I switched to Dvorak 10 years ago and haven't looked back. I switched primarily to ease the discomfort on my wrists rather than the purported typing speed increase. It is much less stress on my wrists even with all the special characters I am constantly typing as a programmer. I used to wear wrist guards to help keep my wrists at a flat angle and take some of the stress off typing and after switching my need for the wrist guards dropped off gradually until I didn't need them at all. I haven't seen any studies done on reduction in carpal tunnel or RSI but I can say that for me it definitely helped.
As an aside, learning Dvorak was much harder back in the Windows 95/NT era where there was very little software support and it was all too common for one of the computers I used regularly not to support it. Nowadays all the OS's have support, even iOS (though only for external keyboards). However the thing that drives me insane is Windows. All the other OS's have a global keyboard setting. Windows is a PER-APPLICATION setting, and it has it done it this way since Windowns 95. If a user comes along that wants to switch the keyboard layout, they have to do that for every application they use. What sense does that make? What idiot designed this?
I hate switching CD's when the entire game is already installed on my computer.
I also have had my share of problems with Copy Protection on games I legally own.
The answer for me was Alcohol 120%. It lets you run games completely from your hard drive. I never met a copy protect scheme it couldn't get around. I run all my games from it now.
I whole-heartedly agree with the article. I am personally very tired of paying for software and getting crap (I don't mind as much when I get it for free, but still).
It it is interesting all the comparisons being made to physical deivces, such as Cars and iPods. But there are two major differences I see with this:
Not every problem in a physical device warrants a replacement. Sure if it does not power on or bursts into flames (see Xbox power supply) they will take it back and give you a new one.
If the physical product is shoddy or the customer is disatisfied with the quality there are often times options open to fix this. Being that the store takes it back (returns) or you have consumer laws to force the retailer to take it back (e.g. Lemon Law)
Most often companies provide software upgrades that may fix the problems the consumer is having (analogous to the real-world physical replacement of a product). So in some regards I think software companies are already doing this.
The problem I see comes in with the lack of accountability in regards to taking returns or providing refunds to those truly disatisfied that don't want a replacement.
I have been using the Dvorak keyboard layout for about 5 years now. I am not sure of the proven evidence regarding whether or not it is really better for your hands as far as RSI... but I can say for me it did a lot of good. I used to have quite a bit of pain in my wrists through the day and ended up switching to dvorak as one of a couple ways to combat it (good ergonomics helps too).
As far as switching back and forth... I have found that nowadays I can switch between the two keyboard layouts no problem. Once in a while my brain takes a couple mistyped words before it realizes I need to use the other layout. I am definitely not as fast in QWERTY as Dvorak, but I am fast enough to feel like typing is not a hurdle to getting my tasks done.
The problem is that you need a good solid foundation in the new keyboard layout before you can start switching between the two. I found I really had to discipline myself when I was first learning Dvorak to use only it. It is easy to get frustrated and revert to using QWERTY just when you want to get something done fast. When using the new layout you will feel like you have reverted back to a pseudo-hunt-and-peck and that's tough, especially when you need to get real work done.
It seems to me that there is a big problem with media integration today. The big media empires are interested in merchandising an idea to death. They take a popular (and sometimes unpopular) story and transform it into every medium possible: books, movies, TV shows, music, Musicals, toys, icecapades, etc. Just look at what disney does to its movies. You will see it spun-off in every possible way within their own company to make money (Disney Channel, RadioDisney, Disney Books, etc.)
And while I don't really have a problem with this, I just fear that it ultimately creates a dirth of new ideas that take off because the large media empires favor existing popular concepts rather than take a chance on something new. This coupled with media consolidation is a bad thing, as it means the outlets for new and creative ideas are few and far between.
Cheating because you don't have time to compete with the people who play 6-8 hours a day is a LAME excuse.
Some people have natural skill and are gonna own you no matter if you are one who plays 6-8 hours a day and they only play it once a week.
I find that in-Game features can reduce cheating in addition to providing better gameplay.
The article mentions Halo 2 on Xbox Live, which as everyone knows uses a Ranking system to match teams up. Thus you are much less likely to be playing in a game with people 100 times better than you. I find that playing in games where the teams are evenly matched can be fun and thus reduces the "need" for people to cheat. Games that somehow balance the teams are much more fun to play in. Yeah we all like being on those teams where you completely own the other team... but you are also going to end up on the other side of that sometimes, where you are the team getting destroyed. And that's no fun.
Another Game Feature I think helps reduce cheating is in Call of Duty. There is a feature that can be enabled in multi-player games called the 'kill-cam'. It shows you the last 7 seconds or so before you died from the point of view of the guy that killed you. I find that watching the kill-cam from time to time reduces the perception that it might have been an 'unfair kill'. "He couldn't have possible seen me!" "I shot him a thousand times and he didn't die!". etc.
In addition the kill-cam helps reduce camping (since you now know where they were when they killed you) and it might even give you some tips on how to play better.
Generally, where I work, I have found resistance to formally "Let the Engineers work on whatever they want" one day a week.
It is far easier to just work on your own projects a little bit from time to time, and then show Management later what you have done (if there is something to show for it).
If I did nothing but what they asked me to (or what marketing thinks the product needs), I would be a mediocre engineer. In my opinion, good engineers will go out on a limb and investigate on their own. This doesn't have to be an extensive effort, but enough to see if its worth working further on.
Once I have something to show, it is far easier to get management to buy into a larger effort.
Just like the old saying goes, "it is easier to beg for forgiveness then ask permission".
One of the things that attracted me to Xbox live was that it had greater ability to prevent cheating than PunkBuster or any of the PC mechanisms. I can't tell you how annoying it was to play Halo 1 via the internet using the proxy application (XboxConnect?). It was cheater central. No fun whatsoever.
I can see why they would want to prevent the use of modders running on Xbox live as a way of hampering cheaters. And frankly, I don't blame them.
Settlers of Catan (and the variants: Seafarers, Spacefarers) is a fun game and something we always seem to come back to on our gaming nights.
However, one of the things that many people dislike about it is the die rolling. Too much is dependent on what the outcome of the die is. Even if you play it smart by trying to cover the odds and occupy as many numbers as possible, your success depends on whether the right combo of resources you own comes up.
Our boardgame group has been steering away from games that involve lots of chance (die rolling and card drawing), to those that involve all strategy such as Peurto Rico & El Grande (all players start out equal and must form strategies based completely off other people's actions). Makes for more intellectually intensive a game and less random.
But ultimately you need a mix of games. Light, fluffy, easy games...thought-provoking, strategy-heavy games, and lots of things in between.
Although outsourcing is a major problem, I have seen several big companies dodge this current hot issue by setting up local shops overseas and then hiring the workers directly (for cheaper wages). This way they can say, "Hey look, we're not outsourcing, we're actually hiring more workers!" and yet still reap the rewards of cheaper overseas salaries.
Ignore for a moment that SCO is SCO and we all at Slashdot hate them for various reasons.
Lots of companies big and small engage in lawsuits everyday as part of doing business. Breach of contract, patent infringement, etc. These things can take years to come to some sort of end, with the parties working something out or a judge making a ruling.
But business should continue to go on. You can't simply put everything on hold due to ONE lawsuit. But that's what SCO is doing. It seems to me that their entire focus has shifted to this ONE lawsuit. And regardless of whether or not you believe in the merits of their case or the ethics of a company whose business model is nothing but lawsuits... they are putting way too much weight into the potential revenue it might generate. And that is quite risky.
This is ONE lawsuit. By putting all their time and energy into this one lawsuit it has dwarfed everything else about the company and its real products. This to me is a bad business practice, and is the real reason that SCO is losing investors.
Many people have attacked the problem from how Developers should write software. As many have mentioned, the ridiculous management schedules and push to just "get it out the door" tends to lend itself to corner cutting in design, coding, testing, etc.
I think that it is up to the End Users to start demmanding better. None of "This Software is provided with no warranty" crap. Somewhat expected from Free Software, but I can't begin to understand how real businesses that spend millions of dollars on commercial software can continue to stand this. If you bought a car with even a fraction of the defects seen in most commercial software packages, you would return that thing so fast it would make the dealer's head spin.
People will argue that building a car and building a desktop application have entirely different sets of risk and expectations. The desktop application will (probably) not kill you when it crashes. There are all sorts of regulations and lawsuits that exist to keep the manufactures very concerned about the quality of their product.
The same is needed in the software industry. Until there is a major demand for high quality products, where users no longer expect or even tolerate that they will find bugs, software will continue to give into buggy, quick and dirty code that must be replaced every 18 months.
There exist software industries today that have incredibly tight quality control and testing (medical & military for instance) and will not tolerate bad code or bugs. Their Software is far less feature rich but far more robust.
End Users of the software need to demand higher standards from their software before the state of programming will really get better.
Yes, there is a bug in the code. No its nothing to go nuts about. I have verified the existence in a product for our company, but you know what it does? Nada.
We use Apache + OpenSSL in our Product. When an SSL request comes in with the malicious data, Apache creates a child process to deal with it. Child process uses NULL pointer to access Memory. Process SEGFAULTs and dies. Apache remains running.
In a well architected system you protect yourself on multiple levels. Linux uses memory protection to limit the damage one bad pointer can do. Apache does the right thing and spawns child processes to deal with requests, thereby preventing problems from bringing down the whole server.
Another poster was right, many of these exploits are sensationalism to scare people and attract readers.
So I downloaded the iTunes software today and started playing around with it. This thing is great! I got so tired of dealing with endless searching on P2P services for the songs I wanted, dealing with slow and incomplete downloads, and you could never count on the quality...
Now I can quickly search, find what I want, and download a good quality song fast! I then started to wish I could convert the songs into MP3 format so I could copy them onto my Web based MP3 Server, and my Nomad Jukebox portable player.
At that point I broke out my Apple AAC file encryption cracking tool (a 3 inch male-to-male stereo connector cable that I used to short-circuit my Headphone jack to my Line-in jack) and then ran Audiograbber to capture and encode to Mp3 all at once. Audiograbber has this great feature to automatically break the catpure file up based upon breaks in the audio feed.
Now I can download from iTunes and yet have mp3's too.
I like bashing marketing as much as the next guy, but maybe this was just a technical mistake.
Before everyone goes and gets there panties in a not, maybe we could try to get some real information here and not just assume its "da man" trying to screw us over again.
Slashdot Mirror
I switched to Dvorak 10 years ago and haven't looked back. I switched primarily to ease the discomfort on my wrists rather than the purported typing speed increase. It is much less stress on my wrists even with all the special characters I am constantly typing as a programmer. I used to wear wrist guards to help keep my wrists at a flat angle and take some of the stress off typing and after switching my need for the wrist guards dropped off gradually until I didn't need them at all. I haven't seen any studies done on reduction in carpal tunnel or RSI but I can say that for me it definitely helped.
As an aside, learning Dvorak was much harder back in the Windows 95/NT era where there was very little software support and it was all too common for one of the computers I used regularly not to support it. Nowadays all the OS's have support, even iOS (though only for external keyboards). However the thing that drives me insane is Windows. All the other OS's have a global keyboard setting. Windows is a PER-APPLICATION setting, and it has it done it this way since Windowns 95. If a user comes along that wants to switch the keyboard layout, they have to do that for every application they use. What sense does that make? What idiot designed this?
I also have had my share of problems with Copy Protection on games I legally own.
The answer for me was Alcohol 120%. It lets you run games completely from your hard drive. I never met a copy protect scheme it couldn't get around. I run all my games from it now.
It it is interesting all the comparisons being made to physical deivces, such as Cars and iPods. But there are two major differences I see with this:
Most often companies provide software upgrades that may fix the problems the consumer is having (analogous to the real-world physical replacement of a product). So in some regards I think software companies are already doing this.
The problem I see comes in with the lack of accountability in regards to taking returns or providing refunds to those truly disatisfied that don't want a replacement.
I have been using the Dvorak keyboard layout for about 5 years now. I am not sure of the proven evidence regarding whether or not it is really better for your hands as far as RSI... but I can say for me it did a lot of good. I used to have quite a bit of pain in my wrists through the day and ended up switching to dvorak as one of a couple ways to combat it (good ergonomics helps too).
As far as switching back and forth... I have found that nowadays I can switch between the two keyboard layouts no problem. Once in a while my brain takes a couple mistyped words before it realizes I need to use the other layout. I am definitely not as fast in QWERTY as Dvorak, but I am fast enough to feel like typing is not a hurdle to getting my tasks done.
The problem is that you need a good solid foundation in the new keyboard layout before you can start switching between the two. I found I really had to discipline myself when I was first learning Dvorak to use only it. It is easy to get frustrated and revert to using QWERTY just when you want to get something done fast. When using the new layout you will feel like you have reverted back to a pseudo-hunt-and-peck and that's tough, especially when you need to get real work done.
It seems to me that there is a big problem with media integration today. The big media empires are interested in merchandising an idea to death. They take a popular (and sometimes unpopular) story and transform it into every medium possible: books, movies, TV shows, music, Musicals, toys, icecapades, etc. Just look at what disney does to its movies. You will see it spun-off in every possible way within their own company to make money (Disney Channel, RadioDisney, Disney Books, etc.)
And while I don't really have a problem with this, I just fear that it ultimately creates a dirth of new ideas that take off because the large media empires favor existing popular concepts rather than take a chance on something new. This coupled with media consolidation is a bad thing, as it means the outlets for new and creative ideas are few and far between.
Cheating because you don't have time to compete with the people who play 6-8 hours a day is a LAME excuse.
Some people have natural skill and are gonna own you no matter if you are one who plays 6-8 hours a day and they only play it once a week.
I find that in-Game features can reduce cheating in addition to providing better gameplay.
The article mentions Halo 2 on Xbox Live, which as everyone knows uses a Ranking system to match teams up. Thus you are much less likely to be playing in a game with people 100 times better than you. I find that playing in games where the teams are evenly matched can be fun and thus reduces the "need" for people to cheat. Games that somehow balance the teams are much more fun to play in. Yeah we all like being on those teams where you completely own the other team... but you are also going to end up on the other side of that sometimes, where you are the team getting destroyed. And that's no fun.
Another Game Feature I think helps reduce cheating is in Call of Duty. There is a feature that can be enabled in multi-player games called the 'kill-cam'. It shows you the last 7 seconds or so before you died from the point of view of the guy that killed you. I find that watching the kill-cam from time to time reduces the perception that it might have been an 'unfair kill'. "He couldn't have possible seen me!" "I shot him a thousand times and he didn't die!". etc.
In addition the kill-cam helps reduce camping (since you now know where they were when they killed you) and it might even give you some tips on how to play better.
Generally, where I work, I have found resistance to formally "Let the Engineers work on whatever they want" one day a week.
It is far easier to just work on your own projects a little bit from time to time, and then show Management later what you have done (if there is something to show for it).
If I did nothing but what they asked me to (or what marketing thinks the product needs), I would be a mediocre engineer. In my opinion, good engineers will go out on a limb and investigate on their own. This doesn't have to be an extensive effort, but enough to see if its worth working further on.
Once I have something to show, it is far easier to get management to buy into a larger effort.
Just like the old saying goes, "it is easier to beg for forgiveness then ask permission".
One of the things that attracted me to Xbox live was that it had greater ability to prevent cheating than PunkBuster or any of the PC mechanisms. I can't tell you how annoying it was to play Halo 1 via the internet using the proxy application (XboxConnect?). It was cheater central. No fun whatsoever.
I can see why they would want to prevent the use of modders running on Xbox live as a way of hampering cheaters. And frankly, I don't blame them.
Settlers of Catan (and the variants: Seafarers, Spacefarers) is a fun game and something we always seem to come back to on our gaming nights.
However, one of the things that many people dislike about it is the die rolling. Too much is dependent on what the outcome of the die is. Even if you play it smart by trying to cover the odds and occupy as many numbers as possible, your success depends on whether the right combo of resources you own comes up.
Our boardgame group has been steering away from games that involve lots of chance (die rolling and card drawing), to those that involve all strategy such as Peurto Rico & El Grande (all players start out equal and must form strategies based completely off other people's actions). Makes for more intellectually intensive a game and less random.
But ultimately you need a mix of games. Light, fluffy, easy games...thought-provoking, strategy-heavy games, and lots of things in between.
Although outsourcing is a major problem, I have seen several big companies dodge this current hot issue by setting up local shops overseas and then hiring the workers directly (for cheaper wages). This way they can say, "Hey look, we're not outsourcing, we're actually hiring more workers!" and yet still reap the rewards of cheaper overseas salaries.
Ignore for a moment that SCO is SCO and we all at Slashdot hate them for various reasons.
Lots of companies big and small engage in lawsuits everyday as part of doing business. Breach of contract, patent infringement, etc. These things can take years to come to some sort of end, with the parties working something out or a judge making a ruling.
But business should continue to go on. You can't simply put everything on hold due to ONE lawsuit. But that's what SCO is doing. It seems to me that their entire focus has shifted to this ONE lawsuit. And regardless of whether or not you believe in the merits of their case or the ethics of a company whose business model is nothing but lawsuits... they are putting way too much weight into the potential revenue it might generate. And that is quite risky.
This is ONE lawsuit. By putting all their time and energy into this one lawsuit it has dwarfed everything else about the company and its real products. This to me is a bad business practice, and is the real reason that SCO is losing investors.
Many people have attacked the problem from how Developers should write software. As many have mentioned, the ridiculous management schedules and push to just "get it out the door" tends to lend itself to corner cutting in design, coding, testing, etc.
I think that it is up to the End Users to start demmanding better. None of "This Software is provided with no warranty" crap. Somewhat expected from Free Software, but I can't begin to understand how real businesses that spend millions of dollars on commercial software can continue to stand this. If you bought a car with even a fraction of the defects seen in most commercial software packages, you would return that thing so fast it would make the dealer's head spin.
People will argue that building a car and building a desktop application have entirely different sets of risk and expectations. The desktop application will (probably) not kill you when it crashes. There are all sorts of regulations and lawsuits that exist to keep the manufactures very concerned about the quality of their product.
The same is needed in the software industry. Until there is a major demand for high quality products, where users no longer expect or even tolerate that they will find bugs, software will continue to give into buggy, quick and dirty code that must be replaced every 18 months.
There exist software industries today that have incredibly tight quality control and testing (medical & military for instance) and will not tolerate bad code or bugs. Their Software is far less feature rich but far more robust.
End Users of the software need to demand higher standards from their software before the state of programming will really get better.
Yes, there is a bug in the code. No its nothing to go nuts about. I have verified the existence in a product for our company, but you know what it does? Nada.
We use Apache + OpenSSL in our Product. When an SSL request comes in with the malicious data, Apache creates a child process to deal with it. Child process uses NULL pointer to access Memory. Process SEGFAULTs and dies. Apache remains running.
In a well architected system you protect yourself on multiple levels. Linux uses memory protection to limit the damage one bad pointer can do. Apache does the right thing and spawns child processes to deal with requests, thereby preventing problems from bringing down the whole server.
Another poster was right, many of these exploits are sensationalism to scare people and attract readers.
So I downloaded the iTunes software today and started playing around with it. This thing is great! I got so tired of dealing with endless searching on P2P services for the songs I wanted, dealing with slow and incomplete downloads, and you could never count on the quality...
Now I can quickly search, find what I want, and download a good quality song fast! I then started to wish I could convert the songs into MP3 format so I could copy them onto my Web based MP3 Server, and my Nomad Jukebox portable player.
At that point I broke out my Apple AAC file encryption cracking tool (a 3 inch male-to-male stereo connector cable that I used to short-circuit my Headphone jack to my Line-in jack) and then ran Audiograbber to capture and encode to Mp3 all at once. Audiograbber has this great feature to automatically break the catpure file up based upon breaks in the audio feed.
Now I can download from iTunes and yet have mp3's too.
I like bashing marketing as much as the next guy, but maybe this was just a technical mistake.
Before everyone goes and gets there panties in a not, maybe we could try to get some real information here and not just assume its "da man" trying to screw us over again.