Well, that's what I mean. A lot of Dvorak users seem to be worse than Mac users. (Yes, I know that it's impossible to be more fanatical than a Mac user. Bear with me.) It's almost as if I've insulted their faith.
Agreed. Although I'll admit to being an...afficianado, zealots are just annoying.
You've thrown me for a loop there. Isn't the point behind Dvorak increasing productivity?
I don't know if this is the focus of most Dvorak users. I've certainly heard it argued that Dvorak is faster, and I've been convinced that it can be. But I wouldn't try to convince anyone that they should try it purely for reasons of speed.
There are certain professions where improving one portion will not help increase productivity. For example, if you could instantly have your code appear on the screen merely by thinking, it still wouldn't speed things up appreciably; most of your time would still be spent on designing and debugging.
I don't know that I agree here...I find coding practices to be highly subjective. Speed may help some and hinder others.
However, the typing pool isn't one. You had a straightforward system: the exectutive dictated to a girl from the steno pool who took it to a girl in the typing pool to convert into letters and memos. The faster the typing, the more documents were produced. We're not talking rocket science here.
Of course more speed results in more productivity in the typing pool. But implicit in this example is the use of mechanical typewriters. QWERTY's main purpose was to keep the linkages from jamming. Not speed/productivity.
Which is my point. QWERTY works. Dvorak works. But neither is significantly better than the other.
I said, and agree, that both are useful; but not that they are equal. But again, this is highly subjective. I find that there are compelling arguments to the fact that Dvorak:
can be faster
is more comfortable
is less likely to cause RSI
But all of this is pointless to argue about. I would encourage anyone interested to try Dvorak and then to decide for themserves. I once made the same arguments you mention; then I tried Dvorak and haven't gone back.
What the hell are you on about? Who said anything about Dvorak being suppressed?
As for commercial market penetration: who knows? There's plenty of arguably superior products that have gone the way of the Dodo.
As for corporate adoption: where do you get the idea that, if the speed increases are true, increased typing speed translates to a commensurate increase in overall productivity; or, that the initial resistance to adoption of equipment is the same as changing a basic, and arguably perfectly serviceable, method of using said equipment?
Perhaps it is you who are experiencing the paranoid fantasy.
1) Read that Dvorak was faster/better (told people).
2) Read that it wasn't (told people).
3) My wife tried Dvorak and said I should check it out. I told her it wasn't that great. I did some more research, found out it was (arguably) better and tried it.
4) Now my wife and I both use Dvorak exclusively.
All speed arguments aside, the main reason I changed my mind was that I found it to be more comfortable.
That's what I'm hoping will become the norm. I.E. a general willingness to pay for quality, possibly "closed", software on open platforms. I agree that platforms themselves should be free from control. But I don't think that the same criteria should necessarily apply to all applications targeting open platforms.
I've actually been considering that. There are three things that bug me though: I got burned when I bought an 840 AV (remember that line?), Steve Jobs (Bill w/ a better dress sense), and the high cost.
For nearly all of my time as a professional dev guy I've cut Redmond some some slack for a few reasons:
It's convenient for ISV's to concern themselves with a single platform. Way before my (professional) time, it'd have been tough for a smaller outfit to target all the popular platforms: atari, commodore, amiga, PC, Apple/Mac, various DOS flavors, etc. They pretty much picked one, maybe more, and gambled that they'd still exist and/or remain popular.
Books, third party dev tools, publications, and training (formal and informal) have long been plentiful.
Many software companies (ok...not as many now) target MS platforms.
And a few more...
But as of late I'm having a change of heart. For the following reasons (and others):
nefarious upgrade practices
restrictive licensing practices
the lessening of system level tools/techniques available to third party developers
still more incursions into third party developer space (search engines, email, possibly anti-virus)
I've about had it with Redmond. I don't even really want to create software for their platforms anymore. Still, I'm not in the RMS camp; I like the idea of making money on software, possibly by restricting the availability of the source code.
I do recognize the benefit of open/free platforms and frameworks. My question is this: is there a place for proprietary (read 'closed') applications on said open/free platforms and frameworks?
Software, or digital content, doesn't wear out. Even if a company could produce a perfect piece of software, office suite or otherwise, it'd be detrimental to do so under current business models. "Software as service" subscriptions could address this, but customers don't seem to go for it. To keep revenue coming in customers have to be convinced, cajoled, or forced into upgrades.
OK, none of this is news to anyone...but what are some viable commercial alternatives? The Open Source model tends to favor charging for support/service, one time charges for feature creation/customization, and donations; micropayments for content has been tried; and Macromedia and Adobe have had success with a "free-to-view pay-to-create" model.
The current "artificial upgrade" seems unethical and possibly doomed. Are traditional business obsolete in the digital arena? What's next?
You're probably right. My father-in-law, a psychologist, was reading about various historical smart people and thought the descriptions of their personalities/habits sounded consistent with people diagnosed as ADD/ADHD.
...as opposed to an overused perjorative. An except from http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Consp iracy (watch out for the extra space in 'Conspiracy').
"Often, what are commonly called "conspiracy theories" are employed by people who would like to believe some conclusion but have little if any evidence for it. They therefore refer to a supposed conspiracy to justify both their conclusion and the fact that they cannot support it with evidence which, naturally, the conspirators are actively concealing. Such theories cannot be falsified; a conspiracy theorist takes lack of evidence for their theory, or even evidence that directly contradicts their theory, to mean that an extremely powerful conspiracy has either suppressed or fabricated the evidence in question."
I'm tired of seeing the label "conspiracy theory" invoked as a magical incantation to stop rational arguments before they even start...
Re:Nice office... but who is going to pay for this
on
The Bionic Office
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
His point wasn't about getting luxury items; it was that this setup is an investment that will result in increased programmer productivity and therefore profit. He may or may not be correct, but I don't think that it's the same as the dot com idiocy.
Go read their faq. They claim that transactions are unnecessary. I don't know that I buy in to their pitch but they have already answered your critiques.
A couple of years ago I might have gone for that lobby...but having switched to both Dvorak and the TouchStream in the last year and a half, I'm having enough trouble getting supporters;)
That's pretty damn cool. Come to think of it, I used to work with a guy who'd lost most of his finger motion in both hands but had learned to type rather quickly with the edge of his palms. He'd get a kind of rolling action with certain keys combos. Here's to adaptation;)
It's a lot more "natural" to have the ctrl key available w/o having to curl your little finger down.
E.G...originally I started "pc" hardware; when I first started coding for *nix platforms I decided to learn emacs (yes...I also learned vi) and couldn't figure out why someone, Stallman I think, would be so crazy as to use crlt <x> - ctrl <y> key sequences. I felt like emacs was designed to make turn my left hand into a claw...then I saw the Happy Hacking keyboard and the light went on.
I get the impression that the majority of the keyboards in the "*nix hardware" world were like this originally. Personally I find this placement much more comfortable on any platform. Sysinternals has a free keyboard driver (with source I think) that will swap your caps-lock and ctrl keys at the kernel level. It works great for everything but SoftICE (obviously). I used this driver for about 3 years...until I bought a TouchStream. But that's something else;)
Typical 'tough on crime' idiocy. You forgot to say 'Give a fair trial and hang 'em' or maybe 'It's time to clean up this town'.
The US legal system was not set up to make it easy to stamp out crime. It was set up to ensure due process, and protect the rights of the accused.
Sentences for the guilty aren't intended to match with your naive and/or hyper-literal application of a legal definition.
As for raising kids...irrelevent.
Lastly, it's every citizen's DUTY to be aware of what government does with regard civil and legal rights. It is also every citizen's duty to challenge any abridgement of those rights.
Homeland Security tested and Ashcroft approved! Operators are standing by to take your...um...order...
That must have been a fun requirements meeting:
on
MRAM in 2004?
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· Score: 1
It has to be "non-volatile, inexpensive, fast and low-power" hehehe...yeah...and fire...hehe...and lots of chicks...hehehe...that'd be cool...and we want it now...yeah...hehehe.
xp is just 2000 with a colourful interface and few updates for the latest hardware
No it isn't. Win2k is version 5.0 (as in NT), XP is 5.1. That dot rev means more than a new gui, and 3rd party hardware drivers don't enter into it...it means changes to the kernel. Some of which include:
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed. Although I'll admit to being an...afficianado, zealots are just annoying.
You've thrown me for a loop there. Isn't the point behind Dvorak increasing productivity?
I don't know if this is the focus of most Dvorak users. I've certainly heard it argued that Dvorak is faster, and I've been convinced that it can be. But I wouldn't try to convince anyone that they should try it purely for reasons of speed.
There are certain professions where improving one portion will not help increase productivity. For example, if you could instantly have your code appear on the screen merely by thinking, it still wouldn't speed things up appreciably; most of your time would still be spent on designing and debugging.
I don't know that I agree here...I find coding practices to be highly subjective. Speed may help some and hinder others.
However, the typing pool isn't one. You had a straightforward system: the exectutive dictated to a girl from the steno pool who took it to a girl in the typing pool to convert into letters and memos. The faster the typing, the more documents were produced. We're not talking rocket science here.
Of course more speed results in more productivity in the typing pool. But implicit in this example is the use of mechanical typewriters. QWERTY's main purpose was to keep the linkages from jamming. Not speed/productivity.
Which is my point. QWERTY works. Dvorak works. But neither is significantly better than the other.
I said, and agree, that both are useful; but not that they are equal. But again, this is highly subjective. I find that there are compelling arguments to the fact that Dvorak:
- can be faster
- is more comfortable
- is less likely to cause RSI
But all of this is pointless to argue about. I would encourage anyone interested to try Dvorak and then to decide for themserves. I once made the same arguments you mention; then I tried Dvorak and haven't gone back.What the hell are you on about? Who said anything about Dvorak being suppressed?
As for commercial market penetration: who knows? There's plenty of arguably superior products that have gone the way of the Dodo.
As for corporate adoption: where do you get the idea that, if the speed increases are true, increased typing speed translates to a commensurate increase in overall productivity; or, that the initial resistance to adoption of equipment is the same as changing a basic, and arguably perfectly serviceable, method of using said equipment?
Perhaps it is you who are experiencing the paranoid fantasy.
No Problem, the same thing happened to me :)
My story went like this:
1) Read that Dvorak was faster/better (told people).
2) Read that it wasn't (told people).
3) My wife tried Dvorak and said I should check it out. I told her it wasn't that great. I did some more research, found out it was (arguably) better and tried it.
4) Now my wife and I both use Dvorak exclusively.
All speed arguments aside, the main reason I changed my mind was that I found it to be more comfortable.
It's not a myth. A debatable point perhaps. As for checking the facts, here's some more.
...as witnessed by my wife, Morgan Fairchild...whom I've slept with...
Red Hat: I come to bury the Penguin, not to praise him.
...
Penguin: Et tu Red Hat?
Although I imagine the ending will be somewhat different...
That's what I'm hoping will become the norm. I.E. a general willingness to pay for quality, possibly "closed", software on open platforms. I agree that platforms themselves should be free from control. But I don't think that the same criteria should necessarily apply to all applications targeting open platforms.
Yeah, I know...the reasons are independent of each other.
I've actually been considering that. There are three things that bug me though: I got burned when I bought an 840 AV (remember that line?), Steve Jobs (Bill w/ a better dress sense), and the high cost.
- It's convenient for ISV's to concern themselves with a single platform. Way before my (professional) time, it'd have been tough for a smaller outfit to target all the popular platforms: atari, commodore, amiga, PC, Apple/Mac, various DOS flavors, etc. They pretty much picked one, maybe more, and gambled that they'd still exist and/or remain popular.
- Books, third party dev tools, publications, and training (formal and informal) have long been plentiful.
- Many software companies (ok...not as many now) target MS platforms.
- And a few more...
But as of late I'm having a change of heart. For the following reasons (and others):- nefarious upgrade practices
- restrictive licensing practices
- the lessening of system level tools/techniques available to third party developers
- still more incursions into third party developer space (search engines, email, possibly anti-virus)
I've about had it with Redmond. I don't even really want to create software for their platforms anymore. Still, I'm not in the RMS camp; I like the idea of making money on software, possibly by restricting the availability of the source code.I do recognize the benefit of open/free platforms and frameworks. My question is this: is there a place for proprietary (read 'closed') applications on said open/free platforms and frameworks?
Ugh...how do I scan my cabinets for viruses?
Software, or digital content, doesn't wear out. Even if a company could produce a perfect piece of software, office suite or otherwise, it'd be detrimental to do so under current business models. "Software as service" subscriptions could address this, but customers don't seem to go for it. To keep revenue coming in customers have to be convinced, cajoled, or forced into upgrades.
OK, none of this is news to anyone...but what are some viable commercial alternatives? The Open Source model tends to favor charging for support/service, one time charges for feature creation/customization, and donations; micropayments for content has been tried; and Macromedia and Adobe have had success with a "free-to-view pay-to-create" model.
The current "artificial upgrade" seems unethical and possibly doomed. Are traditional business obsolete in the digital arena? What's next?
You're probably right. My father-in-law, a psychologist, was reading about various historical smart people and thought the descriptions of their personalities/habits sounded consistent with people diagnosed as ADD/ADHD.
...as opposed to an overused perjorative. An except from http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Consp iracy (watch out for the extra space in 'Conspiracy').
"Often, what are commonly called "conspiracy theories" are employed by people who would like to believe some conclusion but have little if any evidence for it. They therefore refer to a supposed conspiracy to justify both their conclusion and the fact that they cannot support it with evidence which, naturally, the conspirators are actively concealing. Such theories cannot be falsified; a conspiracy theorist takes lack of evidence for their theory, or even evidence that directly contradicts their theory, to mean that an extremely powerful conspiracy has either suppressed or fabricated the evidence in question."
I'm tired of seeing the label "conspiracy theory" invoked as a magical incantation to stop rational arguments before they even start...
His point wasn't about getting luxury items; it was that this setup is an investment that will result in increased programmer productivity and therefore profit. He may or may not be correct, but I don't think that it's the same as the dot com idiocy.
Go read their faq. They claim that transactions are unnecessary. I don't know that I buy in to their pitch but they have already answered your critiques.
Please continue making an ass of yourself.
That's rich coming from someone whose implying that all transactions should be distributed and use two phase commit.
Debugging taught in school?
;)
Where did you go to school?
A couple of years ago I might have gone for that lobby...but having switched to both Dvorak and the TouchStream in the last year and a half, I'm having enough trouble getting supporters ;)
That's pretty damn cool. Come to think of it, I used to work with a guy who'd lost most of his finger motion in both hands but had learned to type rather quickly with the edge of his palms. He'd get a kind of rolling action with certain keys combos. Here's to adaptation ;)
It's a lot more "natural" to have the ctrl key available w/o having to curl your little finger down.
;)
E.G...originally I started "pc" hardware; when I first started coding for *nix platforms I decided to learn emacs (yes...I also learned vi) and couldn't figure out why someone, Stallman I think, would be so crazy as to use crlt <x> - ctrl <y> key sequences. I felt like emacs was designed to make turn my left hand into a claw...then I saw the Happy Hacking keyboard and the light went on.
I get the impression that the majority of the keyboards in the "*nix hardware" world were like this originally. Personally I find this placement much more comfortable on any platform. Sysinternals has a free keyboard driver (with source I think) that will swap your caps-lock and ctrl keys at the kernel level. It works great for everything but SoftICE (obviously). I used this driver for about 3 years...until I bought a TouchStream. But that's something else
Typical 'tough on crime' idiocy. You forgot to say 'Give a fair trial and hang 'em' or maybe 'It's time to clean up this town'.
The US legal system was not set up to make it easy to stamp out crime. It was set up to ensure due process, and protect the rights of the accused.
Sentences for the guilty aren't intended to match with your naive and/or hyper-literal application of a legal definition.
As for raising kids...irrelevent.
Lastly, it's every citizen's DUTY to be aware of what government does with regard civil and legal rights. It is also every citizen's duty to challenge any abridgement of those rights.
Homeland Security tested and Ashcroft approved! Operators are standing by to take your...um...order...
It has to be "non-volatile, inexpensive, fast and low-power" hehehe...yeah...and fire...hehe...and lots of chicks...hehehe...that'd be cool...and we want it now...yeah...hehehe.
No it isn't. Win2k is version 5.0 (as in NT), XP is 5.1. That dot rev means more than a new gui, and 3rd party hardware drivers don't enter into it...it means changes to the kernel. Some of which include:
- larger memory mapped file size
- larger driver and system space
- ability to detach from processes being debugged
- callbacks for file system filter drivers
And a bunch of other stuff listed here:http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/01/12/xp