I bulk buy my blank CDs and DVDs by the hundred. I've just re-stocked. The way I see it, this is enough blank media to last me untill I die (or untill CDs / DVDs become obsolete, whichever is the soonest). I cannot imagine what anybody would do with these 35Gb carts, when they cost so much more than any other kind of media I know.
As the only developer in my company who knows enough about our content management system I end up having to do the macromedia integration work. Last week I wrote a whole bunch of ActionScript 2 (ECMAscript between you and me) classes that allow all various types of flash applications to talk with our server by XML.
My impression of working with Flash is that it is a product desperate to dis-associate it'self from the version 1-4 days, when it was a product only suitable for designers. The MX2004 product whilst lacking in stability provides a more robust (semi-strongly typed) scripting language.
The addition of scriptable components for managing text, media and sound makes it an almost credible application prototyping environment.
In order to get my work done I had to find myself a spare computer in the office that has Windows on it because Macromedia refuse to support anything other than Windows and Mac (badly). The fact that most web developers are running LAMP (Linux, Apache, PHP, MySQL) seems to have evaded the Flash development team.
I suspect that this competition from microsoft is exactly what they need to encourage them to produce a Linux port of their flagship application. Previously Macromedia claimed that the Linux market was insignificant, however they will soon find that their windows market will shrink when the MS developers decide they prefer to script.Net Sparkle applets instead of Flash.
A Linux port would be fresh grounds for Macromedia, and a welcome addition to the range of commercial software available for Linux. It would also be a good way for Macromedia to get some revenge on Microsoft who seem to be about to pull the carpet from beneath Macromedia's feet.
Usually in key based encryption products the key is itself weakly encrypted. In order to decrypt the key, the user must supply a password that gets past the weak encryption on the key. This key can then be used to unlock the stronger encryption in the secureIDE product.
This is how OpenSSH works anyway (i did not read the secureIDE blurb too carefully). The SSH guys say that keys should allways be encrypted, because theft of keys is easy to do. If the key is encrypted then that at least is one more substantial hassle for the crackers to go through before they can get at your data.
Yes, softer tyres give you a softer ride - however your kenetic energy is absorbed as soft tyres flex - if you want your bike to roll easily you need to keep your tyres hard.
The same goes for suspension - if you want to go fast or be sure that as much as possible of the energy you put into the system goes into propelling you forwards you might want to switch off your suspension. My bike has a small damper-control that allows me to lock the suspension off entirely.
When you go downhill, you can see how hot breaking surfaces, tyres and suspension systems get... all that energy was once inside you!:-)
Its quite hard to describe what plush feels like - generally steel is at one extreme and alu is at the other.
You really have to compare an expensive steel bike vs an expensive aluminum bike to feel the diference.
Steel bikes are tough, but not 100% rigid. The result is that some of the bumps and buzz are taken out of the ride. You can feel it in your elbows, wrists, knees and ankles./
Alu on the other hand is much more rigid (being a softer lighter material they have to use fatter tubes so they tend to flex less). The result is that unless you have a whole load of suspension you get all the nasty road-buzz.
The quality of ride depends not only on your frame & suspension but also on the wheels and cranks you use.
A bike is no good unless it is comfortable and rideable... also it serves no practical value unless it can stand up to the rigour and pollution of city (or country for that matter) life.
Of all the materials I have tried (Alu, Carbon, Steel, Titanium) - Steel is still the best all-rounder and my personal favourite.
Steel makes for a plusher ride. Steel frames can withstand bumps and scratches without loosing their strength (much). If you want a bike that feels good, lasts longer and does not weigh much more than an alu bike, go for a high-quality steel frame.
I think you could make a decent mountain bike, however the problem will come at the joins. Accordign to that photo, the frame is made of lugs that have been glued to bamboo poles. Carbon fibre frames are made in a similar way.
The challenge is to find an adhesive that is able to bond nicely to metal and bamboo. The other problem with bamboo is that you cannot guarantee it's regularity in the same way that you can with an artificial tube... I guess that is where craftsmen come in. Not all bamboo tubes are created equal.
A lugged frame is normally made by braising metal lugs to metal poles with a bit of solder. Lugged frames are known for being tough but really heavy.
Yes! It is a single speed - Gears, Breaks - these things are not required when the pedals are connected directly to the chain, and the chain is connected to the wheel. You want to slow down... pedal slower.
An explaination for non-bike-geeks
on
Bamboo Bike A Reality
·
· Score: 5, Informative
I am a bike-geek as well as a Lunix-Geek:
The bike is a single-speed. That means it does not need gears, breaks or even a ratcheted freewheel (on the back wheel)... the pedals are connected directly to the rear wheel by the chain. If you want to slow down you use your legs.
Single-speeds are favourites of city-couriers, where there is a great advantage to have a light-simple bike. There is less to break (XTR gear systems are known to wear out after a few weeks of couriering).
As for Aluminum - dont get me started on that nasty harsh material. There has been a disturbing trend for wannabee bikers to adopt the freakiest lightest materials at the expense of all other properties.
For me, steel still has the edge over all these fancy materials. A steel frame will last for years of hard riding, and still feel as plush as the day it was first ridden.
Yeah, Ultima Online has had this since version 2. Translation actually causes more confusion than harmony - at first you wonder why these people are talking so odly...:-)
This was one of the reasons for a unique kind of power station to be created in Wales (For Americans, that is the little country stuck on the side of England but still part of the UK!).
The Dinorwig Pumped-Storage power-station spends most of it's time consuming electricity by pumping the contents of a huge lower resivoir onto two upper resivoirs.
As soon as the tea-break starts, Dinorwig lets rip, and the entire contents of the upper lakes are allowed to flow back down, the energy being converted back into electricial energy.
Despite the fact that Dinorwig is less than 80% efficient, it saves the generating companies millions a year because it can react in an instant to sudden demands for more power.
http://www.darvill.clara.net/altenerg/pumped.htm
" Dinorwig has the fastest "response time" of any pumped storage plant in the world - it can provide 1320 MegaWatts in 12 seconds. That's a lot of cups of tea!"
It was ugly then... it is ugly now...
on
fvwm Turns Ten
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
These days I have a salary and can afford to have nice pretty computers:
In my primary work area I have a powerbook (With OSX) and a Gentoo Linux PC (Strictly KDE not Gnome). Looking at those screenshots reminds me how much the Linux community has advanced since those 'hobbyist' days. I think we owe it to ourselves to have desktops that are both functional AND pretty.
Anyway Gentoo Linux includes FVWM even though that distro is less than 2 years old!
Fvwm is what Microsoft THINK all UNIX(y) computers still look like!
Quote from the BBC Article: "SpaceShipOne will then fire its hybrid rocket engine, fuelled by a mixture of nitrous oxide and rubber, to reach the blackness of space."
Surely this is a typo? Nobody uses rubber as a rocket fuel... unless this is a new kind of rubber that is completely diferent to the stretchy, boingy stuff?
I have a mind to start a new sourceforge project - a bot that creates a tar-pit website to confuse this kind of bot.
It would grab the album chart from FreeDB and then make a pseudo random listing of 20 or so artists. Clicking on an artist's name would reveal the names of the albums, and clicking on the album name would reveal links to song downloads as MP3s.
Each page would have a 10 second delay on loading, and each MP3 download (which would be white noise) would be downloaed at about 10 bits per second. The idea would be to tie-up as many threads on thhe RIAA servers for as long as possible.
Next, the system would run on a wildcarded domain name so that it would look to the RIAAbot as if it were a large number of sites. Each of these sites would link to each other creating a vast low bandwidth tarpit.
On a slower mac (I had a Blue & White G3), you can use Distcc to have neighborhood Linux computers give a helping hand. DistCC can help you cross-compile - that means you can build G3 code on a cluster of Athlon machines.
If you have more than one Gentoo computer in your office then re-compiling everything does not take that long. DistCC is built into the latest Stage3 disk for all architectures.
One of the reasons I switched from Redhat 8.1 / 7.3 to Gentoo Linux (Beta) was the amazing Emerge package management tool. It combines simple Tar based package files with cool scripts called eBuilds, that automagically fetch and compile all the components I need.
Of course Gentoo is not for everybody... it takes longer to install than Debian (and that is before you have compiled the entire OS from scratch), but for those who are interested in that sort of thing it can be a refreshing alternative.
Next time you upgrade with orange, ask the assistant to quote 'return / failure rates' on all the handsets available....
I was thinking of upgrading - It would be cool to have a camera or the ability to run my own applications on my phone. Despite the cool new products available, I have decided not to buy for at least 6 more months because all of the phones currently available are even less reliable than my t68 (which is only just tolerable).
According to Orange, there are problems with all the new generation of Camera / Organiser phones. Aparantly, the worst offender is the new Nokia camera phone - that had a more than 90% return rate due to hardware faults. I am sure this MS phone could be worse! My Ericsson T68 had to be swaped 4 times this year - I'm astonished that anything could be worse!
As all the mobile phone companies seem to be rushing out new models in time for xmas - it seems the idea of waiting untill the product is right has been completely forgotten.
By the way, if you ARE thinking of upgrading - a heavy user on Orange can usually blag a free handset. Rather than go through the upgrades line, go to the disconnection line and tell them you want to end your contract with orange because O2 or Vodaphone has offered your chouice of handset as a joining incentive.
Orange will usually offer you a decent handset for free as an incentive to keep you to another year's contract. A heavy user should never have to pay for upgrades!
Imagine if this could be made to work on an MS Xbox? It would transform that clunky Halo-player into a practical work computer - or even an affordable clustering machine.
Am I the only one who thinks it's odd that they dumped microsoft (and their flagship product) shortly before they were due to launch?
Surely they knew that they were not going to get this source code for a long time - I cant imagine (for all their tricks), MS playing a practical joke on Sendo - promising source code and then repeatedly finding an excuse not to share it untill Sendo got sick of the whole thing and decides to split with MS.
More likely Nokia paid Sendo a bigger ammount of money than MS originally paid them to publicly ditch Microsoft, and thereby prolong microsoft's entry into the smartphone market.
I've owned using a Sony t68i now for a few months - this has to be the most disapointing phone I have ever had the displeasure of using. I curse the day I ever allowed Orange (UK) to sell it to me.
According to orange, more than 1/3 of the T68s and T68i's ever sent to Orange customers have been returned at least once. Orange no longer recomend the T68 family of phones to anybody who makes 400+ minutes of calls per miniute - it's not up to the job of being a business phone.
First of all, the good points - this is a jewel of a phone. Tiny, pretty and colourful. It's designed with the looks to sucker in geeky types who like cute machines. Thats the good bit over.
Unfortunately, this has to be the least reliable phone I have ever used. Before my T68i, I have owned bricks made by Motrola, and then less brick-like phones made by Nokia. Even my 1996 Motorolla MR1 flip-phone has better signal strength usability and reliability than the T68.
The interface is pretty, but unfortunately the CPU and graphics chip are underpowered - the result is a strange laggy feeling where because the phone takes a fraction of a second to respond, it often leaves the user unsure as to if the button was pressed correctly... so the user ends up pressing the button again, and then fills the screen with redundant characters.
If you allow somebody to sell you this phone, it's worth getting insurance with it (The same goes for the Nokia 8000 and 9000 series phones) - these all have very low MHBF (Mean Hours Before Failure) scores. I'm now on my 4th T68i - every few months I have to get it replaced.
Faults have included, frequent crashes (Orange will admit off the record, that the T68 firmware was just not ready at the time it went to market). Transmission and reception failures - general poor call quiality and lack of reliability. Occaisionally I have had missing menu options, and sporadic and inexplicable freezes.
Anyway, that should be enough to convince you - just dont buy this phone okay?
That nonsense about the guy inventing qwerty to slow people down is just a silly myth... read the truth!
http://home.earthlink.net/~dcrehr/myths.html
It makes no sense. It is awkward, inefficient and confusing. We've been saying that for 124 years. But there it remains. Those keys made their first appearance on a rickety, clumsy device marketed as the "Type-Writer" in 1872. Today the keyboard is a universal fixture even on the most advanced, sophisticated computers and word processors electronic technology can produce. . How could we get stuck with something so bad? . In this case, the answer lies in the old proverb about the early bird catching the worm. As far as the typewriter keyboard is concerned, being first was the whole ball game.
Slashdot Mirror
I bulk buy my blank CDs and DVDs by the hundred. I've just re-stocked. The way I see it, this is enough blank media to last me untill I die (or untill CDs / DVDs become obsolete, whichever is the soonest). I cannot imagine what anybody would do with these 35Gb carts, when they cost so much more than any other kind of media I know.
Has anybody managed to make iTunes work on Linux? I use KDE and Juk - I can use Rsync to copy MP3z onto my iRiver.
I just bought a music player, but not one of those iPods - I got myself an iRiver iHP-140. It's a hard-disk based player that supports OGG files.
The nifty thing is that it supports USB mass-storage profile. MP3/Ogg/Wma (yeah right) can be copied on AND OFF.
Whats more, being a standard compliant device it works fine with Linux. You can just mount it as a filesystem.
As the only developer in my company who knows enough about our content management system I end up having to do the macromedia integration work. Last week I wrote a whole bunch of ActionScript 2 (ECMAscript between you and me) classes that allow all various types of flash applications to talk with our server by XML.
.Net Sparkle applets instead of Flash.
My impression of working with Flash is that it is a product desperate to dis-associate it'self from the version 1-4 days, when it was a product only suitable for designers. The MX2004 product whilst lacking in stability provides a more robust (semi-strongly typed) scripting language.
The addition of scriptable components for managing text, media and sound makes it an almost credible application prototyping environment.
In order to get my work done I had to find myself a spare computer in the office that has Windows on it because Macromedia refuse to support anything other than Windows and Mac (badly). The fact that most web developers are running LAMP (Linux, Apache, PHP, MySQL) seems to have evaded the Flash development team.
I suspect that this competition from microsoft is exactly what they need to encourage them to produce a Linux port of their flagship application. Previously Macromedia claimed that the Linux market was insignificant, however they will soon find that their windows market will shrink when the MS developers decide they prefer to script
A Linux port would be fresh grounds for Macromedia, and a welcome addition to the range of commercial software available for Linux. It would also be a good way for Macromedia to get some revenge on Microsoft who seem to be about to pull the carpet from beneath Macromedia's feet.
Usually in key based encryption products the key is itself weakly encrypted. In order to decrypt the key, the user must supply a password that gets past the weak encryption on the key. This key can then be used to unlock the stronger encryption in the secureIDE product.
This is how OpenSSH works anyway (i did not read the secureIDE blurb too carefully). The SSH guys say that keys should allways be encrypted, because theft of keys is easy to do. If the key is encrypted then that at least is one more substantial hassle for the crackers to go through before they can get at your data.
Yes, softer tyres give you a softer ride - however your kenetic energy is absorbed as soft tyres flex - if you want your bike to roll easily you need to keep your tyres hard. The same goes for suspension - if you want to go fast or be sure that as much as possible of the energy you put into the system goes into propelling you forwards you might want to switch off your suspension. My bike has a small damper-control that allows me to lock the suspension off entirely. When you go downhill, you can see how hot breaking surfaces, tyres and suspension systems get... all that energy was once inside you! :-)
Its quite hard to describe what plush feels like - generally steel is at one extreme and alu is at the other. You really have to compare an expensive steel bike vs an expensive aluminum bike to feel the diference. Steel bikes are tough, but not 100% rigid. The result is that some of the bumps and buzz are taken out of the ride. You can feel it in your elbows, wrists, knees and ankles./ Alu on the other hand is much more rigid (being a softer lighter material they have to use fatter tubes so they tend to flex less). The result is that unless you have a whole load of suspension you get all the nasty road-buzz. The quality of ride depends not only on your frame & suspension but also on the wheels and cranks you use.
A bike is no good unless it is comfortable and rideable... also it serves no practical value unless it can stand up to the rigour and pollution of city (or country for that matter) life. Of all the materials I have tried (Alu, Carbon, Steel, Titanium) - Steel is still the best all-rounder and my personal favourite. Steel makes for a plusher ride. Steel frames can withstand bumps and scratches without loosing their strength (much). If you want a bike that feels good, lasts longer and does not weigh much more than an alu bike, go for a high-quality steel frame.
I think you could make a decent mountain bike, however the problem will come at the joins. Accordign to that photo, the frame is made of lugs that have been glued to bamboo poles. Carbon fibre frames are made in a similar way. The challenge is to find an adhesive that is able to bond nicely to metal and bamboo. The other problem with bamboo is that you cannot guarantee it's regularity in the same way that you can with an artificial tube... I guess that is where craftsmen come in. Not all bamboo tubes are created equal. A lugged frame is normally made by braising metal lugs to metal poles with a bit of solder. Lugged frames are known for being tough but really heavy.
Yes! It is a single speed - Gears, Breaks - these things are not required when the pedals are connected directly to the chain, and the chain is connected to the wheel. You want to slow down... pedal slower.
I am a bike-geek as well as a Lunix-Geek:
The bike is a single-speed. That means it does not need gears, breaks or even a ratcheted freewheel (on the back wheel)... the pedals are connected directly to the rear wheel by the chain. If you want to slow down you use your legs.
Single-speeds are favourites of city-couriers, where there is a great advantage to have a light-simple bike. There is less to break (XTR gear systems are known to wear out after a few weeks of couriering).
As for Aluminum - dont get me started on that nasty harsh material. There has been a disturbing trend for wannabee bikers to adopt the freakiest lightest materials at the expense of all other properties.
For me, steel still has the edge over all these fancy materials. A steel frame will last for years of hard riding, and still feel as plush as the day it was first ridden.
KDE had shadowed windows and menus a long time ago (at least it did on my distribution) - shouldnt the title of this article read
"GTK/Gnome finally catches up by implementing usless feature copied from OSX"
Yes, shadows are nice - they stop windows smelging into each other... but this is so NOT NEWS.
Yeah, Ultima Online has had this since version 2. Translation actually causes more confusion than harmony - at first you wonder why these people are talking so odly... :-)
This was one of the reasons for a unique kind of power station to be created in Wales (For Americans, that is the little country stuck on the side of England but still part of the UK!).
m
The Dinorwig Pumped-Storage power-station spends most of it's time consuming electricity by pumping the contents of a huge lower resivoir onto two upper resivoirs.
As soon as the tea-break starts, Dinorwig lets rip, and the entire contents of the upper lakes are allowed to flow back down, the energy being converted back into electricial energy.
Despite the fact that Dinorwig is less than 80% efficient, it saves the generating companies millions a year because it can react in an instant to sudden demands for more power.
http://www.darvill.clara.net/altenerg/pumped.ht
" Dinorwig has the fastest "response time" of any pumped storage plant in the world - it can provide 1320 MegaWatts in 12 seconds. That's a lot of cups of tea!"
These days I have a salary and can afford to have nice pretty computers:
In my primary work area I have a powerbook (With OSX) and a Gentoo Linux PC (Strictly KDE not Gnome). Looking at those screenshots reminds me how much the Linux community has advanced since those 'hobbyist' days. I think we owe it to ourselves to have desktops that are both functional AND pretty.
Anyway Gentoo Linux includes FVWM even though that distro is less than 2 years old!
Fvwm is what Microsoft THINK all UNIX(y) computers still look like!
Quote from the BBC Article: "SpaceShipOne will then fire its hybrid rocket engine, fuelled by a mixture of nitrous oxide and rubber, to reach the blackness of space."
Surely this is a typo? Nobody uses rubber as a rocket fuel... unless this is a new kind of rubber that is completely diferent to the stretchy, boingy stuff?
I have a mind to start a new sourceforge project - a bot that creates a tar-pit website to confuse this kind of bot.
It would grab the album chart from FreeDB and then make a pseudo random listing of 20 or so artists. Clicking on an artist's name would reveal the names of the albums, and clicking on the album name would reveal links to song downloads as MP3s.
Each page would have a 10 second delay on loading, and each MP3 download (which would be white noise) would be downloaed at about 10 bits per second. The idea would be to tie-up as many threads on thhe RIAA servers for as long as possible.
Next, the system would run on a wildcarded domain name so that it would look to the RIAAbot as if it were a large number of sites. Each of these sites would link to each other creating a vast low bandwidth tarpit.
How about that then?
On a slower mac (I had a Blue & White G3), you can use Distcc to have neighborhood Linux computers give a helping hand. DistCC can help you cross-compile - that means you can build G3 code on a cluster of Athlon machines.
If you have more than one Gentoo computer in your office then re-compiling everything does not take that long. DistCC is built into the latest Stage3 disk for all architectures.
One of the reasons I switched from Redhat 8.1 / 7.3 to Gentoo Linux (Beta) was the amazing Emerge package management tool. It combines simple Tar based package files with cool scripts called eBuilds, that automagically fetch and compile all the components I need.
Of course Gentoo is not for everybody... it takes longer to install than Debian (and that is before you have compiled the entire OS from scratch), but for those who are interested in that sort of thing it can be a refreshing alternative.
Next time you upgrade with orange, ask the assistant to quote 'return / failure rates' on all the handsets available....
I was thinking of upgrading - It would be cool to have a camera or the ability to run my own applications on my phone. Despite the cool new products available, I have decided not to buy for at least 6 more months because all of the phones currently available are even less reliable than my t68 (which is only just tolerable).
According to Orange, there are problems with all the new generation of Camera / Organiser phones. Aparantly, the worst offender is the new Nokia camera phone - that had a more than 90% return rate due to hardware faults. I am sure this MS phone could be worse! My Ericsson T68 had to be swaped 4 times this year - I'm astonished that anything could be worse!
As all the mobile phone companies seem to be rushing out new models in time for xmas - it seems the idea of waiting untill the product is right has been completely forgotten.
By the way, if you ARE thinking of upgrading - a heavy user on Orange can usually blag a free handset. Rather than go through the upgrades line, go to the disconnection line and tell them you want to end your contract with orange because O2 or Vodaphone has offered your chouice of handset as a joining incentive.
Orange will usually offer you a decent handset for free as an incentive to keep you to another year's contract. A heavy user should never have to pay for upgrades!
Hi, I maintain that page on DMOZ - if there are any Star Control related URLS that I have missed, please email me on ip@stodge.org. Thanks! Sal
Imagine if this could be made to work on an MS Xbox? It would transform that clunky Halo-player into a practical work computer - or even an affordable clustering machine.
Am I the only one who thinks it's odd that they dumped microsoft (and their flagship product) shortly before they were due to launch?
Surely they knew that they were not going to get this source code for a long time - I cant imagine (for all their tricks), MS playing a practical joke on Sendo - promising source code and then repeatedly finding an excuse not to share it untill Sendo got sick of the whole thing and decides to split with MS.
More likely Nokia paid Sendo a bigger ammount of money than MS originally paid them to publicly ditch Microsoft, and thereby prolong microsoft's entry into the smartphone market.
I've owned using a Sony t68i now for a few months - this has to be the most disapointing phone I have ever had the displeasure of using. I curse the day I ever allowed Orange (UK) to sell it to me.
According to orange, more than 1/3 of the T68s and T68i's ever sent to Orange customers have been returned at least once. Orange no longer recomend the T68 family of phones to anybody who makes 400+ minutes of calls per miniute - it's not up to the job of being a business phone.
First of all, the good points - this is a jewel of a phone. Tiny, pretty and colourful. It's designed with the looks to sucker in geeky types who like cute machines. Thats the good bit over.
Unfortunately, this has to be the least reliable phone I have ever used. Before my T68i, I have owned bricks made by Motrola, and then less brick-like phones made by Nokia. Even my 1996 Motorolla MR1 flip-phone has better signal strength usability and reliability than the T68.
The interface is pretty, but unfortunately the CPU and graphics chip are underpowered - the result is a strange laggy feeling where because the phone takes a fraction of a second to respond, it often leaves the user unsure as to if the button was pressed correctly... so the user ends up pressing the button again, and then fills the screen with redundant characters.
If you allow somebody to sell you this phone, it's worth getting insurance with it (The same goes for the Nokia 8000 and 9000 series phones) - these all have very low MHBF (Mean Hours Before Failure) scores. I'm now on my 4th T68i - every few months I have to get it replaced.
Faults have included, frequent crashes (Orange will admit off the record, that the T68 firmware was just not ready at the time it went to market). Transmission and reception failures - general poor call quiality and lack of reliability. Occaisionally I have had missing menu options, and sporadic and inexplicable freezes.
Anyway, that should be enough to convince you - just dont buy this phone okay?
That nonsense about the guy inventing qwerty to slow people down is just a silly myth... read the truth!
http://home.earthlink.net/~dcrehr/myths.html
It makes no sense. It is awkward, inefficient and confusing. We've been saying that for 124 years. But there it remains. Those keys made their first appearance on a rickety, clumsy device marketed as the "Type-Writer" in 1872. Today the keyboard is a universal fixture even on the most advanced, sophisticated computers and word processors electronic technology can produce.
.
How could we get stuck with something so bad?
.
In this case, the answer lies in the old proverb about the early bird catching the worm. As far as the typewriter keyboard is concerned, being first was the whole ball game.