What you, and the companies that are suffering at the hands of Microsoft, need to realise is that if you want to dismantle a monopoly, the thing to do IS support that other ten percent. To the hilt. Plug it for all it's worth. And "depreciate" the use of $Monopolist's products at every opportunity.
Do it often enough, and you'll grow a customer base, grow it large enough, and there WILL be a viable alternative.
"We have no parallel to help us guess at what might be behind this door"?
What about um, the other door? The one that we already know has another door behind it?
I must admit, I'm not sure whether the northern shaft is strictly what you'd call parallel to the southern shaft, but gee, I dunno, another door sounds like a pretty BLOODY OBVIOUS guess to me!
I thought at the time, and reading that bit reminds me of it now, that this could also explain the apparent lack of certain anchor elements in the whole Campbellian mythology arc from this first trilogy.
In parts of the ESB and RotJ, there are elements that indicate Yoda knows what's going on. He tells Luke not to do something, or offers some advice, but in a way that implies (to me, anyway) that he knew that Luke wasn't going to take the advice and that he also knew he had to give it anyway, just so Luke could go off and do completely the opposite.
This suggests that Yoda could have been able to see - and it is indicated clearly that Yoda does have prescient abilities - if Anakin WAS the one or not, and he would also know the course of events that would have to unfold for the desired conclusion to be reached - or at least, to the point where the ultimate fate of the "happily ever after" came down to a fifty-fifty shot - Flash, sizzle, crackle - "Father! PHULEEEAZZE!!" - At that point, did any one else find themselves rooting for Vader for all they were worth? "Come on, Darth! You can do it!"?
He would also know that that course of events would inevitably be rather catastrophic in scope. Whole systems laid waste, billions (trillions?) dead, the very existence of the Galaxy itself put to stake, you know the drill.
But he would allow (even encourage) events to unfold that way, because massive, overwhelming, earth-shattering change is by definition not peaceful, or easy. The death of the old is generally slow, painful and messy, and the birth of the new (as births usually are) just that little bit worse. But, until things evolve to a certain point, there is no other way to get from here to there.
Although, for this to work, Annakin would also need to demonstrate foreknowledge of - and collusion with - his destiny. The hero (or, as some religions would have it, the sacrifice) has to go knowingly to his destruction. A lamb to the slaughter, you might say.
It could also be argued that if the Sith are to represent all the things that are out-of-balance in the Force, and there is always only two of them, the Master and the Apprentice, then for the Apprentice to give in to the Light Side and destroy his master would make sense. Light + Dark = 0, or perhaps two Evil Sith, take away two Evil Sith, leaves no Evil Sith.
Of course, in order for that to come about, the Chosen one would have to turn to the Dark Side first. Which makes it neccessary for Annakin's training to be done by someone who would train him well, but neglect the oh-so-important part about resisting the impulses that lead to the Dark Side. Our favorite "crazy old man" is the perfect choice. And what better way to get him into old Ben's clutches than to send off Qai-Gon to knock out the current apprentice, thus creating a space for the new deep-sleeper agent of the Forces of Good, Darth Annakin?
Now, Yoda dies peacefully in his sleep, rather than being smeared three inches thick all the way to the top of his personal Golgotha - he's no hero. Neither is Obi-Wan. When faced with a quick sabre slash across the midriff, he goes all chicken in a puff of smoke. Poor Annakin has to be half barbequed, dragged, broken and bleeding down to a devestated hangar deck, where he expires in a wheeze of compassion and father-son bonding. He doesn't even get to fade away like Yoda. He's our patsy - I mean Chosen One.
All that is needed is for Annakin to know what's in store for him. And for him to consciously take steps that advance the story. Handily ignoring his old home town as a possible hiding place, for example. Or somehow getting his master to allow his Nemesis (Luke) access to a weapon (his lightsabre - "you want this...?"), even though he could already feel the burning in his neatly-cauterised stump-to-be.
The thought came from another interesting theory I came across at the same time, and it was regarding that other great story archtype, typefied by that other great (and somewhat more pre-Campbellian) collection of short stories - the Bibble. In it, the not-particularly-heroic type is given a destiny that could save the world, and the knowledge that it will be the most horrific experience of his short life, and will also require his own death, preferably in as slow, painful and messy a fashion as possible.
Are there any instances of Annakin indicating knowledge of the future, in such a way as to indicate consequent foreknowledge that that future is not a nice place for him to be? Or that by taking a particular course of action, he is deliberately moving towards a dark and horrible future? After all, if a 600-year old oven mitt can see into the future, surely it's not beyond the Chosen One, especially if he's got midichlorians out the earhole like they say.
I haven't seen AotC yet. I just couldn't find the excitement neccesary to drag myself out of my daily rut in order to trek the fifty miles to the nearest decent cinema. I'll wait for the DVD. But when I sit down to watch it the first time, I will be turning the suspense-of-disbelief dial to '11'. THEN I'll go back and pick it apart, frame by frame, 'cause that's what I dig doing.
Not that I intend making a religion out of it or anything. The first time I saw Star Wars (at about 15), it was a truly mind-blowing experience, and Luke Skywalker was the angst-ridden, down-trodden young man I saw myself as. When I saw it again during the pre-TPM ritual screenings of the first three movies, I was so incredibly struck by what a shockingly histrionic ham of an actor that whiny little farmboy was. Funnily enough, I look back at myself at that age, and you'll never guess what I see.
I'm also hoping that Ep III will also provide us with an answer to that other eternal question - what the hell is a Darth, anyway?
> Good to see more weight behind individual rights, but what a way to bias a reader.
Actually, that could be the idea. The RIAA and ilk have been kicking up this big cloud of dust about 'pirates' and the evil, wicked things they do for ages.
Joe Public knows what pirates are, and he loves stories about pirates. People generally do love to read about the really BAAAD guys. So yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum he goes, and casts an eye over the article, looking for the juicy bits.
But he won't actualloy find any, until he gets down to the bit where it gets into the gory details of what the copyright companies are after, and then he'll maybe get a few ideas of his own about who the bloodthirsty scourge of the seas is here.
Which is probably a good thing.
On the other hand, maybe it just putsches a lot of buttons with the tech crowd, and generates lots of hits. Which of course, is all Cnet's really interested in.
No, seriously - There needs to be as much variety in the OS market as there is in any other. think about cars - General Motors, Ford, Toyota, Hyundai, Volvo, Mercedes, Volkswagen, BMW, Mazda - all making rounded square boxes with four wheels.
How about TVs? Sharp, Sanyo, Sony, Samsung, GE, JVC, Toshiba, Mitsubishi, Pioneer - All making boxes that show the Magic Pictures (Ooooo...).
Washing machines. Hoover, GE, Westinghouse, Whirlpool, Email, Smeg, LG, Electrolux - All making boxes that swish your dirty clothes round with a lot of water.
Desktop OSes - Microsoft, Apple.
Over the deafening screams of the teeming millions, I'll just point out that the likes of Morgan, Shelby and Ashton Martin are not in the car maker list either. Yes, the Linux desktop is a wonderful thing, and yes, it may even be the saviour of us all, but still, it's not yet something that the average member of the public is going to be offered as a choice when he walks into the local Best Buy looking to buy um, one of them, um, computer things?
The point is that when Joe Public goes to buy a computer, he's going to get something with one of Microsoft's fine products on it.
The real point is - HE HAS NO CHOICE.
Oh, he could buy a Macintosh. Sorry. Yes, that's a real schmorgasboard there. But he has to go all the way across town to the only Apple retailer in the state. Oh, and guess what? Even the Apple that he gets - Has Microsoft software on it!
And the sales assistant that helps him decide on his new computer - why doesn't he spend any time finding out what the customer wants to do with his new computer and customise the new machine accordingly ("Oh, your son's going to be an engineer? Here, use QNX. You want to be a musician? No problem, load him up with BeOS. Serious gamer? Menuet! 100% assembly for pure, sweet, speed.) Why does this never happen?
If you can find a copy of "The Lost Worlds of 2001", by Arthur Clarke, he writes of how Kubrick came to him with an idea to make the proverbial "Good science fiction movie". Clarke says that they worked on the novel and the movie in parallel, often revising parts of the movie or parts of the book based on what they had seen developed from that day's filming,or on the latest chapter of the book. Clarke states that it was a great, although expensive, way to write a novel.
Clarke originally wanted to give Kubrick co-authorship on the novel because of the considerable input he receive from Kubrick in this and other ways. Kubrick thought that Clarke should have co-authorship on the movie for the same reason, but neither of them wanted to steal the other's thunder in their respective mediums...media?
Eventually they agreed to do it this way: The book was by Aurthur C. Clarke, based on the movie by Stanley Kubrick, and the movie by Stanley Kubrick, based on the novel by Aurther C. Clarke.
In that book, Clarke says that Stanley was one of the nicest guys he's met - not at all what he'd been led to to expect from the reclusive, demanding Hollywood wunderkind that he'd heard about.
There's also a lot of material the Arthur wrote that was gradually modified or discarded as the movie/book developed.
Never having tried an ergonomic keyboard, I can't say how well they work. But for personal prefence, I like the old keyboards - the really big heavy ones that you can use to beat malfunctioning iron into submission with.
For a couple of reasons;
1. TACTILE! They respond with a nice clear click - both on the way in and on the way out. And there'a little bit of give in the key (maybe a millimetre or two). This works out so that I can actually stop myself from getting the wrong character, even after my finger has actually started to depress the key (similar to the earlier post where the guy noticed his backspace finger being deployed even before he's actually hit the mistaken key).
(I use a keyboard a lot, although I can't get an accurate timing of how fast I can go. The reason being that I have to stop (or at least slow down a bit) every few lines or so to give the old brain time to actually produce the lines that come next.)
The second reason is that I've noticed that the older keyboard's keys are actually just a smidgin or two bigger than modern keyboards. The upshot of this is that your hands - or more importantly, your wrists - are actually moving around as you type. It leads to more of a 'piano-player' style, perhaps, but it does mean that you're not keeping your wrists still while working the fingers. Now, I don't know a lot about RSI or what causes it, mainly because I've never had it. Even on the days when I haven't left the keyboard for hours at a stretch, I don't get sore wrists.
Also, the keys are slightly heavier, meaning that you have to exert yourself a little more, so you're not just making those little tiny movements that I think I've heard are bad news.
(On a side note, there was a period about the mid-to-late eighties when new keyboards were appearing on workstations that were very similar in feel to a laptop keyboard - almost flat keys with very little travel and no feedback. Audio feedback could be provided by a tiny 'pip' noise produced by a miniscule speaker in the keyboard, if required. They were fast. Damn fast. But, IIRC they were taken out of circulation after only a very short time as operators started to drop like flies with tenosynovitus, as it was called back then.)
Another thing I like is a chair with armrests. I'm big enough to fill a chair to the point where I can rest my forearms along the armrests just nicely, leaving my hands dangling over the ends. Slip my keyboard underneath them, and away I go, rattle-rattle-rattle.
And finally, the heavy old keyboards are able to take a punch or two (or several) without going all to pieces on you, and they can be had for like 15 bucks at your local junkyard. For nothing if you want to get them out of the dumpster yourself. If I spent a hundred bucks on a you-beaut ergonomic keyboard, like as not I'd be needing another in six months time. Those things are not very robust, I've noticed.
All you need to do, given that it works well enough, is to convince Joe Public that it's safe enough to fly in a plane without someone driving, and Fred's your second cousin.
Could be that's why they called it that in the movie?
Re:Rob Sitch - DeadSet. Legend.
on
Review: The Dish
·
· Score: 1
Ahem. That's 'dropout' in the sense of "Would have become a doctor if he hadn't've started mixing with all those fringe theatre beatniks and ABC longhairs".
I just think it's great that half of our ol' pals, Grahame and The Colonel are on the front page of Slashdot:)
Re:Rob Sitch - DeadSet. Legend.
on
Review: The Dish
·
· Score: 1
Wooo's a icckle idiot, den?
Yaaaay! Mees an ickle idiot, putting targets inna filenames, yesss!
Pardon me while I go beat myself to death with a rubber hose.
Before he became an internationally-renowned director, Rob Sitch (a humble Melbourne uni dropout) spent some time trying to break into the world of professional stuntmen.
Because probably no one outside Australia would have even heard of The Late Show, help me test our server capacity by checking out the following;
I was working at an internet cafe, when this refined old gent came in, wanting someone to show him how to check a mailbox that his grand-daughter had set up for him.
You could tell he was refined (cultured, even),
by the website that his email had been set up on.
Not one of those uncouth modern websites.
Play for fun, play because you like it. Play for a laugh, play with your toys.
The game is SUPPOSED to be the reason for playing.
Not to win some prize and be better than everybody else. That's more like, I dunno, competition or something.
You know competition, right? It's that really weird game that they taught us in preschool. You know the one? It goes like this...
Kid1: Hey! Wanna have a race?
Kid2: What's a race?
Kid1: We run from here to the tree over there and whoever gets there first, is the winner!
Kid2: What's a winner?
Kid1: That's the guy who gets to the tree first, ok?
Kid2: Oh. OK, that sounds like fun.
Kid1: OK. Ready, set, go!
They race off across the playground. Kid2, being the kind of kid who runs everywhere, just because he really likes running (Gosh, you just go so fast! It's like flying!), gets to the tree first.
Kid2: (pant, puff) Wheee! That was fun!
Kid1: I hate you, you're a spaz! (punch kid2 in the guts)
Well, yes, but the whole song is apocrypal, if not wildly inaccurate. The real figures don't fit too well into the song, though. Standing on the surface of a planet that's evolving, and revolving at 1,041 miles per hour; that's orbiting at 18 miles a second, etc, etc, etc...
Course, the real figures, as always, are far more incredible. Apart from the ninety mile a secnd, though - at that rate, our year would last just 74 days. We would have to be orbiting the sun at a distance of more than 420,000,000 miles - just sixty millions mile short of Jupiter - for our year to last...well, a year.
Once again, it's not an argument for gun control, it's about better education by the people who are supposed to be doing the educating! Which isn't just parents, by the by - it's parents, neighbors, teachers, educating machines like TV, or the mighty internet, or your local library, politicians...Take for instance, what it would be like if there was no mention in the law of 'murder' or 'fraud' or 'Grevious Bodily Harm', because nobody knew what it was. If you took the time to explain it to someone - anyone, they would react with horror. If 'abuse' or 'hate' carried the same weight as, say, 'necrophilia' or 'cannibalism'. Target shooting and computer games would be all you could get, or want.
Oh, and look - Can you guess who of the "core group of participants (including members of the Recording Industry Association of America) who coordinated the testing process are aware of the contest results" might be? The geeks are inside the corporate machine, we the believers in freedom are always ready to help the fools fall on their faces. Mwuhahahahaha.
---
I'm sorry yerronor, I don't know what came over me.(ahem)
Now that you mention it, what would be the reaction if they linked the 'Average Annual Income' thing on, say, the New York Times 'free' signup page to your Amazon account? How would we like $$$Fat_Rich_Bastard#1 being charged 25% more than $Struggling_Net_Slave#24435321234 for their copy of 'Financial Independence for Dummies'?
Slashdot Mirror
What you, and the companies that are suffering at the hands of Microsoft, need to realise is that if you want to dismantle a monopoly, the thing to do IS support that other ten percent. To the hilt. Plug it for all it's worth. And "depreciate" the use of $Monopolist's products at every opportunity.
Do it often enough, and you'll grow a customer base, grow it large enough, and there WILL be a viable alternative.
"We have no parallel to help us guess at what might be behind this door"?
What about um, the other door? The one that we already know has another door behind it?
I must admit, I'm not sure whether the northern shaft is strictly what you'd call parallel to the southern shaft, but gee, I dunno, another door sounds like a pretty BLOODY OBVIOUS guess to me!
I thought at the time, and reading that bit reminds me of it now, that this could also explain the apparent lack of certain anchor elements in the whole Campbellian mythology arc from this first trilogy.
In parts of the ESB and RotJ, there are elements that indicate Yoda knows what's going on. He tells Luke not to do something, or offers some advice, but in a way that implies (to me, anyway) that he knew that Luke wasn't going to take the advice and that he also knew he had to give it anyway, just so Luke could go off and do completely the opposite.
This suggests that Yoda could have been able to see - and it is indicated clearly that Yoda does have prescient abilities - if Anakin WAS the one or not, and he would also know the course of events that would have to unfold for the desired conclusion to be reached - or at least, to the point where the ultimate fate of the "happily ever after" came down to a fifty-fifty shot - Flash, sizzle, crackle - "Father! PHULEEEAZZE!!" - At that point, did any one else find themselves rooting for Vader for all they were worth? "Come on, Darth! You can do it!"?
He would also know that that course of events would inevitably be rather catastrophic in scope. Whole systems laid waste, billions (trillions?) dead, the very existence of the Galaxy itself put to stake, you know the drill.
But he would allow (even encourage) events to unfold that way, because massive, overwhelming, earth-shattering change is by definition not peaceful, or easy. The death of the old is generally slow, painful and messy, and the birth of the new (as births usually are) just that little bit worse. But, until things evolve to a certain point, there is no other way to get from here to there.
Although, for this to work, Annakin would also need to demonstrate foreknowledge of - and collusion with - his destiny. The hero (or, as some religions would have it, the sacrifice) has to go knowingly to his destruction. A lamb to the slaughter, you might say.
It could also be argued that if the Sith are to represent all the things that are out-of-balance in the Force, and there is always only two of them, the Master and the Apprentice, then for the Apprentice to give in to the Light Side and destroy his master would make sense. Light + Dark = 0, or perhaps two Evil Sith, take away two Evil Sith, leaves no Evil Sith.
Of course, in order for that to come about, the Chosen one would have to turn to the Dark Side first. Which makes it neccessary for Annakin's training to be done by someone who would train him well, but neglect the oh-so-important part about resisting the impulses that lead to the Dark Side. Our favorite "crazy old man" is the perfect choice. And what better way to get him into old Ben's clutches than to send off Qai-Gon to knock out the current apprentice, thus creating a space for the new deep-sleeper agent of the Forces of Good, Darth Annakin?
Now, Yoda dies peacefully in his sleep, rather than being smeared three inches thick all the way to the top of his personal Golgotha - he's no hero. Neither is Obi-Wan. When faced with a quick sabre slash across the midriff, he goes all chicken in a puff of smoke. Poor Annakin has to be half barbequed, dragged, broken and bleeding down to a devestated hangar deck, where he expires in a wheeze of compassion and father-son bonding. He doesn't even get to fade away like Yoda. He's our patsy - I mean Chosen One.
All that is needed is for Annakin to know what's in store for him. And for him to consciously take steps that advance the story. Handily ignoring his old home town as a possible hiding place, for example. Or somehow getting his master to allow his Nemesis (Luke) access to a weapon (his lightsabre - "you want this...?"), even though he could already feel the burning in his neatly-cauterised stump-to-be.
The thought came from another interesting theory I came across at the same time, and it was regarding that other great story archtype, typefied by that other great (and somewhat more pre-Campbellian) collection of short stories - the Bibble. In it, the not-particularly-heroic type is given a destiny that could save the world, and the knowledge that it will be the most horrific experience of his short life, and will also require his own death, preferably in as slow, painful and messy a fashion as possible.
Are there any instances of Annakin indicating knowledge of the future, in such a way as to indicate consequent foreknowledge that that future is not a nice place for him to be? Or that by taking a particular course of action, he is deliberately moving towards a dark and horrible future? After all, if a 600-year old oven mitt can see into the future, surely it's not beyond the Chosen One, especially if he's got midichlorians out the earhole like they say.
I haven't seen AotC yet. I just couldn't find the excitement neccesary to drag myself out of my daily rut in order to trek the fifty miles to the nearest decent cinema. I'll wait for the DVD. But when I sit down to watch it the first time, I will be turning the suspense-of-disbelief dial to '11'. THEN I'll go back and pick it apart, frame by frame, 'cause that's what I dig doing.
Not that I intend making a religion out of it or anything. The first time I saw Star Wars (at about 15), it was a truly mind-blowing experience, and Luke Skywalker was the angst-ridden, down-trodden young man I saw myself as. When I saw it again during the pre-TPM ritual screenings of the first three movies, I was so incredibly struck by what a shockingly histrionic ham of an actor that whiny little farmboy was. Funnily enough, I look back at myself at that age, and you'll never guess what I see.
I'm also hoping that Ep III will also provide us with an answer to that other eternal question - what the hell is a Darth, anyway?
"Data Integrity Mode
Options: ECC, Non-ECC
You'll know yourself whether you need to have this set to "ECC."
If you don't know then it should be set to Non-ECC
Gee, that's really informative. So much better than those unhelpful, sarcastic old manuals!
Oh, no...
The couch has fallen behind the remote again.
>> The next obvious step of experimentation will be trying to activate this gene in apes
> I'm hoping this post is in jest
I have to agree. Absolutely. The mere thought of it just makes me wanna go "Oook!"
> Good to see more weight behind individual rights, but what a way to bias a reader.
Actually, that could be the idea. The RIAA and ilk have been kicking up this big cloud of dust about 'pirates' and the evil, wicked things they do for ages.
Joe Public knows what pirates are, and he loves stories about pirates. People generally do love to read about the really BAAAD guys. So yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum he goes, and casts an eye over the article, looking for the juicy bits.
But he won't actualloy find any, until he gets down to the bit where it gets into the gory details of what the copyright companies are after, and then he'll maybe get a few ideas of his own about who the bloodthirsty scourge of the seas is here.
Which is probably a good thing.
On the other hand, maybe it just putsches a lot of buttons with the tech crowd, and generates lots of hits. Which of course, is all Cnet's really interested in.
www.actsofgord.com
Keeper of the Retail Faith!
42!!!
No, seriously - There needs to be as much variety in the OS market as there is in any other. think about cars - General Motors, Ford, Toyota, Hyundai, Volvo, Mercedes, Volkswagen, BMW, Mazda - all making rounded square boxes with four wheels.
How about TVs? Sharp, Sanyo, Sony, Samsung, GE, JVC, Toshiba, Mitsubishi, Pioneer - All making boxes that show the Magic Pictures (Ooooo...).
Washing machines. Hoover, GE, Westinghouse, Whirlpool, Email, Smeg, LG, Electrolux - All making boxes that swish your dirty clothes round with a lot of water.
Desktop OSes - Microsoft, Apple.
Over the deafening screams of the teeming millions, I'll just point out that the likes of Morgan, Shelby and Ashton Martin are not in the car maker list either. Yes, the Linux desktop is a wonderful thing, and yes, it may even be the saviour of us all, but still, it's not yet something that the average member of the public is going to be offered as a choice when he walks into the local Best Buy looking to buy um, one of them, um, computer things?
The point is that when Joe Public goes to buy a computer, he's going to get something with one of Microsoft's fine products on it.
The real point is - HE HAS NO CHOICE.
Oh, he could buy a Macintosh. Sorry. Yes, that's a real schmorgasboard there. But he has to go all the way across town to the only Apple retailer in the state. Oh, and guess what? Even the Apple that he gets - Has Microsoft software on it!
And the sales assistant that helps him decide on his new computer - why doesn't he spend any time finding out what the customer wants to do with his new computer and customise the new machine accordingly ("Oh, your son's going to be an engineer? Here, use QNX. You want to be a musician? No problem, load him up with BeOS. Serious gamer? Menuet! 100% assembly for pure, sweet, speed.) Why does this never happen?
Because Microsoft. won't. let. them.
If they try, along comes the Beast of Redmond and waves a big stick at them.
Actually...
If you can find a copy of "The Lost Worlds of 2001", by Arthur Clarke, he writes of how Kubrick came to him with an idea to make the proverbial "Good science fiction movie". Clarke says that they worked on the novel and the movie in parallel, often revising parts of the movie or parts of the book based on what they had seen developed from that day's filming,or on the latest chapter of the book. Clarke states that it was a great, although expensive, way to write a novel.
Clarke originally wanted to give Kubrick co-authorship on the novel because of the considerable input he receive from Kubrick in this and other ways. Kubrick thought that Clarke should have co-authorship on the movie for the same reason, but neither of them wanted to steal the other's thunder in their respective mediums...media?
Eventually they agreed to do it this way: The book was by Aurthur C. Clarke, based on the movie by Stanley Kubrick, and the movie by Stanley Kubrick, based on the novel by Aurther C. Clarke.
In that book, Clarke says that Stanley was one of the nicest guys he's met - not at all what he'd been led to to expect from the reclusive, demanding Hollywood wunderkind that he'd heard about.
There's also a lot of material the Arthur wrote that was gradually modified or discarded as the movie/book developed.
Fascinating stuff.
Never having tried an ergonomic keyboard, I can't say how well they work. But for personal prefence, I like the old keyboards - the really big heavy ones that you can use to beat malfunctioning iron into submission with.
For a couple of reasons;
1. TACTILE! They respond with a nice clear click - both on the way in and on the way out. And there'a little bit of give in the key (maybe a millimetre or two). This works out so that I can actually stop myself from getting the wrong character, even after my finger has actually started to depress the key (similar to the earlier post where the guy noticed his backspace finger being deployed even before he's actually hit the mistaken key).
(I use a keyboard a lot, although I can't get an accurate timing of how fast I can go. The reason being that I have to stop (or at least slow down a bit) every few lines or so to give the old brain time to actually produce the lines that come next.)
The second reason is that I've noticed that the older keyboard's keys are actually just a smidgin or two bigger than modern keyboards. The upshot of this is that your hands - or more importantly, your wrists - are actually moving around as you type. It leads to more of a 'piano-player' style, perhaps, but it does mean that you're not keeping your wrists still while working the fingers. Now, I don't know a lot about RSI or what causes it, mainly because I've never had it. Even on the days when I haven't left the keyboard for hours at a stretch, I don't get sore wrists.
Also, the keys are slightly heavier, meaning that you have to exert yourself a little more, so you're not just making those little tiny movements that I think I've heard are bad news.
(On a side note, there was a period about the mid-to-late eighties when new keyboards were appearing on workstations that were very similar in feel to a laptop keyboard - almost flat keys with very little travel and no feedback. Audio feedback could be provided by a tiny 'pip' noise produced by a miniscule speaker in the keyboard, if required. They were fast. Damn fast. But, IIRC they were taken out of circulation after only a very short time as operators started to drop like flies with tenosynovitus, as it was called back then.)
Another thing I like is a chair with armrests. I'm big enough to fill a chair to the point where I can rest my forearms along the armrests just nicely, leaving my hands dangling over the ends. Slip my keyboard underneath them, and away I go, rattle-rattle-rattle.
And finally, the heavy old keyboards are able to take a punch or two (or several) without going all to pieces on you, and they can be had for like 15 bucks at your local junkyard. For nothing if you want to get them out of the dumpster yourself. If I spent a hundred bucks on a you-beaut ergonomic keyboard, like as not I'd be needing another in six months time. Those things are not very robust, I've noticed.
All you need to do, given that it works well enough, is to convince Joe Public that it's safe enough to fly in a plane without someone driving, and Fred's your second cousin.
How long could that take?
Could be that's why they called it that in the movie?
Ahem. That's 'dropout' in the sense of "Would have become a doctor if he hadn't've started mixing with all those fringe theatre beatniks and ABC longhairs". :)
I just think it's great that half of our ol' pals, Grahame and The Colonel are on the front page of Slashdot
Wooo's a icckle idiot, den?
Yaaaay! Mees an ickle idiot, putting targets inna filenames, yesss!
Pardon me while I go beat myself to death with a rubber hose.
Before he became an internationally-renowned director, Rob Sitch (a humble Melbourne uni dropout) spent some time trying to break into the world of professional stuntmen.
Because probably no one outside Australia would have even heard of The Late Show, help me test our server capacity by checking out the following;
ShitScared#1.mpg
ShitScared#2.mpg
ShitScared#3.mpg
ShitScared#4.mpg
If the other sites are a little um, sloooow;
liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov
This is Nasa's spacecraft tracking site, with either 2d or 3d Java-based tracking applets.
I was working at an internet cafe, when this refined old gent came in, wanting someone to show him how to check a mailbox that his grand-daughter had set up for him.
You could tell he was refined (cultured, even),
by the website that his email had been set up on.
Not one of those uncouth modern websites.
His email was hosted by Ya...whom....
Bzzzzzt!
It was getting your hair cut like Billy Idol that was the foolish thing. The moral was that Opus is a yoghurt head.
--
If two million people do a foolish thing,
It is STILL a foolish thing!
What was it again?
The play is the thing...some such nonsense?
Play for fun, play because you like it. Play for a laugh, play with your toys.
The game is SUPPOSED to be the reason for playing.
Not to win some prize and be better than everybody else. That's more like, I dunno, competition or something.
You know competition, right? It's that really weird game that they taught us in preschool. You know the one? It goes like this...
Kid1: Hey! Wanna have a race?
Kid2: What's a race?
Kid1: We run from here to the tree over there and whoever gets there first, is the winner!
Kid2: What's a winner?
Kid1: That's the guy who gets to the tree first, ok?
Kid2: Oh. OK, that sounds like fun.
Kid1: OK. Ready, set, go!
They race off across the playground. Kid2, being the kind of kid who runs everywhere, just because he really likes running (Gosh, you just go so fast! It's like flying!), gets to the tree first.
Kid2: (pant, puff) Wheee! That was fun!
Kid1: I hate you, you're a spaz! (punch kid2 in the guts)
See? Competition is fun! What a great game!
Well, yes, but the whole song is apocrypal, if not wildly inaccurate. The real figures don't fit too well into the song, though. Standing on the surface of a planet that's evolving, and revolving at 1,041 miles per hour; that's orbiting at 18 miles a second, etc, etc, etc...
Course, the real figures, as always, are far more incredible. Apart from the ninety mile a secnd, though - at that rate, our year would last just 74 days. We would have to be orbiting the sun at a distance of more than 420,000,000 miles - just sixty millions mile short of Jupiter - for our year to last...well, a year.
Go read your Jargon file
A Portrait of J. Random Hacker - Politics
Once again, it's not an argument for gun control, it's about better education by the people who are supposed to be doing the educating! Which isn't just parents, by the by - it's parents, neighbors, teachers, educating machines like TV, or the mighty internet, or your local library, politicians...Take for instance, what it would be like if there was no mention in the law of 'murder' or 'fraud' or 'Grevious Bodily Harm', because nobody knew what it was. If you took the time to explain it to someone - anyone, they would react with horror. If 'abuse' or 'hate' carried the same weight as, say, 'necrophilia' or 'cannibalism'. Target shooting and computer games would be all you could get, or want.
But then what would we do for fun?
Can I just say, from the bottom of my heart;
 Bwaaa-haaa-ha-ha-ha!
Oh, and look - Can you guess who of the "core group of participants (including members of the Recording Industry Association of America) who coordinated the testing process are aware of the contest results" might be? The geeks are inside the corporate machine, we the believers in freedom are always ready to help the fools fall on their faces. Mwuhahahahaha.
--- I'm sorry yerronor, I don't know what came over me.(ahem)
Now that you mention it, what would be the reaction if they linked the 'Average Annual Income' thing on, say, the New York Times 'free' signup page to your Amazon account? How would we like $$$Fat_Rich_Bastard#1 being charged 25% more than $Struggling_Net_Slave#24435321234 for their copy of 'Financial Independence for Dummies'?