Dvorak is still better.

C) Your own anecdotal stories are, I'm sorry to say, worthless.

Actually, this is sort of true, sort of false, but these days probably irrelevant.

True: Only well designed scientific studies (or simulations) of human performance using various layouts can tell us which layouts are most efficient in which contexts.

False: Your anecdotal evidence is actually worth a lot -- to you. If you typed at 40 WPM using one layout and now type at 60 WPM using another layout, good for you. It doesn't mean anything for anyone else, but something about the switch (the new layout, the practice you had to engage in, your desire to prove that your layout is superior) helped you.

Irrelevant: Unless you are a transcriptionist (in which case, you probably should be using a specialized tra

I almost believed you, until I looked for myself for the studies you refer to. While your comments on the subjectivity of his experiences are correct, your statements regarding the results from several major studies is biased. Do a google search for Dvorak vs qwerty and you can read a good subset of those results again, for yourself.

My primary reference on this subject is The Fable of the Keys, which seems to be a pretty comprehensive look at the entire debate. I have read other papers regarding the subject, and generally found the same facts.

f you agree that moving your hands a smaller distance is more efficient, than it follows that the Dvorak layout is more efficient.

The only statistic worth debating is typing speed. Not hand movement or anything else. You can debate numbers all you want, but unless you've done a study showing that Dvorak is faster, you're just engaging in mental masturbation.

This happens in damned near everything -- film vs. digital, MP3 vs. CD, CD vs. vinyl -- people make assertions about what is better without actually bothering to do a fair comparison. I'm tired of it. Point me to studies which show that Dvorak is better than QWERTY, or be quiet.

The best reference I have found on the subject is The Fable of the Keys.

This paper basically attempts to prove that QWERTY vs. Dvorak was not an example of market failure -- in other words, that the best keyboard really did win and it wasn't because QWERTY was an entrenched standard that nobody was brave enough to challenge (which is the typical argument that the losers in any such fight give).

My general problem articles and reviews such as A Week of Wacky Input Devices is that they are not empirical. That is, little soft or hard research is done. I'd like more data bases on market research, user surveys, usability studies, and so forth. Opinions can certainly interesting and useful, but they don't have the same bite as research. Give me more data!

If you are interested Dvorak keyboards, I suggest you check out The Fable of the Keys by Liebowitz and Margolis (1990). At a minimum, it is a long article on why Dvorak failed economically, but it covers more ground than that.

The First Amendment applies only in a very limited way to commercial speech, and courts have had no problem declaring analogous postal mail and fax behavior illegal. I wouldn't bet much that spam stays legal forever.

The main problem with spam isn't First Amendment issues, it's cost-shifting and theft-of-service. And that kind of stuff has always been illegal.

Uhh, I hate to break it to you, buddy, but you have fallen into the dvorak myth. Next time you decided to harass us QWERTY typers, get your story straight. Check out this site and then tell us what you think. Also, I believe scientific research over a person's opinion, so don't tell me the article is complete BS.

Have a nice day!

The fact that QWERTY tends to be slower than other methods is an unfortunate side-effect of this engineering.

The assertation that QWERTY is significantly slower than Dvorak or other layouts also seems to be a myth.

The University of Texas at Dallas (in Richardson) also created one recently, including John Romero on the faculty.

The University of Texas at Dallas (in Richardson) also created one recently, including John Romero on the faculty.

But hes teaching for the Arts and Engineering program at the University of Texas at Dallas (where I'm hoping to go, major in computer science however)... Why yes this IS John Romero's name on the faculty list :P

It takes some time to learn, but once you do it is *much* faster and easier than QWERTY.

At least you are making a claim about Dvorak that perhaps makes sense (contrary to popular belief, Dvorak layout does not lead to superior typing speeds - see this)

As for Dvorak and keyboard pain, I don't think there have been any scientific studies, but lots of people think it does help and often any sort of change helps RSIs.

At least you are making a claim about Dvorak that perhaps makes sense (contrary to popular belief, Dvorak layout does not lead to superior typing speeds - see this) - has anyone researched whether Dvorak would help with RSI's? No offence to the parent, but I can't just go on one anecodote here :)

I personally can't switch as I need to be able to sit down on anyones PC and just start typing... I don't seem to get RSI pain at all, but I'm sure it will start in a few years, given I am a gamer and a programmer...

The University of Texas at Dallas has a new Art & Engineering program that just started up...They brought in two game designers John Romero and Tom Hall to teach a few classes on game programming. Theres a story on it in the college's own publication the UTD Mercury

Then again, everyone rips everyone else off in this industry so I don't know how upset I should be.

Get your facts straight. Nadia and Kimba the White Lion were not done by the same studios. More specifically, the similarities between Nadia and Atlantis have to do with the fact that BOTH are "ripped off" from the same source material, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and they both generally lift from the same Atlantic myths. I've been hearing some of the same ignorant claptrap that Treasure Planet is a "ripoff" of the anime Outlaw Star because it features pirates in space, and because Outlaw Star had a character named Jim Hawking (whose name, btw, was a combination of Jim Hawkins from Treasure Island and Stephen Hawking, the scientist).....while ignoring the fact that BOTH are based on similar source material, the novel Treasure Island. Also, the Nadia situation is a lot more complex, as it was originally something Miyazaki (of Studio Ghibli fame) was going to work on, and it didn't pan out....not coincedentally, the similarities between Gainax's Nadia and Studio Ghibli's movie Laputa: Castle in the Sky...read more about it here. The Lion King/Kimba the White Lion stuff is more blatant, but that is a different issue. -Tom

Actually, I would suggest that a much bigger problem is people blindly believing stories they hear without actually bothering to do a little research first. Thus are urban legends propagated.

The best reference for the Dvorak vs. Qwerty debate is probably "The Fable of the Keys", which you may find to be interesting reading. Also, in case you don't read the article, I would point out that the "Qwerty designed to slow typists down" myth is just a myth. No factual basis whatsoever.

It was designed to reduce jamming, by making sure that keys likely to pressed in succession were likely to be on opposite sides of the keyboard, and therefore reduce the likelihood that the hammers would jam. That, of course, has the nice benefit of making most successive keypresses performed by alternating hands, which is actually a benefit to efficiency. That's not to say that Qwerty is optimal, just that the urban legends in circulation about it are completely false.

Forgive me if this is available on the site, I might not have seen it, but is the software for creating this site available? Are there web based tools for creating the individual course pages and maintaining them? Are the eventually going to be open sourced? Does it make it easy for the professor to create the page (i.e. .doc to pdf conversion and so on)?

At my school we have a system that I assume we purhased called WebCT, and, frankly, it sucks. In fact for a supposedly technology driven school, we have some crappy resources. A bunch of sun workstations and 6 dollar copies of Windows XP, whoopteedo. I digress.

However, in my rhetoric class we handle all document management (turning in papers, journal entries, teachers notes, etc) via an online service provided by the University of Texas Austin. Aside from some really hokey things (strands of learning? that sounds rather new age) it is an interesting way to turn in papers and recieve feedback. It is pretty raw, but it has potential.

It is supposedly going to be open sourced (it is a php/mysql thing, I know because I saw the standard mysql overload page on it one day). Any other schools have systems like this? UTDallas does not, but then again, UTDallas sucks.

For those interested, The University of Texas at Dallas offers a similar degree program called Telecommunications Engineering. Its scope is a bit broader than just wireless.

Check out UTD's page about the program for more information.

When I visited Waterloo to see their CompSci department, they basically told me that half of my classes would be mathematics, the other half would be computer science. Sure there were a few elective spots if you didn't choose one of the more particular options available.

For example: Honors CS - Bioinformatics (one of the more varied CS programs). I don't see any non science/math courses required. Sure you get 5 or 6 electives, but that's not really encouraging a diverse education. Similarly, U of T seems to only require one writing course for CS students. UVic requires one technical writing course and one English course.

Check out this from CMU for a comparison. All CS students are required to complete a non-CS minor. Also see UTD for another example.

As a senior in HS deciding where to go for college I am forced to make some generalizations to narrow down the field. My observation has been that a typical American school requires a broader education than a typical Canadian school (no offense to Canadians; heck, I'm originally from Canada).

So why is this a problem? I've read plenty of articles in Canadian news publications that complain about the loss of students to American programs and, later, American jobs. As a Canadian living in the US, I'm not likely to head back to Canada for an education.

What the hell would they know about ergonomics? They where the ones who argued that Microsoft's monopoly was good for the economy.

Try this!

How come? Primarily because the basic idea of minmizing finger movement is largely irrelevant, specifically, the critical path is the amount of time it takes your brain to decide what movement to make rather than the time it takes for your finger to make the move. Further, coincidentally, the QWERTY keyboard was designed to optimize for alternate hand typing (left, right, left, right) whereas quantitatively Dvorak tends to require more single hand typing (left, left, left, right). This is a disadvantage because our brain is capable of multitasking, deciding what to do with the left hand while the right is moving.

Consequently, although Dvorak is apparently slightly quicker to learn, you are more likely to improve speed by training to get better on QWERTY rather than relearning Dvorak.

See link here.

Interestingly enough, acording to some people, the Dvorak keyboard isn't noticably more efficient than QWERTY in terms of typing speed. This article from the economist discusses the issue. It's mostly a light summary of this paper. Anyway, it's something to think about. Especially when you consider how long it must take to retrain yourself to type on a new keyboard.

Dvorak superiority is probably a myth.

I'm not sure what is more alarming, that it took this guy 6 months to crank out his piece for the Cato Institute or that someone at Salon actually imagined that anything coming out of there constitutes serious research.

This guy is not worth this attention. His essay on QWERTY hardly constitutes the rebuttal of path dependence he thinks it does. All it convinced me is that QWERTY isn't as inefficient as everyone claims. The logical gap between stating that and claiming that "lock-in" effects are trivial is enormous.

But he gets press for ideological reasons. Once you admit to certain kinds of inefficiencies you invite the kind of public debates the Cato Institute hates: the merits of price-caps, or quality controls, or "open access" requirements on things like source code or cable lines.

It all leads to a ridiculous faith in the efficiency of markets. Getting screwed by your local telephone company? It's not a monopoly! ANYONE could compete with them, so let 'em charge what they will.... i386 a standard? Microsoft?

I'm personally waiting for this crowd to produce a piece of "serious research" teling us all that Enron really was perfectly efficient after all.... What were we thinking?

I think this Liebowitz is one of the co-authors of the famous Fable of the Keys paper. I read the "Fable of the Keys" and I was unimpressed - no new research, just criticism of other's research, all to support a very doctrinaire laissez faire free market position about QWERTY keyboards.

I'm really surprised that he's letting facts get in it the way.

The University of Texas at Dallas does it. There is a lab full of Red Hat Linux computers and Sun Ray terminals.

Though their web site is a bit sparse on details, you could probably shoot an email to a member of the staff. They're friendly people, and I'm sure they'd be willing to help you out.

The University of Texas at Dallas does it. There is a lab full of Red Hat Linux computers and Sun Ray terminals.

Though their web site is a bit sparse on details, you could probably shoot an email to a member of the staff. They're friendly people, and I'm sure they'd be willing to help you out.

The University of Texas at Dallas does it. There is a lab full of Red Hat Linux computers and Sun Ray terminals.

Though their web site is a bit sparse on details, you could probably shoot an email to a member of the staff. They're friendly people, and I'm sure they'd be willing to help you out.

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thefl74@netscape.net, elbardo@libero.it, clem131@libero.it, t-i-e@bigfoot.com, gng74@libero.it, moz.party.20.gnes@spamgourmet.com, ema.cerqui@libero.it, ubertob@tin.it, mozparty.20.anagoor@spamgourmet.com, gianpaolo@preciso.net, ian@deepsky.com, marco@porciletto.org, planetx2100@hotmail.com, billabong@tiscalinet.it, piofree@libero.it, skunkyboy@tiscalinet.it, vincenzo@mondopiccolo.net, macmatteo@interfree.it, contreras@jce.it, hereandnow@libero.it, pza@students.cs.mu.oz.au, caedwa@students.cs.mu.oz.au, mgi@students.cs.mu.oz.au, bah@humbug.net, mfp@cs.mu.oz.au, nospamplease@indevelopment.org, peter@simplyit.screaming,net, pmj@users.sf.net, xanni@sericyb.com.au, agh@kalcium-is.com, felicityconsult@ozemail.com.au, lucas@lucaschan.com, andrewg@nopninjas.com, andym@abnormal.com, ts@meme.com.au, jasonpell@hotmail.com, syngin@gimp.org, mhammond@skippinet.com.au, szutshi@devraj.org, rmoonen@bigpond.net.au, fawad@fawad.net, ufs@softhome.net, kotrade@yahoo.com, ben@benscorp.com, 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Actually, that article is inaccurate.

It states that their "salesmen used this slight bit of subterfuge to impress potential customers"... However it failed to get into the typewriter "shoot-outs" that went on during that period, where manufacturers would pit their machines against each other in speed trials. QUERTY came to domminance in those. They world's first and fastest touch-typist also came from the Remingtons' machine promotions. (Look up Frank McGurrin sometime if you care).

It also cites Navy experiments on the Dvorak layout. However... they forgot to mention that it was only one study, compared 14 Dvorak typists to 18 QWERTY typists, and that the experiments were conducted by one Lieutenant-Commander August Dvorak, the navy's top time-and-motion man, and owner of the Dvorak layout patent.

For more (but slightly slanted against Dvorak) see "The Fable of the Keys"

(Note that I'm not saying here that Dvorak just the same as QUERTY, but just that QWERTY is much better than some give credit for, and that Dvorak isn't that vastly ahead).

Let me provide a preemptive response to the inevitable post that will disagree with the parent post:

Whenever someone claims that the Dvorak layout is superior, there is usually a response that relies on the article The Fable of the Keys by Liebowitz and Margolis.

The Fable is written by two economists. They rebut the claim that the failure of the Dvorak keyboard to replace the QWERTY layout represents a market failure. Essentially, they say that Dvorak isn't much better than QWERTY so there was no real advantage to it, and it added costs.

I have no doubt that Liebowitz and Margolis are first rate economists, and that they know all sorts of things about nework effects and market externalities. What I do strongly oppose is their misreading of the cognitive psychology literature, and their unsubstantiated and overblown attacks on August Dvorak.

I am a cognitive psychologist. I've read the literature. I understand my field, and it is apparent that the bias that Liebowitz and Margolis bring to their evaluation of the literature taints their paper. I make no claims about their economic arguments, but they have done their readers a great disservice by unfairly treating their subject (whether out of malice, bias, or incompetance).

For a decent layman's response to The Fable, check out this page

</rant>

The bottom line is that Dvorak is about 10% faster than QWERTY, given the same training. This is substantial, but one must consider that most of the time it takes to compose a document is not typing time, but rather content generation (e.g., thinking about what to say). Therefore, someone like a transcriptionist would benefit from a superior layout more than a typical knowledge worker. In addition, there's pretty good evidence that Dvorak error rates are significantly lower than QWERTY rates. This isn't as much an issue with computers as it was with old typewriters (it takes more time use use whiteout than it does to hit the Backspace key). There have been claims that Dvorak layouts reduce the likelihood of RSIs. There haven't been any really good studies, and it is unlikely that there will be (given the small number of Dvorak users)

I use a Dvorak layout, and I enjoy it for a number of reasons:

* I type a bit faster, but it is probably due to the fact that I engaged in dedicated practice when I learned to type Dvorak.
* People don't ask to use my computer
* I gained a lot of insight about the process of skill acquisition when I learned the new layout.

Oh, and I can still type pretty decently on QWERTY keyboards.

Here is some food for thought, both pro-and-con Atlantis/Nadia connections:
DVDAngle: an introduction to the controversy
Nadia/Atlantis: The evil Disney Empire rips off Anime, again...
Nadia/Atlantis: an opposing view
Nadia/Atlantis: list of "homages" in Nadia

Here is some food for thought, both pro-and-con Atlantis/Nadia connections:
DVDAngle: an introduction to the controversy
Nadia/Atlantis: The evil Disney Empire rips off Anime, again...
Nadia/Atlantis: an opposing view
Nadia/Atlantis: list of "homages" in Nadia

My university recently purchased a few of these to incorporate into a new Technical Communications course. The smart board was by far smarter than the teacher, but that's beside the point.

The boards were intuitive, responsive, and just plain fun to use. Paired with projectors built into the ceiling and interfaced with the terminal by the smartboards, we had quite the multimedia setup for our course. Special markers also added to the fun by allowing the prof to use different colors to 'overwrite' images on the computer that were projected onto the smartboard. Very very cool, and it never crashed or locked once, which I think is fantastic for such an input-sensitive windows system.

I hope to see more schools and universitites employ this technology, as it has a far greater and instant impact in the classroom than grants for new computers a school doesn't have the money to purchase licenses for.

Sorry, this is complete bullshit.

A TCP packet has a header area and a data area. The header has a number of fields in it; the ones that are important here are the source and destination MAC addresses, the source and destination TCP/IP addresses, and the source and destination Port numbers.

A TCP header does not include anything like MAC addresses. The TCP header contains EXACTLY the following fields:

Source Port (16bit)
Destination Port (16 bit)
Sequence Number (32 bit)
Acknowledgement Number (32 bit)
Header Length (4 bit)
reserved (6 bits - currently unused)
TCP Flags (6 bits)
Window size (16 bits)
TCP Checksum (16 bits)
Urgent pointer (16 bits)

Anyone who tells you the TCP HEADER holds anything else is WRONG.

The IP HEADER doesn't even contain MAC information:

Version (4 bits)
Header Length (4 bits)
Type Of Service (8 bits)
Total length (16 bits)
ID (16 bits)
Fragmentation info (16 bits)
TTL (8 bits)
Protocol (8 bits)
Header Checksum (16 bits)
Source IP Address (32 bits)
Destination IP Address (32 bits)

A diagram of the TCP and IP headers can be found at http://www.utdallas.edu/~cantrell/ee6345/pocketgui de.pdf

A dodgy looking page on earthlink, with no real references to back up its claims does not a mythbuster make...

The Straight Dope also addressed this story back in 1981. Cecil initially confirmed it, but then reversed himself when a reader sent in a well-researched article which showed that the QWERTY design was indeed intended to increase typing speed, not decrease it.

It also has a bit to say about the supposed advantages of Dvorak keyboards.

The best article I've seen attempting to debunk this is The Fable of the Keys. I haven't seen a rebuttal of this from the Dvorak camp, but I'm sure that it exists. In short, the article claims that the Sholes (QWERTY) keyboard, far from being an arbitrary selection, actually was the survivor from a number of conteporaneous keyboard designs. On the other hand, most of the "studies" cited to support the Dvorak arrangement by those advocating the arrangement before hand, or even by LtC Dvorak himself.

CT also made a weird beast called MegaFrame. Started out as an 80186-based LAN server (Ethernet? What's Ethernet? Network was an RS-422 daisy chain.) that could be expanded in a modular fashion to some ungodly number of CPUs. Then somebody decided the same box could host a 68010-based "application procesor", and it was CT's chance to break into the Unix marketplace. System admin was much fun: you had to know both Unix and CTOS, the proprietary OS that ran on the 80186 boards. And you thought configuring Win 2K was complicated!

Just for the record, the dramatic quality difference between VHS and Beta is a well documented myth (although, the question is a little more complicated than that, as usual). You are right, however that VHS killed Beta primarily because of the recording length issue.

While I do like Ruby, it doesn't have the support behind it that Python does. Thats why I use Python, and not Ruby.

This is a nice example of path dependence. You use it becuase more people use it, and so on and so on. Things that don't catch on sometimes don't catch on because of tiny, idiosyncratic, reasons, but then the competition snowballs. The canonical example of the QWERY keyborad is overused (and sometimes disputed), but you get the idea.

Besides, there are so many scripting languages. David Korn pointed out here on /. that ksh can do most anything perl can. Why not use ksh, then? Ad nausaeum.

Let's make a stab at objectivity re letter pairs:

On my system (/usr/dict/words on solaris--dict from ispell? not sure) this gives er, in, an, on, te, le, at, en, re, ar as the most frequent. None of these are adjacent (and adjacency is really the only issue now that bar action's no longer involved). A better comparison would look at combos irrespective of order, though, and I don't feel like doing that right now.

I appreciate your point, but keep in mind also that we don't know what the bar mechanism behind the keys was; it may even be that the bars for close keys like t and h were positioned such that they would not be in conflict.

Of course, there's also the lack of strong evidence for superiority of Dvorak. At least, I haven't yet seen somebody to link to a well-documented case for Dvorak based on typist efficiency, and I have seen a link (from above, courtesy briancarnell) that cites a specific study demonstrating that Dvorak's not worth the effort.

Yes, the first one is an urban legend, but yours is just made-up as well. The truth of the matter is that noone alive today has the definitive answer as to why the QWERTY keyboard was used. It certainly wasn't effeciency as the speed record has always been on DVORAK keyboards (that's the name of it, not the key arrangement.)

When you said I made this up, you were a liar. If you would read any decent account of the history of the typewriter, there were in fact speed competitions held and those using QWERTY layouts won. Dvorak's layout didn't come until much later.

The efficiency claim is also nonsense. Yes the fastest typing speeds in the world are achieved on Dvorak, but for the efficiency claim to be true, the average Dvorak keyboarder would have to be faster than the average QWERTY keyboarder. What few studies there are on this point typically find the differences in typing speed border on statistically insignificant.

See this story, which has a good look at the issues and was featured on Slashdot awhile ago.

If you are to lazy to read: No studies confirm that Dvorak keyboards really are conclusively better. On the other hand, too little (quality) research has been done. Most of what has been done is often biased towards Dvorak in the setup, and therefore of little value. An interesting ergonomic study mentioned in the article explains why Dvorak isn't much better despite shorter finger movement and more balanced distribution of keys between hands (reason: qwerty keyboards favours alternating hand-sequences, which is also good for typing speed). The authors of the article believes the assumptions about the market underlying Dvorak propaganda is flawed, and that many keyboard layouts (other than qwerty) (with substantial variations) were given reasonable chances to become the "standard" keyboard.

As for myself, I can only add the obligatory reference to Occams razor. What do you find most likely?

1. Dvorak keyboards really are much better, and people using them are much more efficient, but nobody uses them because [insert random reason here]...
2. Dvorak was really good at selling his keyboard and ideas, and many people got fascinated by them, but in the end the expectations didn't turn out in practice, so it sort of died out.... Not that it was a bad keyboard, it was just that no noticeable gain was seen from switching.

Last year, UTD added a second connection to the Internet, through a seemingly separate backbone. A few months ago, a single fiber cut in Irving, ~20 miles away, knocked out both connections for days.

So much for redundancy!

My recommendation is to finish high school ASAP and get the hell out! College in my experience is a much more accepting place.

UTDallas is in the area and used to be a great place for people like this and I guesss it's still pretty good. But be sure to visit WaterviewSux.com before living on-campus!