Badram requires a simple download, dd to floppy, booting off the floppy, and making sure it started up okay. Then, you can leave it alone for a day while you let it make passes.
Anyways, assuming you are buying new ram and you want to be sure its okay, you'd have to do the same thing. And some older laptops have integrated onboard memory - the badram patch can work around that.
I have a 64M proprietary memory stick for an old toshiba laptop that will be
arriving soon in the email - I will be using badram to test that when it comes.
I'm educationless, as well as lacking certifications,
and I find that more then a few employers don't give
me a second glance.
Re:why not construct this
on
The Space Elevator
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Heinlein had space elevators?
**Thinks**
Tunnel in the Sky : Transdimensional Gates
Rocket Ship Galileo : Rockets
Methuselah's Children : Rockets (I believe)
Red Planet : Rockets
Between Planets : Rockets
Rolling Stones : Rockets
Star Beast : Spaceships (I believe)
Citizen of the Galaxy : Spaceships
Moon is a Harsh Mistress : Magnetic Powered "Slings"
Friday : Spaceships
Orphans of the Sky : Spaceships
Podkayne of Mars : Rockets
Starman Jones : Spaceships and Rockets
Starship Troopers : Rockets and Spaceships
A note on the classification. I call anything that is
propelled by throwing a mass backwards a "rocket", while
any ship capable of intersteller transport that doesn't
have its propulsion system explained is a "starship".
And yes, this is all from memory (other then the book
titles, which I googled for), so I have probably screwed up
a few. Specifics that I remember include "the Rolling Stones",
which was atomic rockets, "Friday" which was starships powered
by a device developed by a lone inventor in his basement, and
"Moon is a Harsh Mistress", which had magnetic "slings", to lift
orbital material into space (it also probably had rockets, but
I don't remember.) Some of Heinlein's later works *might* have
had space elevators, but he seems to be a fan mostly of
atomic rockets.
Clarke used the space elevator in "The Fountains of Paradise", as
well as "3001". I believe someone said that Ben Bova used
space elevators in the "Mars" series. In the first Uplift Trilogy
book, humans had created space elevators, which were made obsolete
by the arrival of the Galactics - but still impressed them anyways
(David Brin). A few other later authors had used the idea as well.
IIRC, a Russian scientist proposed the idea first, under the name
of "Sky Hook", Clarke picked up the idea for the Fountains of
Paradise, which placed it on an island similiar to Sri Lanke, and
other SF authors stole the idea from these two.
Damn, just think about the social skills I would have had if
I didn't spend my teens reading SF.
Viruses and Virii both both are acceptable answers.
Not because anybody's declared it, but because we
know what you're talking about. Those of us that had to
take mandatory latin classes need a place to vent this stuff.
thnx. dat's y i rite like dis. odder peeps complane, but
i say dat u can reed it so dont wine. inglish magers complane
to much.
Actually, I'll go with the anal twits here. Virus has no plural
in latin, thus you go with the english plural rules which says
add an -es. Its a quibble, but if you want to seem educated,
then understand what you are talking about, and what terms you
are using.
OTOH, it wouldn't suprise me if the 'virii' term passes into
the dictionaries in a dozen or so years. Other false latin
plurals, such as octopii, haven't, but virii seems to be in
common usage, and dictionaries don't only strive to show correct
usage and spelling, but they also incorporate new usages and spellings,
however inaccurate, if the usage or spelling is accepted as being
correct.
One thing I like is to have a lot of technical books by
my machine. Because of this, the next desk I buy will
have a shelf above where the monitors will go. Its
otherwise wasted space anyways.
Replace "draw frame-by-frame" with "create special effects frame-by-frame", and us Americans seem to be the sicko's that get off on tenticle rape. (Or haven't you seen the Evil Dead?)
Hell, take a random 1% of videos that are aimed for young males, and export them to Japan. Now tell me, what impression would the Japanese get about Americans?
However, depending on your tastes, perhaps the utilities 'fold' and
'sed' could help. Each paragraph seems to have no first-line indent,
and is seperated from the other paragraphs by 1 blank line (at least
in the file I grabbed at random from my downloaded 'library').
Chapter titles are buffered by several blank lines.
The beauty of text is that, if you know what you are doing and have
a unix environment, you can manipulate it however you want and
most of the transforms are rather trivial to do.
Unless images, obscure characters, or layout are important, nothing
beats text.
Actually, assuming that we have a +/- 23.5 degree margin of error (much less then the lock you work with), the difficulty is only 8x greater. Assume this: Lets say you have 9 levels for the depth of the notch. Then, you have angles of 0, 45, 90, 135, 180, 225, 270, and 315. The maximum amount of permutations is 8 * 9 - or 72 for each pin. Of course, odds are that you'll require only an average of 36 per pin. Of course, per pin, you'll end up using an average of four keys, since you can't reshape the angle (or can you? Another poster mentions that a little bit of lead solder works with normal locks).
Does this worry me? Not really. I have had the experience of knowing a few petty thieves, and locks are to keep honest people honest.
I'm thinking of one of those bedside tables that you can find in places like hospitals. They are [ shaped, so that they can slide over the bed. Allows you to spread out on the couch and still have the laptop on a firm surface. A quick google search turned up this picture which is what I mean (although antique isn't the way to go, I'm sure). Plus, find one that is adjustable, and has a drawer underneath.
I don't have the time or resources for this experiment at the moment, but here's what I'd like to see:
Purpose: To see if certifications help to get a foot in the door.
Method: We take a generic resume, and submit it to several companies looking for a specific job or jobs (network admin, sysadmin, general hardware repair, whatnot). However, some resumes will only list one type of certification, some will list several certifications, others will list none.
Test of Success: If we get an interview set up, then we consider that resume (and the certification or combination of certifications) successful.
Well, I laid it out for you, why doesn't someone try this test, put the results on a webpage, and submit it to slashdot?
Its may not be politically correct to say so, but I strongly believe that people think differently, and, on average, the way men tend to think is different from the way women tend to think.
I tend to go into "deep hack" mode rather easily, where I'm doing a task and all my attention is on that task. It can be coding, it can be watching a TV show, or even reading a book, but when I'm in deep hack mode, I seem to be subconciously filtering my inputs and only thinking about the task at hand. In short, once I'm in deep hack mode, my brain is no longer multitasking. However, the human mind can only hold so much information in short-term memory, so I benefit from keeping the last 15 lines of code in my head, instead of keeping 5 lines of code in my head and also thinking about the pizza in the oven, whether I locked the front door or not, what time it is, etc.
My wife does not seem to have deep hack mode. Her brain always multitasks. Therefore, its a rather low likelyhood that she'll set the house on fire by forgetting a pizza in the oven, but she can't obsess about problems the way I can.
m.e.l.l.e.n.t.i.n.e writes:
Did anyone actually go look at the drive listed? It's a 5400 rpm drive. My grandma can remember information faster than that.
It doesn't matter. There is only a certain speed that we can read off of magnetic medium. Sure, 7200 would result in faster seek times, but assuming that I have a relatively defragmented 120 GB drive where I'm streaming large amounts of data off of (say, mp3's or video), I shouldn't see that much of a performance hit. On the other hand, 7200rpm drives take more energy then 5400 rpms drives (since they spin faster), and more energy means more heat. Now, considering the price, potential use, and heat issues, the 5400rpm drive might be more effective.
Here on slashdot, the MCSE certification is bashed quite frequently. The 7 tests themselves are rather competent, and do deal with MS-OS issues, but due to the amount of schools out there that are willing to teach answers to specific questions, MCSE certification-holders tend to have a wide range of competency.
The A+ seems to be only worse. Haven't checked Network+ or CCNA yet, but I'd be surprized if there wasn't similiar practices with those certification programs.
The A+ wouldn't be my ideal test for first-tier general PC repair competence, but at the same time, its not a bad little test.
When I look at certs, I use them as guildlines for what I should know. I'd rather have the knowledge for the field of knowledge being tested, then to be taught the answer for each question.
Cedric C. Girouard writes:
When did they start making dual-headed switchers ? If they exist, I'll buy one right now. But they're not taking my dual-head unless they pry it from my cold dead hands.:)
we noticed some systems had increased chassis temperatures due to poor design.
This bugs me. It sounds that its not a poor case design, but a well-designed case.
You don't want your case to be airtight. However, a case with plenty of ventilation is usually a bad design. Computers generate heat. If we have a case that only has a few holes, its relatively simple to throw in a fan or two (pointing in the right direction), and be reasonably sure that we have a constant amount of fresh (cool) air being pumped into the case. If we have a lot of ventilation in a case, then instead of the fans pushing air through the case, we'll have fans pushing air to the nearest outlet, thus allowing hotspots to build up in the case.
Basically, to make your computer happy, you want adequate airflow past the video chipset, the CPU, the power supply, and the north/south bridge chipset(s). You also want to give the HDDs room for heat to escape, and depending on the HDD, active cooling. I don't tend to use my optical media drives that often (CDRW & DVD), so I stick them in the top of the case, where heat tends to build up. Then I stick my 3 1/2" HDDs in the 5 1/2" bays left over, so heat can escape. One day I'll hook up a thermocouple and test HDD cooling setups.
First of all, 200 years is a long time. Look at your ancesters 200 years ago, they weren't winning any prizes.
Second, once a species becomes successful, it faces competition from itself. One solution to this self-induced competition is to radiate into new niches. Another problem is that climates do change as well, and all of a sudden, the successful forest creature doesn't have a lot of forests to live in. This is why, in relatively recent years (according to how geologists see the world), several purely carnivorous species turned into several species, including grass eaters. Take yourself. You are decended from tree-dwelling primates, which were decended from insect eaters. Just because your ancesters were damn efficient at eating flies all day doesn't mean you do.
Oh, btw, Dougal Douglas has a book out by the same theme, released 10 or so years ago. Title was "After Man, a Biology of the Future". The book is a little grim though in predicting that the amount of damage humans have done to certain species is irreplaceable, which leads to such things as rats becoming wolflike preditors and rabbits becoming antelopelike creatures.
If they are small offices or don't do much over the lan, just grab an old pentium, throw in a large enough hard drive for their needs, and install your network-fileshare-system-of-choice and sshd. If they are stuck on dialup, just have the servers accept call-ins as well. Once you get one configured how you like it, mirror it to the rest. Cheap, easy solution. (Oh, and buy UPSs. I know this is a non-profit, but they are worth every penny.)
Including the UPS, I'm guessing each machine could be configured for about 120GBs of storage without going overe $300. You're going to be hard pressed to find a NAT that will do the same thing for that price. Don't worry about the reliability of a home-brew solution - a properly setup NFS/Samba/sshd server will probably stay running until the hardware fails. Plus, all of the components are cheap, and easily replaceable.
Oh, one last thing : if they need backups, either look into rsyncing it to a main server, or teaching the secratery to swap tapes at the end of the day. Plus, you probably want to set up a cron job, timed so that every day, 2 or 3 of the machines email you with their status for the month.
Of course, I'm not in your shoes, and maybe something like a NAS/SAN is what you really need.
If you want to see the success of alternative OSes, don't push for linux on the desktop - push for open standards and cross platform programs. Right now, I can sit down at a linux machine or a windows machine, and use Open Office, Mozilla, the Gimp, Blender, and a ton of other programs. That is good.
I don't want to be tied to Microsoft. That doesn't mean I want to be tied to Linux either. (Although Linux would be a gentler master then windows). I prefer to have applications divorced from the data files which are divorced from the underlying OS. I don't want YetAnotherAudioApp that has its own enhanced file format that isn't cross platform. I want mp3s, I want oggs. I don't want to save my work in the unknown Microsoft Office whatever.doc format. Hell, I don't really like saving it in Open Office's.sxw really, but I know if its in.sxw, I could figure out the file format without too much difficulty, and at least Open Office is cross platform.
If you don't keep data in proprietary formats, its harder to get screwed in the long run.
I respectfully disagree. I believe the reason that humans had to work long hours to survive is because, quite frankly, we breed like rabbits.
This is also the force behind technological innovation. As soon as your current level of technology cannot feed you, you face two choices : starve, or innovate.
Slashdot Mirror
Skyshadow writes
[the benefits of SETI contact with an ET includes...] Fox could steal their reality shows and produce them on earth
Convinced me. SETI so that the networks have more shows to steal!
Seriously though, can you imagine the amount of pseudoscience that would be broadcasted if SETI came back as positive?
After all, that local nut has been talking about aliens for years. He was right, lets put him on the air.
Badram requires a simple download, dd to floppy, booting off the floppy, and making sure it started up okay. Then, you can leave it alone for a day while you let it make passes.
Anyways, assuming you are buying new ram and you want to be sure its okay, you'd have to do the same thing. And some older laptops have integrated onboard memory - the badram patch can work around that.
I have a 64M proprietary memory stick for an old toshiba laptop that will be arriving soon in the email - I will be using badram to test that when it comes.
What type of requirements do gov't IT jobs have?
I'm educationless, as well as lacking certifications, and I find that more then a few employers don't give me a second glance.
Heinlein had space elevators?
**Thinks**
Tunnel in the Sky : Transdimensional Gates
Rocket Ship Galileo : Rockets
Methuselah's Children : Rockets (I believe)
Red Planet : Rockets
Between Planets : Rockets
Rolling Stones : Rockets
Star Beast : Spaceships (I believe)
Citizen of the Galaxy : Spaceships
Moon is a Harsh Mistress : Magnetic Powered "Slings"
Friday : Spaceships
Orphans of the Sky : Spaceships
Podkayne of Mars : Rockets
Starman Jones : Spaceships and Rockets
Starship Troopers : Rockets and Spaceships
A note on the classification. I call anything that is propelled by throwing a mass backwards a "rocket", while any ship capable of intersteller transport that doesn't have its propulsion system explained is a "starship". And yes, this is all from memory (other then the book titles, which I googled for), so I have probably screwed up a few. Specifics that I remember include "the Rolling Stones", which was atomic rockets, "Friday" which was starships powered by a device developed by a lone inventor in his basement, and "Moon is a Harsh Mistress", which had magnetic "slings", to lift orbital material into space (it also probably had rockets, but I don't remember.) Some of Heinlein's later works *might* have had space elevators, but he seems to be a fan mostly of atomic rockets.
Clarke used the space elevator in "The Fountains of Paradise", as well as "3001". I believe someone said that Ben Bova used space elevators in the "Mars" series. In the first Uplift Trilogy book, humans had created space elevators, which were made obsolete by the arrival of the Galactics - but still impressed them anyways (David Brin). A few other later authors had used the idea as well. IIRC, a Russian scientist proposed the idea first, under the name of "Sky Hook", Clarke picked up the idea for the Fountains of Paradise, which placed it on an island similiar to Sri Lanke, and other SF authors stole the idea from these two.
Damn, just think about the social skills I would have had if I didn't spend my teens reading SF.
If electronic transmittions from a computer are considered faxes, and all faxes require a phone number...
I now understand the reason behind some usenet sigs. :)
Anonvmous Coward writes:
Viruses and Virii both both are acceptable answers. Not because anybody's declared it, but because we know what you're talking about. Those of us that had to take mandatory latin classes need a place to vent this stuff.
thnx. dat's y i rite like dis. odder peeps complane, but i say dat u can reed it so dont wine. inglish magers complane to much.
Actually, I'll go with the anal twits here. Virus has no plural in latin, thus you go with the english plural rules which says add an -es. Its a quibble, but if you want to seem educated, then understand what you are talking about, and what terms you are using.
OTOH, it wouldn't suprise me if the 'virii' term passes into the dictionaries in a dozen or so years. Other false latin plurals, such as octopii, haven't, but virii seems to be in common usage, and dictionaries don't only strive to show correct usage and spelling, but they also incorporate new usages and spellings, however inaccurate, if the usage or spelling is accepted as being correct.
One thing I like is to have a lot of technical books by my machine. Because of this, the next desk I buy will have a shelf above where the monitors will go. Its otherwise wasted space anyways.
The Devil and David Webster, for all you programmers out there.
Replace "draw frame-by-frame" with "create special effects frame-by-frame", and us Americans seem to be the sicko's that get off on tenticle rape. (Or haven't you seen the Evil Dead?)
Hell, take a random 1% of videos that are aimed for young males, and export them to Japan. Now tell me, what impression would the Japanese get about Americans?
Actually, they look fine to me in vim. :)
However, depending on your tastes, perhaps the utilities 'fold' and 'sed' could help. Each paragraph seems to have no first-line indent, and is seperated from the other paragraphs by 1 blank line (at least in the file I grabbed at random from my downloaded 'library'). Chapter titles are buffered by several blank lines.
The beauty of text is that, if you know what you are doing and have a unix environment, you can manipulate it however you want and most of the transforms are rather trivial to do.
Unless images, obscure characters, or layout are important, nothing beats text.
Actually, assuming that we have a +/- 23.5 degree margin of error (much less then the lock you work with), the difficulty is only 8x greater. Assume this: Lets say you have 9 levels for the depth of the notch. Then, you have angles of 0, 45, 90, 135, 180, 225, 270, and 315. The maximum amount of permutations is 8 * 9 - or 72 for each pin. Of course, odds are that you'll require only an average of 36 per pin. Of course, per pin, you'll end up using an average of four keys, since you can't reshape the angle (or can you? Another poster mentions that a little bit of lead solder works with normal locks).
Does this worry me? Not really. I have had the experience of knowing a few petty thieves, and locks are to keep honest people honest.
I'm thinking of one of those bedside tables that you can find in places like hospitals. They are [ shaped, so that they can slide over the bed. Allows you to spread out on the couch and still have the laptop on a firm surface. A quick google search turned up this picture which is what I mean (although antique isn't the way to go, I'm sure). Plus, find one that is adjustable, and has a drawer underneath.
I don't have the time or resources for this experiment at the moment, but here's what I'd like to see:
Purpose: To see if certifications help to get a foot in the door.
Method: We take a generic resume, and submit it to several companies looking for a specific job or jobs (network admin, sysadmin, general hardware repair, whatnot). However, some resumes will only list one type of certification, some will list several certifications, others will list none.
Test of Success: If we get an interview set up, then we consider that resume (and the certification or combination of certifications) successful.
Well, I laid it out for you, why doesn't someone try this test, put the results on a webpage, and submit it to slashdot?
Its may not be politically correct to say so, but I strongly believe that people think differently, and, on average, the way men tend to think is different from the way women tend to think.
I tend to go into "deep hack" mode rather easily, where I'm doing a task and all my attention is on that task. It can be coding, it can be watching a TV show, or even reading a book, but when I'm in deep hack mode, I seem to be subconciously filtering my inputs and only thinking about the task at hand. In short, once I'm in deep hack mode, my brain is no longer multitasking. However, the human mind can only hold so much information in short-term memory, so I benefit from keeping the last 15 lines of code in my head, instead of keeping 5 lines of code in my head and also thinking about the pizza in the oven, whether I locked the front door or not, what time it is, etc.
My wife does not seem to have deep hack mode. Her brain always multitasks. Therefore, its a rather low likelyhood that she'll set the house on fire by forgetting a pizza in the oven, but she can't obsess about problems the way I can.
m.e.l.l.e.n.t.i.n.e writes:
Did anyone actually go look at the drive listed? It's a 5400 rpm drive. My grandma can remember information faster than that.
It doesn't matter. There is only a certain speed that we can read off of magnetic medium. Sure, 7200 would result in faster seek times, but assuming that I have a relatively defragmented 120 GB drive where I'm streaming large amounts of data off of (say, mp3's or video), I shouldn't see that much of a performance hit. On the other hand, 7200rpm drives take more energy then 5400 rpms drives (since they spin faster), and more energy means more heat. Now, considering the price, potential use, and heat issues, the 5400rpm drive might be more effective.
Here on slashdot, the MCSE certification is bashed quite frequently. The 7 tests themselves are rather competent, and do deal with MS-OS issues, but due to the amount of schools out there that are willing to teach answers to specific questions, MCSE certification-holders tend to have a wide range of competency.
The A+ seems to be only worse. Haven't checked Network+ or CCNA yet, but I'd be surprized if there wasn't similiar practices with those certification programs.
The A+ wouldn't be my ideal test for first-tier general PC repair competence, but at the same time, its not a bad little test.
When I look at certs, I use them as guildlines for what I should know. I'd rather have the knowledge for the field of knowledge being tested, then to be taught the answer for each question.
Just my $.02
Cedric C. Girouard writes: :)
When did they start making dual-headed switchers ? If they exist, I'll buy one right now. But they're not taking my dual-head unless they pry it from my cold dead hands.
Er, have you tried google? Here are some pricey dualhead KVMs. Of course, a KVM and a monitor switch would work as well.
we noticed some systems had increased chassis temperatures due to poor design.
This bugs me. It sounds that its not a poor case design, but a well-designed case.
You don't want your case to be airtight. However, a case with plenty of ventilation is usually a bad design. Computers generate heat. If we have a case that only has a few holes, its relatively simple to throw in a fan or two (pointing in the right direction), and be reasonably sure that we have a constant amount of fresh (cool) air being pumped into the case. If we have a lot of ventilation in a case, then instead of the fans pushing air through the case, we'll have fans pushing air to the nearest outlet, thus allowing hotspots to build up in the case.
Basically, to make your computer happy, you want adequate airflow past the video chipset, the CPU, the power supply, and the north/south bridge chipset(s). You also want to give the HDDs room for heat to escape, and depending on the HDD, active cooling. I don't tend to use my optical media drives that often (CDRW & DVD), so I stick them in the top of the case, where heat tends to build up. Then I stick my 3 1/2" HDDs in the 5 1/2" bays left over, so heat can escape. One day I'll hook up a thermocouple and test HDD cooling setups.
You might not understand evolution.
First of all, 200 years is a long time. Look at your ancesters 200 years ago, they weren't winning any prizes.
Second, once a species becomes successful, it faces competition from itself. One solution to this self-induced competition is to radiate into new niches. Another problem is that climates do change as well, and all of a sudden, the successful forest creature doesn't have a lot of forests to live in. This is why, in relatively recent years (according to how geologists see the world), several purely carnivorous species turned into several species, including grass eaters. Take yourself. You are decended from tree-dwelling primates, which were decended from insect eaters. Just because your ancesters were damn efficient at eating flies all day doesn't mean you do.
Oh, btw, Dougal Douglas has a book out by the same theme, released 10 or so years ago. Title was "After Man, a Biology of the Future". The book is a little grim though in predicting that the amount of damage humans have done to certain species is irreplaceable, which leads to such things as rats becoming wolflike preditors and rabbits becoming antelopelike creatures.
Only 200 years it takes for death to die.
If they are small offices or don't do much over the lan, just grab an old pentium, throw in a large enough hard drive for their needs, and install your network-fileshare-system-of-choice and sshd. If they are stuck on dialup, just have the servers accept call-ins as well. Once you get one configured how you like it, mirror it to the rest. Cheap, easy solution. (Oh, and buy UPSs. I know this is a non-profit, but they are worth every penny.)
Including the UPS, I'm guessing each machine could be configured for about 120GBs of storage without going overe $300. You're going to be hard pressed to find a NAT that will do the same thing for that price. Don't worry about the reliability of a home-brew solution - a properly setup NFS/Samba/sshd server will probably stay running until the hardware fails. Plus, all of the components are cheap, and easily replaceable.
Oh, one last thing : if they need backups, either look into rsyncing it to a main server, or teaching the secratery to swap tapes at the end of the day. Plus, you probably want to set up a cron job, timed so that every day, 2 or 3 of the machines email you with their status for the month.
Of course, I'm not in your shoes, and maybe something like a NAS/SAN is what you really need.
If you want to see the success of alternative OSes, don't push for linux on the desktop - push for open standards and cross platform programs. Right now, I can sit down at a linux machine or a windows machine, and use Open Office, Mozilla, the Gimp, Blender, and a ton of other programs. That is good.
I don't want to be tied to Microsoft. That doesn't mean I want to be tied to Linux either. (Although Linux would be a gentler master then windows). I prefer to have applications divorced from the data files which are divorced from the underlying OS. I don't want YetAnotherAudioApp that has its own enhanced file format that isn't cross platform. I want mp3s, I want oggs. I don't want to save my work in the unknown Microsoft Office whatever .doc format. Hell, I don't really like saving it in Open Office's .sxw really, but I know if its in .sxw, I could figure out the file format without too much difficulty, and at least Open Office is cross platform.
If you don't keep data in proprietary formats, its harder to get screwed in the long run.
I respectfully disagree. I believe the reason that humans had to work long hours to survive is because, quite frankly, we breed like rabbits.
This is also the force behind technological innovation. As soon as your current level of technology cannot feed you, you face two choices : starve, or innovate.
No, that's North Dakota.
I'm still hoping that they'll invent trees here one day to block the wind.
Seriously though, don't dis Minnesota. Twin Cities are one of the largest urban centers in the US. Plus, its the home of Mystery Science Theater 3000!
So what do you call the 5-pin DIN connector when you are referring to the typical older keyboard style?