You know, this sounded rediculous to me.. and it still does of course.. but in discussing this with other people, who perhaps are victims of anti-OSS fud...
There are a great many people out there who believe things like:
You can't write commercial software for linux; if you use GCC to build something, it's GPL also. and so on.
The GPL is only enforced by the FSF. All GPL code belongs to the FSF.
They do NOT see it as just like any other operating system.. they think you are bound to keep everything you do with it open and free.
The point is not that watermarking is foolproof.. but, let's say you suspect some software out there is using your code without permission.. you need some kind of evidence in order to get a court to order a more thorough review... you can't just say "This might be mine because I said so, your honor". Watermarking would let you analyze a binary from some vendor (no reverse engineering involved here), and, if the mark is found, and the software could concievably contain your code, is probably enough evidence to get a court to proceed.
Let's face it... the majority of mac users aren't looking for the cheapest thing out there. $130 for a brand new OS is fine... if you bought 10.2, or 10.1, or 10.0, you still have upgrade cupons, and can get your upgrade for cheap (I think it's $20 or $40, or something.. haven't looked yet). And hey, if you are poor, there is no activation or anything, I mean, you COULD pirate it extremely easily.
This isn't like a "bugfix release" like a windows service pack.. they fixed a lot of stuff, added stuff.. and I have to say, if apple continues to improve OS X in the ame way they have been so far, with each release, it's well worth the $130.
Yes, I know I could do all these same things with linux, but it would take 10x the effort.
I mean, do they sell Novell Linux? If so, what constitutes an expert at Novell Linux is up to them.
If they don't, why exactly do we need Novell to say who is a linux specialist? Their problem, not ours.. if they want to position themselves as some kind of industry leader in linux... I don't see what qualifies them.
Cisco came out with CCIE to certify internetworking experts years ago.. and, although it is of course a merketing ploy, it worked, because at the time cisco was the biggest name in interenetworking, and was in a better position than anyone to define who really knew their stuff. You couldn't be an expert at internetworking without understanding most of ciscos lineup anyway...
The definition of a supercomputer doesn't have anythign to do with how it actually works..... it has to do with speed.
When we say supercomputer, we mean something that is significantly faster than than the average computer.. the fastest computers at any given time are by definition supercomputers.
That's because you are correlating timing between objects with different frames of reference.
In the case of targetting a laser.. you aim, you hit... it's light, the same thing you are using to acquire the target in the first place. Any gravitational affects on the weapon beam would have affected the light coming from the target in the same fashion.
In some areas, the developers know far more about the target systems than the sysadmins do... (say, compiler design, OS design, stuff like that)
In other areas, the sysadmin has a far better understanding of the hardware than the develoeprs (office applications, productivity software, most mass-market stuff). I can't count the number of times when I've asked some developers of software we bought how something interfaces with the hardware, what protocol it uses on the network, somethingl ike that, adn the answer from the head developer was "We don't know; we just used this library"
You are mixing up two things here. Yes, a PIN is easy to brute-force, if the system will allow you to do it. Most will not; after a few wrong attempts, your account is locked. What are the odds of guessing the right 4 digit pin if you only get five attempts?
You don't need a high entropy password if it's not possible to brute-force against the system.
Many banks insist that they KNOW what is in a safe deposit box, so you don't put, say, things that could explode, or start a fire, in them. That's not to say they know the exact contents, but they often supervise. I think maybe you watch too much TV if you think banks have safe deposit boxes full of "dirty" money. (though no doubt there is some out there)
You started by saying that your secuurity is pretty good, and giving us a breakdown.. now you claim you aren't the weak link, because who would want the tapes?
That doesn't change the fact that you are the weak link.
Also, the bank manager has a very good, and valid, point. Wheras you see convenience, he sees the possibility of a complaint down the road, and heck, bank protocol wasn't followed; the employees had information they should not have, which makes them more suspect.
Within seconds, all of them will show up in iChat rendezvous to each other, all running Itunes will show up for each other, and all web services running on any machines will show up as "local" web sites. All machines become immediately resolvable by name.
Example: I head to starbucks. I join the wireless network that is there. Immediatley, any other iChat users show up in iChat Rendezvous. Anyone who has a web site published shows up. I can stream music off any other itunes user in the crowd.
ICMP? Did you mean DHCP? Rendezvous works with or without DHCP. It does not require any central server like DHCP.
Now, yes, you might say windows does some of this.. and it does, poorly. It's quite problematic. WIthout a DHCP server, windows will take quite a while to decide to use a zeroconf address. Then, if all the workgroup names are the same, and browser election happens correctly, which it often does not you will be able to see other computers show up in "network neighborhood". Often, pulling this up takes quite a lot of time.
Could you perhaps provide a URL to which $80 device can store 20 gigs of music, has a battery that lasts 5 hours +, lets me load it up really fast with firewire, and fits in my pocket?
Sorry, Itunes isn't about making me feel better about my ipod.. though I will say that the way the mac deals with itunes and music by default made it a more painless experience.
It was not and is not illegal to export computers.
Computers above a certain processing power cannot be exported to certain countries; countries you also can't sell arms to.
The same went for encryption.. it's not that you were not allowed to export strong crypto; you were not allowed to export strong crypto without a PERMIT, which was often attainable.
Writing a stable voting system with checks and balances that are auditable, and having a system that really works should NOT BE HARD. A mid-level university project, at most, could get it right. We are talking about something really important here....
I mean, it sounds like diebold wrote this with a couple junior guys over a couple weekends, using whatever toolkits they could get their hands on to make the job easier.. what gives?
The grandparent poster doesn't seem to realize that local network speeds and global transit speeds are totally different beasts...
Gigabit ethernet has about as much to do with trans-atlantic links as it does with a local CPU bus... all three transmit data, but the parameters are totally different.
It only sounds confusing because of the mixed up terms people are using.
"Burstable" refers to the internet gateway, and how much traffic is permitted, or to the way billing is calculated.. not to any physical property of the T1.
A t1 Is 1.544Mbps. It's a synchronous serial line. It's not fasetr than that, it's not slower than that.. it's clock rate stays the same, all the time. The only reason we talk about T1s is because, in the olden days, it was one of the first reliable digital high speed services you could get from a telephone company.
When you set up a T1, that involves certain guarantees of line quality, and you are guaranteed 1.544Mbps across the line at ALL times. You don't worry "Is our T1 giving us full bandwidth" . That's why they are more pouplar with commercial systems.. because there are some guarantees. Not about internet bandwidht, but about point ot point bandiwdth.
ADSL, on the other hand, is dynamic, but it runs over variable quality lines, like what you have at home. The only reason ADSL is cheaper is because of the target mass-market... it's actually MORE sophisticated, not less. T1 gear is more expensive, because it has a much smaller market. Also, the telco has to run new wire to your house to give you a T1, and has to have dedicated wire across the city to get it to you... ADSL works over standard phone copper.
As for "overselling".. this is kind of a myth too... we are talking about packet switched network.. they are MADE to be oversold.. otherwise we wouldnt' be using packet switching, we'd be using circuit switched stuff still. Buying a T1 means buying a T1 to your ISP, not buying 1.544Mbps of gateway traffic from them.. that's another matter entirely.
I guess what I'm saying is the internet will ALWAYS be "oversold".. that's in it's nature. You are correct, though, bandwidth needs to increase... faster connecst to telcos, faster connects between ISPS, faster infrastructure at isps..
a 17 meg file should copy in seconds, not 20 minutes.
Everything you describe sounds like something was misbehaving badly.
As for how people claim the mac is a superior machine for productivity.. perhaps it's because we get more work done with it?
I've used all kinds of computers and operating systems. I'm a long time unix nut, and since it came around, a linux nut also. In fact, up until six months ago, I wouldn't touch a mac. Then my truck got stolen, along with my Toshiba laptop (which ran XP). So.. I went out on a limb and tried a mac. Not only did I pick up a mac, but a low-end 800Mhz ibook. The only thing I added was ram, to bring it up to the limit of 640MB.
Now.. we come to productivity.
installing software is faster and easier. Working with files is faster and easier. Diagnosing problems is faster and easier.
The main thing, though, is I feel like OS X works WITH me, not against me.. it does things that are, to me, very logical and straightforward. I don't spend time getting sidetracked figuring out how to arrange my desktop or system to do a particular task.. it just works.. using the GUI is VERY repetitive. I feel like I've been in the dark until I used this.
As for more stable... I don't see it. The typical time between power on/off on my iBook is, well, I can't guess.. I rarely ever turn it off, except for the odd upgrade. IT suspends immediately upon closing the lid, and resumes immediately when I open it... and it does it cleanly and accurately. The battery lasts 5 hours.. I forgot the power cable at home one morning.. didn't matter, used it all day at work anyway. I was watching a divx last night, and it just suspended, towards the end of hte movie.. then I realized I forgot to plug it in (and it had been low on batteries when I started). I grabbed the adapter, plugged it in, hit shift a couple times to wake it up, and it resumed at the exact spot.
I choose to use a mac because having a work environment that really works with me, not against me, is more beneficial to my productivity than raw processing speed.
The problem you had was related to some kind of network card issue, and has nothing to do with the speed of the computer. I assure you that G5 can move a 17 meg file around a hell of a lot faster than your other computers.
We should all keep in mind, there is a huge difference between "We'd like you to enable us to tap your network for legal purposes" and "You are not allowed to deploy anything unless there is some way for us to snoop'.. these are entirely different things. #1 is opportunistic.. if it's possible for the FBI to tap in, then they can request help in doing so... it's not at all the same thing as requiring it.
In any decent sized network, I'm sure any of us who have administered DHCP can say that at one point or another we've had hosts that did not acquire an address properly, for no particular known reason, and then just started working.
Yes, there IS a reason. But if there isn't an ongoing problem, it's often not worth the time and effort to figure out what.. and if it's not repeatable, it may be impossible to find out anyway. It's not worth it.
As an admin, I do care why it didn't work, the curious side of me would liek to know why, but if there are no other problems, and the other 500 machines are working fine, dhcp exhibits no problems, and the temporary problem we had was with one guy who brought in some new kind of gear not normally present... 99 times out of 100, I'm going to write it off as "something related to the fact that he had a mac" and just keep it in the bank of my head in case we have other problems later.
You don't see the entire movie screen at once, you focus on different parts of it, and only make out detail in a small area at a time.. you might be surprised how small. That's the center of your vision. Torwards the edges, and I don't mean just the very edges, you sense motion better, light and dark better, but not color.. and you lose detail as you go to the edge.
Your brain creates a nice image in your head for you to work with... but it's really nothing like a tv screen, or a computer display.. it's not pixel based, your vision isn't pixel based
It's difficult for many people to do.. but try to stare straight ahead and notice where your eyes are in focus, and not... it's difficult, because you are used to having your eyes follow where your brain puts it's attention... but with some practice, you can convince your eyeballs to stay put while you try to "see" what is in the out of focus areas.
There are hundreds of bars in vancouver, and you won't get hassled for ID in most of them, unless you look really young.
Nightclubs, however, are a more serious thing.. and what with more and more nightclubs the world over having metal detectors, cameras, and whatnot... this isn't surprising. A nightclub is not a bar.. you will find lineups at most, these are busy, high profile businesses, and given the lineups outside most good vancouver clubs on a weekend, I can imagine, gather and sharing information such as this will benefit all of them.. those clubs that get together to do this will benefit.. that is, unless the customers don't go.
they are most likely doing this on their own, because it is their responsibility if they are caught selling booze to minors, and they can lose their license, and hence, their entire business. If they can show that they went to great lengths to ensure that people were adults, and were still fooled, the courts may be lenient.
This is why some football games will ID *everyone*, regardless of age.. seems like a stupid policy when you have obviously 50+ year old men buying liquor.. but it lets them say that there is no judgement call.. and hence, makes it easier to keep their license.
dvorak -vs- qwerty has a lot of misinformation floating around about it.. though you got it closer to right than most do.
Usually the story is told that the qwerty keyboard was designed to be as slow as possible, to prevent jams. This isn't true. As you said, it was designed to prevent jams by not putting frequently used characters next to each other, as would make sense to anyone who has ever used a manual or powered manual typewriter.
In a way, it WAS designed for speed.. if you are jamming, you aren't typing very fast, as you have to un-jam first.
Now, is dvorak faster and easier on the hands? Absolutely. Is it vastly superior? Not really.
I always thought alt-graph was basically another meta key, used for other character sets....
What I want to know, is what was the unnamed unlabeled key on my sun keyboard for? I forget where it was.. in the top left, I think, or bottom left, near there.. and it had no label.
What I really want to know.. is... was it the ANY key?
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You know, this sounded rediculous to me.. and it still does of course.. but in discussing this with other people, who perhaps are victims of anti-OSS fud...
There are a great many people out there who believe things like:
You can't write commercial software for linux; if you use GCC to build something, it's GPL also. and so on.
The GPL is only enforced by the FSF. All GPL code belongs to the FSF.
They do NOT see it as just like any other operating system.. they think you are bound to keep everything you do with it open and free.
The point is not that watermarking is foolproof.. but, let's say you suspect some software out there is using your code without permission.. you need some kind of evidence in order to get a court to order a more thorough review... you can't just say "This might be mine because I said so, your honor". Watermarking would let you analyze a binary from some vendor (no reverse engineering involved here), and, if the mark is found, and the software could concievably contain your code, is probably enough evidence to get a court to proceed.
Let's face it... the majority of mac users aren't looking for the cheapest thing out there. $130 for a brand new OS is fine... if you bought 10.2, or 10.1, or 10.0, you still have upgrade cupons, and can get your upgrade for cheap (I think it's $20 or $40, or something.. haven't looked yet). And hey, if you are poor, there is no activation or anything, I mean, you COULD pirate it extremely easily.
This isn't like a "bugfix release" like a windows service pack.. they fixed a lot of stuff, added stuff.. and I have to say, if apple continues to improve OS X in the ame way they have been so far, with each release, it's well worth the $130.
Yes, I know I could do all these same things with linux, but it would take 10x the effort.
I mean, do they sell Novell Linux? If so, what constitutes an expert at Novell Linux is up to them.
If they don't, why exactly do we need Novell to say who is a linux specialist? Their problem, not ours.. if they want to position themselves as some kind of industry leader in linux... I don't see what qualifies them.
Cisco came out with CCIE to certify internetworking experts years ago.. and, although it is of course a merketing ploy, it worked, because at the time cisco was the biggest name in interenetworking, and was in a better position than anyone to define who really knew their stuff. You couldn't be an expert at internetworking without understanding most of ciscos lineup anyway...
Novell is in no such position.
The definition of a supercomputer doesn't have anythign to do with how it actually works..... it has to do with speed.
When we say supercomputer, we mean something that is significantly faster than than the average computer.. the fastest computers at any given time are by definition supercomputers.
That's because you are correlating timing between objects with different frames of reference.
In the case of targetting a laser.. you aim, you hit... it's light, the same thing you are using to acquire the target in the first place. Any gravitational affects on the weapon beam would have affected the light coming from the target in the same fashion.
on what you perceive as the role of the sysadmin.
In some areas, the developers know far more about the target systems than the sysadmins do... (say, compiler design, OS design, stuff like that)
In other areas, the sysadmin has a far better understanding of the hardware than the develoeprs (office applications, productivity software, most mass-market stuff). I can't count the number of times when I've asked some developers of software we bought how something interfaces with the hardware, what protocol it uses on the network, somethingl ike that, adn the answer from the head developer was "We don't know; we just used this library"
You are mixing up two things here. Yes, a PIN is easy to brute-force, if the system will allow you to do it. Most will not; after a few wrong attempts, your account is locked. What are the odds of guessing the right 4 digit pin if you only get five attempts?
You don't need a high entropy password if it's not possible to brute-force against the system.
Many banks insist that they KNOW what is in a safe deposit box, so you don't put, say, things that could explode, or start a fire, in them. That's not to say they know the exact contents, but they often supervise. I think maybe you watch too much TV if you think banks have safe deposit boxes full of "dirty" money. (though no doubt there is some out there)
You started by saying that your secuurity is pretty good, and giving us a breakdown.. now you claim you aren't the weak link, because who would want the tapes?
That doesn't change the fact that you are the weak link.
Also, the bank manager has a very good, and valid, point. Wheras you see convenience, he sees the possibility of a complaint down the road, and heck, bank protocol wasn't followed; the employees had information they should not have, which makes them more suspect.
Not really.
Take five random iBooks off the street.
Plug them all into a hub.
Within seconds, all of them will show up in iChat rendezvous to each other, all running Itunes will show up for each other, and all web services running on any machines will show up as "local" web sites. All machines become immediately resolvable by name.
Example: I head to starbucks. I join the wireless network that is there. Immediatley, any other iChat users show up in iChat Rendezvous. Anyone who has a web site published shows up. I can stream music off any other itunes user in the crowd.
ICMP? Did you mean DHCP? Rendezvous works with or without DHCP. It does not require any central server like DHCP.
Now, yes, you might say windows does some of this.. and it does, poorly. It's quite problematic. WIthout a DHCP server, windows will take quite a while to decide to use a zeroconf address. Then, if all the workgroup names are the same, and browser election happens correctly, which it often does not you will be able to see other computers show up in "network neighborhood". Often, pulling this up takes quite a lot of time.
Could you perhaps provide a URL to which $80 device can store 20 gigs of music, has a battery that lasts 5 hours +, lets me load it up really fast with firewire, and fits in my pocket?
Sorry, Itunes isn't about making me feel better about my ipod.. though I will say that the way the mac deals with itunes and music by default made it a more painless experience.
It was not and is not illegal to export computers.
Computers above a certain processing power cannot be exported to certain countries; countries you also can't sell arms to.
The same went for encryption.. it's not that you were not allowed to export strong crypto; you were not allowed to export strong crypto without a PERMIT, which was often attainable.
This is not THAT HARD.
Writing a stable voting system with checks and balances that are auditable, and having a system that really works should NOT BE HARD. A mid-level university project, at most, could get it right. We are talking about something really important here....
I mean, it sounds like diebold wrote this with a couple junior guys over a couple weekends, using whatever toolkits they could get their hands on to make the job easier.. what gives?
The grandparent poster doesn't seem to realize that local network speeds and global transit speeds are totally different beasts...
Gigabit ethernet has about as much to do with trans-atlantic links as it does with a local CPU bus... all three transmit data, but the parameters are totally different.
Where did you get the # 200 from? The largest, fastest undersea cable projects have far, far less than that.
FLAG, for instance, has 2 pairs of fiber, and runs at 5.6Gbps.
This is a record for internet transmission, not data transmission.
It only sounds confusing because of the mixed up terms people are using.
"Burstable" refers to the internet gateway, and how much traffic is permitted, or to the way billing is calculated.. not to any physical property of the T1.
A t1 Is 1.544Mbps. It's a synchronous serial line. It's not fasetr than that, it's not slower than that.. it's clock rate stays the same, all the time. The only reason we talk about T1s is because, in the olden days, it was one of the first reliable digital high speed services you could get from a telephone company.
When you set up a T1, that involves certain guarantees of line quality, and you are guaranteed 1.544Mbps across the line at ALL times. You don't worry "Is our T1 giving us full bandwidth" . That's why they are more pouplar with commercial systems.. because there are some guarantees. Not about internet bandwidht, but about point ot point bandiwdth.
ADSL, on the other hand, is dynamic, but it runs over variable quality lines, like what you have at home. The only reason ADSL is cheaper is because of the target mass-market... it's actually MORE sophisticated, not less. T1 gear is more expensive, because it has a much smaller market. Also, the telco has to run new wire to your house to give you a T1, and has to have dedicated wire across the city to get it to you... ADSL works over standard phone copper.
As for "overselling".. this is kind of a myth too... we are talking about packet switched network.. they are MADE to be oversold.. otherwise we wouldnt' be using packet switching, we'd be using circuit switched stuff still. Buying a T1 means buying a T1 to your ISP, not buying 1.544Mbps of gateway traffic from them.. that's another matter entirely.
I guess what I'm saying is the internet will ALWAYS be "oversold".. that's in it's nature. You are correct, though, bandwidth needs to increase... faster connecst to telcos, faster connects between ISPS, faster infrastructure at isps..
You had something badly configured.. for sure.
Ethernet duplex mismatch, perhaps? faulty cables?
a 17 meg file should copy in seconds, not 20 minutes.
Everything you describe sounds like something was misbehaving badly.
As for how people claim the mac is a superior machine for productivity.. perhaps it's because we get more work done with it?
I've used all kinds of computers and operating systems. I'm a long time unix nut, and since it came around, a linux nut also. In fact, up until six months ago, I wouldn't touch a mac. Then my truck got stolen, along with my Toshiba laptop (which ran XP). So.. I went out on a limb and tried a mac. Not only did I pick up a mac, but a low-end 800Mhz ibook. The only thing I added was ram, to bring it up to the limit of 640MB.
Now.. we come to productivity.
installing software is faster and easier. Working with files is faster and easier. Diagnosing problems is faster and easier.
The main thing, though, is I feel like OS X works WITH me, not against me.. it does things that are, to me, very logical and straightforward. I don't spend time getting sidetracked figuring out how to arrange my desktop or system to do a particular task.. it just works.. using the GUI is VERY repetitive. I feel like I've been in the dark until I used this.
As for more stable... I don't see it. The typical time between power on/off on my iBook is, well, I can't guess.. I rarely ever turn it off, except for the odd upgrade. IT suspends immediately upon closing the lid, and resumes immediately when I open it... and it does it cleanly and accurately. The battery lasts 5 hours.. I forgot the power cable at home one morning.. didn't matter, used it all day at work anyway. I was watching a divx last night, and it just suspended, towards the end of hte movie.. then I realized I forgot to plug it in (and it had been low on batteries when I started). I grabbed the adapter, plugged it in, hit shift a couple times to wake it up, and it resumed at the exact spot.
I choose to use a mac because having a work environment that really works with me, not against me, is more beneficial to my productivity than raw processing speed.
The problem you had was related to some kind of network card issue, and has nothing to do with the speed of the computer. I assure you that G5 can move a 17 meg file around a hell of a lot faster than your other computers.
We should all keep in mind, there is a huge difference between "We'd like you to enable us to tap your network for legal purposes" and "You are not allowed to deploy anything unless there is some way for us to snoop'.. these are entirely different things. #1 is opportunistic.. if it's possible for the FBI to tap in, then they can request help in doing so... it's not at all the same thing as requiring it.
Some protocls are not rock solid, you know.
In any decent sized network, I'm sure any of us who have administered DHCP can say that at one point or another we've had hosts that did not acquire an address properly, for no particular known reason, and then just started working.
Yes, there IS a reason.
But if there isn't an ongoing problem, it's often not worth the time and effort to figure out what.. and if it's not repeatable, it may be impossible to find out anyway. It's not worth it.
As an admin, I do care why it didn't work, the curious side of me would liek to know why, but if there are no other problems, and the other 500 machines are working fine, dhcp exhibits no problems, and the temporary problem we had was with one guy who brought in some new kind of gear not normally present... 99 times out of 100, I'm going to write it off as "something related to the fact that he had a mac" and just keep it in the bank of my head in case we have other problems later.
You don't see the entire movie screen at once, you focus on different parts of it, and only make out detail in a small area at a time.. you might be surprised how small. That's the center of your vision. Torwards the edges, and I don't mean just the very edges, you sense motion better, light and dark better, but not color.. and you lose detail as you go to the edge.
Your brain creates a nice image in your head for you to work with... but it's really nothing like a tv screen, or a computer display.. it's not pixel based, your vision isn't pixel based
It's difficult for many people to do.. but try to stare straight ahead and notice where your eyes are in focus, and not... it's difficult, because you are used to having your eyes follow where your brain puts it's attention... but with some practice, you can convince your eyeballs to stay put while you try to "see" what is in the out of focus areas.
Heh.. I kind of thought you might make a post in this one Stu....
If I had mod points.... Hmm. I haven't had mod points in over a year. What's with that?
Am I evil?
Does slashdot hate me?
It's about nightclubs.. a very different matter.
There are hundreds of bars in vancouver, and you won't get hassled for ID in most of them, unless you look really young.
Nightclubs, however, are a more serious thing.. and what with more and more nightclubs the world over having metal detectors, cameras, and whatnot... this isn't surprising. A nightclub is not a bar.. you will find lineups at most, these are busy, high profile businesses, and given the lineups outside most good vancouver clubs on a weekend, I can imagine, gather and sharing information such as this will benefit all of them.. those clubs that get together to do this will benefit.. that is, unless the customers don't go.
they are most likely doing this on their own, because it is their responsibility if they are caught selling booze to minors, and they can lose their license, and hence, their entire business.
If they can show that they went to great lengths to ensure that people were adults, and were still fooled, the courts may be lenient.
This is why some football games will ID *everyone*, regardless of age.. seems like a stupid policy when you have obviously 50+ year old men buying liquor.. but it lets them say that there is no judgement call.. and hence, makes it easier to keep their license.
dvorak -vs- qwerty has a lot of misinformation floating around about it.. though you got it closer to right than most do.
Usually the story is told that the qwerty keyboard was designed to be as slow as possible, to prevent jams. This isn't true. As you said, it was designed to prevent jams by not putting frequently used characters next to each other, as would make sense to anyone who has ever used a manual or powered manual typewriter.
In a way, it WAS designed for speed.. if you are jamming, you aren't typing very fast, as you have to un-jam first.
Now, is dvorak faster and easier on the hands? Absolutely. Is it vastly superior? Not really.
I always thought alt-graph was basically another meta key, used for other character sets....
What I want to know, is what was the unnamed unlabeled key on my sun keyboard for? I forget where it was.. in the top left, I think, or bottom left, near there.. and it had no label.
What I really want to know.. is... was it the ANY key?