Users' choice between opt-in and opt-out should be made systemwide, imo. There should be an option to enforce the wish not to have any software installed on the computer (without the user being asked first).
There's a lot on this and nuclear risks in general in Bernard Cohen's book "The Nuclear Energy Option" which is available online at: http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/index.html
If you only read one chapter, make it Chapter 11 "Hazards of High Level Radioactive Waste - The Great Myth". You should at least find it interesting!
People can learn keystrokes for basic commands, but it's a much less friendly learning curve and even more so with less-used commands. I can do most basic documents in Word with just keystrokes, for instance, but trying to insert/modify a table, make varying levels of identation, add a picture (not from clipboard), etc... that's when the GUI comes in handy.
However, in case of quick launchers the basic commands are those that you define yourself. At least, that's how it should be. Most programs will by launched by typing their specific or general name (or unique starting letters) - e.g. "wo" for Word, "em" for email, "ie" for Internet Explorer, "/." for browsing Slashdot, "myd" to open My Documents, etc.
A few years ago I hacked a tiny program launcher in Delphi which works in a similar way. With a greplike helper app I can type "def word//" for a dictionary definition, or "def word" for a reverse definition lookup. Commands are stored in a text file in the form
"cmds=txtpad32.exe c:\etc\runapp.ini", so that typing "cmd" would invoke TextPad to bring up a list of commands to edit. The define command is "def=c:\windows\showmatch.exe c:\etc\bigdict.txt". (Yep, I am still running Windows 98 on this machine!) It was written in Delphi and the size of the.exe is 325k; with assembler it would be much smaller of course. It has a history. To start Internet Explorer, I just type "ie", but I can make "go keyword" lookup keyword on Google using IE.
Slashdot Mirror
Users' choice between opt-in and opt-out should be made systemwide, imo. There should be an option to enforce the wish not to have any software installed on the computer (without the user being asked first).
There's a lot on this and nuclear risks in general in Bernard Cohen's book "The Nuclear Energy Option" which is available online at: http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/index.html If you only read one chapter, make it Chapter 11 "Hazards of High Level Radioactive Waste - The Great Myth". You should at least find it interesting!
However, I would rather type
/. enter (4 keystrokes)
Windows+Spacebar
than
Windows+R http://www.slashdot.org enter (25 keystrokes)
A few years ago I hacked a tiny program launcher in Delphi which works in a similar way. With a greplike helper app I can type "def word//" for a dictionary definition, or "def word" for a reverse definition lookup. Commands are stored in a text file in the form "cmds=txtpad32.exe c:\etc\runapp.ini", so that typing "cmd" would invoke TextPad to bring up a list of commands to edit. The define command is "def=c:\windows\showmatch.exe c:\etc\bigdict.txt". (Yep, I am still running Windows 98 on this machine!) It was written in Delphi and the size of the .exe is 325k; with assembler it would be much smaller of course. It has a history. To start Internet Explorer, I just type "ie", but I can make "go keyword" lookup keyword on Google using IE.