With the death and destruction that is going on right now, I find it sad and pathetic that high profile people like Sting and Regis are eulogizing an operating system (that's still being used around the world, so I don't think is quite dead yet) when they should be eulogizing things like the loss of democratic freedom in the West and the continued opression and death in the rest of the world...
Scientific American devoted an entire issue some time ago (1997) on The Internet, and a significant aspect of that was on information classification. The article discusses, among other things, how librarians (who'd ever thought us geeks would get along with librarians:-) and computer scientists should work together to bring some semblance of order to the chaos.
All of this made a lot of sense even back in 1997, and I think that the issue is even more relevant now. Computer scientists know how to generate the content, and library science is very good at organizing and categorizing information, as well as indexing it for the easiest way to look it up. I read this issue from front to back twice, and it's a permanent part of my library.
I am reminded of some study a few years back about why the current configuration of keyboard exists, that is, the basic arrangement of the letter keys themselves.
The basic idea was that the keys are placed due to the fact of how the original type hammers were placed in the rack of typewriters. The hammers had to be mechanically balanced to minimize wear so they keys were evenly distributed across the keyboard area based on usage in the english language. This allowed the type heads to move faster and more efficiently, and reduced typewriter jams (I happen to be old enough to remember those...). The keyboard layout also had the effect of slowing human typing to a mechanical rate that the typewriter could handle.
Problem today is that the keyboard has retained the same basic layout, even though the mechanical design reasoning no longer exists.
Dworvak came up with what he called a 'natural language' keyboard for the english language, where the letter keys are placed in order of the alphabet. Sounds tough to learn, especially from a touch typist as myself (still can't climb that 45 wpm count...). The studies that have been done comparing equally trained people on the standard layout and the Dworvak layout actually showed a 30-40% speed improvement on the Dworvak.
I'm not sure why the Dworvak layout has not become as popular as I think it should. For me it's the price (they're expensive!) and also tailored to the english language. But I can imagine the Zen Zoning that could take place if you combined Dworvak with the ideas from this article.
Guess I'll be surfing for a reasonably priced portable Dworvak keyboard...
I give this a serious yes vote. Last thing I want to see are my (or my children's) genes patented for Big Pharm. I'll be first in line for a Linux or a Win95/98 client.
Slashdot Mirror
With the death and destruction that is going on right now, I find it sad and pathetic that high profile people like Sting and Regis are eulogizing an operating system (that's still being used around the world, so I don't think is quite dead yet) when they should be eulogizing things like the loss of democratic freedom in the West and the continued opression and death in the rest of the world...
I'm not one for Lotto tickets, but hey, why not?
All of this made a lot of sense even back in 1997, and I think that the issue is even more relevant now. Computer scientists know how to generate the content, and library science is very good at organizing and categorizing information, as well as indexing it for the easiest way to look it up. I read this issue from front to back twice, and it's a permanent part of my library.
The basic idea was that the keys are placed due to the fact of how the original type hammers were placed in the rack of typewriters. The hammers had to be mechanically balanced to minimize wear so they keys were evenly distributed across the keyboard area based on usage in the english language. This allowed the type heads to move faster and more efficiently, and reduced typewriter jams (I happen to be old enough to remember those...). The keyboard layout also had the effect of slowing human typing to a mechanical rate that the typewriter could handle.
Problem today is that the keyboard has retained the same basic layout, even though the mechanical design reasoning no longer exists.
Dworvak came up with what he called a 'natural language' keyboard for the english language, where the letter keys are placed in order of the alphabet. Sounds tough to learn, especially from a touch typist as myself (still can't climb that 45 wpm count...). The studies that have been done comparing equally trained people on the standard layout and the Dworvak layout actually showed a 30-40% speed improvement on the Dworvak.
I'm not sure why the Dworvak layout has not become as popular as I think it should. For me it's the price (they're expensive!) and also tailored to the english language. But I can imagine the Zen Zoning that could take place if you combined Dworvak with the ideas from this article.
Guess I'll be surfing for a reasonably priced portable Dworvak keyboard...
some studies:
http://www.santafe.edu/sfi/publications/Abstracts/ 98-05-041Eabs.html
Old Slashdot discussion:
http://slashdot.org/askslashdot/99/09/26/1841254.s html
I give this a serious yes vote. Last thing I want to see are my (or my children's) genes patented for Big Pharm. I'll be first in line for a Linux or a Win95/98 client.