Slashdot Mirror

Here is another way to contact your rep. http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/

is found among the usenet FAQa: http://www.visi.com/~nathan/a2/faq/asoft.html

Sure, it's funny to the Ivory Soap Parameter (99 and 44/100ths of a percent) of people, but I still keep a copy for my use. What *I* find funny is that the first Macs had an Applesoft emulator available, and it had a subset of the Apple II reference called "Green Book" in its instructions.

I've got a question... if you go here: http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/cgi-bin/newseek.cgi?site=ctc&state=la and your congress rep is vacant "Representative Vacant (- - 01)" what is the best course of action?

Or maybe take their ears away from the corporate whispers for some time with us?

A quick google search found these.
List of representatives
Search for yours, by zip. Make it easier!

Send a letter.

This site will help to contact your representative. This one will work too, and I think it will find senators as well.

Google is our friend! And apparently non-partisan. Yessss...

Yes, and coincidentally enough it's also the same state that appears as a kind of blue rectangle around election time. You can see how strongly we support the right by our governor and the many republican congressmen and senators we elected last time...all what, 8 (out of 53) of them?

http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/cgi-bin/newseek.cgi?site=ctc&state=ca

I'll grant your point that the left generally ignores pornography, but this is a special case. This is (allegedly) pornography in school. Left or right, no vote hungry politician is going to get behind that one.

Deliberately dumb? Not really, just baiting. Don't think the Xerox copier hasn't been considered in copyright infringement litigation. The main point is the MPAA and RIAA are so bent on driving a crowbar between the consumer and the media they control, they'll do anything necessary to limit our historical rights. Part of this is threatening manufacturers with litigation if they don't apply copy protection systems to ordinary items under threat of violating some imaginary clause of the DMCA. Unfortunately, the DMCA is being used to drive out all notions of "fair use" and the eventual "public domain" status of any copyrighted work. Fortunately, the public can supply feedback to the Government on how the DMCA is going.

The granddaddy of this litigation in the modern age was the Betamax Case where Universal and others accused VCR makers of being part of a copyright infringement mechanism. That was struck down and the ruling was later challenged by MGM v. Grokster. That allowed the Betamax ruling to stand but failed to define the limits of what is legal or illegal in the Internet age.

Meanwhile, the MPAA and RIAA were very busy trying to lock down all technical avenues of distribution. They even tried to get copy protection applied to analog audio systems (apply a phase rotation at several frequencies which triggers copy inhibit). I can't find a current link to that but the RIAA gave demonstrations to Congress on how this would reduce the problem of tape copying and off-air recording. Artists countered with their own demonstrations to Congress on how it trashed the audio. The goal was to enact a law to make copying music illegal under any circumstances, including "fair use". The INDUCE Act proposed by Orrin Hatch gives a glimpse into how far this could go.

I have no idea how they let the CD slip out the door without protections but the content controllers (I hesitate to call them providers) have been trying to retrofit restrictions to the CD ever since the CD-R came about for consumers. The MPAA made sure the DVD wouldn't be in the same boat as the CD or the Betamax. The DVD, obviously designed for recording movies, was not to be released in any form without controls approved by the MPAA members. I work with some of the people who were in the room when the first DVD was made in the U.S. What a mess - the MPAA had teams of lawyers ready to sue you for trying to create a mechanism to pirate movies. That's how the DVD was viewed.

Now, there's no shortage of ways to recognize content and disable equipment from use which displeases the MPAA or RIAA. Fortunately, several watchdog groups are pushing back on the laws just as hard to keep some of these historical freedoms and "fair use" alive. Otherwise, we'd get sued for copyright infringement by walking down the street and whistling a song.

Here are a few other things worth reading:

• The MPAA's attempts to lock down media and eliminate our legal rights.
• Janis Ian's excellent view from the other side of the RIAA.
• How the RIAA is using technology to limit rights.

There's a lot of good info there, but here are the cliff notes:

A University of Minnesota Civil Engineer in a report to MN-DOT recently noted that this bridge is considered to be a non-redundant structure. That is, if any one member fails, the entire bridge can collapse. A key factor is that there are only four pylons holding up the arch. Any damage to any one pylon would be catastrophic. The textbook example of a non-redundant bridge is the Silver Bridge over the Ohio River. It failed shortly before Christmas in 1967 resulting in 46 deaths. A single piece of hardware failed due to a tiny manufacturing defect. But that piece was non-redundant, and the entire bridge collapsed into the icy river. Today, bridge engineers design bridges so that any single piece of the bridge can fail without causing the entire bridge to collapse. It is tragic that the I-35W bridge was built a few years too early to benefit from that lesson.

Kind of funny that I don't quite agree totally with the Republican or Democrat side on these issues.

I am in favor of cracking down on illegal immigration - not here legally, leave the country and go back home and apply to immigrate here. However, Real ID is not needed and it is a de-facto National ID card, plain and simple. There is no place for it here in the USA. There is no need for linking driver databases or the Tri-National Driver License Agreement. The Real ID should be repealed and anyone and everyone should Contact Congress and demand its repeal and do it while the Democrats control Congress. Rather than having laws that curtail civil liberties of US citizens, we need to first enforce the laws on the books instead of the typical attitude of looking the other way. Each time the gov't has a shortcoming of enforcing their laws, they pass more laws and we citizens get punished for it. This vicious cycle needs to end.

On the legal immigration issue, I have expressed interest in leaving the USA such as go live in New Zealand. However, I would do ths the legal way though. I went there after Christmas for vacation and when I went through immigration, my passport was stamped with a 3 month visitor permit with an expiration 3 months after the date of the stamp which is the arrival date. The stamp mentioned that if I was in NZ after 3 months (past the expiration date), I was subject to being deported from the country. If I wanted to be there longer than 3 months, I would have to go to NZ immigration and ask for an extention of the permit. At that point, they would extend it or not. If not, I have to leave before the expiration date. Simple rules. It is something we should expect of those who visit the USA or any other country. BTW, the permit did not allow me to earn an income there. That is a different permit which takes paperwork to get. I am too old (older than 30) to get a Working Holiday Permit like many young people get such as college students and recent graduates.

But, how many have called their Congresscritter to let them know how they feel about this?

If you don't know yours, you can go here to find out...it's less likely to be a frustrating experience than using this web site.

Unfortunately I feel it's unlikely to make much difference in the long run, against the moneyed lobbyists fronting for the copynazis, but it's always good to go on record as a voice of sanity.

Copyright infringement should *not* be criminalized to an extent that allows asset forfeiture to be part of the legal remedies.

...get in touch (preferably in writing) with your local Congresscritter if you're in the US:
Contacting the Congress
Write your House Rep
Senators of the 110th Congress
How to Contact US Senators

The interpreted mainframe macro language I use a lot in the Unisys mainframe world (@CALL) uses "=" or "!=: for case sensitive equality and inequality, "eq" and "ne" for case insensitive equality and inequality, and ":=" for variable assignment.

All in all, it's quite clean synctactically. A manual for the language can be found here:

    http://www.visi.com/~rsteiner/2200stuff/callprm.ht m

If Congress refuses to significantly change the Real ID Act, then rebellion is the way to make it fail. The Act is built on a flimsy deck of cards. If a few of the most populated states like CA, NY, IL, MI, TX decide to blow it off. The Federal Gov't would be in a bind. On one hand, if they enforce it, it will kill the airline industry. On the other hand, if they don't enforce it, they are disobeying the law that Congress passed.

It needs to be completely repealed. It was passed without discussion, without debate. It became law as a "rider" on a must-pass piece of legislation. With the Democrat Congress, its demise is more likely. We should contact Contact Congress and ask the law be repealed completely concerning the driver's license provisions.

Careful with the encryption feature. Using it is an FCC violation.

Lots of people dislike the FCC content regulations, like this ham, for example.

Hehe, cool. Got any screenshots (especially of you using Mozilla on OS/2)?

Sure, here ya go...

How much disk space do you have? Do you run Linux too?

Another mirror: http://janus.visi.com/Es3b-en.pdf

too much concentration on flashy UI elements and not enough concentration on service a diverse user base

Have you looked at your website lately? We've got rapidly shifting gif animations, bright colors on a dark background slowly shifting through the spectrum all psychedelic-like, frames, whatever this background image is supposed to be...gah!

too much concentration on flashy UI elements and not enough concentration on service a diverse user base

Have you looked at your website lately? We've got rapidly shifting gif animations, bright colors on a dark background slowly shifting through the spectrum all psychedelic-like, frames, whatever this background image is supposed to be...gah!

So I should add every person who sends mail to a busy email list to a white list, one by one? No thanks.

No. Postini has a feature specifically for mailing lists: you can specify the single TO or FROM address which is associated with that list, and Postini will pass everything which contains the address specified for that list.

Here's the screen screen that Postini uses.

Nope. I dropped lynx years ago. Links is a completely different text-based browser that shows things like tables and frames in a proper way, which makes some attempt to match text colors, and which (in some variants) also has a GUI display so images and other things are present just like they are in the Big Boys.

Here's an example of www.osnews.com being viewed by Links via PuTTY on a SunOS server:

    http://www.visi.com/~rsteiner/links.gif

and the main project site is here:

    http://links.sourceforge.net/

I've personally used Links under OS/2, Linux, and Solaris with some regularity, and also on BeOS from time to time. It's a really nice browser for what it does. Except on Slashdot.

It also happens to be the main language in the application I'm working on, but it'll be ported to something else soon enough. :-)

I also tend to write (or at least tweak) a certain amount of assembler code, CALL (a nice interpreted macro language), and even C on the Unisys mainframe side of life, as well as the occasional tidbit in fairly obscure languages like SymStream/SSG, TTS, or even CTS or ED macros.

I tried to post an example of CALL (which is a language I really like), but the lameness filter prevented me. Maybe that's a hint. ;-) But here are a couple of URLs:

Source for head clone Source for text file lister

It also happens to be the main language in the application I'm working on, but it'll be ported to something else soon enough. :-)

I also tend to write (or at least tweak) a certain amount of assembler code, CALL (a nice interpreted macro language), and even C on the Unisys mainframe side of life, as well as the occasional tidbit in fairly obscure languages like SymStream/SSG, TTS, or even CTS or ED macros.

I tried to post an example of CALL (which is a language I really like), but the lameness filter prevented me. Maybe that's a hint. ;-) But here are a couple of URLs:

Source for head clone Source for text file lister

It does happen, but you need to choose an isp with more "$30,000" clients than "$30" clients. Sure, for my $20 a month I dont get access to their super-secret-special pager number for use during holidays or emergencies. It doesn't really matter though. The only unannounced outage of service I've seen this last year was for under an hour, was due to the line provider, and was given a message in the call waiting pool as to what the problem was before I even had to bother asking a human what the problem was. To me, the best part about the package is that their "residential" service is what most isps consider "buisness" packages: only static ips, all ports unblocked, no throttling, usenet, dialup backup. The only complaint most people have had with this isp was the lack of 24/7 tech support, which they started offereing back in March. Take a look at the announcement page, does your isp offer this? Mine does.

It does happen, but you need to choose an isp with more "$30,000" clients than "$30" clients. Sure, for my $20 a month I dont get access to their super-secret-special pager number for use during holidays or emergencies. It doesn't really matter though. The only unannounced outage of service I've seen this last year was for under an hour, was due to the line provider, and was given a message in the call waiting pool as to what the problem was before I even had to bother asking a human what the problem was. To me, the best part about the package is that their "residential" service is what most isps consider "buisness" packages: only static ips, all ports unblocked, no throttling, usenet, dialup backup. The only complaint most people have had with this isp was the lack of 24/7 tech support, which they started offereing back in March. Take a look at the announcement page, does your isp offer this? Mine does.

>>Re:What the shit is with these new ads?
>>(Score:2)
>>by voice_of_all_reason (926702) on Tuesday April 04, @12:26PM (#15058893)
>>
>>If you block them, they don't register as being viewed and you keep seeing them every time you try to view your new messages/user panel. Guess those are off limits for me now!
>
>Re:What the shit is with these new ads?
>(Score:2)
>by Richard Steiner (1585) on Tuesday April 04, @12:29PM (#15058929)
>(http://www.visi.com/~rsteiner | Last Journal: Wednesday March 29, @06:44PM)
>
>Wow... That Xerox ad is about the most obnoxious thing I've ever seen. It gets in the way of damn near everything!!

It's worse than that -- if you're using Opera, the Xerox flash ad code jumps the page forward to an empty page containing just the ad ... so Slashdot is unreadable with Opera if one of these ads is up -- just an empty page with one ad on it.

ObOn-Topic: I wonder how much market value Apache Harmony may take away from other companies that make JVM's ... is it still even possible to use IBM's JVM for free?

...and if nobody noticed, the recent equitable way the people who settled the issues over copyrighted code in Apache Harmony's JCHEVM relating to the Sable VM should serve as a model to folks working out code disputes. :)

I say thumbs up to the State of New Hampshire for refusing to go along with the Real ID Act of 2005. Unfortunately, NH is a small state that the Federal Gov't can easily ignore their citizens. If one of the heavily populated states such as California, New York, Texas decide not to go along and are defiant towards the Federal Gov't like NH, the house made from the deck of cards known as the Real ID Act will come tumbling down.

One of the most onerous provisions of the Real ID Act is requiring states to electronically link their driver databases. I don't know how extensive this will be. The worst case scenario is another state can add violations to a different state's driver's record. Best case would be states can access other states records on a "read only" basis. One of the biggest pitfalls are states with very strong privacy laws can be accessed from states with weak privacy laws. The strong privacy laws are no good ! The original language of the act required states to join an international compact known as the Driver License Agreement (DLA) which would not only other states can access your state's records but also foreign countries starting with Canada and Mexico. The foreign countries do not even have to comply with the Driver Privacy protection Act. If I was a stalker and I was interested in finding a certain person who went through all steps to protect themselves such as with unlisted phone numbers, I can go to Mexico, pay off a corrupt official (easy to find) to get the given information.

The author of the Real ID Act of 2005 was Francis James Sensenbrenner, Jr. of Wisconsin. An interesting item about him, he bullies people to get his way and does not take kindly to people who dare to disagree with him ! When it was time for people to testify against the PATRIOT Act, he got up, walked out of the hearing room, turned off the microphones. He acted like the Democrats. With his arrogance, he is not fit to be Congressman. Even though I am a Libertarian who usually votes Republican, I am having thoughts of giving money to his Democrat opponent.

This law was passed through the most underhanded ways. It was attached to a must pass appropriations bill. It would have never passed the Senate as a standalone bill. When the standalone bill was assigned to the Senate Judiciary Committee, it was not given a hearing. The Real ID Act was also included in the House provisions of the Intel Reform bill that was later removed and passed at the end of 2004 in the 108th Congress.

The best way to get rid of this law is to tell people and get them pissed off enough to where they raise hell with their Congressman and demand a repeal.

Also a heads up, the DLA provision that didn't make the Real ID Act, it is included in the immigration bill under the Scott Gardner Act. Contact your Congressman. Raise hell about this DLA in the immigration bill and raise hell about the Real ID Act and politely & diplomatically tell him how much it stinks !

Lastly, not many people remember back in 2001, the CEO of Oracle, Lawrence Ellison mentioned that it is time for a National ID card here in the US. At the time, there were more congressman with common sense that put a kibosh on this like Rep. Dick Armey, Rep. Bob Barr who no longer are members of Congress. This leaves a question, how much lobbying money did Larry Ellison put in to get this asinine law passed.

The most important control we have is our vote. When politicians make egregious appointments like this, it's our responsibility to let them know our disagreement at the ballots (and the polls).

The main problem is accountability. I've seen several posts about cronyism patterns in the administration, but about half of the US population doesn't seem to care. Hell, the press hasn't even bothered to pick this story up. Until people are outraged by this kind of abuse, it will continue to go on.

And seriously, look at what brought this guy's resignation. Deutsch's job was to help explain science issues to the public. This same person was limiting important scientific discussion on major issues, such as global warming. So what brought him down? He lied on his resume. That's like bringing down Capone for tax evasion.

So what do we do about it? Write a letter to your congressman. Write to your newspaper to discuss the issue. Talk to friends. Just do something.

Information to contact Congress is found at this link. It is time to "Slash.dot" Congress and encourage our friends to do the same. As more people find out about this piece of $h!t law, more people will get pissed and they should demand repeal !

In addition, this Real ID Act was going to require states to sign the Driver License Agreement which would open our driving databases not only between the states but as a start, foreign countries such as Canada and Mexico as a start. A couple of states already signed the Driver License Agreement - Connecticut and Arkansas. More information can be found at WikiPedia. There is another bill to require states to sign that just passed the House, sponsored of course, by Sensenbrenner. It is HR4437 concerning Immigration. The AAMVA is a non-government organization. They push policies that affect everyone such as this DLA but if you go to their web site, most of their pages are off limits, restricted to their members. They should be required to comply with open door laws. They are especially secretive concerning the DLA. Most people if they realize what it is about would be up in arms on it.

What a stupid reply. Thanks for taking the time to lower my IQ. Keyboard layout and programming languages. Yeah, totally the same thing. Oh wait, you must be one of the guys that's trying to sell one of these pieces of crap. My bad.

If you had put in the same amount of effort to read my post as you did in crafting your oh-so-eloquent response, you'd realize that the analogy answers both of your questions. People keep coming up with new keyboard layouts for the same reason they come up with new programming languages - because it's a project they want to accomplish in an area that they find interesting (see the fellow who set up an evolutionary algorithm to determine the best layout). This also answers the second question, although that could have been answered by looking at, oh, I don't know, just about every single post on slashdot about some guy making a rocketship out of old toast or putting his G3 mac into a Commodore 64 case and the inevitable dozen "but why on earth would someone do this?" replies.

By the way, if you had RTFA, you'd realize that nobody is selling anything - it's a free software keyboard layout. Keyboard and keyboard layout. Yeah, totally the same thing. Oh wait, you must be one of those guys who is so interested in posting a reply that you think is clever that you don't bother to read either the article or the post to which you are replying. My bad.

No offense, but my posts aside, I think you're doing just fine lowering your IQ on your own :).

Nice excerpt from Babylon 5.

There's no need to use shell scripts that export LD_LIBRARY_PATH any more, and there hasn't been for many, many years. With the GNU dynamic linker, and any other modern linker, you can spesify an $ORIGIN which will be searched for libraries, for example "./libs".

Read this for more about why LD_LIBRARY_PATH is bad practise:
http://www.visi.com/~barr/ldpath.html

Not to detract from your point, but many Inuit (eskimos) eat whale blubber because it tastes good:
http://www.visi.com/~wick/axe/muktuk.html

"Exactly...what do we do? We vote, but as I voted in the last election, the guy I was voting against still won. OK...now what? I've written to both my congressmen and senators about topics like the National ID and things like this...they write back to me with a form letter stating that they too are concerned, yet they never say one way or another if they're for or against anything. Which leads us back to the voting booth which has lead no where in the past. "

Legislators have teams of people tracking correspondence like this... and it definitely makes a difference. They rank correspondence according to medium, from emails on the low end to hand-written letters on the highest end.

Contact info for US Congress people available here:
http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/

What else can you do?

Organize friends and acquaintances to write letters and make phone calls. Support organizations that lobby for your position(s).

Get the main-stream media involved. Write a letter to the editor, follow up to get it published. Create a group consisting of like-minded people and hold a press conference, send out press releases. It helps if you build a coalition of acitivst groups. Organize protests. Catch your legislators coming out of lunch, and videotape yourself asking them their stances, and their responses.

Voting is not participating in government. Voting is one way of deciding who participates in government. If you want to participate in government, you can... but it takes more than voting, and to be really effective, it takes more than writing a letter.

Remeber, one vote doesn't mean anything to a US legislator. 10,000 votes do. 1,000 votes do.

" If you don't like it, don't use them. You do have a choice, you know."

Sure, we have that choice... for now. But what happens when all available choices are doing the same thing? The only reason a large company would not submit to China's demands is if doing so would make them lose more business elsewhere. The size of the Chinese market and the relative indifference of consumers preclude this.

Assuming that Chinese policy is wrong, wouldn't it be best for China to change their policy? As more and more companies give in to China's demands, their restrictions on free speech on the internet are becoming a foregone conclusion. Simply not using Yahoo isn't going to change Yahoo's policy, nor China's.

If you want change in China, be proactive. Don't just not use Yahoo -- pass the word to people who are unaware. Let Yahoo know how much business they are losing. Investigate who else bends to the Chinese government, boycott and spread the word.

You may feel like you're doing something by not using Yahoo, and you are. But it's not enough. Have you forwarded the article to your non-Slashdot reading friends who might be concerned about speech limitations in China, asking them to boycott Yahoo?

Have you contacted your legislators about this, to make them aware that you are concerned? Whether or not government can or will do anything about it, public officials need to know.

Here's contact info for US Congresspeople:
http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/

You should also contact your state legislators -- I could see Massachusetts (for example) disallowing Yahoo use in government offices if enough residents do so.

Have you written a letter to Yahoo demanding change, explaining why you are boycotting them and organizing others to do so?

Here's a link to Yahoo's management team bios:
http://docs.yahoo.com/docs/pr/executives/index.htm l

Here's a link to Yahoo's board of directors:
http://docs.yahoo.com/docs/pr/executives/board.htm l

Yahoo's address is:
701 First Ave Sunnyvale CA 97809

I got this impressive email yesterday from a coworker (I removed the name):

"To my fellow Professions Community members, please pardon my use of this forum. The situation in New Orleans is desperate and a few moments of your time could make a significant impact.

To those of you based in the United States, I ask you to please immediately contact your US Senator and US Representative (http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/) and implore them to lobby for an immediate mass security effort in New Orleans.

New Orleans needs the National Guard and the Military. I just returned from New Orleans this morning bringing supplies of gasoline, ammunition and food to my neighbors who are bunkered in their homes. Neighbors have joined to create pseudo-militia to protect the neighborhoods. Local small-town mayors have asked heads of households to return to provide a presence to deter against AK-47 armed gangs who roam the streets.

Tell your Senator and rep that the security situation on the street is more dire than they are hearing from the National FEMA director. The search and rescue is hampered by the lack of security. Thousands of good people are still in their homes in the 20% of New Orleans that did not go under water. They are under constant threat.

Thank you for your time.
--Xxxx Xxxxxxxx
Resident of New Orleans"

Absolutely. However, other forms of correspondence are also very, very important. A politician's office ranks correspondence according to the vehicle in which it is delivered. The rarer, and more time-intensive, the correspondence, the more it is valued.

The best way to get your Congressperson to take notice of you, other than face-to-face contact, is a handwritten letter. I know this may be tough for us /.ers, but one handwritten letter means more than five typed letters.

A telephone call to their office is also ranked highly.

Postcards are counted, but are weighted less than letters. Ditto for faxes. Emails are also counted, but are worth almost nothing.

If you really want patent law to change, have a letter-writing interlude at your next LAN party, or other get-together. Buy the stamps and envelopes ahead of time, sit down with paper and pen, and write it out. It sometimes helps if the best writer in the group writes a sample letter.

It works for the pro-censorship folks, for environmental groups, and for other interest groups -- it will help with patent laws if enough people do it.

Here's a useful database of phone, fax, email, and physical addresses of Congresspeople: http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/

So it is a myth that QWERTY was designed so that keys hit generally in succession were on opposite ends of the keyboard to forestall jamming? Try this website: http://www.acm.vt.edu/~jmaxwell/dvorak/compare.htm l and compare a few sentences.

I also thought this website was pretty neat, and you can test the code yourself: http://www.visi.com/~pmk/evolved.html. I think this website has been on slashdot before, but I can't remember.

Every so often when people advocate Dvorak, contrarians pipe up with nonsense saying QWERTY is exactly equal to Dvorak, or Dvorak is only 5% better, etc al.

Frankly, it is not relevant whether historic studies on Dvorak were true, false, or made up. It does not change the facts on either keyboard, any more than studies that defended QWERTY had their source material 'interesting' destroyed.

Today we can use medical analysis and fairly advanced mathematics to evaluate keyboard layouts.

For example, this was on Slashdot several years ago:
http://www.visi.com/~pmk/evolved.html

People have gone to great lengths to analyze how much and what kind of motion a given keyboard layout forces its user to maintain. The results are quite clear - QWERTY users have to move their fingers vastly further than Dvorak users. Dvorak places the most common letters on the middle row, and alternates the hands better between keystrokes. QWERTY doesn't do this nearly as well. QWERTY is better than random, but not by much.

I'm not some Dvorak nut or fanatic, I'm actually using QWERTY right now. But when I used a Dvorak layed out keyboard I was shocked by how much less I had to move my hands and therefore how much less stressed they were. The reason why people become so evangelical about ditching QWERTY is because QWERTY really is that bad. We're not talking apples and oranges, but rotten apples and oranges.

Well, I was going to post the Java applet that mathematically proves the distance your fingers travel when typing a text, but someone else did it before me.
So science, you say. How about mathematics, computer science and biology in one test? Is that scientific enough?
Evolutionary algorithm applied to keyboards.

What has not been metioned (osnews is down at the moment so I can't verify it there) is that unlike the first generation software, the second generation recognition engine (now alive as Inkwell in Mac OS X) was developed in-house at Apple, in the Advanced Technology Group (ATG)
Apple-Newton Handwriting Recognition's lead was Larry Yaeger (who worked with Alan Kay at Apple) and is now at Indiana University where he's back at Artificial Life research.

Because we all know that professors, lawyers, and, um, more lawyers, are all interested in getting ideas from outside sources.

With the exception of math/science/engineering academicians, none of the above have any real interest in improving the peer review process.

Delenn: "John Sheridan was a good and kind and decent man."
Academician: "You came all this way just to say that?"
Delenn: "You came just as far to say less."
Academician: "But this is extraordinary. There's so much more we'd like to ask you. So much more we'd like to know."
Delenn: "You do not wish to know anything. You wish only to speak. That which you know, you ignore because it is inconvenient. That which you do not know, you invent."

- Babylon 5, The Deconstruction of Falling Stars

The actual address is support@grants.gov

I do not have a Windows computer. I do not have access to a Windows computer. I would be willing to start a group to port your PureEdge Viewer application to Linux and/or other operating systems such as Solaris (Sun).

I object to the government requiring the use of specific and costly COTS software in order to access and use a public function.

I heartily agree with the suggestion that /. readers should email the govt en masse and see if it makes any difference. A marvelous site on which to find the email addresses of your representative and your senators is http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/.

As for emailing my Congressional representatives, I will, but I'm in PA - the Santorum state.

To be decided in the Senate and the House/Senate Conference Committee is the Real ID Act of 2005 sponsored by F. James Sensenbrenner. This will be a backdoor defacto National ID through your driver's license. Included is a linked database known as the Driver License Agreement as sponsored by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators. States will be required to sign it in order for given state driver's license to accepted when dealing with the Federal Gov't such as boarding an airplane or train.

Included in the Driver License Agreement is sharing information not only within the US but with Canada and Mexico (pg 4, item 11 in PDF Document). Required in the database is identity theft type of information such as your Social Security number. Also the Driver License Agreement as a side "benefit" requires your state to punish you with points for a traffic offense anywhere within North America. So a speeding ticket from a vacation in Cancun, Mexico or Montreal, Quebec, Canada will tarnish your home state driving record and as an insult to injury, your insurance goes up !

There is not much time left to defeat this legislation. It is attached to HR1268 - Emergency Appropriations for Iraq, Tsunami Relief. The Senate has removed it but the House will insist on the Real ID Act of 2005 in conference committee and we need to let our Senator's know that we are against this. Information to Contact Congress web link.

It is the same thing with the Real ID Act of 2005 legislation (HR418) by Sensenbrenner. Section 203 requires that states must participate in the Driver License Agreement (DLA). Also states will be required to keep information on personal information like social security numbers, addresses, and driving record items such as license suspensions, points (both redundant since it is done already) and all other violations (moving, non-moving/equipment, parking) and share them with ofhter jurisdictions. In addition, it would require states to punish their drivers for out of state and out of country infractions (Canada & Mexico so far).

Not known to many people is the data will be shared with Canada and Mexico as a start. Reference DLA at the AAMVA. Look on page 4, item 11 defining jurisdiction.The sharing of personal info like SS#'s would be a great bonanza for foreigners and US people alike to abuse such as identity theft.

The Senate so far has refused to pass the legislation so it was attached to the emergency funding for Iraq War and Tsunami Relief (HR1268) since it is a must pass legislation. The House will attempt to pigeon hole the Senate to pass this contrary to their reseversations for this piece of draconian legislation. It will come up for discussion in the second week of April when the Congress reconvenes from their Easter break.

The time is now to speak against this. Contact Congress

Ted and Lisa and Don are part of our fiendish plot to get the U.S. so sick of us that they kick us out, so that we don't have to go to the bother of a revolution. Sort of a ``be revolting so we don't have to revolt'' strategy.

Ted and Lisa and Don are part of our fiendish plot to get the U.S. so sick of us that they kick us out, so that we don't have to go to the bother of a revolution. Sort of a ``be revolting so we don't have to revolt'' strategy.

Ted and Lisa and Don are part of our fiendish plot to get the U.S. so sick of us that they kick us out, so that we don't have to go to the bother of a revolution. Sort of a ``be revolting so we don't have to revolt'' strategy.

Contact Congress and oppose this draconian bill ! Contact your Senators and ask them to strip this "HR418 - Real ID Act of 2005" from any bill it rides over on from the House, probably the Iraqi funding.

Contact Congress

If QWERTY, Dvorak, or the layout in the article don't interest you, you can evolve your own. This guy uses genetic algorithms to do just that. The trick is coming up with a good evaluation function. He supplies code if you want to try it. Fascinating stuff...

It's not surprising that the fastest typist uses the dvorak layout, since it is nearly optimum for english text and three row keyboards.