Although i have not worked with Dvorak, i can offer experiences with two similar pairs of keyboard layouts. I am a very good typist on Qwerty and a fair typist in Arabic. Although i am an American, i lived in a foreign country for a while, where i bought a German typewriter, which has a similar layout but several different key positions from American Qwerty. (I think the German layout is Ayertz where English is Qwerty.) It was always a pain switching between my German typewriter and an American computer keyboard, because i'd always be making mistakes with those different keys. (I would make mistakes using both Qwerty and Awertz.)
In Arabic, i trained myself using the standard (IBM) layout. But then i started using a Mac for Arabic stuff as well, which uses a similar layout which is a little more logical (for example, by placing certain similar-looking letters next to each other). Once i started using that my speed decreased significantly in Arabic. They were different, yet too similar to let me type without hesitating with certain keys. There are still certain characters i'm always hunting for (since i don't have the Arabic letters on the physical keyboard).
I'm not sure to what extent these experiences apply to the Querty and Dvorak question, because they may be so different that it's not such a problem switching back and forth.
Ays Kreem fi Gliim (Ice Cream at Gleem), an Egyptian musical with Amr Diab (i think), has got to be one of the most wretched movies i've ever seen! Bluck! (Hint: not all bad movies come from Hollywood.)
Well, for a newbie i have to commend you for at least using the correct terminology. So many people are going around saying things like "i use Penis" instead of "i use GNU/Penis". Well, let me tell you something, "Penis" isn't a complete system without all of the other free tools provided by GNU.
Of course, as others have pointed out here, Penis isn't always the right tool for the job... but it often is. Penis usability and training issues are often exagerated. Sometimes the users aren't even aware that they're using Penis! (Oops, i meant GNU/Penis. Sorry.)
When did the FSF first start insisting that the operating system be referred to as "GNU/Linux" and why did they wait until the term "Linux" had become entrenched in the minds of users and the general public alike before doing so?
Q: Isn't GNU a collection of biological tools that were included in fish?
A: People who think that a fish is an biological organism, if they hear about GNU at all, often get a wrong idea of what GNU is. They may think that GNU is a the name of a collection of biological processes--often they say "biological tools", since some of our biological tools became popular on their own.
Although Mandrake is personally my favorite distro, and it what i'm using even as i write this, it's still not streamlined enough for the type of user Lindows is targeting. When i go into the "Terminals" submenu, i find that there are six different terminal programs. There are also six text editors. Five browsers. Configuration tools are still redundant and confusing. How does the user know what the difference between "Userdrake", "KUser", and "User Manager"? This plethora of choices may be great for a power user, but it's just confusing for the market that Lindows is going after. This is why Xandros, Lycoris, and Lindows exist.
You are correct about the usage, but it goes beyond companies. For example, British "The audience are listening" and American "the audience is listening". Plural agreement is marginally acceptable in American English with "family": "the family are all gathered together".
What is interesting is that this type of agreement is never possible, even in British English, in a "there" construction. So, although with a true plural noun, the normal agreement is plural, as in "there are thirty attendees in the room", to use the analogous plural form with "audience" is impossible, "*there are an audience in the room".
As for switching from a singular noun to a plural pronoun ("IBM is the leader... They have just..."), speakers do the same with impersonal "they". Note the switch from singular "someone" to plural "them": "If you love someone, set them free." (I use a British lyric as an example so people don't protest that only Americans do this.)
I'm wondering if such CD's aren't already commonplace in some countries. This summer in Croatia I bought a US$16 CD of a local band. It cannot be played on any of my CD-ROM drives. This makes the CD practically useless for me, since this is the way i usually listen to CD's.
By the time i learned enough C++, Qt, and KDE to fix it myself, KDE 2.0 would already be out. It's a bit much to presume that everybody has the skills to do bug-fixes in major pieces of software. KDE was designed for end-users, right? What if my mom had posted this complaint instead of me? My mom is like most end-users: she's probably never even heard of C++. Would you also advise her to fix the bug herself?
I'm not necessarily blaming the original writers of kfm, who have obviously found more interesting things to do than tweak a program that will superceded within a year anyway. However, there certainly are commercial entities out there who would benefit from bug-fixes like these. For example, Corel uses the KDE interface for a Linux distro designed for desktop use. Companies like Corel should be interested in getting these bugs fixed. Bugs in Corel's "enhanced KDE desktop" will reflect directly on Corel, even if they're inherited from the KDE base.
Open source software is beautiful as long as developers are interested in solving the same problems you need solved, or you have the skills, time, and energy to fix it yourself. Otherwise, you're hosed. Having the right to fix it yourself is not the same as actually having the ability to do so. I do not have this ability, which is why i posted the problem here, hoping to bring the bug to someone's attention. The bug was reported long ago to the kfm developers (it's in the bug list on the kfm website), but it does not appear as if they have any intention of fixing it. I would be most grateful to anyone who did!
Although it's great to see Opera coming, i think that KFM would be an adequate browser for 90% of my needs if they'd just fix the stupid cookie bug. (KFM never saves cookies, even when you tell it to.) Is it too much to ask KDE developers to step back from Krash long enough to fix this stupid bug, which would render stand-alone browsers largely superfluous? Why should we have to wait until KDE 2.0?
If two layouts are somewhat similar, they *can* slow you down and increase your error rate. For two or three years, I used both German and U.S. layouts (where maybe six or eight letter/punctuation keys are different, as i remember) on different machines. They slowed me down a bit and i would make certain types of errors in both systems.
Similarly, i have toggled to and from environments where i had to use either the IBM or Mac layouts for Arabic. They're about forty percent different for letters and frequent diacritics. The confusion between the two and constant quick thinking about where such and such a key is on the system i was using meant that i never really got fast typing in Arabic. I tell you this as someone who actually was in a typing competition in high school!
I imagine that this is much less of a problem when the layouts are *very* different, as might be the case with QWERTY and DVORAK.
I agree. It has been claimed that the job of Microsoft tech support is to make the caller feel stupid. It's sad to see that some Linux enthusiasts seem to feel they have similar job descriptions.
Has the writer of this piece ever learned a foreign language? Learned to play the piano? I've not only learned both, but i've taught both professionally for many years. (And i've learned Linux.) Both things need a *lot* of spoonfeeding on the part of the teacher, unless, of course, the learner has a special "gift". Linux is similar. I find the writer's attitude like a professional musician who doesn't think that the non-gifted should even be given the chance to touch the keys of a piano. I would have loved to be this guy's Arabic teacher... "Here's your Arabic novel, here's your dictionary, and here's your grammar. My method of teaching doesn't allow me to tell you anything that's already documented in the grammar or the dictionary. Now start reading that novel! If you can't handle it, then you're too stupid to learn a foreign language anyway."
Although i agree that GUI's foster laziness, the contention that newbies who ask basic questions on mailing lists don't want to learn anything is ludicrous. The fact is you can't even run Linux without learning a lot about it. The guy who came to the mailing list to learn how to turn off ftpd, or whatever, has undoubtedly already spent many an hour reading just to learn about file permissions, file system navigation, and many, many other things. Furthermore, Linux documentation tends to be written for the experienced user. "Man" pages can be useful sometimes, but at others they leave the user more frustrated than before consulted. Linux documentation is really great at omitting typical examples of usage, too.
If you don't want to teach newbies directly, the best thing to do is to direct them towards the documentation. Often a newbie will simply not know where to look for appropriate documentation. This is especially the case when the user doesn't even know what command to use to perform a particular task. Your other choice, of course, is just to ignore them. But even in that case, there's no reason to get sour about it. Not everyone's as technically savvy as you, and there's no reason to get arrogant about the fact.
The original poster wants to convert *from* RealAudio. If all you do is listen to music then MP3 is probably all you need, but RealAudio gives you access to a whole planetfull of content. How else could i listen to i listen to Deutsche Welle Swahili programming, BBC news in English, Radio Canada International in Arabic, exerpts from the Prairie Home Companion, Radio Warsaw in Esperanto... all in my own living room? (I often do each of those things!) Only by using RealAudio! I only wish there were a little net appliance to let me listen to all of that RA content while i'm working in the kitchen.
Just Java and Beyond is the only book i've found that does a good job at explaining Java I/O and the maze of Reader and Writer classes. Although i have many other Java books, the $45 i spent on this one was worth it for that section alone.
Slashdot Mirror
I was going to leave a comment, but then i realised that it wasn't going to make me any money.
Although i have not worked with Dvorak, i can offer experiences with two similar pairs of keyboard layouts. I am a very good typist on Qwerty and a fair typist in Arabic. Although i am an American, i lived in a foreign country for a while, where i bought a German typewriter, which has a similar layout but several different key positions from American Qwerty. (I think the German layout is Ayertz where English is Qwerty.) It was always a pain switching between my German typewriter and an American computer keyboard, because i'd always be making mistakes with those different keys. (I would make mistakes using both Qwerty and Awertz.)
In Arabic, i trained myself using the standard (IBM) layout. But then i started using a Mac for Arabic stuff as well, which uses a similar layout which is a little more logical (for example, by placing certain similar-looking letters next to each other). Once i started using that my speed decreased significantly in Arabic. They were different, yet too similar to let me type without hesitating with certain keys. There are still certain characters i'm always hunting for (since i don't have the Arabic letters on the physical keyboard).
I'm not sure to what extent these experiences apply to the Querty and Dvorak question, because they may be so different that it's not such a problem switching back and forth.
Ays Kreem fi Gliim (Ice Cream at Gleem), an Egyptian musical with Amr Diab (i think), has got to be one of the most wretched movies i've ever seen! Bluck! (Hint: not all bad movies come from Hollywood.)
Well, for a newbie i have to commend you for at least using the correct terminology. So many people are going around saying things like "i use Penis" instead of "i use GNU/Penis". Well, let me tell you something, "Penis" isn't a complete system without all of the other free tools provided by GNU.
Of course, as others have pointed out here, Penis isn't always the right tool for the job... but it often is. Penis usability and training issues are often exagerated. Sometimes the users aren't even aware that they're using Penis! (Oops, i meant GNU/Penis. Sorry.)
If only my Xerox AssJet 790 doubled as a scanner. :(
When did the FSF first start insisting that the operating system be referred to as "GNU/Linux" and why did they wait until the term "Linux" had become entrenched in the minds of users and the general public alike before doing so?
Q: Isn't GNU a collection of biological tools that were included in fish?
A: People who think that a fish is an biological organism, if they hear about GNU at all, often get a wrong idea of what GNU is. They may think that GNU is a the name of a collection of biological processes--often they say "biological tools", since some of our biological tools became popular on their own.
Although Mandrake is personally my favorite distro, and it what i'm using even as i write this, it's still not streamlined enough for the type of user Lindows is targeting. When i go into the "Terminals" submenu, i find that there are six different terminal programs. There are also six text editors. Five browsers. Configuration tools are still redundant and confusing. How does the user know what the difference between "Userdrake", "KUser", and "User Manager"? This plethora of choices may be great for a power user, but it's just confusing for the market that Lindows is going after. This is why Xandros, Lycoris, and Lindows exist.
You are correct about the usage, but it goes beyond companies. For example, British "The audience are listening" and American "the audience is listening". Plural agreement is marginally acceptable in American English with "family": "the family are all gathered together".
What is interesting is that this type of agreement is never possible, even in British English, in a "there" construction. So, although with a true plural noun, the normal agreement is plural, as in "there are thirty attendees in the room", to use the analogous plural form with "audience" is impossible, "*there are an audience in the room".
As for switching from a singular noun to a plural pronoun ("IBM is the leader... They have just..."), speakers do the same with impersonal "they". Note the switch from singular "someone" to plural "them": "If you love someone, set them free." (I use a British lyric as an example so people don't protest that only Americans do this.)
Leston Buell
Department of Linguistics
UCLA
I don't know about those ads, but i am sooooo happy to see anonymous postings gone. I expect the quality of the comments to improve drastically.
The Ascent E-Toilet Number 2.0 is the most advanced model i've seen so far. Info at:
Ascent E-Toilet
Does this mean AOL will be able to delight us with ten times as many free CDs? Yippeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Let the fun begin!
> Has anyone else noticed those huge ads that seem
> to be randomly appearing in the middle of
> articles?
Yeah, i think that i read somewhere tat these ads were caused by something called GNU/Hurd or something.
Yeah, e-mail terrorists working for Satan and Hello Kitty!
I'm wondering if such CD's aren't already commonplace in some countries. This summer in Croatia I bought a US$16 CD of a local band. It cannot be played on any of my CD-ROM drives. This makes the CD practically useless for me, since this is the way i usually listen to CD's.
Netpliance shhould offer a modifiable version with no ISP contract... priced accordingly, of course.
By the time i learned enough C++, Qt, and KDE to fix it myself, KDE 2.0 would already be out. It's a bit much to presume that everybody has the skills to do bug-fixes in major pieces of software. KDE was designed for end-users, right? What if my mom had posted this complaint instead of me? My mom is like most end-users: she's probably never even heard of C++. Would you also advise her to fix the bug herself?
I'm not necessarily blaming the original writers of kfm, who have obviously found more interesting things to do than tweak a program that will superceded within a year anyway. However, there certainly are commercial entities out there who would benefit from bug-fixes like these. For example, Corel uses the KDE interface for a Linux distro designed for desktop use. Companies like Corel should be interested in getting these bugs fixed. Bugs in Corel's "enhanced KDE desktop" will reflect directly on Corel, even if they're inherited from the KDE base.
Open source software is beautiful as long as developers are interested in solving the same problems you need solved, or you have the skills, time, and energy to fix it yourself. Otherwise, you're hosed. Having the right to fix it yourself is not the same as actually having the ability to do so. I do not have this ability, which is why i posted the problem here, hoping to bring the bug to someone's attention. The bug was reported long ago to the kfm developers (it's in the bug list on the kfm website), but it does not appear as if they have any intention of fixing it. I would be most grateful to anyone who did!
Although it's great to see Opera coming, i think that KFM would be an adequate browser for 90% of my needs if they'd just fix the stupid cookie bug. (KFM never saves cookies, even when you tell it to.) Is it too much to ask KDE developers to step back from Krash long enough to fix this stupid bug, which would render stand-alone browsers largely superfluous? Why should we have to wait until KDE 2.0?
If two layouts are somewhat similar, they *can* slow you down and increase your error rate. For two or three years, I used both German and U.S. layouts (where maybe six or eight letter/punctuation keys are different, as i remember) on different machines. They slowed me down a bit and i would make certain types of errors in both systems.
Similarly, i have toggled to and from environments where i had to use either the IBM or Mac layouts for Arabic. They're about forty percent different for letters and frequent diacritics. The confusion between the two and constant quick thinking about where such and such a key is on the system i was using meant that i never really got fast typing in Arabic. I tell you this as someone who actually was in a typing competition in high school!
I imagine that this is much less of a problem when the layouts are *very* different, as might be the case with QWERTY and DVORAK.
I agree. It has been claimed that the job of Microsoft tech support is to make the caller feel stupid. It's sad to see that some Linux enthusiasts seem to feel they have similar job descriptions.
Has the writer of this piece ever learned a foreign language? Learned to play the piano? I've not only learned both, but i've taught both professionally for many years. (And i've learned Linux.) Both things need a *lot* of spoonfeeding on the part of the teacher, unless, of course, the learner has a special "gift". Linux is similar. I find the writer's attitude like a professional musician who doesn't think that the non-gifted should even be given the chance to touch the keys of a piano. I would have loved to be this guy's Arabic teacher... "Here's your Arabic novel, here's your dictionary, and here's your grammar. My method of teaching doesn't allow me to tell you anything that's already documented in the grammar or the dictionary. Now start reading that novel! If you can't handle it, then you're too stupid to learn a foreign language anyway."
Although i agree that GUI's foster laziness, the contention that newbies who ask basic questions on mailing lists don't want to learn anything is ludicrous. The fact is you can't even run Linux without learning a lot about it. The guy who came to the mailing list to learn how to turn off ftpd, or whatever, has undoubtedly already spent many an hour reading just to learn about file permissions, file system navigation, and many, many other things. Furthermore, Linux documentation tends to be written for the experienced user. "Man" pages can be useful sometimes, but at others they leave the user more frustrated than before consulted. Linux documentation is really great at omitting typical examples of usage, too.
If you don't want to teach newbies directly, the best thing to do is to direct them towards the documentation. Often a newbie will simply not know where to look for appropriate documentation. This is especially the case when the user doesn't even know what command to use to perform a particular task. Your other choice, of course, is just to ignore them. But even in that case, there's no reason to get sour about it. Not everyone's as technically savvy as you, and there's no reason to get arrogant about the fact.
The original poster wants to convert *from* RealAudio. If all you do is listen to music then MP3 is probably all you need, but RealAudio gives you access to a whole planetfull of content. How else could i listen to i listen to Deutsche Welle Swahili programming, BBC news in English, Radio Canada International in Arabic, exerpts from the Prairie Home Companion, Radio Warsaw in Esperanto... all in my own living room? (I often do each of those things!) Only by using RealAudio! I only wish there were a little net appliance to let me listen to all of that RA content while i'm working in the kitchen.
/ audilink.html
I've got a page up on RA multilingual content:
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/leston
Just Java and Beyond is the only book i've found that does a good job at explaining Java I/O and the maze of Reader and Writer classes. Although i have many other Java books, the $45 i spent on this one was worth it for that section alone.