Before even owning a laptop/netbook, I fell in love with the low-depth, nearly silent click of laptop keyboard keys made for the full size keyboard. However, there's quite a number of people who like this, so it's not entirely easy to find them anymore.
Counterintuitive? Definitely. You see, once all the millions of keyboard manufacturers noticed the trend, they started making short/shallow keys with the exact same switch as standard keyboards. So, while it looks like a laptop keyboard, they're quite frequently normal crap keyboards whose downward press, if slightly off-angle, produces a scrape within the switch that slows/messes up typing or completely blows a gaming experience.
I can't buy keyboards online anymore because I just need to test it out myself. "Slime" and "Laptop style" just isn't enough to convince me.
"Microsoft has been very secretive about the next version of its Windows operating system. After the success of Windows 7, everyone is very interested in the next iteration – Windows 8"
Except they're not. In fact, most people, if they've upgraded to 7 at all, are hoping to have another XP-esque reign of continuing stability improvements and tweaks simplifying simple operations that had been bloated with Vista.
Next iteration? For an OS? We're not talking about blockbuster entertainment here, we're talking infrastructure. Who the hell looks FORWARD to infrastructure changes unless something broken or amiss?
I just built an XP box for a friend whose computer burned down in an apartment fire! It runs fine on *old* hardware! I didn't kick him up to 7 because he doesn't need it... why should he be "excited" about Windows 8!?/hype-rage!
I read this on FARK yesterday and I finally had a tiny bit of hope that maybe, if I'm in trouble, someone will be like me and just attempt to do what should be done. This morning, I go the restroom at work, and see that plastered in front of the urinals and on the backs of stall doors (for your easy reading, of course) are lists of ways you're required to respond to emergencies:
In the case of fire: Calmly exit the building For no reason, re-enter the building until given the OK by emergency responders
In the case of a shooting: Run, hide, and call the police. Don't try to stop the shooter.
In case of violence: Run, hide, and call the police. Don't try to intervene.
And the lists go on. I'm surrounded by warnings that if a good actions puts yourself at risk, then the action is BAD. And I weep a little...
Wait... so they "unbundled" the Office Suite and recreated 3 new bundles costing on average $500 per person? That's the same price as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Access, and Publisher bundled together as Office Professional 2010 without a bulk institutional discount!
Ok, you're correct by tautology. I want something as do other people. Bravo! But you're not really commenting in the context of the article. You call it "QQ", but the Red Hat CEO calls it wasting hundreds of billions of dollars shotgunning bad features at users that don't want them.
It's an insane idea, but even the auto manufacturing industry modulizes features better than the tech industry.
Base Car = 15,000 Automatic Transmission = 1200 Built-in GPS = 500 + any subscription fee Bigger engine = 1000 Alloy Wheels = more "racing" suspension = more etc etc
AND when adding options that affect fuel efficiency, they note it! With devices like cell phones it's simply "We'll give you everything, charge you for everything, and you'll like it".
That's not "QQ", sugar britches. That's hoping one industry's common sense approach to sales catches on in the market I use more than once every 10 years.
The business models between customer and vendors are fundamentally broken,' said Jim Whitehurst, speaking Wednesday at the Interop conference in New York. 'Vendors have to guess at what [customers] want, and there is a mismatch of what customers want and what they get. Creating feature wars is not what the customer is looking for.'
Yes! There are so many features that end up being hindrances or that fall short of actual needs that it makes an investment not worth while. For example, here's what I want out of just my cell phone:
My Cell Phone (Rumor2) needs to:
Make and receive phone calls (Grade: A)
Keep a phone book (Grade: A)
Send text messages using a mini keyboard (Grade: A)
Play MP3s (Grade: D-)
--3.5mm headphone jack (Grade: F)
--Drag/Drop micro usb computer interface (Grade: C)
--Easy playlist, enqueue functions (Grade: F)
Serve as an impromptu, good-enough camera as needed and transfer photos to another cell and to a computer (Grade: B)
Take a micro-SD 8GB card (Grade: A)
Have the option for a low-graphic, low-power GUI. (Grade: C)
Be included with the $40/month 2-year contract that allows for limited cell-to-cell photo transfer, unlimited nights/weekends, unlimited texting.
That's what I need... this is what else my phone tries to do:
Connect me to a Sprint-only pseudo-internet as well as the real internet
Sell me games for my phone
Sell me ringtones (while not allowing me to make my own)
Be GPS
And I know I'm not alone. It's not like I want a rotary phone attached to my hip, but I don't want to be SO WIRED all the time. Give me a tablet PC that runs as Ubuntu Netbook Remix (or some other low-graphic moddable UI) for $400, the phone that fulfills only the needs I list above, and a desktop PC and I'm set. That's it. Game over.
If Closed Source: Con - Companies can secretly build in flaws to exploit trust. Pro - A chance at security through obscurity (not too much, of course, because exploiters KNOW the code exists, just not what the code says exactly) Con - Companies can unknowingly build in flaws that can be exploited by those in the know.
If Open Source: Pro - Everything is known about the code so any potential flaws are widely known and can be fixed. Con - Fixes can be flawed, too. Con - No standard will likely be settled upon-- partially because of the nature of the Open Source community and partially because for-profit companies will interfere as much as possible.
If hard-copy votes only: Con - More human effort required. Con - Human error expected. Pro - There's also a LOT more oversight.
Indeed, I'm part of that still-mostly-young generation that grew up with the option of dial-up and broadband was not ubiquitous. Pagers were mainstream and cell phones were just breaking into the mass market.
More importantly, I come from a low-income background where there were some months where we had to decide to pay the electricity bill in whole and risk losing water or try to negotiate with the electric company some way to pay later. Plenty of people still live the same way and would likely easily be suckered into this "$6/month deal!" without considering the large cost of a broadband internet connection before signing up. You forget such things when you just want the best for your student child and are told that this is a super-cheap way to help guarantee a strong education.
There are a few types of programs I would expect to lose functionality when I lose internet access. MMO games, an internet browser, email.
There are some I would expect to always be functional regardless of internet connection. Media players, single-player games, and office suites are some examples.
Tired all of those choices that TWO things can offer? Confused by those floaty things that enter your vision and then move away when you try to focus on them? Scared by things that don't outright hug you?
Then you should buy Apple!
Apple... for when thinking takes too much thought.
+10, would read again! I love Slashdot, but in the realm of understanding education for everyone and not just the pseudo-genius self-representations people here like to push, few people really bother talking about reality.
In reality, most people would not learn more than they need to survive, get laid, and possibly occupy themselves in times of leisure. We need functioning classrooms, internships, and apprenticeships to force people to learn enough to actually become interested in... SOMETHING... ANYTHING. That's reality and that's why I like teaching. Teach 'em well early, I say, that way they have the simple curiosity to seek out info later... hopefully.
... for my own education and career, I have to laugh at the suggested volunteerism... mainly because it takes a massive amount of effort and resources to teach large numbers of people. Even if you could remove bureaucracies attached to HR (since everyone's volunteering time) and fundraising and JUST focus on the teaching aspect, anyone to suggest such a notion is beyond naive
Here are two, extremely important facts about education:
1) Most people can't simply learn on their own. They can't even bother themselves to be interested in the world immediately in front of them. They need to have some sort of pressure to sit down, shut up, listen, analyze, and output. VERY FEW people actually get sufficient inspiration to seek out information and discussion on their own with sufficient vigor to actually become some sort of specialist in a field some time in the future. This is why we have classes and why attendance is taken.
2) It is difficult being a teacher. Considering the above requirements to get people to learn, imagine striving to do the above while staying relevant to a curriculum with 30-400 students in a single room day-in and day-out. That is a full-effort position... and the only people willing to do that FOR FREE are those who are not in need of money. Good luck getting a quality education from a series of rich, volunteer professors.
Ya, it's a great idea... a free wiki-cation. But it's not possible in a world where housing, food, health care, and entertainment costs money. It's not possible in a world where people have other things more attractive to do than sit in a class room on a regular as-needed basis to learn any topic well. Anyone tell you otherwise is trying to sell you a product that will be DOA.
Slashdot Mirror
To all of those who know the feel of the laptop keyboard and are suggesting some brands and models, "Thank you!"
Before even owning a laptop/netbook, I fell in love with the low-depth, nearly silent click of laptop keyboard keys made for the full size keyboard. However, there's quite a number of people who like this, so it's not entirely easy to find them anymore.
Counterintuitive? Definitely. You see, once all the millions of keyboard manufacturers noticed the trend, they started making short/shallow keys with the exact same switch as standard keyboards. So, while it looks like a laptop keyboard, they're quite frequently normal crap keyboards whose downward press, if slightly off-angle, produces a scrape within the switch that slows/messes up typing or completely blows a gaming experience.
I can't buy keyboards online anymore because I just need to test it out myself. "Slime" and "Laptop style" just isn't enough to convince me.
Your fiction stinks and your biggest fan is dead. Luckily, he's in a better place now.
*
The future of the PC is not immediately viewable from the window. One must step out and look around.
"Microsoft has been very secretive about the next version of its Windows operating system. After the success of Windows 7, everyone is very interested in the next iteration – Windows 8"
Except they're not. In fact, most people, if they've upgraded to 7 at all, are hoping to have another XP-esque reign of continuing stability improvements and tweaks simplifying simple operations that had been bloated with Vista.
Next iteration? For an OS? We're not talking about blockbuster entertainment here, we're talking infrastructure. Who the hell looks FORWARD to infrastructure changes unless something broken or amiss?
I just built an XP box for a friend whose computer burned down in an apartment fire! It runs fine on *old* hardware! I didn't kick him up to 7 because he doesn't need it... why should he be "excited" about Windows 8!? /hype-rage!
Never leave the building! Of course!
Damn glad to hear it, too!
Isn't that a bit definite? Isn't there gray area?
Scenario:
8:00am - Fire starts in a one-story office building out in Podunk, Wisconsin.
8:02 - You and 10 others evacuate without issue.
8:02:30 - You see the 12th employee through a window who trips, falls, and doesn't finish her route out.
Option A: Time passes wherein someone helps the person who tripped.
Option B: Time passes wherein no one tries to help the person who tripped.
8:15 Fire department arrives.
Which option do you want to happen?
Then how do you respond to the engineer who crunched his minivan (with his family in it) so he could save another man slumped over at the wheel?
I mean... there was obvious risk to himself and his family. It could have been a bloody mess. But he was competent and he acted at the right time.
Should he not have done that? Was that wrong?
Yep, bad wording on my part. Better:
After evacuating the building during a fire, do not, for any reason, re-enter the building unless given the OK by an emergency responder.
Another one:
"In the case of fire, do NOT try to put the fire out unless you've been trained to do so."
Does "looking at the new fire extinguisher instructions for 8 seconds" count?
Yep, bad wording on my part. Better:
After evacuating the building during a fire, do not, for any reason, re-enter the building unless given the OK by an emergency responder.
The way I read that is: If you see someone hurt, don't try to be a hero... even if there are no paid heroes (firefighters) around.
I read this on FARK yesterday and I finally had a tiny bit of hope that maybe, if I'm in trouble, someone will be like me and just attempt to do what should be done. This morning, I go the restroom at work, and see that plastered in front of the urinals and on the backs of stall doors (for your easy reading, of course) are lists of ways you're required to respond to emergencies:
In the case of fire:
Calmly exit the building
For no reason, re-enter the building until given the OK by emergency responders
In the case of a shooting:
Run, hide, and call the police. Don't try to stop the shooter.
In case of violence:
Run, hide, and call the police. Don't try to intervene.
And the lists go on. I'm surrounded by warnings that if a good actions puts yourself at risk, then the action is BAD. And I weep a little...
Wait... so they "unbundled" the Office Suite and recreated 3 new bundles costing on average $500 per person? That's the same price as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Access, and Publisher bundled together as Office Professional 2010 without a bulk institutional discount!
What a deal!
Ok, you're correct by tautology. I want something as do other people. Bravo! But you're not really commenting in the context of the article. You call it "QQ", but the Red Hat CEO calls it wasting hundreds of billions of dollars shotgunning bad features at users that don't want them.
It's an insane idea, but even the auto manufacturing industry modulizes features better than the tech industry.
Base Car = 15,000
Automatic Transmission = 1200
Built-in GPS = 500 + any subscription fee
Bigger engine = 1000
Alloy Wheels = more
"racing" suspension = more
etc
etc
AND when adding options that affect fuel efficiency, they note it! With devices like cell phones it's simply "We'll give you everything, charge you for everything, and you'll like it".
That's not "QQ", sugar britches. That's hoping one industry's common sense approach to sales catches on in the market I use more than once every 10 years.
The business models between customer and vendors are fundamentally broken,' said Jim Whitehurst, speaking Wednesday at the Interop conference in New York. 'Vendors have to guess at what [customers] want, and there is a mismatch of what customers want and what they get. Creating feature wars is not what the customer is looking for.'
Yes! There are so many features that end up being hindrances or that fall short of actual needs that it makes an investment not worth while. For example, here's what I want out of just my cell phone:
My Cell Phone (Rumor2) needs to:
Make and receive phone calls (Grade: A)
Keep a phone book (Grade: A)
Send text messages using a mini keyboard (Grade: A)
Play MP3s (Grade: D-)
--3.5mm headphone jack (Grade: F)
--Drag/Drop micro usb computer interface (Grade: C)
--Easy playlist, enqueue functions (Grade: F)
Serve as an impromptu, good-enough camera as needed and transfer photos to another cell and to a computer (Grade: B)
Take a micro-SD 8GB card (Grade: A)
Have the option for a low-graphic, low-power GUI. (Grade: C)
Be included with the $40/month 2-year contract that allows for limited cell-to-cell photo transfer, unlimited nights/weekends, unlimited texting.
That's what I need... this is what else my phone tries to do:
Connect me to a Sprint-only pseudo-internet as well as the real internet
Sell me games for my phone
Sell me ringtones (while not allowing me to make my own)
Be GPS
And I know I'm not alone. It's not like I want a rotary phone attached to my hip, but I don't want to be SO WIRED all the time. Give me a tablet PC that runs as Ubuntu Netbook Remix (or some other low-graphic moddable UI) for $400, the phone that fulfills only the needs I list above, and a desktop PC and I'm set. That's it. Game over.
If Closed Source:
Con - Companies can secretly build in flaws to exploit trust.
Pro - A chance at security through obscurity (not too much, of course, because exploiters KNOW the code exists, just not what the code says exactly)
Con - Companies can unknowingly build in flaws that can be exploited by those in the know.
If Open Source:
Pro - Everything is known about the code so any potential flaws are widely known and can be fixed.
Con - Fixes can be flawed, too.
Con - No standard will likely be settled upon-- partially because of the nature of the Open Source community and partially because for-profit companies will interfere as much as possible.
If hard-copy votes only:
Con - More human effort required.
Con - Human error expected.
Pro - There's also a LOT more oversight.
~~~
Still, I only vote on paper.
Indeed, I'm part of that still-mostly-young generation that grew up with the option of dial-up and broadband was not ubiquitous. Pagers were mainstream and cell phones were just breaking into the mass market.
More importantly, I come from a low-income background where there were some months where we had to decide to pay the electricity bill in whole and risk losing water or try to negotiate with the electric company some way to pay later. Plenty of people still live the same way and would likely easily be suckered into this "$6/month deal!" without considering the large cost of a broadband internet connection before signing up. You forget such things when you just want the best for your student child and are told that this is a super-cheap way to help guarantee a strong education.
There are a few types of programs I would expect to lose functionality when I lose internet access. MMO games, an internet browser, email.
There are some I would expect to always be functional regardless of internet connection. Media players, single-player games, and office suites are some examples.
Done in one! I'd +1 ya, if I could.
Tired all of those choices that TWO things can offer? Confused by those floaty things that enter your vision and then move away when you try to focus on them? Scared by things that don't outright hug you?
Then you should buy Apple!
Apple... for when thinking takes too much thought.
That's probably because you went to school for the wrong reasons.
+10, would read again! I love Slashdot, but in the realm of understanding education for everyone and not just the pseudo-genius self-representations people here like to push, few people really bother talking about reality.
In reality, most people would not learn more than they need to survive, get laid, and possibly occupy themselves in times of leisure. We need functioning classrooms, internships, and apprenticeships to force people to learn enough to actually become interested in... SOMETHING... ANYTHING. That's reality and that's why I like teaching. Teach 'em well early, I say, that way they have the simple curiosity to seek out info later... hopefully.
... for my own education and career, I have to laugh at the suggested volunteerism... mainly because it takes a massive amount of effort and resources to teach large numbers of people. Even if you could remove bureaucracies attached to HR (since everyone's volunteering time) and fundraising and JUST focus on the teaching aspect, anyone to suggest such a notion is beyond naive
Here are two, extremely important facts about education:
1) Most people can't simply learn on their own. They can't even bother themselves to be interested in the world immediately in front of them. They need to have some sort of pressure to sit down, shut up, listen, analyze, and output. VERY FEW people actually get sufficient inspiration to seek out information and discussion on their own with sufficient vigor to actually become some sort of specialist in a field some time in the future. This is why we have classes and why attendance is taken.
2) It is difficult being a teacher. Considering the above requirements to get people to learn, imagine striving to do the above while staying relevant to a curriculum with 30-400 students in a single room day-in and day-out. That is a full-effort position... and the only people willing to do that FOR FREE are those who are not in need of money. Good luck getting a quality education from a series of rich, volunteer professors.
Ya, it's a great idea... a free wiki-cation. But it's not possible in a world where housing, food, health care, and entertainment costs money. It's not possible in a world where people have other things more attractive to do than sit in a class room on a regular as-needed basis to learn any topic well. Anyone tell you otherwise is trying to sell you a product that will be DOA.
OMG weasel word aneurysm!