KeyChest isn't really DRM, it's a central repository for purchase information of DRMed files.
The idea is that companies opt into it, and then every device knows what you own. So when you go download Finding Nemo off iTunes, you can suddenly watch it on your cable box from the cable company, because they are both members of KeyChest and both know that you have a license to that media.
Basically, it solves the "tied to one format" problem. Each file still needs a "real" DRM format, the KeyChest just serves as a central clearing house of what licenses you have.
This would fix one of the MAJOR problems with DRM. It's still DRM, but it would be better than what we have now.
There was a short article on this somewhere (Gizmodo, Engadget, Ars Technica, somewhere) last week. I can't find it right now.
As stupid as I think this story is... disabled people can drive trikes (which Harley sells), standard bikes (depending on their particular ailment), and still buy general merchandise (hats/shirts/posters/etc). Technically it's not that unreasonable.
Now the liquor store that needs to handy-cap enable the public bathroom they don't have... that's kinda crazy.
Remember each carrier sells 6 dozen phones. The iPhone 3G has 4% of the market, which is the largest share any device has. Next is a BlackBerry series with about 3.5%.
If you only look at smart phones, the 3G has 30% of the market, more than any BB line.
I know. I had a Dell Axim X50v. It was a great little handheld, but the software was all over the place. You couldn't go down to the store and buy more than a tiny handful of programs. That left you with a dozen sites all claiming to have tons of software and sketchy reviews, on sites plastered with ads that often looked like link bait.
It was a massive pain compared to what Apple made with the App Store.
And how do you download it? Do you download version A, that installs directly on your WinMo device? Or version B that installs with an installer onto Windows and through there the WinMo device? Is there even a version A? Often there isn't, so there is no "I need this now".
Apple has revolutionized the ability to find and get software for these devices, in my experience.
I'm willing to trade "Apple-yness" for the experience they bring. They're not a monopoly, you can always go WinMo or Android or Symbian. I'm also aware of how much the market has changed as a result of their appearance, much for the better.
Apple came in and took over the cell phone market. Everyone wants to better Apple, the iPhone, the App Store. They are "the" cell phone company right now, so people like to take pot shots at them whenever possible.
OK, the BB/Android/WinMo is more open. Until Apple came along, software for BB/WinMo was more expensive and harder to find. Cellphone/smartphone apps didn't have nearly the market it has now.
Apple has 4% of the cell phone market in the US. It's not like they're the only choice.
And it's not like this kind of behavior is new for Apple. Apple has been trying to do things themselves for years, often annoying former partners in the process. Think Adobe was happy with Aperture?
... the 900 lb gorilla of the new generation smartphone market at the moment.
If Apple is a 900 lb gorilla, then Google is a 2 ton elephant. Aren't there already apps on the store that do this kind of thing? I think this is more of a "We can't let Google win" thing. Would they deny Joe Bob Software's "Find-My-Friend" app?
We'll see how this all sorts out, especially with competitive pressure from others companies. People keep saber rattling about getting investigations into this (and we saw that start with Google Voice). Something will have to change.
I've got an iPhone. I generally like Apple. I'll admit some of this stuff seems a little ridiculous. I'm not that mad at this, here's why.
Apple tends to make good interfaces, so the Apple app will probably be good. It's not like Google's app is being denied to be replaced with some horrible piece of junk. It could be worse.
But the real thing is while Apple is doing this, it's WAY better than the pre-Apple cell phone world. I can buy a game (like Bejewelled) that connects to Facebook for $3. Games used to cost $3 per month. And it wasn't full featured, it was one little mode. Google Maps is free. Cell companies used to have terrible programs for an extra $10 a month.
Compared to desktops, the situation is poor. Compared to where cellphones were, it's great; so I'm willing to accept it. As more competition comes around (Android gaining steam) Apple will be forced to improve.
Apple has been in the cell phone market for 3 years now. Apps have been available for 2 years.
Basically I'm not impatient yet. If nothing changes in the next year or two, I will be. But for now, my cell situation is so much better than it was 2 years ago, I'm happy enough.
I'm glad they're mostly gone. They wouldn't move past their little cabal when the web started exploding. Then they tried to force you to use their terribly awful browser, hobbling the internet for developers for quite a while.
Many people, my parents included, still use AOL for mail. It's free now, but it's still horrible. If you've read a message and don't keep it as new or save it, it will delete it for you after a short while. Google gives out gigs of mail and AOL is still deleting 3kb messages you read.
Then, their is their worst sin of all. They bought and killed The ImagiNation Network. That was an amazing service at the time, especially multiplayer RedBaron. They could have turned that into a real property with their size. Instead they killed it.
The only thing they did of popularity these days is AIM, and I think that may have been a simple size thing. Sure ICQ was popular first, but AOL was what got millions of people to instant messages and made it friendly (as opposed to being person 19305359).
If they didn't have all the ads on AIM, they probably would have died a couple of years ago.
Let's take a 1TB disk, which is becoming common. To address it all in 512B sectors, you need 31 address bits (since there are 2 billion sectors).
If you change to 4KB sectors, you now have 1/8 as many, so you only need to address ~270 million sectors, which takes 28 bits of address space.
The thing is, disks are given addresses of a certain size. If all address are 16 bits, and the sectors only have 512B in them, your disk can't be bigger than 32MB. By using 32 bits, you can go up to ~2GB. If you are using 4KB clusters, you could have 16GB.
In short, it saves address lines. That prevents having to change protocols, saves memory, saves hardware costs, etc.
The FAT filesystem article on Wikipedia discusses how this same basic problem happened to FAT.
There is a difference between market share and most popular phone. iPhones are the most popular line of phones. BBs have the highest market share, if you add up their 4 or 5 (or whatever) different lines of phones.
The iPhone 3G line is the most popular phone is the US. In fact, it has nearly a 10% lead over the next most popular phone. It's market share is 4%, double your guess.
When we were in situations like that, before we got our own datacenter and colocated, we would always do the same thing. We'd make sure everything was backed up (for if something got screwed up).
Then we'd change the root password, and give them the new one. That way they could look around at whatever they needed, change what they needed.
When they said they were done, we'd change the root password back. They had all the access they needed, but couldn't mess with stuff the rest of the time.
Would it really? I realize that it can be difficult for people in some situations to type, but how is this any better than the "look at the letter on the computer screen" method?
That one doesn't require a a craniotomy and wires in your brain. In that method (or the blow in the tube method Steven Hawking uses) you could look at individual words that you may be trying to spell to speed things up (like in texting). In this method, you only get letters. To get something else, you'd have to train the computer to recognize that pattern in brain.
It's neat, but I don't think it's very useful in it's current form. Only for people who lack vision and can't see to use the other methods.
Amazing. Why there are no(*) downsides at all! This will sweep the world!
Soon we will all use this, and the keyboard will be dead. Imagine what computers could look like without the needing keyboard. Almost like... tablets of some kind. We'll call them "portable blackboard computers".
Let me see if I have this right... during a giant global recession during which people had trouble paying rent and were scared of losing their jobs, they weren't out buying $200 consoles? Egads!
Look at how gaming has done through all this. Yes, sales fell, but New Super Mario Brothers Wii has sold over 2 million units in a month in the US. Modern Warfare 2 sold tons and tons of units. Amazon is having tons of trouble keeping the Wii and Wii games in stock.
All things considered, gaming is doing amazingly well.
And why not? There is tons of trash out there, but some games are really REALLY good. GTA4 was the best yet (even if it still had flaws). NSMBW is classic gaming bliss. It's throw-your-controller-through-your-TV hard at times but still fun. It's a real challenge. Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks has been a blast so far (got my copy of the weekend).
Console gaming is doing very well.
BTW: Losses from MS/Sony? They sell at a loss, so that's a given. In fact, how many quarters has MS made a profit in the gaming division since '01? That's what I thought. If things were really bad, the losses would be much higher.
If New Super Mario Brothers Wii didn't sell, that would be a good indicator of gaming's downfall. But good games/stable franchises seem to be selling really well.
So why would consoles die? Only computers can compete with the graphics from a 360 or PS3, but computers haven't killed consoles in the last 15 years, so why now? My iPhone is great and has great games, but the games on the DS are better. The DS is targeted at games and it shows. Even with physical buttons (like most other phones) it wouldn't be as comfortable to play as a DS with it's buttons.
I'd say OnLive (or something similar) would be the most likely to kill gaming as we know it soon. Only problem: OnLive is basically a console, so that wouldn't kill "console gaming".
That's Cable's fault. Here is my cable card experience.
Get Cable Cards. Despite being plug-and-play, this required an appointment with a Cable idiot.
Pay extra per month for my CCs so I can use the service I already pay an ungodly amount of money for
Have a problem with channel or two. Call up to have them fix it. It requires a reset signal be sent, which only happens once there is a tech at my place.
Move out, get my own place. Need CCs transferred to new account. They can't do that. They come out to replace my two cards with two NEW cards, because they are idiots. Those cards don't work, so they give me my old cards back, just like I asked in the first place. This took TWO tech visits.
Have cards fail, get the replaced. This requires a tech. Comcast won't let me swap them myself.
For the time I don't have my service? They'll give me free VOD/PPV. But I can't use that, I have Cable Cards.
That's the short version.
By the way, my cards, which are basically PCMCIA cards, may need replacing again. You'd think they'd know how to build a solid-state device that doesn't move for two years without it dieing, but they don't.
Cables has gone out of their way to make things as difficult as possible. I'm guessing 90% of people don't even know the things are available. And with the deficits Cable has put in place (like no PPV/VOD), I'm not surprised people aren't rushing out to use them. And they don't work with Switched-Digital-Video, so any day now I may lose the option to use them.
It failed because the FCC didn't force things nearly hard enough. They let cable drag their feet WAY too long.
One of the purposes of government is to push businesses to make improvements that may be against their interest.
Take the E911/GPS requirement on cell phones. Providers weren't going to do that on their own. It cost money, it didn't provide new revenue. It may be a feature, but it probably wouldn't get people to switch companies. Left up to their own devices, it may not have been available for years and years more without government intervention.
This is the same thing. The telephone network is old. It's already IP based on the back-end (for the most part). But putting little A/D converter boxes in every phone box in the US that doesn't have one (so analog signals go digital there) isn't happening all that fast. Sure in a city where Verizon is running fiber to the home it makes sense, but what about a few miles into the farms? You think the phone companies are going to rush to put them there to serve 3 customers?
So the government will push this, and we'll all benefit. If you have IP up to the box that distributes the phone near your house, everyone could get DSL/ethernet/fiber/whatever.
And how about replacing the interface IN the house? No phone company could accomplish that. "Sign up for our service, and we'll have to re-wire your whole house and you'll have to buy all new phones!". That will sell well. If we want a transition like that to happen (before 20 years after it's needed), that's the kind of thing government does.
Also, I don't see the lack of the FCC "abuse" as being the good part of VOIP. I want the FCC to force VOIP providers to be able to find me if I call 911. The appeal of VOIP I saw was avoiding the phone company abuse. Why did a phone line with unlimited long distance cost $60 a month? Because no one could compete with the local phone monopolies. THAT is the abuse VOIP avoided that made it attractive to many people (among other attributes).
I've had TiVos for years and years and years. I have a Series 3 now. I love it.
But if you want a truly PC based solution, how about Nero LiquidTV? It is basically the official PC version of the TiVo software. It still needs a TiVo subscription, but it has all the features and the same fantastic interface.
I would too. I've actually improved a ton, mostly from studying foreign languages (French and Latin, mostly). While I'm miles better than I used to be, I still get little wavy red lines all the time.
I've heard quite a few reasons for using typewriters, especially manual. You have to think our your sentences first, since there is no real correction. On my computer I can type and type and type and edit later, but you can't do that on a typewriter (unless you want to retype everything 40 times). This forces you to put much more thought into your words and thoughts.
The force required on the keys (if you have a manual) makes the words feel... costlier... and the sound really is great. I'd imagine that when you really get going the noise helps keep you in the groove. Actually, a good IBM Model M day do the same.
Then there is the fiddle factor. If you gave a 12 or 14 year old a typewriter and say "write a story", all they can do is write the story. Give them a copy of Word (or any other word processor) and they can write, choose a font, a color, edit the spacing.... With a typewriter, you get words and nothing else. No fonts to change. No sizes. All the decisions are made for you.
I'm not much of a writer. I don't own a typewriter (although my brother has beautiful one from the 40s). I can easily say that the thing I like most about this is something that probably resonates with other/.ers: they're really mechanically complex. They weigh a ton and are crammed with tons of little levers and cams and such. A seemingly almost solid block of metal articulates 30 (or so) little hammers and moves the type head perfectly, even at 120 WPM. They are little mechanical marvels. Imagine what seeing the Frank McGurrin type 90 WPM must have been like for people, raised on writing longhand.
Nope. Debtor's prison, for one. And since the camps were the town, they usually controlled law enforcement. If you wanted out, you probably had to sneak out and get FAR away before you were found. Maybe they wouldn't kill you, maybe they would. You were starting fights and resisting arrest after all. They had to do it, for public safety.
Who knows what they'd do to your family if you left them behind.
They were effectively slave camps. Just because they didn't have people on guard tower's with shotguns doesn't mean they weren't.
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Nope. That's what the $45 restocking/refurbishing fee is. I can understand that. This is just... strange.
Out of pocket + Google ETF + T-Mobile ETF > Unsubsidized cost
That doesn't add up.
KeyChest isn't really DRM, it's a central repository for purchase information of DRMed files.
The idea is that companies opt into it, and then every device knows what you own. So when you go download Finding Nemo off iTunes, you can suddenly watch it on your cable box from the cable company, because they are both members of KeyChest and both know that you have a license to that media.
Basically, it solves the "tied to one format" problem. Each file still needs a "real" DRM format, the KeyChest just serves as a central clearing house of what licenses you have.
This would fix one of the MAJOR problems with DRM. It's still DRM, but it would be better than what we have now.
There was a short article on this somewhere (Gizmodo, Engadget, Ars Technica, somewhere) last week. I can't find it right now.
As stupid as I think this story is... disabled people can drive trikes (which Harley sells), standard bikes (depending on their particular ailment), and still buy general merchandise (hats/shirts/posters/etc). Technically it's not that unreasonable.
Now the liquor store that needs to handy-cap enable the public bathroom they don't have... that's kinda crazy.
Remember each carrier sells 6 dozen phones. The iPhone 3G has 4% of the market, which is the largest share any device has. Next is a BlackBerry series with about 3.5%.
If you only look at smart phones, the 3G has 30% of the market, more than any BB line.
I know. I had a Dell Axim X50v. It was a great little handheld, but the software was all over the place. You couldn't go down to the store and buy more than a tiny handful of programs. That left you with a dozen sites all claiming to have tons of software and sketchy reviews, on sites plastered with ads that often looked like link bait.
It was a massive pain compared to what Apple made with the App Store.
And how do you download it? Do you download version A, that installs directly on your WinMo device? Or version B that installs with an installer onto Windows and through there the WinMo device? Is there even a version A? Often there isn't, so there is no "I need this now".
Apple has revolutionized the ability to find and get software for these devices, in my experience.
I'm willing to trade "Apple-yness" for the experience they bring. They're not a monopoly, you can always go WinMo or Android or Symbian. I'm also aware of how much the market has changed as a result of their appearance, much for the better.
Apple came in and took over the cell phone market. Everyone wants to better Apple, the iPhone, the App Store. They are "the" cell phone company right now, so people like to take pot shots at them whenever possible.
OK, the BB/Android/WinMo is more open. Until Apple came along, software for BB/WinMo was more expensive and harder to find. Cellphone/smartphone apps didn't have nearly the market it has now.
Apple has 4% of the cell phone market in the US. It's not like they're the only choice.
And it's not like this kind of behavior is new for Apple. Apple has been trying to do things themselves for years, often annoying former partners in the process. Think Adobe was happy with Aperture?
If Apple is a 900 lb gorilla, then Google is a 2 ton elephant. Aren't there already apps on the store that do this kind of thing? I think this is more of a "We can't let Google win" thing. Would they deny Joe Bob Software's "Find-My-Friend" app?
We'll see how this all sorts out, especially with competitive pressure from others companies. People keep saber rattling about getting investigations into this (and we saw that start with Google Voice). Something will have to change.
I've got an iPhone. I generally like Apple. I'll admit some of this stuff seems a little ridiculous. I'm not that mad at this, here's why.
Apple tends to make good interfaces, so the Apple app will probably be good. It's not like Google's app is being denied to be replaced with some horrible piece of junk. It could be worse.
But the real thing is while Apple is doing this, it's WAY better than the pre-Apple cell phone world. I can buy a game (like Bejewelled) that connects to Facebook for $3. Games used to cost $3 per month. And it wasn't full featured, it was one little mode. Google Maps is free. Cell companies used to have terrible programs for an extra $10 a month.
Compared to desktops, the situation is poor. Compared to where cellphones were, it's great; so I'm willing to accept it. As more competition comes around (Android gaining steam) Apple will be forced to improve.
Apple has been in the cell phone market for 3 years now. Apps have been available for 2 years.
Basically I'm not impatient yet. If nothing changes in the next year or two, I will be. But for now, my cell situation is so much better than it was 2 years ago, I'm happy enough.
I'm glad they're mostly gone. They wouldn't move past their little cabal when the web started exploding. Then they tried to force you to use their terribly awful browser, hobbling the internet for developers for quite a while.
Many people, my parents included, still use AOL for mail. It's free now, but it's still horrible. If you've read a message and don't keep it as new or save it, it will delete it for you after a short while. Google gives out gigs of mail and AOL is still deleting 3kb messages you read.
Then, their is their worst sin of all. They bought and killed The ImagiNation Network . That was an amazing service at the time, especially multiplayer RedBaron. They could have turned that into a real property with their size. Instead they killed it.
The only thing they did of popularity these days is AIM, and I think that may have been a simple size thing. Sure ICQ was popular first, but AOL was what got millions of people to instant messages and made it friendly (as opposed to being person 19305359).
If they didn't have all the ads on AIM, they probably would have died a couple of years ago.
Let's take a 1TB disk, which is becoming common. To address it all in 512B sectors, you need 31 address bits (since there are 2 billion sectors).
If you change to 4KB sectors, you now have 1/8 as many, so you only need to address ~270 million sectors, which takes 28 bits of address space.
The thing is, disks are given addresses of a certain size. If all address are 16 bits, and the sectors only have 512B in them, your disk can't be bigger than 32MB. By using 32 bits, you can go up to ~2GB. If you are using 4KB clusters, you could have 16GB.
In short, it saves address lines. That prevents having to change protocols, saves memory, saves hardware costs, etc.
The FAT filesystem article on Wikipedia discusses how this same basic problem happened to FAT.
There is a difference between market share and most popular phone. iPhones are the most popular line of phones. BBs have the highest market share, if you add up their 4 or 5 (or whatever) different lines of phones.
You're right. We should only use that label for the best selling handset in the US (this is about NYC, after all).
Oh, wait.
The iPhone 3G line is the most popular phone is the US. In fact, it has nearly a 10% lead over the next most popular phone. It's market share is 4%, double your guess.
Nope. It's the most popular phone in the US based on units sold. 4% of the market.
That's almost 10% better than the best BB. 75% better than the entire RAZR V3 line.
When we were in situations like that, before we got our own datacenter and colocated, we would always do the same thing. We'd make sure everything was backed up (for if something got screwed up).
Then we'd change the root password, and give them the new one. That way they could look around at whatever they needed, change what they needed.
When they said they were done, we'd change the root password back. They had all the access they needed, but couldn't mess with stuff the rest of the time.
How about making it so users can attach a URL with a tweet so people don't have to use URL shorteners?
Would it really? I realize that it can be difficult for people in some situations to type, but how is this any better than the "look at the letter on the computer screen" method?
That one doesn't require a a craniotomy and wires in your brain. In that method (or the blow in the tube method Steven Hawking uses) you could look at individual words that you may be trying to spell to speed things up (like in texting). In this method, you only get letters. To get something else, you'd have to train the computer to recognize that pattern in brain.
It's neat, but I don't think it's very useful in it's current form. Only for people who lack vision and can't see to use the other methods.
Amazing. Why there are no(*) downsides at all! This will sweep the world!
Soon we will all use this, and the keyboard will be dead. Imagine what computers could look like without the needing keyboard. Almost like... tablets of some kind. We'll call them "portable blackboard computers".
(*) Only known downsides:
For those curious, you can find the patent here. Looks like a generic recommendation engine.
My question is, if this was decided in August, why is it only precedent now?
It that normal? Was it time for an appeal?
Linkbait.
Let me see if I have this right... during a giant global recession during which people had trouble paying rent and were scared of losing their jobs, they weren't out buying $200 consoles? Egads!
Look at how gaming has done through all this. Yes, sales fell, but New Super Mario Brothers Wii has sold over 2 million units in a month in the US. Modern Warfare 2 sold tons and tons of units. Amazon is having tons of trouble keeping the Wii and Wii games in stock.
All things considered, gaming is doing amazingly well.
And why not? There is tons of trash out there, but some games are really REALLY good. GTA4 was the best yet (even if it still had flaws). NSMBW is classic gaming bliss. It's throw-your-controller-through-your-TV hard at times but still fun. It's a real challenge. Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks has been a blast so far (got my copy of the weekend).
Console gaming is doing very well.
BTW: Losses from MS/Sony? They sell at a loss, so that's a given. In fact, how many quarters has MS made a profit in the gaming division since '01? That's what I thought. If things were really bad, the losses would be much higher.
If New Super Mario Brothers Wii didn't sell, that would be a good indicator of gaming's downfall. But good games/stable franchises seem to be selling really well.
So why would consoles die? Only computers can compete with the graphics from a 360 or PS3, but computers haven't killed consoles in the last 15 years, so why now? My iPhone is great and has great games, but the games on the DS are better. The DS is targeted at games and it shows. Even with physical buttons (like most other phones) it wouldn't be as comfortable to play as a DS with it's buttons.
I'd say OnLive (or something similar) would be the most likely to kill gaming as we know it soon. Only problem: OnLive is basically a console, so that wouldn't kill "console gaming".
That's the short version.
By the way, my cards, which are basically PCMCIA cards, may need replacing again. You'd think they'd know how to build a solid-state device that doesn't move for two years without it dieing, but they don't.
Cables has gone out of their way to make things as difficult as possible. I'm guessing 90% of people don't even know the things are available. And with the deficits Cable has put in place (like no PPV/VOD), I'm not surprised people aren't rushing out to use them. And they don't work with Switched-Digital-Video, so any day now I may lose the option to use them.
It failed because the FCC didn't force things nearly hard enough. They let cable drag their feet WAY too long.
One of the purposes of government is to push businesses to make improvements that may be against their interest.
Take the E911/GPS requirement on cell phones. Providers weren't going to do that on their own. It cost money, it didn't provide new revenue. It may be a feature, but it probably wouldn't get people to switch companies. Left up to their own devices, it may not have been available for years and years more without government intervention.
This is the same thing. The telephone network is old. It's already IP based on the back-end (for the most part). But putting little A/D converter boxes in every phone box in the US that doesn't have one (so analog signals go digital there) isn't happening all that fast. Sure in a city where Verizon is running fiber to the home it makes sense, but what about a few miles into the farms? You think the phone companies are going to rush to put them there to serve 3 customers?
So the government will push this, and we'll all benefit. If you have IP up to the box that distributes the phone near your house, everyone could get DSL/ethernet/fiber/whatever.
And how about replacing the interface IN the house? No phone company could accomplish that. "Sign up for our service, and we'll have to re-wire your whole house and you'll have to buy all new phones!". That will sell well. If we want a transition like that to happen (before 20 years after it's needed), that's the kind of thing government does.
Also, I don't see the lack of the FCC "abuse" as being the good part of VOIP. I want the FCC to force VOIP providers to be able to find me if I call 911. The appeal of VOIP I saw was avoiding the phone company abuse. Why did a phone line with unlimited long distance cost $60 a month? Because no one could compete with the local phone monopolies. THAT is the abuse VOIP avoided that made it attractive to many people (among other attributes).
I've had TiVos for years and years and years. I have a Series 3 now. I love it.
But if you want a truly PC based solution, how about Nero LiquidTV? It is basically the official PC version of the TiVo software. It still needs a TiVo subscription, but it has all the features and the same fantastic interface.
I would too. I've actually improved a ton, mostly from studying foreign languages (French and Latin, mostly). While I'm miles better than I used to be, I still get little wavy red lines all the time.
Then there are the typos...
Still, watching a typewriter work is rather cool.
I've heard quite a few reasons for using typewriters, especially manual. You have to think our your sentences first, since there is no real correction. On my computer I can type and type and type and edit later, but you can't do that on a typewriter (unless you want to retype everything 40 times). This forces you to put much more thought into your words and thoughts.
The force required on the keys (if you have a manual) makes the words feel... costlier... and the sound really is great. I'd imagine that when you really get going the noise helps keep you in the groove. Actually, a good IBM Model M day do the same.
Then there is the fiddle factor. If you gave a 12 or 14 year old a typewriter and say "write a story", all they can do is write the story. Give them a copy of Word (or any other word processor) and they can write, choose a font, a color, edit the spacing.... With a typewriter, you get words and nothing else. No fonts to change. No sizes. All the decisions are made for you.
I'm not much of a writer. I don't own a typewriter (although my brother has beautiful one from the 40s). I can easily say that the thing I like most about this is something that probably resonates with other /.ers: they're really mechanically complex. They weigh a ton and are crammed with tons of little levers and cams and such. A seemingly almost solid block of metal articulates 30 (or so) little hammers and moves the type head perfectly, even at 120 WPM. They are little mechanical marvels. Imagine what seeing the Frank McGurrin type 90 WPM must have been like for people, raised on writing longhand.
Nope. Debtor's prison, for one. And since the camps were the town, they usually controlled law enforcement. If you wanted out, you probably had to sneak out and get FAR away before you were found. Maybe they wouldn't kill you, maybe they would. You were starting fights and resisting arrest after all. They had to do it, for public safety.
Who knows what they'd do to your family if you left them behind.
They were effectively slave camps. Just because they didn't have people on guard tower's with shotguns doesn't mean they weren't.