Other than the one crash where I had to manually kill the X processes, X usually doesn't freeze for me. The most common crash I get (which is, at times, more common for me than Win98 + netscape crashes on the same system) has to do with my mouse, so I'm guessing it's probably either a quirk with my laptop (Dell Inspiron 3200, with a built-in touchpad) or, as someone suggested to me, possibly GPM. Basically, when I try to switch from a console to X, I seem to have a one-in-ten or so chance of getting something like 'cannot open mouse: device busy' (can't remember the exact error), and then X exits with 'explicit kill or server shutdown', and I have to restart X, although the system itself is fine.
What actually happened that time is that X seemingly froze in the process of switching from a console back into X. Whenever I hit ALT-F7, I would get a blank screen, but the process list said that X was still running. CTRL-ALT-BKSP wouldn't do anything at the blank screen, so all I could really think of to do was kill the processes from a console and restart X; I didn't have to reboot the system entirely.
I've had X crash on me more times than I care to think about; it doesn't seem to like my laptop's mouse. Still, I've never once had it take down the OS with it; the worst scenario I've ever had was having to switch to a console and manually kill X-windows and every X process on the pid list.
http://www.ccsi.com/~mbrooks/dvorak/ is a good starting point if you're interested in the Dvorak layout; I tried it this past summer, and found it to be much easier on my hands, although I was reduced to a hunt-and-peck typist. One of these days I want to actually start learning to type on a Dvorak as quickly as I can on a QWERTY..
You may also want to check out the official page for the Dvorak keyboard layout at http://www.dvorakint.org, although it seems to be down at the moment.
There was also a handy little utility I had for Win9x that would let you switch layouts on the fly and learn to type with a Dvorak without buying one, but I've lost the link to it.. I'll post a followup if I find it again.
At this point, I don't think anyone can really say where Canada Post is going to take this, especially given the seeming lack of information on their web page, but I think this service has a lot of potential.
For example, take a situation I've been faced with recently: I'm a university student with no car living in a dorm about 20-30 mins walk away from the nearest post office that I'm aware of. I have to send money to someone elsewhere in Canada. Now, I can go to the bank (~5-10 mins away), get a money order, buy a stamp, buy an envelope, and find a way to mail letters on campus; or, I can walk all the way down to the post office, get a (slightly cheaper, IIRC) money order there, buy the stamp and envelope, and mail it. But now, if the CPC wished, we could have a third option: we know that the EPOB thing will enable you to pay at least some of your bills online, and possibly access other postal services as well. So why not have the ability to send money orders online? I can just authorize the CPC to yank X dollars out of my bank account, same as I would to pay a bill, and they deliver a money order of the appropriate amount to the address I give them.
Maybe I'm just lazy, but I think I would prefer the third option. It could easily arrive the next day, too - the CPC could just send the order to the post office closest to the recipient of the money order, and have that post office actually print off/fill out a physical money order, put it in an envelope, and toss it into the bin for the next day's delivery. So it saves time for both sides.
Similarly, the CPC could offer prepaid shipping on the EPOB. Right now, the CPC has a service called 'Xpresspost', which is basically in between couriers and normal surface/air mail. It's not weight-based, and you can just walk into a post office, buy the box size you want in 'regional delivery', 'national delivery', or 'international delivery' flavor. So why not sell those online? I spend a few minutes clicking and typing, and within a day or two they deliver the box to my door.
This service could be quite useful, even above and beyond what I've mentioned above. Now, all that remains to be seen is what Canada Post will actually do with it..
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Other than the one crash where I had to manually kill the X processes, X usually doesn't freeze for me. The most common crash I get (which is, at times, more common for me than Win98 + netscape crashes on the same system) has to do with my mouse, so I'm guessing it's probably either a quirk with my laptop (Dell Inspiron 3200, with a built-in touchpad) or, as someone suggested to me, possibly GPM. Basically, when I try to switch from a console to X, I seem to have a one-in-ten or so chance of getting something like 'cannot open mouse: device busy' (can't remember the exact error), and then X exits with 'explicit kill or server shutdown', and I have to restart X, although the system itself is fine.
What actually happened that time is that X seemingly froze in the process of switching from a console back into X. Whenever I hit ALT-F7, I would get a blank screen, but the process list said that X was still running. CTRL-ALT-BKSP wouldn't do anything at the blank screen, so all I could really think of to do was kill the processes from a console and restart X; I didn't have to reboot the system entirely.
I've had X crash on me more times than I care to think about; it doesn't seem to like my laptop's mouse. Still, I've never once had it take down the OS with it; the worst scenario I've ever had was having to switch to a console and manually kill X-windows and every X process on the pid list.
http://www.ccsi.com/~mbrooks/dvorak/ is a good starting point if you're interested in the Dvorak layout; I tried it this past summer, and found it to be much easier on my hands, although I was reduced to a hunt-and-peck typist. One of these days I want to actually start learning to type on a Dvorak as quickly as I can on a QWERTY..
You may also want to check out the official page for the Dvorak keyboard layout at http://www.dvorakint.org, although it seems to be down at the moment.
There was also a handy little utility I had for Win9x that would let you switch layouts on the fly and learn to type with a Dvorak without buying one, but I've lost the link to it.. I'll post a followup if I find it again.
At this point, I don't think anyone can really say where Canada Post is going to take this, especially given the seeming lack of information on their web page, but I think this service has a lot of potential.
For example, take a situation I've been faced with recently: I'm a university student with no car living in a dorm about 20-30 mins walk away from the nearest post office that I'm aware of. I have to send money to someone elsewhere in Canada. Now, I can go to the bank (~5-10 mins away), get a money order, buy a stamp, buy an envelope, and find a way to mail letters on campus; or, I can walk all the way down to the post office, get a (slightly cheaper, IIRC) money order there, buy the stamp and envelope, and mail it. But now, if the CPC wished, we could have a third option: we know that the EPOB thing will enable you to pay at least some of your bills online, and possibly access other postal services as well. So why not have the ability to send money orders online? I can just authorize the CPC to yank X dollars out of my bank account, same as I would to pay a bill, and they deliver a money order of the appropriate amount to the address I give them.
Maybe I'm just lazy, but I think I would prefer the third option. It could easily arrive the next day, too - the CPC could just send the order to the post office closest to the recipient of the money order, and have that post office actually print off/fill out a physical money order, put it in an envelope, and toss it into the bin for the next day's delivery. So it saves time for both sides.
Similarly, the CPC could offer prepaid shipping on the EPOB. Right now, the CPC has a service called 'Xpresspost', which is basically in between couriers and normal surface/air mail. It's not weight-based, and you can just walk into a post office, buy the box size you want in 'regional delivery', 'national delivery', or 'international delivery' flavor. So why not sell those online? I spend a few minutes clicking and typing, and within a day or two they deliver the box to my door.
This service could be quite useful, even above and beyond what I've mentioned above. Now, all that remains to be seen is what Canada Post will actually do with it..