Slashdot Mirror
AOL Joins The Hardware Marketeers
Compaq and Dell are among the PC manufacturers who already ship PCs with similar "direct contact" buttons, a calculated bet that convenience and ubiquity are going to beat due diligence on the part of consumers. Embedding a URL in hardware will certainly make alternatives (no matter how easy) just a tad less convenient than the built-in link. I wonder how the linked AOL addresses are embedded in the keyboard, and whether they're alterable. Even if they're not, would it be difficult to set up a layer which "listened" to your keyboard and performed on-the-fly translation when you hit one of those buttons?
At least one of those keys is straightforwardly user-programmable: as the article says, "[D]on't worry; there is one key, with the infantilizing name "My Key," that lets you create a link to any site on the Web." Wow -- users get one key.
AOL may change their mind about shipping these to anyone willing to fork over a few dollars for shipping. For the novelty value, or even for a one-programmable-button keyboard, less than $10 may replace a lot of coffee-ruined keyboards. Then again, the production of AOL come-on CDs doesn't seem to have waned. (But if there's a practical way to hack the pre-set presets, dollars-ta-donuts they pull the deal faster than you can say "Netpliance.")
Be grateful they haven't gotten to "direct-Internet-link" buttons on mice. Yet.
I just want a free keyboard, or four. $7.95 is a good price for a keyboard I can throw in the trunk of my car and not worry about. If it's an AOL keyboard then I will even enjoy abusing it. Where the hell can I get one ayway? If anyone knows of a link I can follow to get it please post it.
From planet stupid.
its xmodmap -e "keycode 115 = F20" thanks for the information.
The more keys for using a word processor was sarcasm in order to help prove a point.
I was trying to say that if we add keys for one function(web browsing) some people might think, "Why should it stop there?" And then I tried to show several more keys I could easily think of more.
The number of keys on the keyboard could just cascade to hundreds of more keys. 13 for web-browsing, 20 for really good word processing, 8 or so for your music player, a few extra keys for use in playing half life.
Currently, the command line is the number one most important tool being developed. Because what comes from being typed into the command line can later be changed to what is said into a microphone. The command line is currently the only way for a computer to have a "vocabulary".
You said the thing about pointing at a picture of a deer and saying "food" or saying "deer" and it symbolizing two different things. There is nothing wrong with adding extra words to your vocabulary, but adding pictures to the wall is not the way to do it. In a way they would become aliases to the commands that they actually represent. I would love to come in front of my computer and say "log on" and it log on.
We wouldn't even need to have a computer that does real language processing. The command line doesn't. In a way we would actually learn a brand new langauge. Speaking "Computer-eze".
Maybe that cleared up a few things, and will give you a little more (points at a deer) for thought.
AOL (and I don't doubt many other companies as well) have not missed the lesson to be learned from Microsoft's success: proprietary, or at least "branded" solutions that achieve brand recognition--or even better yet: customer lock-in, work. Just look at one of the biggest obstacles to desk-top acceptance of Linux and other alternative operating systems. It's not the operating system itself. It's not even the learning curve. It's the lack of availability of Ms-Office or a Ms-Office-compatible applications suite!
Don't get me wrong: I am not fond of monolithic, integrated, do-it-our-way-or-not-at-all solutions. I have StarOffice here at home. And it's being requested at the office. And it's an okay package. But I do not care for its monolithic nature.
Just wanted to clear that point up lest anybody mistake the thrust of my comments. And just so folks don't take this as Yet Another Anti-Microsoft Bash, follows an example of why vendor-specific keys (for example) are a Bad Thing.
We use Sun Sparc boxen extensively at work. I run Sun Sparc Solaris at home. I like (Sparc) Solaris. (I prefer Linux on x86, btw.) And furthermore: I run the Open Look window manager. It's clean, fast, and handy. (I like it so much, I use it on my Linux laptop as well.)
But there's a problem: Sun keyboards have a set of specialized keys. Keys such as "Copy", "Paste", etc. And many Open Look apps/utilities need these keys. (They are handy, btw.)
But at work we also have users that need a Ms-Win box on their desk as well. (Remember that application suite problem?) What to do? Well the more cost- and space-effective solution is to give 'em a keyboard/monitor/rodent switch so they can switch between their X-terminal and their PC.
But oh, ohhhh. Problem. The Sun keyboard won't work on the PC (at least under Ms-Win) and the PC keyboard doesn't have the requisite special keys.
This is all by way of illustrating why proprietary anything only leads one, ultimately, down the path of choice limitations. My recommendation: avoid proprietary, even branded solutions if at all possible. Shun the "ties that bind."
Who are these AOL users anyway?
it isn't just the extra keys... The difference is actually something useful. They put 2 USB ports on the back edge of the keyboard!
The Bezosmeister : |
Everyone seems to be ranting about how useless certain keys are, or where they are positions (i.e. capslock/control, windows/menu keys, etc.). Who cares? Keys can be easily remapped. I use remapping (Xmodmap) to give myself tons of hotkeys (configured through WindowMaker):
capslock,menu --> hyper_l, hyper_r (mod3)
windows --> meta_l, meta_r (mod4)
numlock --> super_r (mod5)
printscrn/sysrq --> numlock
scrolllock --> capslock
I don't have a scroll lock key any more, leaving it's LED free for other programs. I hold numlock(super) and use the numeric keypad to control XMMS (i.e. super+/ = play, super+* = stop, super+up=vol.up, etc.). I use hotkeys (hyper+key) to switch between windows, minimize/maximize, start programs, etc. I leave Meta for applications (like Emacs) to use. Using Ctrl/Alt for hotkeys would usually interfere with some other application's hotkeys, but now I have my own modifier keys to use. Much better than the "My key" button, although it would be nice to have even more keys for one-button access to things. I'm sure you could get these to link to something other than AOL. If the AOL/Windows branding bothers you, relabel the keys (i.e. "AOL" --> "/.", "Shopping" --> "Emacs", Windows --> Tux).
Err maybe not .... would the use of icons or function keys be prior art I wonder ...
... it's not that they must make money - they must make huge billion dollar thwacks of money. They must prevent the 100$ multiuser computer, web surfing, gaming box from appearing, they must stop free music from proliferating ... (what if 1000's of artists start distributing their own music on line and sell their own T-Shirts, CD's, advertising, etc.) - but they don't control the future and they are afraid.
... BOF really
It's all just part of the times. Huge bloated corps are desperately scared
So take something old that cost's 10$ and add keys and curves and charge 100$. MS and AOL
*RTFM* you don't hear much of this lately on slashdot, i guess. i forgot how the comand goes but they can all be done pretty easily.
ARG! This is not what I would consider a good thing. It just re-inforces the concept of point and click.
Thousands of years of evolution, and we are brought back to the stone age. Cavemen couldn't talk, so they would draw pictures on cave walls and point. Do you have any idea how many pictures it would take to have a decent conversation now days?
Og see, Og point, Og do.
I would have to have a house the size of Rhode Island. Just because we are on a computer and it seems easy to point and click because the menus are all nicely arraged doesn't change anything. We still limit ourselves to a vocabulary of what we can immeadiatly see.
Someone else on this article has already mentioned a quote from Neal Stephenson's The Diamond age about how most of civilization lost literacy because they could just point at a picture and get that.
These buttons may extend the functionality for a little while, but what happens when we do things on computers besides just the internet? I believe they added 13 keys just for the internet. OK, that's not too bad. But it would be really nice if I had some more keys for word processing, that would make things SO much easier. How about a key for italics, bold, and underline... That's 3 keys. But I like to change fonts alot. How about 5 or so font keys that are customizable and have the most common fonts I switch between... Oops, forgot, I need a key to center, left align, and right align. Up to 11, but I bet I can think of a few more.
We don't need more keys, we have F1 through F12 along with Ctrl, Alt, Shift, that's a total of 12(normal) + 12(Ctrl) + 12(alt) + 12(shift) + 12(ctrl-alt) = 60 extra key combinations that nobody every uses. Before we start drawing more pictures on the wall, why don't we look and see what we already have?
Og see, Og post as Anonymous Coward.
only problem, penguins don't fly....
Blast away, if you will, but I firmly feel that any attempt to make getting online easier is a noble one. While the Slashdoterati are mumbling about how the Internet will change the world of communications, at the same time they wish to restrict it to themselves; rather than an open system with the free exchange of ideas from all comers, we would have a system of socially inept Linux zealots who never do anything but flame each other over the question of which distro is the best one. So, then let's compare what AOL had done to what the Open Source community has done:
AOL: hit one button, and you're online
Linux: Search for a PPP HOWTO, only to find that it was written in 1994 and is completely useless. Install any of the 50 or so "easy" PPP packages. Realize that none of them will work. Reboot to Windows, then hit the AOL button on your keyboard. Finally, you're online, no thanks to Linux.
And lest you think that AOL users are somehow not as smart as you because they don't use a "real man's operating system" (a joke at best; real men kill defenseless animals to prove their masculinity), or that they are less internet-"saavy", let me clue you in. If Slashdot ran on AOL, it wouldn't have half the problems it has now. Why, you ask? Because AOL has a little thing called the Terms Of Service (TOS, and before some geek asks, it has *nothing* to do with Atari). If a user violates the TOS, for example by uttering an obscenity, or taking the Lord's name in vain, then they can be kicked of AOL permanently, or be charged a hefty fine. Imagine if everytime you let loose a stream of profanity when someone questioned your choice of programming languages, you got slapped with a $100 fine. Charged directly to your credit card, so there's no way to complain. I bet all that IPO money would disappear pretty quickly, eh? To put it bluntly, you don't fuck with AOL.
Now, as for the level of intelligence of the average AOL user, you'll find that people from all walks of life use AOL to be connected with the world. Poets, artists, teachers, writers, and celebreties all call AOL home online. Compare this to places like Slashdot in which everyone is a foaming Linux zealot. How would you rather spend an afternoon: discussing important issues in art, politics, and philosophy, or flaming each other over who is the most 31337? Making life-long friends or putting up with clueless FreeBSD trolls? Again, the OSS community comes up well behind AOL.
Lastly, so many of you seem to overlook AOL's contributions to the Open Source community. While AOLServer has always been open source, CmdrTaco had to be badgered constantly for almost a year before he released the Slash code. Who can claim the moral high ground now? In fact I have looked at the source code for both projects and concluded that Hope College has no qualms about leaving their graduates without the most basic fundamentals of programming. I was literally shocked when I saw how many goto's Mr. Malda had employed. Compare this to the elegant code of AOLServer, much of it written by MIT professors. Again, your 'community' simply doesn't hold up.
Feel free to turn your brains back on, now that I'm done bludgeoning you with the brutal facts. I am well aware that the most rabid zealots among will cling to their blind faith, ignoring even the sound of the walls collapsing around them. But I hope to reach the more reasonable Slashdot reader, the one who gave up on the Amiga and filters Katz stories. To him I will say that Linux must learn from AOL. Linux needs friendly greetings, easy to use channels, and builtin chat rooms. A 'Favorites' folder would allow users to keep track of things more easily, and a standard ISP would reduce dialup connection setup woes. Usernames would move beyond the standard three letter initials to more descriptive names like 'Horny4u' or 'CoolDude3949291'. The entire system of text-based consoles is obsolete: there is nothing that you can type that can't be done faster with mouse clicks. Finally, 'keywords' could be assigned to popular Linux resources, web sites, and applications. Thus, rather than having to remember that in order to run the Gimp, you need to type a cryptic command like 'gimp', they would simply enter 'GNU Image Manipulation Program' into the keywords box. This is the sort of advice you would normally get by paying an expert like myself, but in the spirit of 'free beer', I am offering it to the community.
If Linus Thorwalds is reading this, you should really consider these propositions. If you want more help, call me and we'll discuss my rates, and maybe more about your Linux program.
Wow, your mac can talk! and since 1995 no less?
Gosh, you sure are 'l33t, I wish I could be like you with my crapy, inferiour PC.
I'll stick with my old Gatway with its program key buttons and macros.
If it was easy, or even INTUITIVE, to get to your favorite stuff in the UI, why would you need a keyboard with all these damned buttons????
Stuff that in your windoze pipe and smoke it!
i love joe
Then please make me the happiest man alive, darling! Will you marry me?
Achingly yours,
Joe
You actually find it easier to remember 'GNU Image Manipulation Program' then it is to remember the four letter acronym of what you just typed above... 'gimp'?
Sorry, but my fingers say no.
holy shit, you're a psycho.
4nD d47'z d4 b0770m 11n3, 'kUz d4 4n0nYm0u5 k0w4rD 541d 50!!!!
So what's so "frightening" about this? No one is forcing you to order the damn stupid keyboard. Take the keyboard if you think it is useful, and leave it if you don't. More articles with some content please...
Yeah, I'm terrified, too. The mere thought of yet another product out there that I don't want and don't have to buy scares the shit out of me... Why doesn't the government prevent companies from producing products that I don't like??
Heh. It's refreshing to see intelligent comments posted here occasionally. timothy, whose liberal biases are well known, reminds me of the idiots who want to sue the tobacco industry because they're too stupid to read a warning label, or the morons who want to 'protect the children' by chopping the Second Amendment into little pieces.
Anybody here remember Lotus 1-2-3 ? This seems rather along the same lines with the template you can stick over the F keys, but this is easier and more idiot proof
If only this were true. Yes, in your present state of mind you still have control over which buttons you push. But in my clown-induced sleepless condition, I pre5s th3 wrong kees pretty often. The clown must have big plans for these new keys. He is greedy and wants to control me with more than just those Microsoft keys. He would only think of such a thing if the current ones have been effective in his plan. Now I am worried about what those keys have been doing to me for the last four years. Great, now I will be up all night disassembling my keyboards.
'Esc', 'Ctrl' and caps lock in the right places, lots of Fn keys, infinite configurability... absolutely perfect for emacs and vi!
My 'Happy Hacking' keyboard does not even come close to the quality feel of the DEC LK401, which is one of the reasons why I prefer (and use) a VT420.
The AT and 104-key PC variants must DIE! ;-)
~AC
I'm sick of AOL constantly attempting (and succeeding) to take over the world... Join the resistance and destroy anything belonging to AOL!!! Send them back to hell!!! VIVA LA RESISTANCE!!!!!
The keyboard I am typing on is useless.
Congradulations, you've just found a use for it.
Wow, you have some issues to work out.
MODERATE THIS UP!!!!
Really... Think about it.
Making AOL easier to use will bring more idiots, morons and "script kiddies" to the internet. But that's what you'd want!
The more the merrier! The more internet users, the more demand for bandwidth and technology. Then you can produce fibres and routers and computers (oh MY!) for cheaper, thus reducing costs to your own equipment.
Remember back in 1990, how much great computers (at that time) cost? How much do great computers today cost? Roughly a bit less, but about that level. Then remember the speed of these compared to ten years ago. Buying one of those ten-year-old computers can be done practically with the change in your pocket, depending on the type.
So in ten more years, the more AOL and MS and all these companies try to get idiots online and on computers, maybe that Cray you always wanted will be up at Egghead.com with easy payment terms, ready to plug into your very own T-3 from your phone company for only $150/mo!
Big deal. I had my LispM reciting 'Hamlet' in '82.
Macs have talked since they shipped in 1984. The public debut was a Mac saying something like "He-l-lo Steve. My Name Is Mac-in-tosh."
Yes, god bless the original Macintosh keyboard. Arrow keys are for wussies!
Dear fake troll:
The unbelievably lame Slashdot purity test can be found at http://www.pompano.net/~stiletto/sla shdot.html
and a built in shock system that teaches you subconciously not to push it
Yea heres an idea! put TWELVE numbered keys on the keyboard, and name them F1-12!!! Then make them programable!!! That would be WAY cool!!!
wait a minute...
My bad... got em already.
So these are basically extra keys that nothing (under linux) is mapped to off the bat?
sweet! Now I don't have to remember control alt meta R some weird command in emacs. Just meta1 and meta2 and meta3 and meta4 and meta......
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH LOL
On linux pppd is just as easy.
Nonsense. I read his description of setting up PPP in Linux and it read like my fucking diary. Screw you, pal. I wasted an entire weekend on that shit: I'd track down and download ten "easy PPP" programs with a semi-functional OS (windows) and then reboot into a non-functional OS (linux) to untar them, test them, and watch them fail -- and then repeat the process with ten more. At the time I was contracting on the side for an ex-employer; those wasted hours could have been billed at $50.00 apiece (before taxes, obviously
This is the only reason I don't use Linux: I can tolerate X, I infinitely prefer bash to dos (ugh), and it's real nice to have all the gnu tools there already instead of having to fight with config.h to build the damn things in win32. But if I can't connect to the net, it's a paperweight and I can't be bothered.
Think long and hard: Getting PPP to work on Linux is considerably more difficult than prodding GNU shit into building on a semi-unsupported platform. Linux has no future in the marketplace. For ordinary home use, it's worthless because 80% of what most people want out of a computer these days is Netscape.
I agree whole heartedly that it's hard to set up X (though this is improving)
I don't recall the name of the X config utility that came with Red Hat 5.2 (there were probably a dozen of them, but one in particular was (IIRC) new in that release), but it was really, really damn good. It's not ready for my mom yet, but it does make configuring X an order of magnitude easier. Since RH plays nice with the GPL, there's no reason that thing shouldn't be finding its way into all the other distros, too. I certainly hope so. YAST is the worst piece of shit that ever walked the Earth
DOES IT RUN LINUX?
Ever since some mofo figured out that you can put extra buttons on a PS2 keyboard, the whole thing has gone downhill. One of my buddies has a keyboard with a row of like 15+ buttons across the top that are all hotkeyed to stuff... How lazy can you get that you cant click a friggin shortcut on the desktop?
Now, when you walk into some AOL lamer's office, you can tell what he is at a glance, and not waste your time talking to him.
It took Michaelangelo quite a few years to paint that chapel, and he had the assistence of numerous students. I don't think it would take him _quite_ that long to describe it.
Buttons are very scarry. What if you pushed a big red one and it blew up the whole world? I am also afraid of Penguins. You could be standing around minding your own business and one could fly up behind you and poop on your head. You probably wouldn't realize it and would go shopping. Then some dumb kid would see you and go "hey mom! that guy has penguin dookey on his head!" then they would laugh, and you would be so embarrassed that you would pee your pants.
The left Windows key is useless -- CTL + ESC brings up the start menu.
The right Windows key is useless -- SHIFT + F10 brings up the context menu.
But they're quite easy to remap in BeOS.
How convenient. You seem to be named after a keyboard too.
;-)
I'm not sure what the exact memory limit on the current batch of SmartCards is, but I can foresee having a general-purpose smartcard in the near future. What information do you have that you would like to carry on a smartcard?
Keyboards preferences, to begin with. In the bigger picture, I'd want to be able to slap my card in a computing device and have it recognize that I prefer the English language (U.S. variant), with a QWERTY keyboard layout, 14-point fonts (minimal) -- others may want Spanish Dvorak with reversed b/w for visibility. Here's the email account I use (primary) -- log on and see if I have any mail. My bookmarked URL's are instantly available. I'm not sure how carrying around your private key (a la PGP) would work, though. Basically, I would like to see a system where my prefernces are honored. And this works on any computer (any OS, or device). Walk up to the computer, slap your card in, do your business, eject the card, and walk away.
Sounds good.......
-t.
Just look at USA
I am sure it would take two mins to come up with alternate software, the links are obviously done via software and scan codes.. they are not 'embedded in the keyboard' - so it would be easy for us to remap those extra keys, and make them do what we want.. sign up! i did.. can;t go wrong for $7.95.. unless you want a cheapo 104 key with no exta buttons..
----------------------------
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Esobofh - Currently drinking fresh mango juice.
i love joe
Moderate this down to (Score:-1,Troll)
Trollz rool.
with IE
Moderate this down to (Score:-1,Troll)
Trollz rool.
Seeing all these people who claim that the control key should be where the caps lock key normally is just makes me laugh out loud. These people don't realize that with the control key in the lower-left corner of the keyboard, it can be used by the one finger that (until the advent of PC's and the control key), never got to do ANYTHING: the left thumb. The control key in its normal position allows you to utilize your left thumb rather than wasing precious time rearranging your hand to press it with one of your other fingers. Your other fingers have OTHER tasks assigned to them.
Now, you tell me. Can you type faster using NINE fingers or using TEN fingers?
Say you put the control key where the caps lock key normally is. What do you press it with? The left thumb won't reach... it's alone and useless again. The left pinky? Alright... left pinkey is on your misplaces control key. Now, the keystroke you want is CONTROL-A. DOH!!! Hmm, what's going on here? Why, it's your left pinkey's job to type the A key, and it's off on vacation lounging around on some out-of-place control key?
So what do you do?
"Ah ha!", you say. "I'll simply press the 'A' key with my left ring finger.
You do that and:
1. You're using the WRONG FINGER, which will slow you down.
2. Make a habit of that and you'll eventually be saying "AHH, my wrists!"
Those keys were laid out that way for a reason. Taking your hand off of the home row will slow you down. It will also possibly damage your hand... these keyboards were designed so that you could type on them WITHOUT killing your hand, so don't go thinking you're qualified to go rearranging it, because you're probably not.
So what do you DO you press your misplaced control key with?
"Ah HA! My left thumb! I'm sure it's still around. It will still have faith in me..."
So you go and find your left thumb. You ask it, "Left thumb, I'm sorry about before. It was wrong of me. Can you PLEASE try to hit the misplaced left control key on this keyboard while I type the 'A' key with my left pinky?"
The thumb's feelings are hurt (not as bad as the ligaments in your hand from not realizing I was right sooner, but we'll play along), but eventually you convince it.
So speaks the thumb: "Well, you really made me sad. But I'll try to press that control key."
Of course, your control key is where the caps lock key normally is... so it reaches... it strains... your entire wrist bends...
"AHHHH!!! My wrist! Again!"
Back to the emergency room.
"I tried my best," says your left thumb. "It was so much EASIER to hit the control key when it was in the RIGHT PLACE. I'm outta here, loser."
"I QUIT" says your left pinkey finger. You let that loud-mouthed ring finger butt in on my territory. I'm outa here.
"I'm gone also" says your ring finger. "Trying to assign ME extra work while that pinkey was slacking off... SCREW YOU."
Next, your index finger turns in its resignation and leaves without a further word.
Then you're left with just your one MIDDLE FINGER... and I don't think I have to TELL YOU what it does.
So to all those people who think the control key should be where the caps lock key normally is... the MIDDLE FINGER has yer number!
I'm just saying we're supposed to be at least somewhat self-reliant here. If you buy a car...you're not expected to know how it was built...but you're damned well expected to know how to drive the damned thing.
And the people who buy the AOL keyboard know how to 'drive' it, by pushing a button. What, pray tell, is the limit we should stop at? Are icons and windows to easy? You seem to imply that there is a point at which we shouldn't attempt to make anything easier to use. How far should we go? Your views are typical of elitists who feel that because they have some sort of special knowledge (in this case, computers), that everyone else should be forced to come to their level. That is a ridiculous claim. Ever hear of specialization of labor? You do one thing, they do another.
find it interesting that you take such a consumptionistic view of things. You make it quite clear that you've never studied economics
Unfortunately, my course of economics went well beyond 'Das Kapital', but please try to bear with me anyway. Just ask if you see any unfamiliar terms like 'rational' or 'reason'.
Capitalism is good, in moderation.
Yes, I suppose you probably want a government to tell you what to do. Sadly for you, my fellow objective thinkers and I see the complete folly of this concept. That is why we oppose idiotic ideas like regulation or socialism.
If capitalism ran rampant, we wouldn't have things like Linux, or Netscape, or cheap long distance (if you don't see why...please don't reply to this post)
Let me explain how wrong you are. Linux came about becase Linus Torvalds couldn't afford a real version of Unix. In fact, the original versions of Linux were not licensed under the GPL because he intended to sell it for a profit. Care to explain away how capitalism doesn't fit into that scenario? Granted, Linux has of late been overrun by socialist jackasses like ESR and Jon Katz, but that wasn't the original plan. As for Netscape, Marc Anderrsen, a brilliant programmer, realzied that academia was not only a haven for socialists, but also a dead end in terms of work. Seeking more greenbacks, he started his own company, which he sold out for a handsome profit. That's 'capitalism run rampant', and guess what? It works. You proved so yourself, even if you're too blinded by your biases to realize it.
Maybe you hadn't heard, but socialism failed long ago. This is an objective fact.
Are you joking? Lets see, on my keyboard I have keys labeled F1 through F12. Do you see those on your keyboard? Know what those are? Go ahead... make F5 do whatever the hell you want it to. Feel the power. Rejoice that you are using a Model M IBM AT/PS2 keyboard.
I'm using XFree86 with twm.
.xsession:
.twmrc:
In my
xmodmap -e "Keycode 115 = F20"
In my
"F20" = : all : f.exec "/usr/local/bin/netscape http://www.slashdot.org &"
Now, whenever I hit the left "Windows" key on my keyboard, I launch Netscape and pull up Slashdot. The moral: RTFM -- you might be surprised!
The only problem is that TWM doesn't seem to support binding a key to the f.menu directive -- I can press all I want, but no menu comes up.
try a 'man loadkeys', and look at the bottom for related utilities. or try 'man -k keyboard' and sift through the entries.
/usr/lib/kbd/keymaps. There's all kinds of goodies there. I looked into this because I wanted right-alt + f2 to go to virtual console two, not just left-alt + f2.
On my RedHat 6.1 system, keyboard-related files are under
-Paul Komarek
who cares? its all marketing. if you were so easily persuaded then you wouldn't be here reading this stuff that is for sure. You would be caught either spending money on Amazon or CDNOW!
Its all good.
My keyboard already has 18 or so "internet hot buttons". Theoretically I guess I could set them to do whatever I want in Linux but I haven't gotten to that yet. Right now they don't do anything in Linux. They used to print messages in syslog about unrecognized scancodes, so I'll take that as a hint it wouldn't be hard to make them handled any way I want. No predefined links though, but mostly common web functions in Windows. Buttons are: Logitech (brings up a menu of user-defined links), www, history, open url, home, send to back, print, back, forward, stop, refresh, search, find, add favorite, open favorites, hot links, scroll up, scroll down.
I would be inclined to agree that we shouldn't over do it with extra buttons, and that language is good. (of course, I'm very much a text+command line+words oriented person. I use lynx because I don't care much about graphics, and I use love LaTeX because it lets me write good looking docs without using an annoying GUI.)
Here's an idea: There should be a row of function buttons which have any program can use for its own functions. This would be like the normal F[1-9][0-2]? keys, but they would have little LCD screens on the keyboard above the keys that could be have icons displayed in them by the program. There is no standard way to do this, so I think it would have to be in a USB keyboard or else be a horrible kludge of the keyboard protocol (it might not be, since I haven't looked into AT or PS/2 keyboard interfaces.) This would be the analog of the button bar at the top of a window, but you wouldn't have to reach for your mouse to use them. Of course, you could use loadkeys and showkey to bind them in console mode, and you could use xmodmap and xev to set them up under X. Apps could program the icons when they got the keyboard focus, I guess. This would be good because it keeps the people who want buttons happy, and it makes it very scaleable by allowing reuse of the same buttons for different apps. For novice users who don't understand how different programs have different windows and stuff, you could fix the keybindings the way they are in the AOL kbd :(
#define X(x,y) x##y
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
\begin{rant}
Desktops are over-rated. You don't use a computer just for the sake of using a computer (unless you are trying to waste time, in which case you should read /. with your threshold at -1 and read _every_ comment, or you should read through the userfriendly.org cartoon archive right from the beginning. (hint, use wget to download the .gifs as you read :)). The reason you use a computer is to accomplish something. This is either something like preparing a document, writing some code, sending email, reading 'net news, browse the web, get mp3s, or various other things that amount to something which you either have to get done or you want to get done. I find this is best accomplished with a simple window manager. I saw somebody saw that "the reason for having a window manager is so you can have more xterms open." There are some programs that obviously benefit from a GUI, mostly programs that have anything to do with graphics or formatting. (i.e. xfig is great for doing diagrams. LaTeX's picture environment (where you use commands like \put and \line in a .tex file that you compile/run to create a .dvi, which can be converted to postscript or PDF, or viewed directly) is nice for things which need scale and precision, but you often have to draw the thing by hand on paper to figure out all the positions, lengths and angles if the diagram is anything at all complicated. xfig is great because it is a wysiwig vector drawing program, and can export as LaTeX commands for \include'ing in a LaTeX doc. (it also exports ps, eps, and various raster formats like jpg or pnm.))
Consider programs that do a non-interactive task, like list files in a directory. This is the classic type of command line Unix program. You run it, it does its thing, it exits. (The really classic ones which are part of the core Unix shell commands that all sytems have are almost always very terse. If part of its job description included printing info, then it does, otherwise is doesn't print anything except for errors. You check $? to see if it worked right, if you have any doubts or want to use it in a script. I'm not limiting the discussion to those commands, since that would be dumb. (they already work very well with no GUI.) I'm including programs like zip and unzip, which have a tendency to be chatty, but which are still very much one operation per invokation shell commands, and non-interactive (except for y/n overwrite confirm).)
For the class of programs described in the paragraph above, it is possible to implement a GUI version of the command by providing a window which shows information relevant to the task, and providing radio buttons and toggles which specify extra options. If there are a lot of options, there can be menus or tabs. For example, xrm, if it existed, would show you a list of files in the directory, and let you select one or more of them. It would have a toggle for recursive, a toggle for force, and an execute button which would delete the files/directories. It wouldn't exit after deleting one file, because that's not how GUIs are done. They let you do more operations with the options set the way you put them, usually.
For most programs with more than a couple options, a GUI is useful if it can present the options in a way that makes it easier and faster to get your task done than it would be to do the task from the command line.
There are several factors that go into deciding whether write the program as a GUI or as a command line tool. First, and extremely important in the whole philosophy of Unix, is that the programs like this are tools. programs that do a non-interactive task are the kind that can usefully be combined with other programs in a pipe, or as part of a script. What if the only command to delete files was to run xrm (which doesn't exist, so you'd be doubly screwed), and pick some options from its menus, then pick a file? If xrm didn't take command line options, or if it insisted on opening a window, then shell scripting would suck. (rm isn't really a good example, since a lot of scripts need it, even if they do something totally unrelated. Besides, the sysadmin would have to clean up /tmp every now and then, and would have to do it manually (since there is no way to script it with xrm!) unless she was a good hacker and thought of using mv -f file /dev/null to get rid of things.) GUI versions of things that are already handled well by command line programs have their uses, especially for people who don't need to use computers often, or for very long.
Note that GUI-versions-for-newbies of commonly used programs are a terrible idea, in my (NSH :) opinion. Newbies who expect to spend a significant amount of time using computers (i.e. want to become non-newbies, probably ASAP), do not benefit from a GUI wrapper for doing non-interactive simple tasks. It is much better for the aspiring newbie to learn to the command line syntax of relatively simple commands which do tasks which crop up all the time, like removing files with rm. Knowing how to use a GUI program to do something is one thing. You can't easily combine that knowledge with other programs. Knowing how to use a command-line tool is another thing, because once you know a few simple tools, you can use the shell to put them together with pipes, command substitution, xargs, etc. The capability gained from knowing how to use a GUI program which does a given task adds linearly with the capabilities gained from knowing other GUI programs which specific operations. The capability gained from knowing a command line tool to do a certain task _MULTIPLIES_ your previous total capability (well, probably not multiplies, probably some combinatorial function like the number of permutations of n commands blah blah, ... (not to knock discrete structures or anything :) hehe.), because you can combine the newly learned command with any combination of other commands you know. (note that this capability product counts the capability to do many many useless tasks, like deleting all the files whose names is the rot13 codeing of a word which appears on a line in a text file which also contains the word "echelon". (i.e. :), and my computer isn't very fast, so awk and sed are great.)
rm -- $( grep -w echelon foo.txt | tr 'A-Za-z' 'N-ZA-Mn-za-m' )
) Try doing that with a GUI character translator, a GUI pattern-searcher, and a GUI rm. You could, but you'd have to get the GUI programs to save their results to a file, then load it from the other GUI. Kinda slow, compared to the command line. (ok, I admit it took me about a minute to get the rot13 with tr right, but you'd have the same problem if your GUI character translator was as general purpose as tr, which it would almost have to be to be worth writing at all. (except for rot13 features in file viewers or editors, which could be used.) Keep in mind that once you figure out how to do it with tr, you can do it as many times as you want, grepping different files, with no extra effort, but to use the GUI tools again you'd have to do just as much work. (you could leave their windows open and the options set, but you'd still have to save to a file and move to the next tool, or cut and paste if there wasn't too much text. That introduces even more chance for human error.)) GUIs for things only a few very commonly used options, to do a simple task, are good only for people who won't be spending enough time with computers to justify the learning time. Learning command line tools is a long term investment which gains value the more you learn how to do more different things from the command line. (i.e. not just processing files into other files.) For example, you can do a lot with wget and one-line sed and/or awk scripts. (I don't know much perl yet (working on it, though
Note that xrm is becomming the poster-child for dumb things to have a GUI's for.
Another factor in determining the whether a GUI is useful for knowledgeable users is how complex the options are. Programs with lots of different seldom-used options, like find, could benefit from a GUI. (of course, find gets regular use from the command line, usually with -name, -mtime, or -size, so the command line version is very important to have, especially for scripting. However, it _would_ be useful to have a GUI frontend to construct a command line for find. A powerful, not a flashy or user-obsequious, GUI is required. find is used often enough that remembering how to get what you want out of a relatively powerful GUI which lets you string together multiple conditions is not too hard. Very importantly, a GUI for an experienced user would be centered around searching for files named x. Everyone knows how to do that anyway, so it would be stupid to write the GUI assuming that's what most people would use it for. People would use the GUI mostly for complicated find commands most people would have to read the man page for every time they wanted to construct such a command. For use in scripting, a button to print the constructed find command on stdout could come in handy. (I'm going to have to write a GUI front end for find sometime... Cool. I should start a useful-GUIs-for-hackers project. :)
This leads my argument to the point that another factor in the usefulness of a GUI is how often the task is done, with respect to the complexity of the command line arguments. For things which are done regularly like deleting files, a GUI is a complete waste of time. For complicated things which get done all the time, like grep, a GUI is not needed. This is a case where newbies might be attracted to a graphical searcher, because they keep forgetting the command line arguments to grep. (which one makes it search for non-matching lines...? -n? (nope, that prints line numbers. -v is the one to inVert the search...) However, grep is such a powerful scripting tool and can be put to good use so often that it really must be learned by anyone who plans to use computers regularly. Another program, wget, has very many command line options, most of them difficult to remember. (the --long-options forms aren't much easier to remember, I find.) For simple use, the command line wget works fine. For more complicated tasks with patterns for accept-lists, etc., it is usually necessary to check the man page. It might well be possible to make a GUI version or front end for wget which made it easier to choose the right options to get the job done. The critical question is whether it is faster to use the GUI or to check the man page. I'm not sure whether there would be much benefit to having a GUI for wget. I think there might be, since wget isn't used very often, and there are a _lot_ of options which nobody remembers unless they've just spent the last couple minutes putting together a wget command that does what they want. Even then, you'd never remember all of them. You might remember that wget has a certain feature, but not know the relevant command line option. OTOH, a GUI is not a panacea for this problem. Some things are just complicated. However, it is often easier to figure out how to do something when the options to choose from are all sorted into categories. For example, a GUI can't make pattern matching much easier than grep, unless it limits itself to a less expressive pattern language than regular expressions. I can't picture how a GUI would be faster for stringing together sub-patterns, etc. This is especially true when you consider that you usually need to go back and tune your pattern to match exactly what you wanted it to, unless you are using a simple enough pattern that a regular expression for it would be easy to make up. Allowing for small changes to the composed pattern would probably leed to an overcomplicated GUI. Another example of a task that isn't done very often is uudecoding. The uudecode program doesn't need a GUI because it doesn't have many options. You just give it the filename. If find that you need to read the man page, it's probably because your about to do something that will end up using it a lot shortly after, so it's worth your time to gain the speed of the command line.
The value of a GUI for a task which could be done by a non-interactive command is in the amount of time it saves getting the job done. The time to use the command line version must take into account the time to read the man page and figure out what command line options to use, if necessary. Obviously, for commands that get used all the time with simple arguments, like rm filename [more filenames], a GUI is useless. For doing tasks which require a lot of choice of options, especially tasks which are done infrequently enough that the command line syntax isn't usually remembered from the last time you figured it out, a simple GUI which presents the options in a sensible manner can speed things up considerably.
GUIs are way over-rated, but they do have their uses.
\end{rant}
Note that the rant applies mostly to Unix environments, and others where a flexible, versatile command shell is available, and the tools runnable by the shell are powerfull enough that they _can_ be used to do almost everything, even things that aren't very convenient. This includes Windows with Cygwin32 bash + tools. Note that a shell environment itself benefits enormously from having a mouse to cut and paste text, ala xterm under X or gpm on a Linux text console.
#define X(x,y) x##y
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
Just because all those nice looking number keys on that number pad dedicated to them are there doesn't mean you have to use them in every word, you know.
#define X(x,y) x##y
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
Any ideas? Sure. man xmodmap.
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
How about a "Hackers" keyboard that has (in order of importance):
1. Put the word "Meta" on the "windoze" keys
2. Put the word "Ctrl" on the "caps lock" key.
3. Put the word "Super" on the two current control keys.
4. Put the word "Menu" or "Hyper" on the "windoze menu key".
5. Get rid of the arrow, home, etc symbols on the numeric keypad, and make the key marked with "NumLock" say something else (comma?).
6. Make the three keys with PrintScrn, etc say F13, F14, F15.
7. Make all the labels on the function keys, especially the Fn keys, MUCH larger, at least as large as the capital letters, so they can be read at a distance. Get rid of all the arrow logos on the tab, shift, and Enter keys. The arrow keys should have nice bold triangles on them.
8. Make the labels for the leds be 1,2,3 or A,B,C, or something. Since I have deleted numlock, caps lock, and scrolllock, they don't need to show keyboard state, so this allows them to be more easily used by a program.
9. If you want to call it a "Linux" keyboard, print your company logo and "Linux Keyboard" in the corner.
Some X programming is necessary to make this work, especially to get rid of "num lock", but no hardware changes are necessary except for changing labels, so a keyboard manufacturer could probably do this easily. If the keyboard manufacturer is willing to do hardware modifications than some of the buttons can be electronically switched and new scan codes produced for all the keys with new labels. You could also delete the keys I called "Super" and "Hyper" above and make the space key much wider. You could also delete the LED's entirely. And use an upside-down T for the arrows (Windoze users would appreciate this, too!).
Microsoft has also been co-branding these with OEMs such as Dell for some time now. This is just more of the same.
-dwd-
Here is my own proposal to enhance the AOL keyboard -
It will take three more button to make
the AOL keyboard truly unique.
Button 1: Sucks !
Button 2: Sucks even more !
Button 3: Mother of all suckers button !
Now AOL can start selling their enhance button during the Halloween.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Yeah, I'm terrified, too. The mere thought of yet another product out there that I don't want and don't have to buy scares the shit out of me... Why doesn't the government prevent companies from producing products that I don't like??
Why would anyone care if there are additional
keys that do certain things under winblows?
Just reprogram them to something else. When
you're running Linux or OS/2 those keys aren't
handled by the winapi so what's the big deal?
I see these keyboards as a neat AOL deal much like
those free reformatable diskettes of the past.
I wish they'd send us RW CDs instead of those useless CDs that fill my garbage can.
>When you install your RocketBoard driver >software, you will be assigned a unique global
>user identification number (GUID). This number
>along with your IP address is used to help
>dentify you and your browsing habits and to
>gather broad demographic information.
HA!HA!HA!
Are you for real? They aren't likely to provide
drivers for Linux and even if they do why the
heck would you want to install them?
Just remap the keys and you get 18 new function
keys. I think this is a great gift form AOL
much like those diskettes they used to send us
regularly.
I don't see how you folks are disturbed by this. They are just offering another product, not forcing it upon you. I don't understand why, when AOL comes up with some idea, everybody's first thought is "evil" or "scary".
All it does is broaden the market. There is probably a way to hack those 17 buttons to your pleasing, so don't fret.
----------
"They misunderestimated me." --George W Bush, Nov. 6, 2000
damn copy and paste....
:)
that second "first post" button should read
* A "troll/grits" button (ac version only)
sorry....
-mark
-mark
If your computer says LINUX, run...computers can't talk! [unless you have text-speech software]
You never use your Windows-E to open up Windows Explorer? Or Windows-F to open up Find Files? I find the Windows button quite useful, actually. I don't really appreciate the right click button, though.
These new keyboards not only have the extra aol keys, but will have a small LCD panel that will give you all those nice AOL ads. Sure you can cover up the LCD panel but they keyboard has a "LCD Panel being covered" sensor which will make the keyboard driver post the ads on your screen. Any attempt to use your old keyboard will result in the destruction of your computer.
--
Lab test show that use of micro$oft causes deadly cancer in lab animals.
If you care, my lame mp3s live at http://www.mp3.com/tib...
So basicially pay for the shipping and then remap the keys to do strange and unusual things in X.
Does Microsoft scare you?
No.
The only reason why they are doing this is to harness a phsycological principal that people don't like to waste things that they have. Therefore, some of them will use the AOL keys even if it means switching to AOL.
Man, I have to give everyone my new email address, resubscribe to all my mailing lists, and get a new ISP.. but thankfully I can now press that big shinny AOL button on my keyboard....
Hmm... I don't really think its going to work that way.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
One word: emacs. Bind the function keys, meta-function keys, control-function keys however you like.
But then to use emacs effectively you have the task (becoming more and more difficult nowadays) of finding a keyboard with the CAPS LOCK and CONTROL keys in the right place, i.e. CONTROL above the left shift key, CAPS LOCK below it.
Incidentally, I question strongly the wisdom in the PC arrangement with the key placement reversed. CAPS LOCK is never chorded with any other keys whereas CONTROL is always chorded; why place the chorded key in an awkward location and put the unchorded (and seldom used) key in a place where it's easy to mistype? This cannot even be useful for word-processing typists given the relative ease of mistyping the CAPS LOCK when TAB or SHIFT are intended.
Of course, I didn't use the feature more than once, and didn't bother attaching the keyboard to my current machine, but if you into that sort of thing, it's really quite OK.
IBM AT Keyboard rox!
The best keyboard any heavy-typster can get!
I love it.
What do we need shortcut-keys, when we have shells with command-completion?
--- If OS were buildings, then the first woodpecker to come around would erase 95 % of civilization.
Ernest, as in Ernest scared stupid,... etc...
"EYYYYEWWWWWOOOOOOYEWWWWWW"
Opportunities multiply as they are seized. --Sun-Tzu
YES!!! I would pay $$$ for a ADB->PS/2 adaptor so I could scrounge up the original mac ADB keyboard! That is what I grew up using and it is the only keyboard I can truely love. Control is in the right place, and it don't have no stinkin' F-keys or navigation keys but it does have arrow keys and a numeric keypad. If anyone has one of these keyboards in working condition, mail me! As for the ADB, I'm pretty sure there is ADB->PS/2 (intended for iMacs).
The model M's are great keyboards, but they have all of the extra keys that I am complaining about (except the MS ones).
These keyboards are stupid. They are win95 keyboards with penguins painted on them. It is SO PATHETIC that windows keyboards are so commonplace thesedays that people explicitly trying to manufacture a linux-friendly keyboard can't find one non-MS keyboard.
Does Microsoft scare you? This is the same thing. AOL will use their big bucks to give out free/cheap stuff that will be designed to only work with AOL - e.g. anti-competitive. The only reason why they are doing this is to harness a phsycological principal that people don't like to waste things that they have. Therefore, some of them will use the AOL keys even if it means switching to AOL.
What's ironic about it? I don't like Microsoft hardware or software and I never said I did. Does it make it ironic because I don't follow the status quo?
There's an HP keyboard I saw that has a TON of extra internet-related keys like that. Uesless stuff for "shopping", "people",etc.
My question is, how hard would it be to make your own drivers to make the keys do your bidding? I had one of those fancy multimedia keyboards that had semi-useless(but uncustomizable) features such as calculator, sleep mode, etc. Eventually I renamed WINAMP.EXE to CALC.EXE, and I was able to bring up my tunes with one keypress.
Actually, for a techie user in Windows (yes, we do exist...), those buttons are genuinely useful. I use my mouse as little as possible, and having a button to right-click is part of that (as are all the other keys you mentioned - try not using your mouse in Windows for a bit and see what I mean). I agree with you on the Windows logo buttons, though - I've never found them to be worth the space. And BTW, there are 2 buttons for left-click: Enter to run (double-click), and Space to put focus on the selected icon (single-click).
strangely enough, there will be 12 more buttons but none of them will take you to the web.
hmm,
press 1 to see our pre defined content
press 2 to see out pre defined content
press 3 to see . . .
It says the keyboard is free....I wonder if we can
find another use for the aol buttons....
AdFuel
Actually someone IS making the Northgate keyboards again... see http://www.cvtinc.com
Damn it, don't feed the trolls.
--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
I am a NT user who worships at the altar of the start menu key. Start + R brings up a run dialog, Start +E brings up an explorer window, Start+f brings up the search window (in 2k MS replaces "find" with "search" everywhere. weird), Start + M minimizes all open windows.
Anyhow, I am of the belief that keys are good, and in *nix you just ought to program them to do something cool.
Matt
The e-machine that I use (Hey, it's cheap) uses a bit of software called "Easy Keyboard" which just runs a prog when it gets the right scancode. The version that I use can't be easier to change, just open up the config, type the path/prog name next to the button name (or a address next to the internet button) and that's it. As lame as it sounds, it's kinda growing on me.
"Bend over and kiss ISA, PCI, overclocked Celerons and The Computer Show and Sale good-bye."
Wait, you mean the Computer Show and Sale which is basicly just a flea market full of hole-in-the wall junk hardware dealers? Ugh. That's the last place you want to go to build your own system. I hate to go off on a tangent, but these dealers are the same types that try to make a living selling crap on Ebay instead of, uh, getting a JOB. They have this nice habit of lying about the hardware they sell ("Yeah, you can use this CD-ROM to play DVDs!"). and overprice it. I seen this in the Maryland area, so maybe it's different in other states.
Anyone here work for a keyboard manufacturing company?
Just a thought.....
Perhaps you could slip some code into these "internet keyboards" that just occasionally sends users to Slashdot or some other "subversive" website instead?
:)
Fixing copyright
I think it's cool. Think about this keyboard under X we could bind the keys to anything we wanted. A "PGP Sign" key. Perhaps a "slashdot" key. I'm sure any talented windows user could also set their keyboard to bring them to sites such as betanews or bugtraqnt. Heck it's a free keyboard. Why not? I personally have keyboards coming out my ears. They seem to multiply or something. I don't see anyone perticulary using these keyboards. I'm looking forward to getting one in the mail with a free AOL disk:) At one point, I was receiving a redidiculeous amount of online service cds. I tried to collect enough to cover my room in them. However, it didn't work well, about two weeks into it I started through the things like frisbies at trees and such. Lately, I've been thinking about microwaving them. HEY! I wonder... what would happen if you microwaved a keyboard? Oh ya, and the obligitory: Man, think about the WPM on a beowolf clusters of these things:)
err.. most hardware devices, including Keyboards, use drivers. In linux, DOS, winXX, whatever... so the fact that these new keyboards would require new drivers.. well, that's not very surprising, is it.
coolfish.
. We're approaching a world where everything is automated for ease of use - College graduates can then sit on their asses and buy computers that do their laundry, their dishes, and jack them off...
all I wanna know is.. WHERE CAN I GET ONE!??!
> (we already have the right mouse button to do just that, but I don't see a button to left-click).
Start menu? What start menu? My windows keys act as meta in X so that Emacs still gets all of my meta- keystrokes, even with windowmaker intercepting alt- a lot of the time...
>The Hacking keyboard is the keyboard of my dreams, EXCEPT it does not have physical arrow keys. For using a shell,
>editing in a console editor, or gaming, these 4 keys are essensial. It's really too bad - they got everything else right.
Feh! These are only essential if you like pulling your hands away from the keys.. I haven't used editors besides vi and emacs (what else is there? (don't answer that.)). But both of them allow me to move around and edit text without moving to never-never land where they keep the arrow keys.. And just about any shell you use will allow command line editing using one of the two keysets ( vi or emacs ).
--
dronf!
Yeah, that would do. Actually, my Compaq Armadea 1585DMT (P150 MMX) was like that. I made them run different programs. Although the buttons only worked in Windozes :(.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I'd rather get a keyboard that emphasizes comfort--like the Microsoft Natural Elite
Heh, and a keyboard that makes you confused every time you go back to normal arrow and nav keys. ("wtf? the home button moved again?")
no hot keys around!
Uh... not that the Windows keys are very hot or anything, but I think they technically qualify as 'hot keys'.
-
__
Comment submitted. There will be a delay before you understand what you posted.
At my local K-mart, I've seen AOL-brand tool kits, printer cables, compressed-air cans, and laptop accessories. They're nothing more than Curtis accessories with AOL CDs. The only difference: AOL products cost about $1 more.
Essentially, AOL has convinced people to pay for its "free" CDs. That's the scary part.
Put my clarinet beneath your bed 'till I get back in town.
We're approaching a world where everything is automated for ease of use.
Have you ever washed your clothes with bar soap and a washboard? Ever baked bread from scratch? Ever hand-copied a book, word for word?
Making everyday things easier isn't a bad thing. It's usually called progress.
Put my clarinet beneath your bed 'till I get back in town.
Let's see, you can but dishwashers and clothes washers at lots of places, including Sears . To jack off, go to any "adult entertainment" store or website . ;-)
Put my clarinet beneath your bed 'till I get back in town.
Don't forget Espn.com is owned by Mickey Mouse Inc. That's Disney, ABC, ESPN for you - it's not really that much of a pushover.
Mmmm.. Donuts
We here at AOL/Time Warner have developed an exciting new line of keyboards to accomodate the special needs of our dedicated customers. These new keyboards will enhance the AOL experience to even higher levels than we could have ever anticipated when we first began flooding the US Postal system with free CDs.
The initial release of the AOL keyboard will include three new buttons to make the most common functions of our subscribers even easier to access. One button will serve as an additional Caps Lock key to ensure that an idle slip of the finger while embroiled in a hot cybersex session in one of our chat rooms does not inadvertently cause any lower case letters to be displayed in the message being typed. The next button will serve to run the Instant AOL Spellchecker(tm), which will assure that every third word in the message being typed is abbreviated to the smallest size possible, thus maintaining the witty and distinctive writing style that Internet users all over have come to appreciate from our subscribers. Finally, and this new feature gets me giddy with anticipation everytime I think about it, the third button will run an automated script which will generate message boxes on the user's screen that simulate dialing into the AOL login server, attempting to connect and then displaying a message box stating that the server is busy and that the user should try again later, complete with the sound of a busy signal in full stereo; now even people who do not subscribe to America Online or even have a modem can experience the wonder and excitement of being an AOL customer!
This is only the beginning of the AOL keyboard line; we have many new and exciting features planned for later releases, such as cryptic username generators, connection speed throttles and even a crash preferences control panel that will allow users to customize their computer crashes to their exact specifications. And all of these features will be available at the touch of a button! We here at AOL/Time Warner are proud to present these amazing new advances to our loyal customers and would like to thank them for working hard to maintain the fine reputation and quality of communication that has become the trademark of an America Online customer!
Deosyne
(Gee, can't tell that I do email tech support, can you?)
you really think the average luser is going to pay 8 bucks to get a new keyboard which is no better than the one they already have? for this to be actually scary AOL would have to get M$-style agreements (i'm gonna make you a keyboard you can't refuse :) with OEMs, which i don't see happening--the big OEMs (like Compaq) probably want to produce their own keyboards with their own special buttons, so the only OEMs who would bite would probably be the little irrelevant ones. so big deal. (now if AOL would put their stupid buttons on a Kinesis keyboard--there's a nice big space in the middle of the keyboard for them--and give them out for 8 bucks i'd bite though...and i'd have 17 buttons to map to emacs keys :)
I have a nifty keyboard that came with my compaq computer. It has buttons for email apps, audio cd control , volume, print button, etc. It's quite useful -- just need to get it working with linux ;) .. one touch allows me to do simple things. It's VERY convenient!
Um....my windoze box can talk to me. It sounds like tron on speed. Pretty cool if you've ever heard it.
--Have a Johsonville brat.
Yeah! A Slashdot virus! Press a button to read your mail, and you end up reading a grits troll!
"The best way to do mathematics is to be creatively lazy." -I. M. Isaacs
Every time I go there, I see more little posters on the windows of the stores, with little penguins, that say like "we sell linux".
So I want to buy a keyboard to use with linux. English distribution (spanish distribution is _very_ annoying), with no windows keys, and a big backspace key. I go and ask on the 30 stores, and they all say "oh, the old ones? no.. maybe I have a keyboard with english distribution, but it has windows keys".
Ironic.. Do they even build those keyboards yet?
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Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
So how do you switch terminals?
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Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
Maybe yours cant, but My mac has been able to talk since about 1995, anything i type i can have my computer say, including Linux ;-)
My mac has been able to talk since about 1995, anything i type i can have my computer say, including Linux ;-)
But how does it pronounce it? :)
Turn on, log in, burn out...
guess Windoze will have the most user friendly keyboard on earth.. just three keys.. CTRL ALT DELETE nothing can possibly beat that! :)
The only keyboard with busy signals and horrible lag!
----
Don't underestimate the power of peanut brittle
ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
Free AOL keyboard?
Well, it won't work as a coaster... won't work very well as a frisbee... what's the use of these, then? Everyone knows that the only thing that AOL is good for is free stuff...
Mebbe if I'm REALLY desperate for a new keyboard....
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Those are the best kind!
I visit my local Thrift Store and buy up each and every one of the Model M keyboards that I can find. It's a shame that they don't make them anymore (a removable cord on a PC keyboard, come on, that is sweet). They are durable, and easily cleanable.
He who knows not, and knows he knows not is a wise man
What everyone needs is a nice Northgate OmniKey Ultra. Sure, they don't make them anymore. But they have a great clicky-feel, it has jumpers to configure the keyboard for dvorak, to move the ctrl key to where the caps-lock key is, programmable keystroke macros and redefinable key-repeat rates (no software needed for any of this...) and it's built to last. Oh, and no Windows keys. Don't leave home without one.
I agree... Nobody is forcing you to use the keyboards either, I gather that you need to actually request one of these to get one.. Nothing scary about it, besides, we're talking about a *keyboard*... no big deal.
THE MAGIC WORDS ARE SQUEAMISH OSSIFRAGE
I sure hope so. If they do require drivers, they can be rewritten to map the buttons to slashdot, linux.com, etc. Imagine some virus that replaces the driver with the one mentioned above. Or even with a simple device driver used in Linux for email, web browsing, etc.
I understand that the idea of AOL is repugnent to allmost any self-respecting geek. But this has been done before, why the special reaction now? AOL is doning exactly what they hace been doing for years, making the internet(or at least a dialup network) stupid.
Nate Custer
"The poet presents his thoughts festively, on the carriage of rhythm; usually because they could not walk" Nietzsche
I foresee a future where start-ups who build cheap custom-built keyboards spring up to take advantage of the craze for keyboards as marketing effort. In the true tradition of consultant-speak Gardner will start to release papers discussing "keyboards as an affinity apport to brand horizontal portals". Portals will experience a brief re-surge in popularity as they release associated keyboards. There'll be women's keyboards that have buttons taking you to women.com, a cooking page, and a pregnancy calendar. The businessman's keyboard will have hard links to the stock tickers, the Wall Street Journal, and the Financial Times. Jodi.org will release a net.art version that takes you to themselves, Hell.com, and a random site of the day. Colleges will release a standard keyboard for freshman with connections to the safe sex page, alcohol counseling centers, and the campus bookstore online (with a special key for a credit card offer).
Then some genius will develop keyboard extensions that allow you to map your personal bookmarks to your keyboard. It will somehow snap on or slide out. It will initially be developed by some corporate bigwig who tries to ship the add-on preprogrammed with all his corporate URLs and is incredibly disappointed when still nobody visits.
Instead of useless stacks of mousepads, we'll have useless stacks of keyboards. Little kid will become furious with his pre-teen sister when he finds that she's replaced his Squaresoft keyboard with a Backstreet Boys keyboard and he pushes one of the function keys expecting to go to the Chocobo racing fan site and instead ends up at 16 Magazine online.
MIRANDA. O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world
That has such people in't!
Because the snark was a...
LinuxMall has a cool linux keyboard for about 39.95. I have one, and it kicks ass :)
LnuxMall has a linux keyboard (see previous post). But it just replaces the win9x key with a penguin key :) Also comes with extra ctrl and caps lock keys in case you want to remap.
My big question is: are they targeting people who already use AOL (e.g., selling them through ads on the AOL service), or are they trying to pack these in with PCs, or sell them in stores? The latter would certainly be much scarier.
In the interests of saving myself the time of making this argument even more idiotic that you have already made it. this will be my last post...feel free to reply and get the last word if you want.
socialism failed eh? What do you call China? (if you say "communism" then i'm gonna bitch slap you so hard your grandma will hurt). As for capitalism..i knew you were going to go on this rant against all the points I made. THERE IS NO FUCKING INVISIBLE HAND!!! the market doesn't even itself out so that really good products like Netscape and Linux can just float on in. If there is no governmental regulation then companies like M$ and AT&T would gain and keep monopolies and there would be nothing anyone else could do about it (read: words like "leverage") - only idiots and economists think the world would be a much better place if we had a system of unbridled capitalism...thank god we've never given either one their druthers.
Ok..that's it. - I'm done. have fun flaming me...but why don't you do it with your actual login you fucking karma whore! At least i have the balls to take a mod-down as well as a mod up!
-FluX
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"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
I'm no linux elitist. In fact I often get flamed for arguing that MS isn't really that bad of an OS. But you make some pretty ridiculous points here my friend:
It's called 'progress'. Perhaps we should go back to steam power? Horse power?
I don't believe that progress is inherently supposed to make life "easier"..it's supposed to make life better. We're not talking about a cure for AIDS here..we're talking about facilitating the laziness of American culture. Why do you think voter turnout is so low? Why do you think people sue companies because they spilled coffee in their lap and got scalded? Because someone or some company is supposed to do it all for them. I'm not saying we're supposed to be climing trees and fighting bears. I'm just saying we're supposed to be at least somewhat self-reliant here. If you buy a car...you're not expected to know how it was built...but you're damned well expected to know how to drive the damned thing.
Gee...it was probably college graduates who designed said machines. Or did the computers invent themselves? Please explain.
The original post was an allusion to the fact that the world is becoming too concerned about a piece of paper rather than actual performance. I know many people without college degrees who I consider vastly more intelligent and productive than most who have any sort of degree.
translation: despite the booming economy, no one will hire me. As a result, I resent anyone with a job. Pity me, please.
Actually, I have a job that I am very happy at. but I do appreciate the effort you put in on that jab. BTW - you also discuss a little economics in your rant. I find it interesting that you take such a consumptionistic view of things. You make it quite clear that you've never studied economics. Capitalism is good, in moderation. If capitalism ran rampant, we wouldn't have things like Linux, or Netscape, or cheap long distance (if you don't see why...please don't reply to this post). But that's another discussion for another idiot.
-FluX
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Your Ad Here!
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"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
YOU LINUS PEOPLE ARE FOOLS, YOU CANT EVEN DIAL UP TO AOL YET!
Wine is not an emulator, but it does run some versions of the AOL client through an ISP and BYOA.
Now who wouldn't want to visit a site that offersWill I retire or break 10K?
You really only need one definable key. Just write a simple program that puts up a menu
- / for Slashdot
- b for Blue's News
- f for Freshmeat
- u for User Friendly
- m for Winamp/XMMS
- g for GNOME.org
etc., and then bind it to your definable key (in most X11 window managers, this would be the Evil Empire Flag Key). This would give you the incredibly useful shortcut My-/ to retrieve news for nerds. Don't deny it, you wantWill I retire or break 10K?
I have been on aol for 5 years, and it is not that bad. I get 6 Kb downloads from them, and very rarely a busy signal. All in all they are not a bad isp. I wish they were open to other platforms, so I wouldn't have to use a proxy server. You ask, why do I stay with them? Very simple, my dad collects model trains, and AOL has avery large bulletin board community of model train collectors. I have the choice of aol, or paying for my own. Stop dogging AOL, they aren't that bad.
-- the computer doesn't want any beer, no matter how much you think it does. NEVER, EVER feed your computer beer.
I have a happy hacking keyboard lite and it kicks!! You complain about the lack of arrow keys but it does have arrow keys under the ; ' [ and / It actually works better because I don't need to EVER lift my hands to hit any key, including the arrows. It was a little weird starting out but I wouldn't go back to a 'standard' keyboard for anything.
I prefer to think of AOL as "the idiot's ISP", for those who are too stupid to find things on their own, AOL just hands it out on a silver platter. too bad, because there are certain things that are limited by AOL which wouldn't be under other ISPs. Seeing the growth AOL has had within the last 15 years, from being a small internet provider, to buying Time Warner, it might be alarming at the rate of "idiots" in our country getting on AOL. Another interesting fact about AOL's purchasing Time Warner: Time Warner is a massive cable provider all over the country, and even many parts of the world. Now that AOL is aquiring Time Warner, for "some reason" they're suddenly not too interested in a flat monthly rate. wonder why....
Once upon a time, hardware mfct. dominated software mfct. And there was all kind of hardware, and IBM had a monopoly, yada, yada, yada...
Then came Microsoft, and the software industry drove the hardware industry. And there was all kinds of software for Windows and MS had a monopoly, and the hardware had to be standardized so it could run Windows.
And now we have Open Source, and MS is trembling, but they ain't stupid. They're getting into the hardware business. MS probably won't dominate the hardware business, but we can expect to see more types of hardware that is customized and can't be hacked/modified.
Guess what, kiddies: Open Source won't save you from proprietary hardware, and all those long nights of kernel hacking will just go towards making sure that the next proprietary network appliance/PC can run all kinds of software right out of the box.
So you'll have the source. So what. It'll be the source for X-box Linux that only runs on the X-box, so what good is it... really?
Bend over and kiss ISA, PCI, overclocked Celerons and The Computer Show and Sale good-bye. You won't be able to build your own PC anymore, and the big corporations will laugh themselves all the way to the bank.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
wouldn't it be a lot more usefull if we had special keys like "public" "void" "else" "while" and so forth.. :)
I used to have an HP keyboard with an internet, mail, lock key, etc. The mail key even had a light that lit up when you had mail, but I never figured out how to program that to work with my mail program. Other than that light they were completely mappable to any program file, as well as a few built in commands (lock screen, etc). By default they went to sign up forms for HP branded internet services, etc, but I remapped the internet key to bring up netscape, and used the lock key quite frequently (much easier to push a button rather than ctrl-alt-delete click on lock). I guess the only problem was after I installed linux on the computer I found myself hitting the internet key to try to bring up netscape only to realize oops I can't do that. I don't see the big deal.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
Woohoo, finally! With a few _minor_ alterations I got linux working on this thing. I used the disply from a gameboy, which now rests where the numpad is. Screw the iopener, this thing costs less AND is portable... Get your keyboard QUICK before they make them unhackable. Instructions will be up as soon as I figure out how to fit /. in the oh so precious amount of ram that I have left...
No one is really going to be free until nerd persecution ends.
I personally would like these extra keys to work both at the console and in X. Toward this end, I did a little research. The showkey program is very useful for getting the scancodes off any keyboard. Here's how you do it:
Here's what I get from my Microsoft Pro keyboard, which I got because it's USB and my VAIO doesn't have a PS/2 port. (USB works great, BTW! I can also report success with the Vaio's USB floppy.)
I filled in the key names and states later--showkey of course has now idea what the key means.
Now, there are some interesting things to note here. The first thing that sticks out is the Sleep button. We only get two scancodes here, and I'm curious why. Second, all the sequences start with the 0xe0 scancode, which is a good thing, because it signals the start of an extended sequence. The big question that I'll be dealing with in a week or so is whether a keymap can be written that supports a key that effectivly appears to be two extended keys.
I intend to write a keymap for this keyboard, both for the console and for X, but don't let me stop someone else from doing it first! :) it shouldn't take a long time, but I've got to move first.
--
Ever heard of Jeff Minter? He is the guy who wrote "attack of the mutant lamas" and other killer apps for the Atari and Amiga. This guy had spray painted his keyboard in psycedelic colors, noway to se the key markings! His saying was "If you don't know where the keys are, you shouldn't code." ;-)
hey, when is aol going to send these things in the mail? maybe i'll get 100 of them like i have 100 of their cds. hey, i bet some brazilian kids can build houses out of those keyboards. :)
-cesar (i love you alysha)
So don't buy this keyboard!
And as far as the AOL CDs go, they make wonderful coasters.
Maybe they'll start sending millions of these keyboards out in the mail. The only problem is, I don't think these keyboards make good coasters coasters. :)
I don't really think its going to work that way.
I know a LOT of people who would take the easiest approach and just go with aol.
--
Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
The words that anyone that works ISP technical support dreads. Usually uttered by someone running Windows 3.11 with 4 Megs of RAM on a computer with sparks flying out of it.
And, of course: "I pay $15.00 a month for this, and now I have to click on two seperate icons?" (You get this when you try to explain the difference between a dialer and a browser). I can only imagine someday someone yelling at me because with AOL they could get online by using the clapper and an etch-a-sketch connected into the wall with a coat hanger (and not even a metal coat hanger, too).
The horror, the horror...
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
If you don't want an AOL keyboard, don't buy one. There's probably plenty of AOL users who will find this cool and useful. You don't have to be one of them.
For the record, as much as dislike many things Microsoft does (despite my username, which is meant as irony), I use a Microsoft Internet Keyboard that has 10 extra buttons. The default for some of them is to send you to hotmail, etc, but they are labelled generically and can easily be reprogrammed with Microsoft software (under Windows) or keymapping under Linux.
I wouldn't be at all upset if every hacker/cracker focused all there efforts in some coordinated fasion completely and entirely on AOL. They might then be known as America Off Line.
AOL is the worst possible ISP around. I use AOL and really hate it. It doesn't give you the "real" internet experience. It gives you a filtered version. How is it the true internet?? The true internet is IE. Go on, do what you need to do, go off. Not log on, wait for it to connect, wait some more, get more spam in the mail, get kicked off, log on again, get IMed by a ton of losers, and get kicked off again. Wow, it really is the best.
Have a look at HKLM->Software->Microsoft->Keyboard All the extra buttons are configured there.
this is just another step in the automation of idiocy.
As are computers in general. Just read most any comment posted here.
People who use AOL, and most of the rest of 'em too, just don't want to do shit. Congratulations to AOL for marketing this.
You're right. Everyone should be forced to wade through as sea of configuration files, man pages, chat scripts, incompatible PPP versions, etc. just to get online. Did you build the house you live in? Maybe you were to lazy to do it the old fashioned way and do it by yourself? Congratulations to the real estate agent for marketing it.
We're approaching a world where everything is automated for ease of use
It's called 'progress'. Perhaps we should go back to steam power? Horse power? When your argument is taken to it's logical conclusion, we should be back in caves, fighting mammoths with our bare hands and eating trees.
College graduates can then sit on their asses and buy computers that do their laundry, their dishes, and jack them off...all at the same
time.
Gee...it was probably college graduates who designed said machines. Or did the computers invent themselves? Please explain.
The cool part is that all the dickheads who have BA's in Business Administration (read: "Well, no, Mr. Prospective Employer, I don't know any *nix or networking but i'd like to be a system administrator!") get to do nothing while the REAL geeks of the world get to do all the work.
Translation: despite the booming economy, no one will hire me. As a result, I resent anyone with a job. Pity me, please.
You obviously have some sort of issue with the advancement of technology. It was luddites like yourself who tried to destroy the Industrial Revolution one machine at a time. But they failed just as surely as you will. AOL has a product. They offer it for sale. People want it. They take money and buy it. They don't buy it because they are stupid, but because it makes sense. You see, it in a society like ours, innovation is encouraged. Remember all the fuss about patents? AOL selling these keyboards is along the same lines. It's called capitalism, and it works much better than any other system. In fact, the only moral option that AOL has it to sell these keyboards: doing so creates capital, which is the highest persuit a man can engage in. Think about it sometime. I mean really think, too, not just repeat the mantras you've been instilled with by the state-run education system. You might be surprised at the result.
Tell me again how this is different from the current version of emacs? :)
Model M is nice for a PS2 keyboard, but it's only half a loaf. There's one sitting on my lap as I type--the tech guy finally 'fessed up to having a real keyboard when the malfunctiong keys on the annoying gateway keys got up to 3 . . .
:(
But at home, I have genuine AT keyboars, with the control key where God meant it to be, and the 10 (not that new-fangled 12) function keys to the left, where I can reach them while typing.
I don't know what I'm going to do when I get a motherboard that won't take the old keyboards
You do need a replacement keyboard for your i-opener, don't you?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
What's wrong with convenience? If 14 million households have AOL accounts, why should they have to custom-program "email" "web" and "weather" keys on their keyboard, or go through menus to get to the 3 or 4 things they use their computers for 95% of the time?
What a bunch of babies y'all are. Is ease-of-use really so horrible? Why not just crawl under a rock and go back to flipping a panel of toggle switches to enter data like you had to on the Altair?
Anyone near Seattle who wants cheap computer parts should visit the Boeing surplus store. They usually have rolling bins with about 2 cubic meters of assorted keyboards, for $4-5 each. If you know what you're looking for, the "assorted circuit boards" bin can be a great resource too, I got enough 10-base-T NICs to set up a home network for about $5 each, and a Dell pentium-75 (now a firewall) for less than $50. You too can be the envy of your friends with a modem and telephone labeled "not for use with Classified data"
0 1 - just my two bits
The "Windows" keys on the bottom row of keys on most modern keyboards aren't what I technically call "hot keys." Now, what this company wants with its one key access to certain web sites and certain AOL-specific functions is definitely a hot key. In a way, the Internet keyboards function in a similar manner.
I still like the MS Natural Elite keyboard because after using the keyboard for a few months, using another keyboard is very uncomfortable and feels cramped.
(BTW, what I find ironic about the the Linux crowd is that while they have a dislike for Microsoft software, they do admire Microsoft mouse pointers and keyboards.)
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
What I find ironic about your statement is that while a most Linux users rant on and on about Microsoft software, many of them actually have lots of praise for Microsoft keyboards and mouse pointers.
You'd be surprised how many people use the MS Natural Elite keyboard; it's shape--while it does get some getting used to--is surprisingly comfortable and going back to a normal keyboard results in a cramped feeling. By the way, the "Windows keys" are actually useful for many of the "themes" in KDE and Gnome GUI desktops. And of course, the current Microsoft Intellimouse and Intellimouse Explorer are very popular, mostly because of the shape that fits your right hand very well (it should be noted that Linux programmers know how to take full advantage of the Intellimouse Explorer's features).
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Personally, I _hate_ the concept of a computer keyboard with pre-programmed hot keys. All that does is direct traffic to certain sites instead of other sites. I've seen it on my stepfather's e-Machines 466 MHz Celeron machine and it smacks of advertising overkill.
I'd rather get a keyboard that emphasizes comfort--like the Microsoft Natural Elite keyboard (no hot keys around!).
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Heh. What you want is one of the old-school IBM PS/n keyboards. No OS-specific keys, tactile feedback you can feel and *hear*, and a built-like-a-tank construction you just don't see in computer hardware anymore. This thing weighs like ten pounds. It eats other keyboards for breakfast };-)
And as for the Ctrl key thing, hey, nothing a couple of self-adhesive stickers and xmodmap can't fix . . .
iSKUNK!
_______
2B1ASK1
The Jon Katz keyboard: It has fourteen-thousand letters, yet nobody ever gets past the first thirty...
And it's got a direct-link button just like the AOL keyboard; it automatically sends preset flamemail to Jon Katz. Comes in very handy when you're in a hurry.
--
RumorsDaily
I'm scared by this
Really, you think this is scary? Why? No one is going to force you to press the button... There are tons of keyboard manufacturers out there.
Sorry, I don't think I'll be seeing this after eating too much sardeen and olive pizza and falling asleep.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Goodwill has a store in Pittsburgh, too. It's much the same as the one you described. Pity they weren't willing to part with the Commodore PET, VIC-20, and Apple IIe on display. :)
For more information, click here.
I'm surprised nobody has pointed this out before. The keyboard isn't free per se; you still have to pay $7.95 shipping and handling. If you look around at thrift stores and the bargain racks in computer stores, you can find 101- or 104-key keyboards for less than that, without advertising built in.
Besides, the true geek either uses an IBM buckling-spring keyboard (raises hand) or some funky ultra-ergonomic dealie.
For more information, click here.
i have a 105 key logitech internet keyboard with 17 extra internet keys (for a grand total of 122 keys (= ) and i couldnt figure out what to do with the extra keys in linux (in windoze it used the logitech software drivers in order to work)
/)
then i found the scan codes for the extra keys and now in linux a row of internet keys are used to switch to consoles 1-6 (havent figure out what to do with the other 11 internet keys)
anyhow, it seems the keys work through some kind of software in windows, in *nix, we can figure out the keyboard scancode and use these extra keys on the keyboard for other purposes (such as rm -rf
p.s. is extrans (html tags to text) not working?
_______________________________________________
There is no statute of limitation on stupidity.
At the risk of giving away a not-at-all-secret source;), I'd like to suggest to anyone who does crave a nice IBM buckling-spring behemoth and is anywhere near Austin, TX to visit the Goodwill computer store on Research Blvd -- near the Dell Factory outlet, too, so you can get a Dell Precision(tm) WorkStation to go with the good keyboard, and only wish it would have as long a useful life.
...
I've purchased several keyboards there, all of the heavy, clicky, substantial variety. They tend to have quite a few 'ergonomic' split-halves variety, though exactly how ergonomic these are I leave for others to decide, since I don't really like them. And plenty of run-o-the-mill cheapies, too, but some people like that chicklet feel, I think. Anyway, lots of people don't care.
Among the keyboards I've purchased there are two IBMs 'retired' from govt. service at a) NASA and b) some other agency, I forget which. The stock is pretty fluid, though -- you get what you get, and the nicer ones are understandably more than the cheapies.
(Two more bonuses: 1) There's a mini computer 'museum' as you enter with some interesting hardware. For anyone who's only read about a Lisa here on Slashdot and knows Ronald Reagan only from Saturday Night Live re-runs, this is one place you can see one running. 2) Many of the PCs / Macs sold at the store are running Linux -- mostly or all Debian, I think.)
Well, that's a ramble, but I hope someone liked it. I'm sure Goodwill would be happy to be slashdotted with your donations of obsolete (to you) equipment
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
The keyboard I am typing on is useless. It has a resonable amount of tactile feedback, but more would be nice. The thing that really bothers me is the keys. Control is in the lower left corner. Wrong place. No, I will not get a Sun keyboard. Read on to find out why. This keyboard has a bunch of useless crap keys, namely F1-F12, Insert, Delete, Home, End, PgUp, PgDown, Num lock, caps lock, scroll lock, print screen, pause/break and most of all the win95 keys. The windows keys piss me off more than anything. Because Microsoft wanted some ego reinforcement, they have effectively guarenteed that it is impossible for the average consumer to find a resonably priced keyboard without four useless keys with their logos on them. I mean useless literally. Come on, two keys pull down the start menu and one pulls down a contextual menu (we already have the right mouse button to do just that, but I don't see a button to left-click). All of these keys are just legacy crap taking space on my keyboard and making it heavy and ugly. Give me something slick like the Happy Hacking keyboard. The Hacking keyboard is the keyboard of my dreams, EXCEPT it does not have physical arrow keys. For using a shell, editing in a console editor, or gaming, these 4 keys are essensial. It's really too bad - they got everything else right.
Look for a rant on mice coming soon. :-)
If this is a true aol keyboard, there must be no option to turn off the caps lock.
-Reid
Ceterum censeo Microsoftam esse delendam.
I wonder what such a key costs? Maybe we could all chip in and buy one with a cute penguin .... press it and some time after midnight when you're not looking it wipes out the M$ crap and pulls a Linux distro in in its place :-)
1. Run msconfig.exe from start, run (alternatively, accessories | system tools | system information, tools | system configuration)
2. Under the "startup" tab, look for the program and uncheck it. It should be called "CPQEASYACC".
3. Create a shortcut to the program in case you want to use it later.
4. Uncheck the box next to "CPQEASYACC" in msconfig.
Similar methods might be necessary for computers sold with AOL keyboards or computers sold by other manufacturers; I've only tried Compaq.
--
The shareholder is always right.
Since Warner Brothers invented the web, it seems only fitting and proper that their URLs take the place of the keyboard.
They gave you your own key and look at the ingratitude it bought them! I bet they'll be so wimpy as to leave you with your "My Key", and maybe even add a few -- one for each member of the family. And you, embolden by their capitulation in the face of your ruthless greed, you will continue pounding nails through their innocent hands with your hate speech.
Seastead this.
One button for /. site, one for Blue's News, etc. :)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Scared by a keyboard, now there's something you don't see everyday.
Of course, if this was a Linux keyboard with seventeen such keys which range from recompiling your kernel incorrectly, to popping up echoed "M$ suckz" ego boosting messages, it would be deemed "very neat" by the Slashdot Editorial crew
would it be difficult to set up a layer which "listened" to your keyboard and performed on-the-fly translation when you hit one of those buttons?
It probably IS just a software driver that handles the URLs because all a keyboard transmits is a scancode. This scancode is translated to an appriate character code by the operating system. The translation layer would be in the form of a driver (guess which operating system its for). As a result, it'll probably be fairly easy to hack up.
Because of the way the keyboard 'protocol' (if you want to call it that) works, there is no real way to transmit a true URL from the keyboard, except by having it transmit the actual scancodes for the characters that make up the URL, but that wouldn't allow you to run a program from that button. It would allow to type that URL into a word processor pretty quickly though.
RocketBoard's website isn't helpful; it looks like you can't get the keyboard yet. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if you needed drivers for it. Even Microsoft's new keyboards need drivers for any extra button functionality beyond volume and suspend.
"The best way to do mathematics is to be creatively lazy." -I. M. Isaacs
From http://www.rocketboard.com/legal/priv acy.html:
When you install your RocketBoard driver software, you will be assigned a unique global user identification number (GUID). This number along with your IP address is used to help dentify you and your browsing habits and to gather broad demographic information.
Since they are using a GUID, they will know exactly who you are and everything you look at in their network. No doubt they will be providing your name, address, phone number, etc to any of their advertisers whose pages you visit.
this is just another step in the automation of idiocy. People who use AOL, and most of the rest of 'em too, just don't want to do shit. Congratulations to AOL for marketing this. We're approaching a world where everything is automated for ease of use - College graduates can then sit on their asses and buy computers that do their laundry, their dishes, and jack them off...all at the same time. The cool part is that all the dickheads who have BA's in Business Administration (read: "Well, no, Mr. Prospective Employer, I don't know any *nix or networking but i'd like to be a system administrator!") get to do nothing while the REAL geeks of the world get to do all the work.
Thank you AOL...my life is complete! oh...i'm sorry, sir, would you like fries with that?
-FluX
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"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
I wonder if it comes with an AOL 5.0 recovery key (Format c: /s /u)...
It's not like it is surprising or anything. We've known for quite some time that they intend to make boxes that do nothing except run AOL- this is just the logical predecessor to that box and it's cousins. AOL gets a little practice in distribution and organization for very little skin off their back.
Besides, this isn't really a big threat. It's not like AOL can control HW makers in the same way MS does, especially once they start competing. What should be scary is their newfound control (via TimeWarner) of content. I can always get a box from VA or office depot or any of about a zillion online sites, and I'll be able to get them without AOL keyboards. I won't be able to get whole bunches of movies that the Turner Networks own with that box, though. I may not be able to read Time. And don't forget those NBA contracts... think espn.com might get shutout of the loop anytime soon? That is the kind of domination that has been staring us in the face for months, and that is what we ought to be scared of.
~luge
IAAL,BIANLY
It seems like it shouldn't be too hard to watch the keycodes that are flying around and system() something when the button press is detected. A program like this would make this and other keyboards' extra buttons somewhat useful (volume control/mute would pro'ly be the best)
The slashdot keyboard...it has /., freshmeat, jennicam and userfriendly
* 4 hot keys for favorite sites, defaults to
* a "submit story" button
* a "first post" button (ac version only)
* a "first post" button (ac version only)
* an lcd karma counter (login version only)
B. coming soon to an e-tailer near you....only $59.95 (or 3 shares of ANDN)
-mark
-mark
If your computer says LINUX, run...computers can't talk! [unless you have text-speech software]
But AOL is the point-of-entry for many people into the net -- come on, even I started out as a brain-dead AOLer for a month or so. AOL is the Ellis Island, the NYC of (often computing and) the Internet. As such, people will buy the keyboard, get lock-in syndrome, and THE ASSIMILATION WILL STOP, which is the importantly sad thing. AOLers are meant to move on, to grow from AOL into mature ISP users. The AOL keyboard would keep them in the womb.
And children don't know any better than to buy what the womb tells them to.
Ceterum censeo Microsoftam esse delendam.
What's different here are the 18 colorful keys lining the top of the keyboard, most of which have generic subject names like "travel" or "auction."
Eighteen control keys is good news. It means that at last we can have really useful Emacs keyboards.
"To spell-check, just hit Auctions-Travel-Q. If you want to spell check against a French dictionary, use Music-Auctions-Travel-Q instead."
Note: I am only partly joking.