Man, this is probably the most insightful piece of writing on the subject of keyboard layout that i've ever read. And the subject is rather important. There are definitely serious problems with the current keyboard arrangements.
Along similar lines to what the above poster proposes, I believe that consigning the spacebar to just one of the two halves (they way it's sometimes done on some "natural" split keyboards), and reserving the other side to shift, or perhaps even better - backspace. I have realized (just now as I write this, in fact) that I always hit the space bar with one of my thumbs, the other one being actually completely wasted.
It would be a very convenient and also quite natural layout. On the right there's the spacebar, and on the left is the backspace (intuitively corresponding to a backwards motion). The shift and control keys could then be either below those two large buttons, or perhaps to the side, but still within reach of the thumbs.
If something similar could also be done with the enter key, a great keyboard would result, from a usability point of view.
Re:Obligatory Futurama reference ...
on
3D Monitor
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· Score: 1
This is crazy fascinating.. I never realized about the dominant eye, which I do have, kind of.. Is there any large tangible benefit I can now extract from this knowledge?
Kind of helps make up for all the bad stuff in the world.
That is precisely the reason why there is so much media attention to this, as well as to the Mars rovers, and the much-hyped plans for sending men to Mars again.
For a cross-section of the populace it covers up a lot of the administration's fuck-ups and tries to focus attention away from them. (Obviously, there's a lot of people who couldn't give a rats ass about this one way or another.) But to people like you and me, it's a big deal. And interestingly enough it just so happens that you and me might be the people who are more likely to effect some kind of change, as we are the most in the balance about the issues around us, being (hopefully) better educated and thus more empowered than a lot of other people.
i agree with the parent poster. i used to be amazed by all the "wireless-cam-in-your-fridge-to-reorder-your-milk" applications, but they really don't seem to be worth the trouble. not for a long while anyway. right now, i wouldn't trust or need anything to do that, and i think it would be way more trouble than it's worth to implement this "pay from any meter in the city" thing. i mean, why? if you want to go that far, just have pre-pay, or let it charge you extra on the card you already gave it at a pre-agreed rate.
i mean, really, where is this all going? is it really that incredible? or unnecessary. the more slashdot i read, the more i literally think of the starving children all over the world.
lame article. flat. non-inspired. they talk about exactly the things she doesn't like people to talk about. and "in her spare time, she downs chai while arguing philosophy with friends." i mean, i guess all of our lives are like this, but why trivialize? anyway, i could've done much better.
While I agree with much of what the author says, I find his deliberately careless use of the term "geek" annoying. I agree that escapism is a growing problem today, with the internet, and to a lesser extent science-fiction and fantasy, contributing to it.
However, extending this conclusion to mean that "geeks" inheriting the earth (a doubtful proposition to start with) shall be to its detriment is simply irresponsible use of rethoric. The whole reason for why the term "geek" has become much more legitimate and non-insulting is because "geeks" exert a growing amount of influence in this world, and engage with its modern problems rather better than many "non-geeky" types. And while it can be argued that the influence they exert isn't in this world, but in a virtual one, the distinction between the two is rapidly evaporating.
So while the author presents a well-argued view of escapism being a growing concern today, his conclusion is an unnecessarily emotional departure from the more level-headed presentation of the rest of the piece.
Wow. I must say this is quite a brilliant way of looking at software. Well, I guess that means it hasn't crystallized quite the same way in my brain before. But it's essentially very true. Software solves problems. It's easiest to solve problems when you're closest to the source of the problem and to the people who need solutions. Thus, if you're one of those internal staff developers, you just talk to your users, solve their particular problem right on the spot.
There's a huge overhead of packaging the software and making it usable by a general public that's gets even more complex the further you're removed from your users/clients.
I like the analogy with software being more like a set of instructions on how to do something rather than as a physical product that does something. It's kind of both, of course, but it's very interesting to think about the different aspects involved.
Damn, this turned out to be one of the most personally relevant threads on slashdot in ages. I have a problem with this all the time. I feel the same things about games as I feel about my childhood. I can remember all the fun and pleasure that I derived from playing games, just like I can recall with great fondness the books I read as a child or the places I went. But when I actually try to play now, it's mostly just annoying or only mildly entertaining.
And I agree with you completely, I just can't bring to remove the weight of "this is a complete utter waste of my time that just leaves me drained" feeling that I get when I play games. It's actually an almost universal sign of depression - the only times I start to play a lot is when other stuff starts to really get to me and that's the only thing I can come up with to escape.
But it's so obviously a waste, that no matter what I do - play games or force myself not to - I feel guilt or regret or something. (Except of course when I'm actually doing things that are better.)
This is a very bad review.
on
Decipher
·
· Score: 1
It should have been caught by the moderators, or whatever we have on this site, and not published. In lue of that, I want to mod down the review itself, so it can be taken off the front page.
It's just terribly written, and I feel it decreases the potential readership of this book. I'm less likely to read this book now that I've heard about it than if I randomly hit it on a bookshelf and read the summary in the back.
There's a small but very cool technology museum at MIT that even most people in Boston don't seem to know about. It has all kinds of very neat things, like an exhibit about MIT's research into robotic walking, an amazing collection of moving sculptures by Arthur Ganson, a very good hologram exhibit, and a lot more.
I don't know if you're looking for this sort of thing, but it was personally for me one of the best museum visits ever.
Slashdot Mirror
The author stresses how the whole assumption of television is that the viewers don't pay for the content, and how it's impossible to change.
He's missing all of the last 5 years of cable or so - with all the shows that HBO has released which have done very well on video/dvd.
Bah. And backspace by itself makes a lot of sense for right-to-left, yes?
Man, this is probably the most insightful piece of writing on the subject of keyboard layout that i've ever read. And the subject is rather important. There are definitely serious problems with the current keyboard arrangements.
Along similar lines to what the above poster proposes, I believe that consigning the spacebar to just one of the two halves (they way it's sometimes done on some "natural" split keyboards), and reserving the other side to shift, or perhaps even better - backspace. I have realized (just now as I write this, in fact) that I always hit the space bar with one of my thumbs, the other one being actually completely wasted.
It would be a very convenient and also quite natural layout. On the right there's the spacebar, and on the left is the backspace (intuitively corresponding to a backwards motion). The shift and control keys could then be either below those two large buttons, or perhaps to the side, but still within reach of the thumbs.
If something similar could also be done with the enter key, a great keyboard would result, from a usability point of view.
This is crazy fascinating.. I never realized about the dominant eye, which I do have, kind of.. Is there any large tangible benefit I can now extract from this knowledge?
Kind of helps make up for all the bad stuff in the world.
That is precisely the reason why there is so much media attention to this, as well as to the Mars rovers, and the much-hyped plans for sending men to Mars again.
For a cross-section of the populace it covers up a lot of the administration's fuck-ups and tries to focus attention away from them. (Obviously, there's a lot of people who couldn't give a rats ass about this one way or another.) But to people like you and me, it's a big deal. And interestingly enough it just so happens that you and me might be the people who are more likely to effect some kind of change, as we are the most in the balance about the issues around us, being (hopefully) better educated and thus more empowered than a lot of other people.
i agree with the parent poster. i used to be amazed by all the "wireless-cam-in-your-fridge-to-reorder-your-milk" applications, but they really don't seem to be worth the trouble. not for a long while anyway. right now, i wouldn't trust or need anything to do that, and i think it would be way more trouble than it's worth to implement this "pay from any meter in the city" thing. i mean, why? if you want to go that far, just have pre-pay, or let it charge you extra on the card you already gave it at a pre-agreed rate.
i mean, really, where is this all going? is it really that incredible? or unnecessary. the more slashdot i read, the more i literally think of the starving children all over the world.
lame article. flat. non-inspired. they talk about exactly the things she doesn't like people to talk about. and "in her spare time, she downs chai while arguing philosophy with friends." i mean, i guess all of our lives are like this, but why trivialize? anyway, i could've done much better.
it's always the lawyers' fault!
While I agree with much of what the author says, I find his deliberately careless use of the term "geek" annoying. I agree that escapism is a growing problem today, with the internet, and to a lesser extent science-fiction and fantasy, contributing to it.
However, extending this conclusion to mean that "geeks" inheriting the earth (a doubtful proposition to start with) shall be to its detriment is simply irresponsible use of rethoric. The whole reason for why the term "geek" has become much more legitimate and non-insulting is because "geeks" exert a growing amount of influence in this world, and engage with its modern problems rather better than many "non-geeky" types. And while it can be argued that the influence they exert isn't in this world, but in a virtual one, the distinction between the two is rapidly evaporating.
So while the author presents a well-argued view of escapism being a growing concern today, his conclusion is an unnecessarily emotional departure from the more level-headed presentation of the rest of the piece.
Wow. I must say this is quite a brilliant way of looking at software. Well, I guess that means it hasn't crystallized quite the same way in my brain before. But it's essentially very true. Software solves problems. It's easiest to solve problems when you're closest to the source of the problem and to the people who need solutions. Thus, if you're one of those internal staff developers, you just talk to your users, solve their particular problem right on the spot.
There's a huge overhead of packaging the software and making it usable by a general public that's gets even more complex the further you're removed from your users/clients.
I like the analogy with software being more like a set of instructions on how to do something rather than as a physical product that does something. It's kind of both, of course, but it's very interesting to think about the different aspects involved.
It's kind of cute how they set it up at just there right height for a japanese person to read - 172.6cm.
Damn, this turned out to be one of the most personally relevant threads on slashdot in ages. I have a problem with this all the time. I feel the same things about games as I feel about my childhood. I can remember all the fun and pleasure that I derived from playing games, just like I can recall with great fondness the books I read as a child or the places I went. But when I actually try to play now, it's mostly just annoying or only mildly entertaining.
And I agree with you completely, I just can't bring to remove the weight of "this is a complete utter waste of my time that just leaves me drained" feeling that I get when I play games. It's actually an almost universal sign of depression - the only times I start to play a lot is when other stuff starts to really get to me and that's the only thing I can come up with to escape.
But it's so obviously a waste, that no matter what I do - play games or force myself not to - I feel guilt or regret or something. (Except of course when I'm actually doing things that are better.)
big fuckin' suprise! Slashdot, debian and vim! Who'd've thought?
ha
It should have been caught by the moderators, or whatever we have on this site, and not published. In lue of that, I want to mod down the review itself, so it can be taken off the front page.
It's just terribly written, and I feel it decreases the potential readership of this book. I'm less likely to read this book now that I've heard about it than if I randomly hit it on a bookshelf and read the summary in the back.
There's a small but very cool technology museum at MIT that even most people in Boston don't seem to know about. It has all kinds of very neat things, like an exhibit about MIT's research into robotic walking, an amazing collection of moving sculptures by Arthur Ganson, a very good hologram exhibit, and a lot more.
I don't know if you're looking for this sort of thing, but it was personally for me one of the best museum visits ever.