More thinking about the articles and about Dvorak
on
The Myth of QWERTY
·
· Score: 1
First of all, my alignment. I've been typing QWERTY for 11 years beginning when I'm just a F.2 (in US standards, Grade 8) student. I didn't really choose QWERTY: there's no choice. I learn it because I think it is useful. And I learnt about Dvorak a year ago and really tried that and converted myself to be a Dvorak typist 3 months ago.
Back to the article now. Frankly speaking, I do not see what's the objective of the article, which is my first question. It seems to me that it tries to convince people that the Dvorak failure is not due to market failure. But that is the subject of the cited work "The Fable of the Keys", and this article seems to add no more argument nor additional evidence. It is just a restatement or reference to such work.
I've tried to read earlier posts here. I found reference to an article "Should technology choice be a concern of antitrust policy?", which use the cited work as a basis for the assertion that market failure did not apply to QWERTY. But then, after reading a little bit further, I found that "The Fable of Keys" asserted that "The benefit of Dvorak does not justify retraining of staffs", which is exactly a standard lock-in. I started to wonder how people actually think.
In fact, I believe the methodology of this work does not make much sense when the study is about "Is Dvorak better than QWERTY". It compares the rate of improvement between new Dvorak typists and old QWERTY typists. The Dvorak group do not enjoy the years of experience of typing enjoyed by QWERTY typists, and have never even attempted to type faster than they currently did. They doesn't even have a good motivation to try type faster, where QWERTY typists have abundent of reasons to try typing faster. Nor did the study address issues other than typing speed. If what you study is "which keymap is better", you got to use another experient, which employ individuals who never learnt how to type and never told about any story about which keymap is better. Without that sample, we have to rely on our own experience to "guess" which is better.
I also read posts that explain how they abandon Dvorak when they started the vi editor. I usually use Emacs, and since Emacs keymaps are generally keyboard-neutral there's no problem. But when I did use vi I actually comes up with the problems suggested by that post. But after a while, I found that it is not that uncomfortable using vi with Dvorak. Yes, there's no hjkl convenience. But are j and k really that far away? Not quite. How about h and l? Yes, they are really horrible. But there is something to balance that out: w and b are quite near and reachable in Dvorak. Don't forget that word movements are much more efficient way to navigate your text.
Then I try to find things that I can do and cannot do after switching to Dvorak, and try to find the missing links that prevent wide adoption. The only reason is: a huge switching cost. You have to renew every keyboard. And if you cannot make it happen overnight, we split ourselves into two parties typing different keyboards and cannot work on same machines. Modern operating systems does provide better "upgrade path", since you can install both keyboard mapping to a Win95 or Linux machine. But whenever you work at a new site, you end up doing the same exercise again. And nobody yet find THE way to switch between keymaps. Adding to the already long story, you have to relearn every keymap. I've said that Emacs is keyboard neutral, but that does not mean your brain use the keyboard neutral bindings. Any Dvorak learner will learn his lesson that your brain directly map the functionality like "next line" to positions on the keyboard like "left little finger left and down followed by striking the key left-low" (control-n). It needs quite some time to retrain your brain to use the keyboard neutral mapping, but soon it turns back to a (new) keyboard sensitive binding.
But that's not about which is better. That's about which is being used. What's being used is not necessarily what's better.
> So, you are saying that the value of my work is > only that which I can expect to get back if I > freely distribute the result? (zero)?
It is damned wrong that you can expect nothing back if you have free distribution. If Richard Stallman did not show it clearly enough, the whole OpenSource thing is to show you the contrary. In short, it tries to break the only way to reason that IP laws are needed.
> By that logic, nobody should be paid to code. > There aren't enough hobbyist programmers to > fulfill users' desire for programs.
Programs have their use. This makes it more unnecessary to have IP laws on them. If distributing a painting earns you nothing, you might not have the motive to produce it (some will, anyway). But if distributing programs (say, a word processor) do not earn you a penny, there will still be places (say, in the office) where the need of the program exceed the cost of producing it. Programs still get written.
> Why should I be forced to give away not only the > binaries for an application I develop, but also > the source code?
It seems that few people (especially those who do not like copyleft) get this. It is a basic right of any human being to keep things private. If you do not want to disclose something, nobody should be able to force you doing so. Richard Stallman had explicitly made strong negative comments that some "public licenses" (like ASPL and the early NPL) denying such right.
What GPL say is that "if you give it to somebody else, you must not restrict the one receiving your work". That is, you must not deny the right of others to copy, distribute, modify, disassemble, profile, etc. your work. Note that this is exactly the idea of freedom. You are not free to kill me, because by doing so you deny my basic freedom to live. You are not entitled to deny my freedom.
> Should artists be forced to give away their > paintings? No. Should authors have to give you a > copy of their books? No. Should a farmer have to > give you his produce? No.
Artists should not deny you from taking photos of their paintings (at least, when you're not using flash which can damage their painting). Authors should not restrict you from taking ideas from his story and write your own. Farmers should not say no to other farmers using exactly his method to grow their crops. They are all socialistic concepts. When people are not restricted, the whole society benefit. When they are restricted, only the first inventor benefit.
Nobody can force you into calling it GNU/Linux or Linux. No clause in the GPL asks for a "GNU" label. So calling the thing GNU/Linux (or anything else) depends on the people. If you don't like it, just refuse to do so.
On the other hand, it would be a stupid move to start rewriting things just because somebody asks you to call it something else (and without much chance in succeeding). The energy of free software comes from its users: the more people using it, the stronger it is. To rewrite things means to break up the user base into two camps, the FSF camp and the non-FSF camp. Now the number of testers for each camp is halved, the efforts needed to add more features is doubled, and so proprietary software companies have twice or more chance to divide and conquer them.
If you don't like it to be called GNU/Linux, just ignore RMS. Don't rebel in such a way which makes everybody lose.
Slashdot Mirror
First of all, my alignment. I've been typing QWERTY for 11 years beginning when I'm just a F.2 (in US standards, Grade 8) student. I didn't really choose QWERTY: there's no choice. I learn it because I think it is useful. And I learnt about Dvorak a year ago and really tried that and converted myself to be a Dvorak typist 3 months ago.
Back to the article now. Frankly speaking, I do not see what's the objective of the article, which is my first question. It seems to me that it tries to convince people that the Dvorak failure is not due to market failure. But that is the subject of the cited work "The Fable of the Keys", and this article seems to add no more argument nor additional evidence. It is just a restatement or reference to such work.
I've tried to read earlier posts here. I found reference to an article "Should technology choice be a concern of antitrust policy?", which use the cited work as a basis for the assertion that market failure did not apply to QWERTY. But then, after reading a little bit further, I found that "The Fable of Keys" asserted that "The benefit of Dvorak does not justify retraining of staffs", which is exactly a standard lock-in. I started to wonder how people actually think.
In fact, I believe the methodology of this work does not make much sense when the study is about "Is Dvorak better than QWERTY". It compares the rate of improvement between new Dvorak typists and old QWERTY typists. The Dvorak group do not enjoy the years of experience of typing enjoyed by QWERTY typists, and have never even attempted to type faster than they currently did. They doesn't even have a good motivation to try type faster, where QWERTY typists have abundent of reasons to try typing faster. Nor did the study address issues other than typing speed. If what you study is "which keymap is better", you got to use another experient, which employ individuals who never learnt how to type and never told about any story about which keymap is better. Without that sample, we have to rely on our own experience to "guess" which is better.
I also read posts that explain how they abandon Dvorak when they started the vi editor. I usually use Emacs, and since Emacs keymaps are generally keyboard-neutral there's no problem. But when I did use vi I actually comes up with the problems suggested by that post. But after a while, I found that it is not that uncomfortable using vi with Dvorak. Yes, there's no hjkl convenience. But are j and k really that far away? Not quite. How about h and l? Yes, they are really horrible. But there is something to balance that out: w and b are quite near and reachable in Dvorak. Don't forget that word movements are much more efficient way to navigate your text.
Then I try to find things that I can do and cannot do after switching to Dvorak, and try to find the missing links that prevent wide adoption. The only reason is: a huge switching cost. You have to renew every keyboard. And if you cannot make it happen overnight, we split ourselves into two parties typing different keyboards and cannot work on same machines. Modern operating systems does provide better "upgrade path", since you can install both keyboard mapping to a Win95 or Linux machine. But whenever you work at a new site, you end up doing the same exercise again. And nobody yet find THE way to switch between keymaps. Adding to the already long story, you have to relearn every keymap. I've said that Emacs is keyboard neutral, but that does not mean your brain use the keyboard neutral bindings. Any Dvorak learner will learn his lesson that your brain directly map the functionality like "next line" to positions on the keyboard like "left little finger left and down followed by striking the key left-low" (control-n). It needs quite some time to retrain your brain to use the keyboard neutral mapping, but soon it turns back to a (new) keyboard sensitive binding.
But that's not about which is better. That's about which is being used. What's being used is not necessarily what's better.
> So, you are saying that the value of my work is
> only that which I can expect to get back if I
> freely distribute the result? (zero)?
It is damned wrong that you can expect nothing back if you have free distribution. If Richard Stallman did not show it clearly enough, the whole OpenSource thing is to show you the contrary. In short, it tries to break the only way to reason that IP laws are needed.
> By that logic, nobody should be paid to code.
> There aren't enough hobbyist programmers to
> fulfill users' desire for programs.
Programs have their use. This makes it more unnecessary to have IP laws on them. If distributing a painting earns you nothing, you might not have the motive to produce it (some will, anyway). But if distributing programs (say, a word processor) do not earn you a penny, there will still be places (say, in the office) where the need of the program exceed the cost of producing it. Programs still get written.
> Why should I be forced to give away not only the
> binaries for an application I develop, but also
> the source code?
It seems that few people (especially those who do not like copyleft) get this. It is a basic right of any human being to keep things private. If you do not want to disclose something, nobody should be able to force you doing so. Richard Stallman had explicitly made strong negative comments that some "public licenses" (like ASPL and the early NPL) denying such right.
What GPL say is that "if you give it to somebody else, you must not restrict the one receiving your work". That is, you must not deny the right of others to copy, distribute, modify, disassemble, profile, etc. your work. Note that this is exactly the idea of freedom. You are not free to kill me, because by doing so you deny my basic freedom to live. You are not entitled to deny my freedom.
> Should artists be forced to give away their
> paintings? No. Should authors have to give you a
> copy of their books? No. Should a farmer have to
> give you his produce? No.
Artists should not deny you from taking photos of their paintings (at least, when you're not using flash which can damage their painting). Authors should not restrict you from taking ideas from his story and write your own. Farmers should not say no to other farmers using exactly his method to grow their crops. They are all socialistic concepts. When people are not restricted, the whole society benefit. When they are restricted, only the first inventor benefit.
Nobody can force you into calling it GNU/Linux or Linux. No clause in the GPL asks for a "GNU" label. So calling the thing GNU/Linux (or anything else) depends on the people. If you don't like it, just refuse to do so.
On the other hand, it would be a stupid move to start rewriting things just because somebody asks you to call it something else (and without much chance in succeeding). The energy of free software comes from its users: the more people using it, the stronger it is. To rewrite things means to break up the user base into two camps, the FSF camp and the non-FSF camp. Now the number of testers for each camp is halved, the efforts needed to add more features is doubled, and so proprietary software companies have twice or more chance to divide and conquer them.
If you don't like it to be called GNU/Linux, just ignore RMS. Don't rebel in such a way which makes everybody lose.