Slashdot Mirror
Grafitti Causes Paralysis?
wtpooh writes "Some researchers at Johns Hopkins have found that writing on PDAs like the PalmPilot can cause a special kind of paralysis, as your mind has to adjust to a new kind of writing. Check out the story "
(please don't send me flame mail for posting satire... I just
thought it was funny, but considering I can't feel much below
my neck after moving furniture all day, I might be wrong :)
Fooled you all!
No, I must confess, I did not read the part at the end where they say they are a satire mag. Someone at work forwarded the link to me, and I fell for it all the way. I've got a feeling he'll be coming over and laughing at me any time now.
Of course, if I had known it was a joke I would still have submitted it, but I wouldn't be quite so red-faced now :).
I realize that the artice was a joke, but I've actually seen something similar. I decided to learn how to type on a Dvorak keyboard a few years ago, and almost totally immersed myself in it for a few months. At first, I could switch back to QWERTY without any problem, but once Dvorak felt "natural", it was suddenly a lot harder. I would sit at a QWERTY keyboard and know what I wanted to type, but my hands refused to move for a couple seconds while my brain "switched keymaps".
Oddly enough, once I started typing a sentance (just a couple of letters in, even), it would come back to me effortlessly, but as soon as I stopped for a few seconds, I'd have that hesisation again!
Oh, and for those who think that Dvorak is overhyped-- you're right. My objective with learning Dvorak wasn't speed. I was in a dorm room where *everybody* wants to check email on any computer they can beg their way onto. Changing the keymaps was a pretty effective deterrant.
Humorous aside: Dvorak may be "optimized" for typing in English, but UNIX commands (and programming symbols like ";") are clearly optimized for typing in QWERTY! To type "ls\n" on a Dvorak keyboard, you hit the QWERTY keys "p;\n" -- three consecutive little finger keystrokes. Ick! And if you mess up while learning and accidently type in a QWERTY "ls", a dvorak keyboard will show "no". It's quite odd to be at a bash prompt, tell your computer a simple command like "ls" and have "no" appear on the screen. I thought my computer was rebelling against me the first time I did it!