I get the same benefit by using only "tenkeyless" keyboards that don't have any numerical key pad ("tenkey").
I don't miss the numerical key pad on the right side of the cursor keys. First of all, I learned to type on a C-64 that did not have any. Later, in school and college, I usually used the left hand for the calculator while holding a pencil in the right hand.
The layout of the 104-key keyboard is mostly because of influences from historical systems. DEC's computer terminals from the 1970's used to have a screen, keyboard and logic board in one case, with the screen on the left side and the logic boards to the right side of the screen. It was natural to position the alphanumeric keyboard so that it was centered with the screen. At this time, IBM's systems had the logic boards under the screen and the keyboard separate. IBM's keyboards had the alphanumeric part in the middle with different types of function and cursor keys on both the left and right sides. IBM used variations of this layouts for the IBM XT's keyboards. Later, DEC conducted a study in how cursor keys were used, and that study resulted in the the inverted T-cluster that we have today. In DEC's earlier model, the cursor keys were located above the Enter key, and they had to be moved down to the right so that they could be used with the same hand as before... DEC's VT220 terminal with this layout became quite popular, and IBM just copied DEC's keyboard layout. Then the PC revolution took off, people got used to this layout, and the rest is history.
I disagree. The ideal would be 3:4 (0.75) to be close to the aspect ratios of A4 (0.71) and US Letter (0.77) paper sizes. Some of us would like to use pads to get some work done. If I want to watch movies when travelling, I would get a portable DVD player.
The white ALPS switches in the Northgate Evolution do have a "clack" when you bottom out. You could replace the white sliders with the "cream" rubber-dampened sliders from an Apple Extended Keyboard II. The AEKII is quite inexpensive and easy to find. First you will learn how to open and reassemble ALPS switches and get (or make) yourself a keycap puller. There are instructional videos on Youtube and info on geekhack.org. The mod takes a few hours to do, but it is totally worth it.You will still hear the rattle of the key caps and the clicks.
To further cut down on noise, you could put foam inside or under the keyboard. The simplest noise cancellation device would be a large mouse pad under the keyboard.
It is not just the illegal filesharers that have problems sharing with NAT.
I work for a company that uses P2P for legal content distribution, and I would say that NAT is an even bigger problem for us. Serving content costs money, and the cost savings of serving through P2P is part of our business model. If we can't use P2P, then we lose money.
Also, unlike the illegal P2P networks, we need to provide a quality of service. Users do not get as upset when they can't download something from an illegal P2P network as they do when they can't get it through a commercial entity.
I developed cramps and aches in my right hand after having use small travel mice for too long. Not only was the claw-like grip bad for my hand, but the force required to push the buttons on these particular mice was too high.
I then got a WowPen Joy, slanted mouse, but I do not recommend it. The force required to push the buttons was still too high, so it was painful to use. Eventually, I opened it up, desoldered the hard switches and soldered in softer switches, and now I have no problems using the mouse.
I like the grip on the Evoluent VerticalMouse better, but it wants to "correct" my up/down and left/right mouse movements to be straight lines... and this can be extremely annoying, or not noticeable, depending on your habits.
Posture and mouse position is also important. I have started to use keyboards without any numeric pad to the right of the cursor keys. This has allowed me to place the mouse in a more natural position, leading to less fatigue in my right shoulder.
I dropped out of college. Then after a short job, I found it quite getting a job that I thought that I was qualified for. Then a few years later, I went back to college to finish my degree in Computer Science.
However, I did find that retaking courses at college was more difficult than the first time. Because the course schedule had changed, some courses I needed to take were at the same time as others, or changed to another semester. Therefore, I could not not complete my degree in the same amount of time than I would otherwise have done.
After college, I found that the time gap was a big mark on my resume. I was dismissed as many times in the first iteration as when before I had gone back to college.
There is also a lot of ageism. At least over here in Sweden, most recruiters want people who are ideally no older than 25, with a completed degree and exactly three years of experience, so that the company can put the guy to work directly, make work long hours, easily mold in the company's way of doing things... and pay a lower wage. If you are over 30 and do not have much commercial work experience in the field, then you are practically no longer wanted. Even people over 40 with 15 years of work experience in IT are having problems finding work.
Yes, but you seem to be someone who has a clue, and in my experience, your kind of people are in minority among those who have the power to make hiring decisions.
In many many cases, in both tiny and large corporations, hiring is done first by a HR department, outsourced to a headhunter, or by some boss who knows accounting very, but where neither type of person has any clue about what person they are supposed to hire except for the directions that were given to them. In my experience, it is not uncommon for HR-people to utterly misinterpret the directions so that they forward unqualified people or not forward qualified people.
Some classic mistakes when hiring computer programmers are confusing Java with Javascript, dismissing applicants who have written "several scripting languages" on their CV when they are looking for someone who knows "Pearl" -- or vice versa, looking for "scripting" but dismissing people who enumerate which scripting languages they have experience in, or to ask for n years of experience in something that is less than n years old.
I agree with people here that you should not place your kid in front of a computer or a TV too much at an early age. It is more important to play with physical items and interact with real people. With a physical item, the imagination has free range to run wild -- as it should. Free play and imagination is how kids explore -- and thus learn -- how the world works. With a ready-made story, such as in a computer game, educational computer program or TV show, the freedom is limited to what the author intended. Not that a story could not provide a doseof inspiration for the kid's own imagination, of course.
However... Once you do introduce computers to them, I suggest that you give them user interfaces that were designed with ergonomics in mind: slanted (or even vertical) mice, slanted/curved keyboards, etc.
That way, they will get used to these devices first and it is likely that they may tend to prefer them in the future over cheaper "classic" mice and keyboards. I believe that this could help them in the long term, preventing them from developing RSI or Carpal Tunnel problems later in life.
Jet engines with intakes (so that they can suck what? neutrinos?)
The air intakes are for atmospheric flight. Flying in atmosphere/gravity requires more energy than in space. If there is free fuel (air) around your space plane, then it makes sense to use it when you can.
X-fighters banking on curves (I guess their x-wings generate some lift in the vacuum of space)
X-wings could generate "lift" in space if their "repulsors" are switched on. The repulsors generate lift when near a large object with large mass, such as a planet. It also allows them to lift off straight up. The Death Star has a not so inconsiderable mass and it would therefore make sense that the repulsors be switched on during the trench run.
You could also ponder on the probability that most of the pilots could be more used to flying in atmosphere than in deep space, and that they therefore may tend to do the same maneuvers in space.
Things in orbit that start falling to on side and people inside them start falling too (yahoo!!!)
If your artificial gravity generator can not anticipate the rocking, then it can not compensate for it. This happens in Star Trek too.
I don't believe that the new scenes are completely original. The shots of Vader and C-3PO have been confirmed when fans have talked to the actors, and there are several pictures from the '80s of those sets.
However, the shots of Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker building the lightsaber is dubious. Mark Hamill has previous to Celebration V been asked many times by fans about the scene, and each time, mr Hamill has denied ever doing that scene.
The only part of the last part of that scene that could be original would be C-3PO, but Anthony Daniels has said (to me, in person) that he was the only actor in that shot. According to him, the idea for the scene came very very late in the production. It was in fact, the last scene ever shot and they did not get the time to shoot the part with Luke in it.
The time of the revelation of this new scene coincides perfectly with an announcement of a new collectible lightsaber replica from eFX. I can definitely see the marketing reasons for announcing the "deleted" scene...
Luke's prosthetic hand looked normal at that point. He got shot in the hand while on Jabba's sail barge later in the movie.
Then did he cover the "wound" in the prosthetic with a black glove.
Didn't the p0rn industry complain when the DVD format came, that the quality of the image was too good? You could see every pimple, every stubby hair, etc..
And now, there is p0rn movie in more than 5 times that resolution... and in 3D!
(assumption that 1080p 35 mm, more or less, and that the IMAX flick is 70 mm)
I'm not only referring to having seen this kind of technology in a keyboard before.
I am also asking, have we not seen before, time and time again, Microsoft copying someone else's technology and claiming it to be their own major exclusive new super-invention?...
When I went to college lectures, more often than not, the lecturer spent up to a quarter of an hour of the beginning of the lecture trying to hook up his laptop to the auditorium's projector system and getting the PA system to work properly.
And these were classes in Computer Science, mind you...
The name "Plastiki" is also a reference to how the craft resembles Norwegian amateur explorer/archeologist Thor Heyerdahl's raft/catamaran Kon-Tiki which had done a similar journey across the Pacific.
Thor Heyerdahl's son is also one of the people behind the project, and on board.
Wrong. There is no "automatic" memory management in C++. If you are thinking about the destructor being called at the end of a scope, then the word that you were looking for is "implicit", not "automatic". If you were indeed thinking about "automatic", then dude, your code must leak memory like crazy...
I am appaled that the post above was moderated as "Funny". This is a serious problem for many people, and that is not a joke!
Myself, I would suffer a migraine attack from 15 minutes exposure of the wrong type of scented candles (some are OK, some are not, it depends on the chemical in the scent). And even if I can "cure" the migraine with medicine, that medicine has side-effects such as nausea, sleepiness and sluggishness.. and can have an adverse effect on your body in the long term. I have had to make the cleaning woman at the office change to using different cleaning products so that I wouldn't suffer migraines there. I have to change seats in the subway if someone with strong perfume seats herself (it is usually an older woman) too close to me. This is no joke.
In the netbook/smartbook marketplace, what I think people want is not just a new gadget for serfing the web. They want something with the same capabilities as their old PC, only smaller. I think this is the reason why ARM netbooks never really took off. Their specs were crippled and they could run only custom software.
Something that I am hoping for, is that I could get a ARM-based touchpad or netbook and use that to replace my noisy old intel desktop PC for web-browsing and simple programming. The CPU horsepower is more than enough, plus it would be fan-less and have three times the battery time.
If it only had the capabilities: a decent amount of memory, proper graphics with hardware-accelerated video and HDMI out to a proper screen, USB ports for a keyboard, bluray and storage. I am eagerly awaiting an ARM-based touchpad to appear with these capabilities, so that I can start hacking.
I can get a migraine attack if I am subjected to too much perfume, and there are a lot of other people with the same problem.
I (we) already have to avoid perfumed people at work, when travelling and standing in line for something. Now, all of us with the same sensitivity are being locked out of that chinese neighbourhood completely.
I recall that I saw a hardware add-on for the PalmPilot back in 1999 that did this.
Oh yeah. I think I found it... or one of them: Palm Tilt Sensor. I remember a lot more freeware apps than are available on that page, there being more than one of them seems quite likely.
The other day at work, I rewrote a program that does a lot of large disk accesses from using fread()/fwrite() calls to using memory-mapped files. In both cases, the OS (Windows Vista) did the disk caching, and in both cases the performance was practically the same.
The difference was mostly in how the memory usage was reported. My program was reported as using 80% of all memory, instead of 5% that it was reported of using before. Most of that memory is "cache" in practice, free for the OS to take and give to another program when it needs it.
Slashdot Mirror
I get the same benefit by using only "tenkeyless" keyboards that don't have any numerical key pad ("tenkey").
I don't miss the numerical key pad on the right side of the cursor keys. First of all, I learned to type on a C-64 that did not have any. Later, in school and college, I usually used the left hand for the calculator while holding a pencil in the right hand.
The layout of the 104-key keyboard is mostly because of influences from historical systems. ...
DEC's computer terminals from the 1970's used to have a screen, keyboard and logic board in one case, with the screen on the left side and the logic boards to the right side of the screen.
It was natural to position the alphanumeric keyboard so that it was centered with the screen.
At this time, IBM's systems had the logic boards under the screen and the keyboard separate. IBM's keyboards had the alphanumeric part in the middle with different types of function and cursor keys on both the left and right sides. IBM used variations of this layouts for the IBM XT's keyboards.
Later, DEC conducted a study in how cursor keys were used, and that study resulted in the the inverted T-cluster that we have today. In DEC's earlier model, the cursor keys were located above the Enter key, and they had to be moved down to the right so that they could be used with the same hand as before
DEC's VT220 terminal with this layout became quite popular, and IBM just copied DEC's keyboard layout. Then the PC revolution took off, people got used to this layout, and the rest is history.
I disagree. The ideal would be 3:4 (0.75) to be close to the aspect ratios of A4 (0.71) and US Letter (0.77) paper sizes.
Some of us would like to use pads to get some work done. If I want to watch movies when travelling, I would get a portable DVD player.
LEGO-compatible bricks exist, and are legal, because the patent has expired. One example is Hello Kitty bricks.
However, LEGO bricks are cast with quite high tolerances to connect properly. I have not seen that 3D printers have that precision yet.
Where I come from, any reference to the movie "Hackers" made without irony will yield you an immediate (and deserved) flogging.
The white ALPS switches in the Northgate Evolution do have a "clack" when you bottom out. You could replace the white sliders with the "cream" rubber-dampened sliders from an Apple Extended Keyboard II. The AEKII is quite inexpensive and easy to find.
First you will learn how to open and reassemble ALPS switches and get (or make) yourself a keycap puller. There are instructional videos on Youtube and info on geekhack.org.
The mod takes a few hours to do, but it is totally worth it.You will still hear the rattle of the key caps and the clicks.
To further cut down on noise, you could put foam inside or under the keyboard. The simplest noise cancellation device would be a large mouse pad under the keyboard.
It is not just the illegal filesharers that have problems sharing with NAT.
I work for a company that uses P2P for legal content distribution, and I would say that NAT is an even bigger problem for us. Serving content costs money, and the cost savings of serving through P2P is part of our business model. If we can't use P2P, then we lose money.
Also, unlike the illegal P2P networks, we need to provide a quality of service. Users do not get as upset when they can't download something from an illegal P2P network as they do when they can't get it through a commercial entity.
I developed cramps and aches in my right hand after having use small travel mice for too long. Not only was the claw-like grip bad for my hand, but the force required to push the buttons on these particular mice was too high.
I then got a WowPen Joy, slanted mouse, but I do not recommend it.
The force required to push the buttons was still too high, so it was painful to use. Eventually, I opened it up, desoldered the hard switches and soldered in softer switches, and now I have no problems using the mouse.
I like the grip on the Evoluent VerticalMouse better, but it wants to "correct" my up/down and left/right mouse movements to be straight lines ... and this can be extremely annoying, or not noticeable, depending on your habits.
Posture and mouse position is also important. I have started to use keyboards without any numeric pad to the right of the cursor keys. This has allowed me to place the mouse in a more natural position, leading to less fatigue in my right shoulder.
I dropped out of college. Then after a short job, I found it quite getting a job that I thought that I was qualified for. Then a few years later, I went back to college to finish my degree in Computer Science.
However, I did find that retaking courses at college was more difficult than the first time. Because the course schedule had changed, some courses I needed to take were at the same time as others, or changed to another semester. Therefore, I could not not complete my degree in the same amount of time than I would otherwise have done.
After college, I found that the time gap was a big mark on my resume. I was dismissed as many times in the first iteration as when before I had gone back to college.
There is also a lot of ageism. At least over here in Sweden, most recruiters want people who are ideally no older than 25, with a completed degree and exactly three years of experience, so that the company can put the guy to work directly, make work long hours, easily mold in the company's way of doing things ... and pay a lower wage.
If you are over 30 and do not have much commercial work experience in the field, then you are practically no longer wanted. Even people over 40 with 15 years of work experience in IT are having problems finding work.
Yes, but you seem to be someone who has a clue, and in my experience, your kind of people are in minority among those who have the power to make hiring decisions.
In many many cases, in both tiny and large corporations, hiring is done first by a HR department, outsourced to a headhunter, or by some boss who knows accounting very, but where neither type of person has any clue about what person they are supposed to hire except for the directions that were given to them.
In my experience, it is not uncommon for HR-people to utterly misinterpret the directions so that they forward unqualified people or not forward qualified people.
Some classic mistakes when hiring computer programmers are confusing Java with Javascript, dismissing applicants who have written "several scripting languages" on their CV when they are looking for someone who knows "Pearl" -- or vice versa, looking for "scripting" but dismissing people who enumerate which scripting languages they have experience in, or to ask for n years of experience in something that is less than n years old.
I agree with people here that you should not place your kid in front of a computer or a TV too much at an early age. It is more important to play with physical items and interact with real people. With a physical item, the imagination has free range to run wild -- as it should. Free play and imagination is how kids explore -- and thus learn -- how the world works. With a ready-made story, such as in a computer game, educational computer program or TV show, the freedom is limited to what the author intended. Not that a story could not provide a doseof inspiration for the kid's own imagination, of course.
However... Once you do introduce computers to them, I suggest that you give them user interfaces that were designed with ergonomics in mind: slanted (or even vertical) mice, slanted/curved keyboards, etc. That way, they will get used to these devices first and it is likely that they may tend to prefer them in the future over cheaper "classic" mice and keyboards. I believe that this could help them in the long term, preventing them from developing RSI or Carpal Tunnel problems later in life.
Jet engines with intakes (so that they can suck what? neutrinos?)
The air intakes are for atmospheric flight. Flying in atmosphere/gravity requires more energy than in space. If there is free fuel (air) around your space plane, then it makes sense to use it when you can.
X-fighters banking on curves (I guess their x-wings generate some lift in the vacuum of space)
X-wings could generate "lift" in space if their "repulsors" are switched on. The repulsors generate lift when near a large object with large mass, such as a planet. It also allows them to lift off straight up. The Death Star has a not so inconsiderable mass and it would therefore make sense that the repulsors be switched on during the trench run. You could also ponder on the probability that most of the pilots could be more used to flying in atmosphere than in deep space, and that they therefore may tend to do the same maneuvers in space.
Things in orbit that start falling to on side and people inside them start falling too (yahoo!!!)
If your artificial gravity generator can not anticipate the rocking, then it can not compensate for it. This happens in Star Trek too.
I don't believe that the new scenes are completely original.
The shots of Vader and C-3PO have been confirmed when fans have talked to the actors, and there are several pictures from the '80s of those sets.
However, the shots of Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker building the lightsaber is dubious.
Mark Hamill has previous to Celebration V been asked many times by fans about the scene, and each time, mr Hamill has denied ever doing that scene.
The only part of the last part of that scene that could be original would be C-3PO, but Anthony Daniels has said (to me, in person) that he was the only actor in that shot. According to him, the idea for the scene came very very late in the production. It was in fact, the last scene ever shot and they did not get the time to shoot the part with Luke in it.
The time of the revelation of this new scene coincides perfectly with an announcement of a new collectible lightsaber replica from eFX. I can definitely see the marketing reasons for announcing the "deleted" scene ...
Luke's prosthetic hand looked normal at that point. He got shot in the hand while on Jabba's sail barge later in the movie. Then did he cover the "wound" in the prosthetic with a black glove.
Didn't the p0rn industry complain when the DVD format came, that the quality of the image was too good? You could see every pimple, every stubby hair, etc.. And now, there is p0rn movie in more than 5 times that resolution... and in 3D!
(assumption that 1080p 35 mm, more or less, and that the IMAX flick is 70 mm)
Haven't we seen this before?
I'm not only referring to having seen this kind of technology in a keyboard before.
I am also asking, have we not seen before, time and time again, Microsoft copying someone else's technology and claiming it to be their own major exclusive new super-invention? ...
When I went to college lectures, more often than not, the lecturer spent up to a quarter of an hour of the beginning of the lecture trying to hook up his laptop to the auditorium's projector system and getting the PA system to work properly.
And these were classes in Computer Science, mind you ...
So no, tech can even be a hindrance to education.
The name "Plastiki" is also a reference to how the craft resembles Norwegian amateur explorer/archeologist Thor Heyerdahl's raft/catamaran Kon-Tiki which had done a similar journey across the Pacific.
Thor Heyerdahl's son is also one of the people behind the project, and on board.
Wrong. There is no "automatic" memory management in C++. If you are thinking about the destructor being called at the end of a scope, then the word that you were looking for is "implicit", not "automatic". ...
If you were indeed thinking about "automatic", then dude, your code must leak memory like crazy
I am appaled that the post above was moderated as "Funny".
This is a serious problem for many people, and that is not a joke!
Myself, I would suffer a migraine attack from 15 minutes exposure of the wrong type of scented candles (some are OK, some are not, it depends on the chemical in the scent). .. and can have an adverse effect on your body in the long term.
And even if I can "cure" the migraine with medicine, that medicine has side-effects such as nausea, sleepiness and sluggishness
I have had to make the cleaning woman at the office change to using different cleaning products so that I wouldn't suffer migraines there.
I have to change seats in the subway if someone with strong perfume seats herself (it is usually an older woman) too close to me.
This is no joke.
In the netbook/smartbook marketplace, what I think people want is not just a new gadget for serfing the web. They want something with the same capabilities as their old PC, only smaller. I think this is the reason why ARM netbooks never really took off. Their specs were crippled and they could run only custom software. Something that I am hoping for, is that I could get a ARM-based touchpad or netbook and use that to replace my noisy old intel desktop PC for web-browsing and simple programming. The CPU horsepower is more than enough, plus it would be fan-less and have three times the battery time. If it only had the capabilities: a decent amount of memory, proper graphics with hardware-accelerated video and HDMI out to a proper screen, USB ports for a keyboard, bluray and storage. I am eagerly awaiting an ARM-based touchpad to appear with these capabilities, so that I can start hacking.
I can get a migraine attack if I am subjected to too much perfume, and there are a lot of other people with the same problem.
I (we) already have to avoid perfumed people at work, when travelling and standing in line for something. Now, all of us with the same sensitivity are being locked out of that chinese neighbourhood completely.
I recall that I saw a hardware add-on for the PalmPilot back in 1999 that did this.
... or one of them: Palm Tilt Sensor. I remember a lot more freeware apps than are available on that page, there being more than one of them seems quite likely.
Oh yeah. I think I found it
Things can be even more complex and misleading.
The other day at work, I rewrote a program that does a lot of large disk accesses from using fread()/fwrite() calls to using memory-mapped files.
In both cases, the OS (Windows Vista) did the disk caching, and in both cases the performance was practically the same.
The difference was mostly in how the memory usage was reported. My program was reported as using 80% of all memory, instead of 5% that it was reported of using before.
Most of that memory is "cache" in practice, free for the OS to take and give to another program when it needs it.
Haiku is a clone of BeOS. BeOS has had tabbed windows for a long time.
"Goo" is a dialect of Lisp, so "Gooo" it is!
Personally, I think Google should rename it "Giggity"..