But now, tiny keys, and not in the QWERTY pattern either? How is this helping?
How would having it in the QWERTY pattern help anyone? You can't do ten-finger touch-typing on a cell phone, so there's no advantage for touch-typists. Hunt-and-peck typists are going to need time to locate each letter anyway, whether the layout is QWERTY or Dvorak or alphabetical or anything.
Text entry on small devices is an entirely different beast than text entry on a full-size keyboard, and I commend the designers for recognizing that. Whether the solution they've come up with is any good, I suppose time will tell.
I doubt anyone is going to have the dexterity to not hit those letter keys while meaning to just use the numeric part of the keypad.
RTFA.
You're supposed to hit the letter keys when you're trying to type a number. That's how it works. If all four letter keys surrounding a number are pressed together, it registers as the number rather than the letters. In fact, I don't think the number 'buttons' even have any switches under them.
(Actually, I would hope that they register a number-press when any THREE letters are chorded -- that's enough to determine which number is intended, and makes it less important to distribute your finger pressure evenly across all four corners, which must be unnatural.)
Another thing it does right is allow the customer some ownership over the digital product they are purchasing.
You mean it MANAGES the customer's DIGITAL RIGHTS...?
The first service able to deliver a large library of inexpensive tracks on demand with decent quality and no restrictions will eclipse anything else in the industry.
Gee, that sounds easy! A sure-fire business plan! I'm surprised you haven't started something like this up yourself!
Oh, but first could you define what "large library", "inexpensive", and "decent quality" mean? It's kind of important.
if I want to turn a notebook into a desktop, I'll attach a VGA monitor and use a seperate bluetooth keyboard and mouse.
So you carry a VGA monitor and bluetooth keyboard around with you on business trips?
A notebook computer already HAS a display and a keyboard. It's redundant to add duplicates of those parts to such a computer to make it suitable for prolonged desktop use.
What really worries me, though, is a plague of dozens of zombie C64 machines under the control of hackers bringing down valuable services like Google and Yahoo with DDoS attacks.
UUh, maybe I'm missing something here. Why would you not want a customer to see all the data associated with his server.
Don't tell me you've never gotten an irate message from some idiot out on the net who installed poorly-configured personal firewall software and says "I went to your website and it tried to hack my computer on port 80!"
Sharing information is, in general, a Good Thing. But if they don't have an understanding of how to apply the information in proper context, it can do a lot more harm than good.
If you don't do a lot of file sharing why do you need broadband?
Are you fucking kidding me?
Businesses sure shouldn't be doing any filesharing -- better cancel those contracts for burstable OC3's and put in a few analog phone lines with 56K modems. That's all they really need, right?
I can point you to a half dozen russian sites where, for $20 a month, you can get on legal on-demand MP3 downloads of just about any popular artist.
Including tariffs? It's not like you can go down to Tower Records and buy a foreign import version of your favorite band's CD without paying $10 more for it. Why should MP3 purchases be any different?
What does RIAA gain out of it?? Some extra revenue so the ridicuosly wealthy singers can support thier drug habit and thier trips to space.
Once again, for those who still haven't been paying attention...
The RIAA represents the record labels, not the artists.
None of the settlement monies are likely to ever make their way into the artists' pockets, whether they're "ridicuosly wealthy" or not.
RIAA-member labels have routinely screwed artists out of the basic payments owed to them -- not just small obscure artists, but many of the big names too. Many only get money from their CD sales because they had to sue the label for what was theirs.
Don't hate on wealthy artists just because they're wealthy -- the RIAA gives them headaches too.
a "secure disposal company" could bake a drive at curie temperature for 24 hours in an alternating magnetic field of varying frequency, strap a hand-grenade to it and drop it down a disused mineshaft, but how can you be sure it's the same drive, or that they haven't made a backup of its contents?
If a company is THAT paranoid about security, they will send an agent to accompany the sensitive drives to the oven/grenade/mineshaft facility and confirm that they are not mirrored or swapped out for other drives.
The simple scientific fact is that it takes only one overwrite cycle to make data unreadable.
The simple scientific fact is that you are wrong.
The read head on a mass-market Winchester drive may not be able to tell the difference between 'a 1 that used to be a 0' and 'a 1 that's always been a 1', but an electron microscope can.
Again, if the data is THAT sensitive, there's someone willing to spend weeks analyzing the disk surface in a lab figuring out what the contents most likely used to be.
My question is... if money is at all an issue, why would you WANT to import a Nissan or Toyota from Japan into the US, when those companies already sell similar if not identical cars domestically? It's not like you'll readily find a dealer for replacement Supra GT-R R34 parts here anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
Quantum computers, sure. I bet they'll even run Duke Nuk'Em Forever lan parties over IPv6.
They might, they might not...
But now, tiny keys, and not in the QWERTY pattern either? How is this helping?
How would having it in the QWERTY pattern help anyone? You can't do ten-finger touch-typing on a cell phone, so there's no advantage for touch-typists. Hunt-and-peck typists are going to need time to locate each letter anyway, whether the layout is QWERTY or Dvorak or alphabetical or anything.
Text entry on small devices is an entirely different beast than text entry on a full-size keyboard, and I commend the designers for recognizing that. Whether the solution they've come up with is any good, I suppose time will tell.
they suddenly develop a random love of small things, maybe to them it looks "massive"?
This is the same reason I prefer to date women with tiny hands.
I doubt anyone is going to have the dexterity to not hit those letter keys while meaning to just use the numeric part of the keypad.
RTFA.
You're supposed to hit the letter keys when you're trying to type a number. That's how it works. If all four letter keys surrounding a number are pressed together, it registers as the number rather than the letters. In fact, I don't think the number 'buttons' even have any switches under them.
(Actually, I would hope that they register a number-press when any THREE letters are chorded -- that's enough to determine which number is intended, and makes it less important to distribute your finger pressure evenly across all four corners, which must be unnatural.)
Exactly who was Capt. Ed Murphy?
He's the guy who runs Sealab, right?
His law is derived from the fact that even the slightest mistake will cause Pod 6, if not the entirety of Sealab, to explode.
He suggests that Visual Basic is better than Java. I will refrain from comment, the quote speaks for itself.
Rootbeer's Corollary to Godwin's Law:
On Slashdot, the terms "Visual Basic" and "Hitler" shall be interchangeable.
Wasn't it Princess Leia who said "The more you tighten your grip, the more will slip through your fingers"?
I think Admiral Ackbar's quote better fits Slashdot's opinion of Microsoft's behavior here...
Another thing it does right is allow the customer some ownership over the digital product they are purchasing.
You mean it MANAGES the customer's DIGITAL RIGHTS...?
The first service able to deliver a large library of inexpensive tracks on demand with decent quality and no restrictions will eclipse anything else in the industry.
Gee, that sounds easy! A sure-fire business plan! I'm surprised you haven't started something like this up yourself!
Oh, but first could you define what "large library", "inexpensive", and "decent quality" mean? It's kind of important.
CNN moved the story ... the link from the article is 404'd.
No worries, I can just use MICROSOFT HEFT-KEWL INTERWEB SEARCH PROGRAM! to find it again.
if I want to turn a notebook into a desktop, I'll attach a VGA monitor and use a seperate bluetooth keyboard and mouse.
So you carry a VGA monitor and bluetooth keyboard around with you on business trips?
A notebook computer already HAS a display and a keyboard. It's redundant to add duplicates of those parts to such a computer to make it suitable for prolonged desktop use.
Could be that when the author talks about "web addresses", he means whether a URI exists, not whether a domain is registered.
o wb oyneal/ is a "web address" that does not exist, and I get a 404 when I try to go there.
http://www.slashdot.org/cowboyneal/cowboyneal/c
What that has to do with domain resolution, I can't answer.
They get it for free, but they also lose it any time someone wants to take it away, for any specific domain.
No, they lose it any time someone BUYS it. And who could someone buy it FROM? Verisign.
disgorgement of ill-gotten profits and attorneys' fees
Well, at least they're admitting that the attorneys' fees are ill-gotten...
What really worries me, though, is a plague of dozens of zombie C64 machines under the control of hackers bringing down valuable services like Google and Yahoo with DDoS attacks.
I, for one, welcome our new 8-bit overlords...
since when do things get so old that you can drink them?
Not a fan of scotches and cognacs, are you?
Can I sue George Bush...
If my son decides to go bomb someone and take their house?
Nope. Remember the Clinton investigation? The President generally has prosecutorial immunity while in office.
So you'll have to wait until Inauguration Day 2005 before you can sue him.
sue the parents for doing such a poor job raising their children that they would commit murder.
You're kidding, right?
I mean, I doubt that the reason these kids killed is because their parents never sat them down and told them not to kill people.
Some children won't have a moral compass, no matter how hard their parents try to instill one.
Problem: someone with a knife took over a plane and crashed it.
Incorrect. Three or four people with knives took over planes, killed the airline staff and maybe some of the passengers, and THEN crashed the planes.
Do you think your armed security guard really could have shot and killed 4 hijackers in a confined space without harming any innocent bystanders?
If so, what if there had been TEN hijackers per plane?
UUh, maybe I'm missing something here. Why would you not want a customer to see all the data associated with his server.
Don't tell me you've never gotten an irate message from some idiot out on the net who installed poorly-configured personal firewall software and says "I went to your website and it tried to hack my computer on port 80!"
Sharing information is, in general, a Good Thing. But if they don't have an understanding of how to apply the information in proper context, it can do a lot more harm than good.
If you don't do a lot of file sharing why do you need broadband?
Are you fucking kidding me?
Businesses sure shouldn't be doing any filesharing -- better cancel those contracts for burstable OC3's and put in a few analog phone lines with 56K modems. That's all they really need, right?
I can point you to a half dozen russian sites where, for $20 a month, you can get on legal on-demand MP3 downloads of just about any popular artist.
Including tariffs? It's not like you can go down to Tower Records and buy a foreign import version of your favorite band's CD without paying $10 more for it. Why should MP3 purchases be any different?
What does RIAA gain out of it?? Some extra revenue so the ridicuosly wealthy singers can support thier drug habit and thier trips to space.
Once again, for those who still haven't been paying attention...
The RIAA represents the record labels, not the artists.
None of the settlement monies are likely to ever make their way into the artists' pockets, whether they're "ridicuosly wealthy" or not.
RIAA-member labels have routinely screwed artists out of the basic payments owed to them -- not just small obscure artists, but many of the big names too. Many only get money from their CD sales because they had to sue the label for what was theirs.
Don't hate on wealthy artists just because they're wealthy -- the RIAA gives them headaches too.
Modern hard drives have commands "SECURITY ERASE" and "ENHANCED SECURITY ERASE".
These are commands that the average user of a $100 ATA hard drive will never execute.
How likely do you think it is that some HD manufacturers omit support for these commands from their disk controllers as a cost-saving measure?
a "secure disposal company" could bake a drive at curie temperature for 24 hours in an alternating magnetic field of varying frequency, strap a hand-grenade to it and drop it down a disused mineshaft, but how can you be sure it's the same drive, or that they haven't made a backup of its contents?
If a company is THAT paranoid about security, they will send an agent to accompany the sensitive drives to the oven/grenade/mineshaft facility and confirm that they are not mirrored or swapped out for other drives.
The simple scientific fact is that it takes only one overwrite cycle to make data unreadable.
The simple scientific fact is that you are wrong.
The read head on a mass-market Winchester drive may not be able to tell the difference between 'a 1 that used to be a 0' and 'a 1 that's always been a 1', but an electron microscope can.
Again, if the data is THAT sensitive, there's someone willing to spend weeks analyzing the disk surface in a lab figuring out what the contents most likely used to be.
Psychotic diary entries that advocated violence, financial records, proprietary engineering data, etc.
I know Slashdot is somewhat biased, but is it really fair to say that someone who advocates proprietary engineering data is PSYCHOTIC?
My question is... if money is at all an issue, why would you WANT to import a Nissan or Toyota from Japan into the US, when those companies already sell similar if not identical cars domestically? It's not like you'll readily find a dealer for replacement Supra GT-R R34 parts here anyway.