The bottom line is that keyboards don't have a dedicated circuit for each key - they use a bunch of small grids and detect key presses at the ends of rows/columns in the grid.
Actually, USB is a part of this, too.
Most USB keyboards and other HID devices are low-speed devices, in part because this makes for thinner (and cheaper!) cabling. Each packet at low speed may contain no more than 8 bytes of payload. There are different ways you can implement a USB keyboard within the HID protocol, the most common is for each packet to send the scancodes of all keys that are pressed down at any one time. HID supports some nice bit-packing options in the report formats, but since keyboards commonly have over 100 keys, that means at best you could use no less than 7 bits per scancode.
In other words, low-speed USB keyboards are limited by the protocol to sending no more than 8-9 scancodes to the host at any one time. "Full-speed" (i.e. top speed of USB 1.1) keyboards would be able to get around this limitation.
Re:That's one heck of a "long goodbye"
on
Goodbye, VGA
·
· Score: 1
There is absolutely no technical reason to prefer USB keyboards over PS2 unless you have a machine that lacks a PS2 port.
One advantage of USB is that extension cords in the form of hubs are widely available, so that you can run USB from your home theater PC to the trackball and keyboard on your TV tray.
If I were planning to use a keyboard with a home theater PC I might consider a wireless one instead...
Re:That's one heck of a "long goodbye"
on
Goodbye, VGA
·
· Score: 1
I use a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.... even fewer cables:)
Rechargeable, right? So that'd mean there's still at least one cable for both, though it could also be one cable each...
Blah. Can't feel a lot of respect for any programmer who doesn't cultivate an appreciation for different styles of expression. To me that's a fundamental aspect of improving myself as a programmer.
Still, the bit about "hired a Perl hacker" was funny. For sure one of the big temptations in thinking too hard about programming is failing to get anything done.:)
It does have its legitimate uses. What about someone with, say, one hand? Or one finger? Capslock H Capslock e l l o period, one key at a time.
The need for one-handed typing has largely been negated by the proliferation of video chat.:)
But there's a shift key on each side of the keyboard. You can type shift plus any single letter one-handed. Of course, some people physically aren't capable of this - in that case, there are more advanced accessibility options they can activate.
Though to be fair, it's been rendered sort of redundant by Stickykeys (which has been around for quite a while now - at least 15 years). If you don't know what it is, press Shift five times in a row. It basically turns modifier keys (Alt, Shift, Ctrl) into toggles instead of holds.
Personally I can't stand stickeykeys. Sometimes I'll press a key and realize I didn't need to press it - in that case, I really don't want it to "stick"... Or I'll hold down shift and not necessarily know immediately what other key I want to press. I have turned on Stickeykeys by mistake in the past, just through my regular keyboarding habits...
I know a number of places that still have databases where the policy is to put everything in in all caps to fix issues of sorting mixed case (on ancient systems) and duplicate entries. After all, if the database sees McDonald and Mcdonald as separate names, MCDONALD for everything fixes that.
In that case there's a simpler answer: the program you use to enter data into this database (whether it's a web front-end or whatever else) can capitalize everything for you.
The summary seems to approach this from two conflicting directions: "I don't like caps lock" and "taking it away equates to taking away people's freedom". That doesn't really make a lot of sense. The key is basically unnecessary in my opinion, and removing it is an improvement, particularly if this means the keyboard layout is better (i.e. wider keys on small devices - or a more useful key like CTRL or ALT in that position)
I think it was a mistake for them to make a comment about removing this key as a way of "improving the quality of comments" - I think people are feeling slighted by that. If they'd just said "we want to simplify the keyboard layout by removing a key we feel isn't useful enough for its position on the home row" I think this would have been better-received.
On the other hand, I think it'd be reasonable to compare this kind of move to, say, Apple's efforts at getting people to use a one-button mouse to "simplify" the interface... Though the problem there was that the second mouse button is actually tied to some useful, commonly-used functionality. Apple has followed an increasingly bizarre and confusing path in their efforts to stick to that "one button" rule while still providing the right-click functionality without the need for keyboard chording... In particular, the "invisible right-mouse-button" that looks like part of a single, large mouse button - or mice and trackballs with no distinct mouse buttons at all... But it seems to me that caps lock really [i]is[/i] extraneous. There's no essential functionality that's lost with this change.
Ha, that's what I thought. It's an extra two minutes, lazy douche.
Is it? Admittedly I don't know Denver at all. I was curious, so I looked it up on Google Maps. How do you even get from one side of that roadblock to the other, on foot, using Park? The bike trail, I guess?
> On a side note, I wonder if they're going to start profiling teddy bears next...
That sucks. Me and all my teddy bears are flying next week. What's the TSA regulations on groping teddy bears?
Well, it's not so much that the TSA deals with the teddy bears directly - rather they have them on hand so children can point out where they were touched.
I'm sick of that "better safe than sorry" attitude, especially when it's combined with a lack of critical thinking skills.
Let's say you're a bomber. You attach a device to the underside of a bridge. NOBODY who is seriously intending to do this would make it as visible as a toy robot GOD DAMN IT. It would be a non-descript box or what-not and placed where it would be the least noticable.
But if you make that assumption, and the bomber knows that you make that assumption, then the assumption becomes incorrect because the bomber will adjust their strategy. Assuming that a bomber wouldn't disguise a bomb as a piece of art is exactly what makes that method of attack viable.
Did the robot like the cliche dinner and a movie? Did the robot order the most expensive thing on the menu and follow it with dessert? What type of movie did the robot want to see? Did robot invite the Bomb Squad in when it was dropped off?
No, but the robot did collect extensive tactile sensor readings of the Bomb Squad with its primary manipulator units prior to decoupling from the Bomb Squad's facial interface. The robot also made sure the Bomb Squad had its IP address, and told the Bomb Squad they could ping it any time they like... The Bomb Squad has a good feeling about this.
If you doubt the logic of this move, you have to consider the hidden combat potential of small toy robots. For instance, this was demonstrated quite clearly in A Fist-Full of Yen.
It's not so much that terrorists have won, but much more that police departments get paid more for envisioning ever more over-reactionary and retarded ways to respond to things.
By convincing town boards that it is necessary to respond to a toy robot with a SWAT team, bomb squad, and a 200-strong terror response force, they can generate a ton of revenue from the town coffers that they get to spend on tacticool gear, weapons, and stuff.
You know, now that I think about it, I like this approach! It seems much better than some of the alternatives, like asserting their importance against sports fans happy about a world series win - and if a toy robot or two gets blown up along the way, that's better than an otherwise-happy sports fan getting killed by a pepper-ball to the face.
Well, your odds of dying from cancer induced from sitting in the airplane are substantially higher than your odds of dying from cancer induced by the screening.
Are you qualified, medically speaking, to make this statement?
You know what pisses me off the most at airports? Not hightened security, but the lack of electric outlets and free (or cheap) wifi. That aggravates me to no end.
Hey, at over a million bucks a line plus 4 employees due to federal security mandates, there's no money left for the airport authorities to put in public electrical outlets or offer free WiFi.
That's stupid. Why on earth would they offer free WiFi when they can charge you money for it? After all, it's not like, after check-in, you can go somewhere else until it's time for your flight... Not unless you want to go through check-in again.
I think it makes sense to have the OS centrally manage application rights. All of them.
Execution
Granular Network Access
FS Read/Write (like limit to directory or file)
Mutability/Updates
Hardware/Driver Access
Execute other programs
etc etc etc...
It just seems like kind of a no-brainer. Why does my browser need anything more than read/write on the cache folder and write for Downloads?
Well, the ability to apply restrictions with that level of granularity to individual programs when run hasn't traditionally existed in most OSes. Adding it isn't a trivial task, and since the implementation pretty much* has to be part of the kernel, the importance of finely-grained security features has to be weighed against the performance impact of inserting security checks into the various syscalls. I believe all major platforms are headed in this direction, however, giving the OS more selective control over individual processes' capabilities.
One other problem with web browsers is that their role has never been truly defined or bounded. Even the sandboxing rules of Java Applets eventually gained exceptions (in the case of applets accompanied by security credentials, and after the user elects to allow the applet to run). People are using web interfaces for things that have traditionally been done with desktop apps.
(* Actually, there are some partial solutions to filtering a process's actions via userspace: ptrace() for instance, is probably the most complete solution in wide use. However, ptrace() isn't secure enough to rely upon it as a security feature (if you allow processes to call fork(), there's a race condition between the new process doing things and the ptrace process's attempt to ptrace the new process... There are also various implementations of process jails - I don't think anything really useful has been embraced in the kernel yet.)
Slashdot Mirror
Wireless just means another set of batteries to change.
Or recharge. Or fail to recharge at some point...
Wireless technology is great stuff, but sometimes you can't beat the simplicity and reliability of a good ol' wire.
This has nothing to do with USB vs PS/2.
This has to do with masking.
http://www.dribin.org/dave/keyboard/one_html/
The bottom line is that keyboards don't have a dedicated circuit for each key - they use a bunch of small grids and detect key presses at the ends of rows/columns in the grid.
Actually, USB is a part of this, too.
Most USB keyboards and other HID devices are low-speed devices, in part because this makes for thinner (and cheaper!) cabling.
Each packet at low speed may contain no more than 8 bytes of payload.
There are different ways you can implement a USB keyboard within the HID protocol, the most common is for each packet to send the scancodes of all keys that are pressed down at any one time.
HID supports some nice bit-packing options in the report formats, but since keyboards commonly have over 100 keys, that means at best you could use no less than 7 bits per scancode.
In other words, low-speed USB keyboards are limited by the protocol to sending no more than 8-9 scancodes to the host at any one time. "Full-speed" (i.e. top speed of USB 1.1) keyboards would be able to get around this limitation.
There is absolutely no technical reason to prefer USB keyboards over PS2 unless you have a machine that lacks a PS2 port.
One advantage of USB is that extension cords in the form of hubs are widely available, so that you can run USB from your home theater PC to the trackball and keyboard on your TV tray.
If I were planning to use a keyboard with a home theater PC I might consider a wireless one instead...
I use a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.... even fewer cables :)
Rechargeable, right? So that'd mean there's still at least one cable for both, though it could also be one cable each...
But apparently the Haskell comunity found a programmer that actually care about Haskell just last week, they are now up to 38 people. I quote:
Blah. Can't feel a lot of respect for any programmer who doesn't cultivate an appreciation for different styles of expression. To me that's a fundamental aspect of improving myself as a programmer.
Still, the bit about "hired a Perl hacker" was funny. For sure one of the big temptations in thinking too hard about programming is failing to get anything done. :)
It does have its legitimate uses. What about someone with, say, one hand? Or one finger? Capslock H Capslock e l l o period, one key at a time.
The need for one-handed typing has largely been negated by the proliferation of video chat. :)
But there's a shift key on each side of the keyboard. You can type shift plus any single letter one-handed. Of course, some people physically aren't capable of this - in that case, there are more advanced accessibility options they can activate.
Though to be fair, it's been rendered sort of redundant by Stickykeys (which has been around for quite a while now - at least 15 years). If you don't know what it is, press Shift five times in a row. It basically turns modifier keys (Alt, Shift, Ctrl) into toggles instead of holds.
Personally I can't stand stickeykeys. Sometimes I'll press a key and realize I didn't need to press it - in that case, I really don't want it to "stick"... Or I'll hold down shift and not necessarily know immediately what other key I want to press. I have turned on Stickeykeys by mistake in the past, just through my regular keyboarding habits...
I know a number of places that still have databases where the policy is to put everything in in all caps to fix issues of sorting mixed case (on ancient systems) and duplicate entries. After all, if the database sees McDonald and Mcdonald as separate names, MCDONALD for everything fixes that.
In that case there's a simpler answer: the program you use to enter data into this database (whether it's a web front-end or whatever else) can capitalize everything for you.
The summary seems to approach this from two conflicting directions: "I don't like caps lock" and "taking it away equates to taking away people's freedom". That doesn't really make a lot of sense. The key is basically unnecessary in my opinion, and removing it is an improvement, particularly if this means the keyboard layout is better (i.e. wider keys on small devices - or a more useful key like CTRL or ALT in that position)
I think it was a mistake for them to make a comment about removing this key as a way of "improving the quality of comments" - I think people are feeling slighted by that. If they'd just said "we want to simplify the keyboard layout by removing a key we feel isn't useful enough for its position on the home row" I think this would have been better-received.
On the other hand, I think it'd be reasonable to compare this kind of move to, say, Apple's efforts at getting people to use a one-button mouse to "simplify" the interface... Though the problem there was that the second mouse button is actually tied to some useful, commonly-used functionality. Apple has followed an increasingly bizarre and confusing path in their efforts to stick to that "one button" rule while still providing the right-click functionality without the need for keyboard chording... In particular, the "invisible right-mouse-button" that looks like part of a single, large mouse button - or mice and trackballs with no distinct mouse buttons at all... But it seems to me that caps lock really [i]is[/i] extraneous. There's no essential functionality that's lost with this change.
They also have to be sure that the plastic gun isn't going to transform into an evil 30-foot tall incompetent robot warlord.
Fix'd
Ha ha!
But, no, seriously... he's really sure he can trust Starscream, this time. That last apology of his sounded really sincere.
Ha, that's what I thought. It's an extra two minutes, lazy douche.
Is it? Admittedly I don't know Denver at all. I was curious, so I looked it up on Google Maps. How do you even get from one side of that roadblock to the other, on foot, using Park? The bike trail, I guess?
> On a side note, I wonder if they're going to start profiling teddy bears next...
That sucks. Me and all my teddy bears are flying next week. What's the TSA regulations on groping teddy bears?
Well, it's not so much that the TSA deals with the teddy bears directly - rather they have them on hand so children can point out where they were touched.
Padded suit. Baseball bat. Swing. Done.
Nuff said.
Seriously, how much boom could be in that kind of size of toy frame if you consider electronics and detonator?
Would you really want to find that out firsthand? That toy's big enough to hold a hand grenade, I'd say - those are considered lethal weapons, right?
I'm sick of that "better safe than sorry" attitude, especially when it's combined with a lack of critical thinking skills.
Let's say you're a bomber. You attach a device to the underside of a bridge. NOBODY who is seriously intending to do this would make it as visible as a toy robot GOD DAMN IT. It would be a non-descript box or what-not and placed where it would be the least noticable.
But if you make that assumption, and the bomber knows that you make that assumption, then the assumption becomes incorrect because the bomber will adjust their strategy. Assuming that a bomber wouldn't disguise a bomb as a piece of art is exactly what makes that method of attack viable.
Did the robot like the cliche dinner and a movie?
Did the robot order the most expensive thing on the menu and follow it with dessert?
What type of movie did the robot want to see?
Did robot invite the Bomb Squad in when it was dropped off?
No, but the robot did collect extensive tactile sensor readings of the Bomb Squad with its primary manipulator units prior to decoupling from the Bomb Squad's facial interface. The robot also made sure the Bomb Squad had its IP address, and told the Bomb Squad they could ping it any time they like... The Bomb Squad has a good feeling about this.
If you doubt the logic of this move, you have to consider the hidden combat potential of small toy robots. For instance, this was demonstrated quite clearly in A Fist-Full of Yen.
This is why we can't have plastic guns. It might be a bomb!
They also have to be sure that the plastic gun isn't going to transform into an evil 30-foot tall robot warlord.
It's not so much that terrorists have won, but much more that police departments get paid more for envisioning ever more over-reactionary and retarded ways to respond to things.
By convincing town boards that it is necessary to respond to a toy robot with a SWAT team, bomb squad, and a 200-strong terror response force, they can generate a ton of revenue from the town coffers that they get to spend on tacticool gear, weapons, and stuff.
You know, now that I think about it, I like this approach! It seems much better than some of the alternatives, like asserting their importance against sports fans happy about a world series win - and if a toy robot or two gets blown up along the way, that's better than an otherwise-happy sports fan getting killed by a pepper-ball to the face.
To baldly go where no one has ever gone before.
That explains Picard, but what about curly Kirk?
Shatner has a toupee.
It's a well-kept industry secret, though, so be careful about who you tell.
Well, your odds of dying from cancer induced from sitting in the airplane are substantially higher than your odds of dying from cancer induced by the screening.
Are you qualified, medically speaking, to make this statement?
You know what pisses me off the most at airports? Not hightened security, but the lack of electric outlets and free (or cheap) wifi. That aggravates me to no end.
Hey, at over a million bucks a line plus 4 employees due to federal security mandates, there's no money left for the airport authorities to put in public electrical outlets or offer free WiFi.
That's stupid. Why on earth would they offer free WiFi when they can charge you money for it? After all, it's not like, after check-in, you can go somewhere else until it's time for your flight... Not unless you want to go through check-in again.
They voted for this, so it's technically suicide.
Who voted for this, exactly?
Haha, why not just read playboy before entering scanner.. that way picture should be clear and solid.
For added effect, put a metal ruler in your pants, for handy scale reference.
In the grand scheme of tech-elitism, ARM >> AVR. :P
ARM bitshift right AVR? I don't get it.
No, it's C++. He's pulling an entire AVR out of an ARM, demonstrating ARM's superiority!
LED Zeppelin
Dear Mods: Parent post was a joke.
+1 Insightful
+1 Dur-hey
Electric Light Orchestra
Thanks for the Wikipedia link! Now I can easily find out who Electric Light Orchestra is!
I think it makes sense to have the OS centrally manage application rights. All of them.
It just seems like kind of a no-brainer. Why does my browser need anything more than read/write on the cache folder and write for Downloads?
Well, the ability to apply restrictions with that level of granularity to individual programs when run hasn't traditionally existed in most OSes. Adding it isn't a trivial task, and since the implementation pretty much* has to be part of the kernel, the importance of finely-grained security features has to be weighed against the performance impact of inserting security checks into the various syscalls. I believe all major platforms are headed in this direction, however, giving the OS more selective control over individual processes' capabilities.
One other problem with web browsers is that their role has never been truly defined or bounded. Even the sandboxing rules of Java Applets eventually gained exceptions (in the case of applets accompanied by security credentials, and after the user elects to allow the applet to run). People are using web interfaces for things that have traditionally been done with desktop apps.
(* Actually, there are some partial solutions to filtering a process's actions via userspace: ptrace() for instance, is probably the most complete solution in wide use. However, ptrace() isn't secure enough to rely upon it as a security feature (if you allow processes to call fork(), there's a race condition between the new process doing things and the ptrace process's attempt to ptrace the new process... There are also various implementations of process jails - I don't think anything really useful has been embraced in the kernel yet.)