Oh, right. You found MkLinux, that little piece of Apple abandonware that has not been maintained in years and moreover never reached beyond developer releases when it was being worked on. Let me just warn anybody who thinks this is the solution to installing Linux on a nubus mac - This distro simply is not functional. Not even close. This is one case where results from google do not come close to reflecting the reality I came to discover through unfortunate experience. Conclusion for nubus powermacs: give up now, do not even try. I desperately wanted to believe that Linux, with its stellar reputation for running on all sorts of hardware, would work on nubus macs. This is one case where, reputation notwithstanding, it will not. Sorry.
Actually, slashdot is a bunch of paranoid, whiny losers who fear the loss of rights that generally never existed in a legal sense, that are actually privileges. Some of the things slashdot readers seem to fear the loss of are illegal anyway, like copying stuff regardless of the copyright. Other things, like palladium, are not even close to coming to pass.
At all times the paranoia manifests itself most by grossly exaggerating the effect that whatever technological restriction measure being considered at the moment is going to have on everyone's lives. Especially considered that most of them only affect computers, which are hardly the sacred source of our most valued liberties, like freedom of assembly, speech, the press, weapons, and movement. Shit, you think things are getting bad in the world when we can log onto a site like this and say anything we want without fear of government reprisal? The cynicism found here is disgusting, and unjustified. I conclude that if anyone could see through schemes like the supposed massive restrictions palladium will put on computer users so easily, the probability of them having such far reaching consequences is terribly low. People here consistently overestimate the power of big companies and the government, and also, in their arrogance, the stupidity of the populace.
I've been blocking Your Rights Online from my frontpage for a long time because it is just a bunch of ranting lunatics who see oppression by more powerful forces everywhere because they feel powerless over their own lives. Their paranoia is just a viewpoint, and their constant fear is hardly the most rational take on things. Such people need to own up to the fact that if they feel trapped in a hopeless situation, odds are that it is because of their own actions, not some other entity that forced the circumstances upon them, through trickery or brute force or some other unfairness. Sadly, this is the last thing they would ever do, because they prefer to claim victimhood rather than failure. If they cannot make positive changes in their lives, it is because such a thing is impossible, not because they are deficient in real desire or ability.
I would also like to question the reliability of past consensuses on slashdot, in addition to all the Chicken Littles here. Remember the cynical conclusion Slashdot reached about the iPod when it was first released? Slashdot said, 'That's stupid' (collectively I might add) and was collectively wrong. Consensus on this site means nothing, it just means the herd is moving in the same direction, not necessarily the way the wind is blowing.
The paranoid people, in predicting an impending effect from a restrictive technology, are wrong proportionately to the severity of the effect. I know this because I don't even bother reading Your Rights Online, and despite all the gloom and doom predictions made there, my life has not changed at all. In any way. Even concerning computers. That it might is irrelevant, the sky might fall as well...
I don't know about you, but big media doesn't run my life, they just amuse me for a small portion of it. The idea that they could leverage the value I find in that amusement in order to control my behavior in a broader sense is absurd. Especially since it is such a non-essential product. I saw some post saying everybody was going to switch to palladium systems because their kid would want to play video games. Sometimes I think slashdot believes everybody not only has a kid like this, but IS a kid who just wants to play video games or something.
If you are like that as an adult, somebody else is already running your life anyway, and your paranoia and resentment of the situation will not help you. Stand up, look around, take control of yourself, and you will be free.
At some level, I groan whenever I see these comparisions of operating systems and platforms based on analogies relating automobiles. Then again, since those were the other disruptive technology of the twentieth century, I suppose some analogies may be warranted. Want to hear one I came up with myself? I knew you would.
Windows/x86 is just like a model T ford. Ever see film footage of the busy intersections of cities during the twenties, when the T was at its height? Practically every single car is a model T, and there are thousands of cars! There were other makes of cars in existence, but almost nobody had one compared to the model T. We know that eventually, there were several other big manufacturers of cars, and that their reliability, safety, and efficiency improved by leaps and bounds since the heyday of the model T (the second best selling car ever). However, their basic features were all present in the model T.
If you thought this was going somewhere really elaborate, sorry. I refuse to flesh it out any further, since all analogies like this describe reality in the haziest fashion possible.
Incidentally, I produced this post on a 400mhz G4 powermac with a gig of ram in it, and for all practical purposes it feels as fast in everyday tasks as the Dual 1ghz G4 on the desk next to it (less ram, perhaps? - the dual still has 512mb). Including, interestingly enough, in launching applications. Although this happens seldom because the platform is so stable. I could conceive this computer lasting for several more years. Most probably computing will change enough in a few years that this machine will be left behind, like all the other older Apples I have that still work. At least, that has been the past trend. The old Performa I was fooling with today just cannot browse the web well (too slow to render), even though it can do it. It still is a functional machine, but I would not use it unless I had to. I have seen people with Apple computers that are waaay older than this that still work fine, BTW. People shy away from continuing to use them because they perceive a qualitative difference using newer computers.
Yes, Apple computers cost more initially, but they do in my experience also last longer. But how much is this extra reliability worth in the face of constantly increasing demands put upon them? Not that much, with the benefits from extended reliability falling to nearly zero after a few years. The only way to keep many old machines in service, as some other poster pointed out, is to put them into other roles that they still can fulfill, while the main computer on everyone's desktop for general use is upgraded.
I think that the computer industry is based around the idea that we should upgrade every two years or so because people generally wanted to do that in the past. The new machines had tangible features (like faster web browsing, good application launch times) that they saw as benefitting them. Yet since the last upgrade most people had, there have not been any dramatic changes in what they have been doing with their machines, and thus little reason to upgrade. Should you be one of the people in this situation, paying more for a computer that lasts longer could be a good idea, depending on how much longer that you thought it would last, versus how much more you were paying.
Or maybe you could just keep the current one as long as possible. When it fails, you might want to consider an Apple, though.
Huh, I didn't know who she was, and I looked her up on google. Quite a lovely young lady if I do say so myself. But more interesting is the first link in the search results. Check it out here. Somebody has figured out how to get fake search results as the very first result on google! I ran into it sometime in the past couple of days, but seeing it again prompted me to take greater notice. Amazing! I wonder how long it will take google to figure this scam out...
Art, pure and simple
on
Alien Case Mod
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
This is the single most inspired and creative case mod I have ever seen. I see some posts from people scorning it. Maybe you would not want to own one, but that's only because it would be better off in a museum or something.
Yeah, I think once you spend a certain amount of time on slashdot, you eventually turn into a troll. This descent into trollness is followed by your being driven from the site, and eventually suicide in the manner of the WIPO Troll. Seriously, I laid into you so hard because I am guilty of the same silliness to a great degree. I just made a couple of new shell functions today (these are going to save me some real time though). But, worse, I am dvorak typist. Observe my advocacy of that strategy elsewhere in the comments on this article. I have to restrain myself from buying programmable footswitches, mouse pointers that track the focused led strapped to my forehead, etc.
As long as you recognize that most of the customizations and modifications we make to the interfaces to our machines serve no purpose other than our own amusement, I'm ok with it. I wasn't quite sure what your intentions were from the article. So I ribbed you real good to make sure. Good luck finding your perfect keyboard! Just don't be surprised if you discover it doesn't exist, and that someone finds it funny that you are constantly disappointed that technology can't do more for you. Sometimes you just have to be content with what you have, which is really quite a lot.
In closing, take a moment to reflect on how good your life truly is. Peace.
"QWERTY wasn't designed to slow typing, it was designed to move the hammers for letters that would frequently be typed in sequence further apart. The further apart two hammers are, the faster they can be used in sequence since each hammer has to fall back less far before it is out of jamming range of the next hammer."
You make a good point here, that QWERTY keyboards were designed primarily with the requirements of the typewriter in mind, and not the human who would be using it. And from this bold assertion you go on to insist that it is an equal or better human interface than DVORAK, which was designed after nearly a decade of human factors research.
Not true. If nothing else, it is my experience that DVORAK greatly reduces the amount of effort expended in typing.
However, I like your other two points. It does take a lot of training and patience to learn (easy to use, hard to learn, mark of a good tool in my opinion). Switching back and forth between keymaps is most likely a terrible idea, and too difficult for me, but why would you do that when you have selected a preference? If you thought you would be in situations that required you to do that regardless, I agree you would be much better off only knowing QWERTY.
Keep your model M, my friend. But just because you like your keyboard and layout the way it is, is no reason to piss on DVORAK.
Who cares about an increase in speed, if all I get is a massive increase in comfort, that is nice.
How much more comfortable would your typing be if the majority of the letters, including all the important vowels, were in the home row? If most common patterns of letters were spread out to alternate between the right and left hand?
DVORAK is not a myth or an urban legend, except perhaps the idea that it is principally designed to increase speed. It was designed to reduce the motion required to type. This certainly has increased comfort for me at least. Speed notwithstanding, I could already type fast enough when I switched, and I didn't make my switch based on the idea that I would be able to type faster. More like, I will be able to type more without my hands getting as tired.
Make the switch to Dvorak, and as long as you are not forced to use any other keymap by work circumstances and whatnot, you will never look back. I can't vouch for trying to use both keymaps alternatively, I switched over outright about two years ago now. Things I have noticed about this:
1. I have no idea whether it is really faster or not, although the world record was apparently set on a keyboard like this. However, it has improved my typing speed very much, for the simple reason that looking at the keyboard no longer provides any feedback as to what letter is where (I never changed the position of the keys, figuring to touch type). This forced me to learn to touch type properly, and I did, with a resultant speed increase.
2. Speed issue aside, it is much more comfortable than Qwerty. The more time I spend typing the more I appreciate that most of the letters I use are in the home row. Seriously, it is astonishing how much less motion it takes to type on a keyboard like this.
3. It took me about three weeks to switch, and more like two months to get comfortable. This is a long curve, and I did almost no typing-related work during this period. They say it takes you longer to learn if you attempt to keep working on the old keymap while learning a new one. I theorize you might never learn at all doing this, since the 'cold turkey' process already takes quite a while, and the process otherwise might be so gradual that you would not see much benefit for your effort.
I would encourage anyone who sees a lifetime of typing ahead of them to give this system a try - over the long term it is saving me a lot of effort and making my hands more comfortable, far better than I think any more exotic keyboard design could do. What is more, it is practically free!
"4. The touchpad is under my thumbs. Who in the world thought this was a good idea? OK, yes, I know that you can set it to turn off the touchpad when you're typing -- but it's still a hack, and you shouldn't have to do it. Even when it's 'turned off', it's still possible to do actions you didn't intend, particularly if you pause for a second to study your code. It's just another imperfection of the touchpad."
What are you talking about? My thumbs go on the spacebar... Do you have giant thumbs?;) You aren't the only person who mentioned this, but pardon me if I say it sounds ridiculous. Maybe you have a laptop with one of those slightly-smaller than normal keyboards. I hate those too, incidentally. They cause all sorts of problems, not only with thumbs going on the touchpad (apparently), but also typing.
I am in favor of such a technology. At least as it applies to speeding and drunk driving. For some reason, the actions people take in their cars are associated with the ultimate in personal freedom. In America at least, there is still a sense of machismo connected to not using seatbelts. While I won't get into that issue, I routinely see people who speed and drive recklessly who are abusing their right to operate a vehicle and with their actions are endangering the lives of other people. Drunk driving is the same way.
Both are illegal for a reason - Because people should not be allowed to make a decision that puts other's lives at risk without their permission. However, it has become painfully obvious after driving on American roads that a significant minority of people have complete disregard not only for their own safety, but the safety of others as well. These people will continue to engage in dangerous behavior as long as they are physically allowed.
Forcing cars to operate within the legal constraints that have already been established for their operation regardless of the driver would make the roads much safer in my opinion. Further, the cost to individual freedoms would be minimal, because the only freedoms taken away would be a freedom that does not even exist from a legal standpoint, the freedom to violate the law.
Much arguing is happening within this discussion about copyright situations in which the law may be unjust or unclear. These are well founded. I am willing to allow a lot of flexibility in the making and enforcement of laws that do not involve life and limb, like copyright laws. But I have become rigid in my ideas of how traffic laws should be made and enforced, especially on busy highways. Let me give you a hint, without ambiguity.
Good lord, man! Listen to all your complicated specifications! I especially like the last one, whinging about how your current keyboard is black and that makes it hard to see in the dark. Want a super-1337 keyboard but can't touch type, eh? What are you doing that could possibly justify a ultra-custom keyboard? Oh, never mind, it appears you are adjusting the volume of your PC sound system, even muting it! Wow, it is pretty important to be able to do that quickly and efficiently, as it directly affects your productivity writing Perl scripts to automate tasks that each take 1/100,000th of the time it takes to produce the script. Clearly, you are planning for a future of repetitive, yet complex computing tasks that require more than a mere conventional keyboard and mouse interface. I advise that you begin working as hard as you can, nights and weekends, on the construction of a complete super keyboard system. Ultimately, it should be scriptable enough that you will just write a master script that performs all your daily work for you by invoking other scripts. And how will this master script be triggered? With a single button, my friend, a single button.
Actually, I'll write the master script for you, it shouldn't be all that complex.
"I lament how trackpoints are disappearing off laptop keyboards these days."
I can't second that, I hate those things. Maybe they are better when you get used to them, but I have had to spend zero amount of time learning to use the alternative, the trackpad. That is, IF the trackpad is a good one (most seem to be). I used one that was supposedly based on heat sensing on a friend's Dell laptop, and it was the most utterly unresponsive thing ever.
Brushing aside this isolated experience, I would like to make a generalization. Generally, I think trackpads take much less motor control and concentration than the alternative trackpoints, which are like a shortened, miniature joystick. Maybe you can develop skill with trackpoints, but it is not worth developing when the alternative is so much easier immediately. Undisputably you are making much larger muscle movements with the trackpad, but these still fall into the realm of the small and convenient. Whereas trackpoints respond to much more minute motions and therefore take greater skill to control, making them tedious to work with and master. You even mention in your post that they are less accurate too!
I speculate that the reason trackpoints are starting to disappear is because most people find them annoying for the reasons I stated.
Amen, brother. I think the cable modem folks at least are concerned about allowing anyone to become a provider of content, which is what running a webserver allows you to do. Put up a server, publish something interesting or useful for the world to see.
See the difference? Kazaa in essence allows you to do what the big media companies want you to do with your connection - suck down content of various kinds through the fast pipe they provide you with. Not all that different from cable tv. At the moment, much of the content people are downloading (or uploading for that matter) may be illegal, but they are working on that. They want to remain the main providers of content on your connection
Essentially, they are trying to control the technology so that it suits a projection of their business model. I think they have some kind of long range plan, anyway. Lord knows what they would be able to leverage in order to put it into effect - I don't even use the Road Runner startup page or any other service that is supposed to be provided to users beyond the bandwidth, but they might roll out something.
Or looking at it another way (minus the corporate control conspiracy theory), when broadband providers were just starting out, they had no Acceptable Use Policies and allowed pretty much anything. The result for cable modem providers was a disaster, with a couple of people running Hotline servers that sucked up all of the backbone bandwidth for entire towns. They want to make sure that kind of thing never happens again, hence the draconian AUP provisions against running servers of any kind. Viewed in light of cable modem providers early history, I can understand how these people view anything called a 'server' as potentially threatening their whole model of bandwidth reselling. They may not consider p2p in that league yet, but if it causes as severe a disruption as the first broadband Hotline servers did, they will start prohibiting it as well.
Really, the problem is that all ISPs, broadband or otherwise, operate by selling more bandwidth then they actually have in order to make a profit. There is nothing wrong with doing this, as long as their estimates of how much bandwidth people will actually use versus how much they will pay for correspond well with reality. Apparently, broadband ISPs have not gotten the formula right yet. One could argue convincingly that this is because the nature of the service they are offering is different than previous dialup ISPs. In essence, the economics of broadband are different - people use it differently than dialup when it is available. Therefore it is impossible to simply assume the numbers associated with dialup scale up proportionately to broadband.
So the broadband providers are going to have to change their business models.
Not all of them, smartass. What if I need to use apps that require hardware drivers that are only available on Linux, like ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) for instance? Incidentally, ALSA is going to be in the next Linux kernel (currently modules and other stuff). Fink will never give you access to the low level hardware functionality that some apps, particularly audio, require.
That renders the protocol nearly purposeless. It really isn't that much faster, to make it worth switching to from 802.11b. I am especially incensed because I opted to get the 'g' card in my Powerbook a few months ago. At least it is backwards compatible with 'b'.
PID COMMAND %CPU 190 Window Man 11.4% 538 ScreenSave 0.8%
Hmmm, running the Flurry screensaver on the desktop of my 867mhz G4 powerbook (with the Nvdia Geforce 4MX 32MB GPU) reveals the above numbers as approximately the average (selected output from 'top -u'). The most significant change in the CPU usage comes from the window manager, which changes from neglible to about 10% when the saver starts.
I think what people mean when they say things like this is that this CPU usage, while not always a low percentage, is both much lower than without Quartz Extreme (without which this number is about 3X greater), and moreover low enough that it does not interfere with most work. I run the screensaver engine with a considerably more CPU hungry saver nearly all the time, and the system is still as responsive as ever for everyday tasks. I turn it off for long code compiles and MP3 encoding, though.
I think perhaps the issue in your case is that you must have a certain amount of graphics memory to be able to take advantage of Quartz Extreme, which really does help quite a bit on systems that can. Dunno...
Screw that, I'm sick of so many shiny (but functionally useless) features being introduced into computers all the time. Next computer I buy (and OS it runs) is going to be based on a careful analysis of what I want to do with the machine (how much utility it will offer me), rather than based on whether it has X new features with accompanying buzzwords to describe them.
To hell with the computer industry that insists I must be buying new hardware and software all the time when my requirements for getting work done on a computer do not change that often. If they don't want to sell me a system that reliably provides me with the ability to perform the tasks I want to do, and does not change constantly so I have to keep relearning these tasks, I'll find an alternative.
I do not care what desktops will have achieved in the next two years. During this time, I don't see my requirements change to need some supposedly brilliant innovation which wastes all the time that it supposedly saves through the effort it takes to learn the system, which is going to change at the whim of some company anyway when they want to sell me something new.
What happened after the 18 month mark? Did the inefficiency 'stay off'? I am interested in this story, since I have often thought it plausible that the amount of time people spend with computerized systems could be wasted as it was just duplicating tasks that could be performed by other means. Sure, sometimes it is theoretically 'faster,' but this does not mean better.
On the other hand, I wonder if the drastic changes you describe simply involved correcting the messed-up priorities of organizations, of which the computerization was the symptom, not the cause.
You've stumbled upon the real solution, it does indirectly relate to population. There is limitless potential for the creation of value in a world where the amount of human knowledge is allowed to grow without limits.
Allow me to explain. All value is created by human knowledge. A clear example is the value of copper. If we did not know that copper was useful, there could be so much copper in the world that we were tripping over hunks of it on the sidewalk, and it would continue to be worthless. Yet as soon as someone realized things could be made from copper, it would become quite useful to humans and therefore valuable.
It is the same way with all other value. Human knowledge creates it. Humans have nearly unlimited wants - Once you satisfy one, we immediately move on to another. Knowledge of how to satisfy more human wants is what creates value. Therefore, the more people we have using their brains to figure things out, the better our wants will be fulfilled.
We say economic growth has happened when the value of all the things we were provided with has increased over time, that is to say, in general, our wants were fulfilled increasingly better with time. This is a natural progression as certain problems of providing for our wants are solved, allowing us to use our brains (the most valuable resource we have is time spent thinking of solutions to problems) to solve the problems that remain. Economic growth is therefore a good indicator of whether society is on the right track to fulfilling the wants of its members.
Unless you what you want is to not have what you want, in which case I say you are perverse.
Much more closely than I do now. After 1.0 the improvements seemed less noticeable to me. I suppose this means the software has matured. Is anyone really excited about the new features? Are they interesting from an end user perspective?
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, right. You found MkLinux, that little piece of Apple abandonware that has not been maintained in years and moreover never reached beyond developer releases when it was being worked on. Let me just warn anybody who thinks this is the solution to installing Linux on a nubus mac - This distro simply is not functional. Not even close. This is one case where results from google do not come close to reflecting the reality I came to discover through unfortunate experience. Conclusion for nubus powermacs: give up now, do not even try. I desperately wanted to believe that Linux, with its stellar reputation for running on all sorts of hardware, would work on nubus macs. This is one case where, reputation notwithstanding, it will not. Sorry.
Actually, slashdot is a bunch of paranoid, whiny losers who fear the loss of rights that generally never existed in a legal sense, that are actually privileges. Some of the things slashdot readers seem to fear the loss of are illegal anyway, like copying stuff regardless of the copyright. Other things, like palladium, are not even close to coming to pass.
At all times the paranoia manifests itself most by grossly exaggerating the effect that whatever technological restriction measure being considered at the moment is going to have on everyone's lives. Especially considered that most of them only affect computers, which are hardly the sacred source of our most valued liberties, like freedom of assembly, speech, the press, weapons, and movement. Shit, you think things are getting bad in the world when we can log onto a site like this and say anything we want without fear of government reprisal? The cynicism found here is disgusting, and unjustified. I conclude that if anyone could see through schemes like the supposed massive restrictions palladium will put on computer users so easily, the probability of them having such far reaching consequences is terribly low. People here consistently overestimate the power of big companies and the government, and also, in their arrogance, the stupidity of the populace.
I've been blocking Your Rights Online from my frontpage for a long time because it is just a bunch of ranting lunatics who see oppression by more powerful forces everywhere because they feel powerless over their own lives. Their paranoia is just a viewpoint, and their constant fear is hardly the most rational take on things. Such people need to own up to the fact that if they feel trapped in a hopeless situation, odds are that it is because of their own actions, not some other entity that forced the circumstances upon them, through trickery or brute force or some other unfairness. Sadly, this is the last thing they would ever do, because they prefer to claim victimhood rather than failure. If they cannot make positive changes in their lives, it is because such a thing is impossible, not because they are deficient in real desire or ability.
I would also like to question the reliability of past consensuses on slashdot, in addition to all the Chicken Littles here. Remember the cynical conclusion Slashdot reached about the iPod when it was first released? Slashdot said, 'That's stupid' (collectively I might add) and was collectively wrong. Consensus on this site means nothing, it just means the herd is moving in the same direction, not necessarily the way the wind is blowing.
The paranoid people, in predicting an impending effect from a restrictive technology, are wrong proportionately to the severity of the effect. I know this because I don't even bother reading Your Rights Online, and despite all the gloom and doom predictions made there, my life has not changed at all. In any way. Even concerning computers. That it might is irrelevant, the sky might fall as well...
I don't know about you, but big media doesn't run my life, they just amuse me for a small portion of it. The idea that they could leverage the value I find in that amusement in order to control my behavior in a broader sense is absurd. Especially since it is such a non-essential product. I saw some post saying everybody was going to switch to palladium systems because their kid would want to play video games. Sometimes I think slashdot believes everybody not only has a kid like this, but IS a kid who just wants to play video games or something.
If you are like that as an adult, somebody else is already running your life anyway, and your paranoia and resentment of the situation will not help you. Stand up, look around, take control of yourself, and you will be free.
At some level, I groan whenever I see these comparisions of operating systems and platforms based on analogies relating automobiles. Then again, since those were the other disruptive technology of the twentieth century, I suppose some analogies may be warranted. Want to hear one I came up with myself? I knew you would.
Windows/x86 is just like a model T ford. Ever see film footage of the busy intersections of cities during the twenties, when the T was at its height? Practically every single car is a model T, and there are thousands of cars! There were other makes of cars in existence, but almost nobody had one compared to the model T. We know that eventually, there were several other big manufacturers of cars, and that their reliability, safety, and efficiency improved by leaps and bounds since the heyday of the model T (the second best selling car ever). However, their basic features were all present in the model T.
If you thought this was going somewhere really elaborate, sorry. I refuse to flesh it out any further, since all analogies like this describe reality in the haziest fashion possible.
Incidentally, I produced this post on a 400mhz G4 powermac with a gig of ram in it, and for all practical purposes it feels as fast in everyday tasks as the Dual 1ghz G4 on the desk next to it (less ram, perhaps? - the dual still has 512mb). Including, interestingly enough, in launching applications. Although this happens seldom because the platform is so stable. I could conceive this computer lasting for several more years. Most probably computing will change enough in a few years that this machine will be left behind, like all the other older Apples I have that still work. At least, that has been the past trend. The old Performa I was fooling with today just cannot browse the web well (too slow to render), even though it can do it. It still is a functional machine, but I would not use it unless I had to. I have seen people with Apple computers that are waaay older than this that still work fine, BTW. People shy away from continuing to use them because they perceive a qualitative difference using newer computers.
Yes, Apple computers cost more initially, but they do in my experience also last longer. But how much is this extra reliability worth in the face of constantly increasing demands put upon them? Not that much, with the benefits from extended reliability falling to nearly zero after a few years. The only way to keep many old machines in service, as some other poster pointed out, is to put them into other roles that they still can fulfill, while the main computer on everyone's desktop for general use is upgraded.
I think that the computer industry is based around the idea that we should upgrade every two years or so because people generally wanted to do that in the past. The new machines had tangible features (like faster web browsing, good application launch times) that they saw as benefitting them. Yet since the last upgrade most people had, there have not been any dramatic changes in what they have been doing with their machines, and thus little reason to upgrade. Should you be one of the people in this situation, paying more for a computer that lasts longer could be a good idea, depending on how much longer that you thought it would last, versus how much more you were paying.
Or maybe you could just keep the current one as long as possible. When it fails, you might want to consider an Apple, though.
"I'm sure there are people who do need these ports, for them there are two options - buy a PC laptop or buy an adapter."
And given that the adapters frequently do not work correctly in important ways, only one of these options is real.
Huh, I didn't know who she was, and I looked her up on google. Quite a lovely young lady if I do say so myself. But more interesting is the first link in the search results. Check it out here. Somebody has figured out how to get fake search results as the very first result on google! I ran into it sometime in the past couple of days, but seeing it again prompted me to take greater notice. Amazing! I wonder how long it will take google to figure this scam out...
This is the single most inspired and creative case mod I have ever seen. I see some posts from people scorning it. Maybe you would not want to own one, but that's only because it would be better off in a museum or something.
Yeah, I think once you spend a certain amount of time on slashdot, you eventually turn into a troll. This descent into trollness is followed by your being driven from the site, and eventually suicide in the manner of the WIPO Troll. Seriously, I laid into you so hard because I am guilty of the same silliness to a great degree. I just made a couple of new shell functions today (these are going to save me some real time though). But, worse, I am dvorak typist. Observe my advocacy of that strategy elsewhere in the comments on this article. I have to restrain myself from buying programmable footswitches, mouse pointers that track the focused led strapped to my forehead, etc.
As long as you recognize that most of the customizations and modifications we make to the interfaces to our machines serve no purpose other than our own amusement, I'm ok with it. I wasn't quite sure what your intentions were from the article. So I ribbed you real good to make sure. Good luck finding your perfect keyboard! Just don't be surprised if you discover it doesn't exist, and that someone finds it funny that you are constantly disappointed that technology can't do more for you. Sometimes you just have to be content with what you have, which is really quite a lot.
In closing, take a moment to reflect on how good your life truly is. Peace.
Nice article. I'm a Mac user too, pretty funny!
"QWERTY wasn't designed to slow typing, it was designed to move the hammers for letters that would frequently be typed in sequence further apart. The further apart two hammers are, the faster they can be used in sequence since each hammer has to fall back less far before it is out of jamming range of the next hammer."
You make a good point here, that QWERTY keyboards were designed primarily with the requirements of the typewriter in mind, and not the human who would be using it. And from this bold assertion you go on to insist that it is an equal or better human interface than DVORAK, which was designed after nearly a decade of human factors research.
Not true. If nothing else, it is my experience that DVORAK greatly reduces the amount of effort expended in typing.However, I like your other two points. It does take a lot of training and patience to learn (easy to use, hard to learn, mark of a good tool in my opinion). Switching back and forth between keymaps is most likely a terrible idea, and too difficult for me, but why would you do that when you have selected a preference? If you thought you would be in situations that required you to do that regardless, I agree you would be much better off only knowing QWERTY.
Keep your model M, my friend. But just because you like your keyboard and layout the way it is, is no reason to piss on DVORAK.Who cares about an increase in speed, if all I get is a massive increase in comfort, that is nice.
How much more comfortable would your typing be if the majority of the letters, including all the important vowels, were in the home row? If most common patterns of letters were spread out to alternate between the right and left hand?
DVORAK is not a myth or an urban legend, except perhaps the idea that it is principally designed to increase speed. It was designed to reduce the motion required to type. This certainly has increased comfort for me at least. Speed notwithstanding, I could already type fast enough when I switched, and I didn't make my switch based on the idea that I would be able to type faster. More like, I will be able to type more without my hands getting as tired.
Make the switch to Dvorak, and as long as you are not forced to use any other keymap by work circumstances and whatnot, you will never look back. I can't vouch for trying to use both keymaps alternatively, I switched over outright about two years ago now. Things I have noticed about this:
1. I have no idea whether it is really faster or not, although the world record was apparently set on a keyboard like this. However, it has improved my typing speed very much, for the simple reason that looking at the keyboard no longer provides any feedback as to what letter is where (I never changed the position of the keys, figuring to touch type). This forced me to learn to touch type properly, and I did, with a resultant speed increase.
2. Speed issue aside, it is much more comfortable than Qwerty. The more time I spend typing the more I appreciate that most of the letters I use are in the home row. Seriously, it is astonishing how much less motion it takes to type on a keyboard like this.
3. It took me about three weeks to switch, and more like two months to get comfortable. This is a long curve, and I did almost no typing-related work during this period. They say it takes you longer to learn if you attempt to keep working on the old keymap while learning a new one. I theorize you might never learn at all doing this, since the 'cold turkey' process already takes quite a while, and the process otherwise might be so gradual that you would not see much benefit for your effort.
I would encourage anyone who sees a lifetime of typing ahead of them to give this system a try - over the long term it is saving me a lot of effort and making my hands more comfortable, far better than I think any more exotic keyboard design could do. What is more, it is practically free!
"4. The touchpad is under my thumbs. Who in the world thought this was a good idea? OK, yes, I know that you can set it to turn off the touchpad when you're typing -- but it's still a hack, and you shouldn't have to do it. Even when it's 'turned off', it's still possible to do actions you didn't intend, particularly if you pause for a second to study your code. It's just another imperfection of the touchpad."
What are you talking about? My thumbs go on the spacebar... Do you have giant thumbs? ;) You aren't the only person who mentioned this, but pardon me if I say it sounds ridiculous. Maybe you have a laptop with one of those slightly-smaller than normal keyboards. I hate those too, incidentally. They cause all sorts of problems, not only with thumbs going on the touchpad (apparently), but also typing.
I am in favor of such a technology. At least as it applies to speeding and drunk driving. For some reason, the actions people take in their cars are associated with the ultimate in personal freedom. In America at least, there is still a sense of machismo connected to not using seatbelts. While I won't get into that issue, I routinely see people who speed and drive recklessly who are abusing their right to operate a vehicle and with their actions are endangering the lives of other people. Drunk driving is the same way.
Both are illegal for a reason - Because people should not be allowed to make a decision that puts other's lives at risk without their permission. However, it has become painfully obvious after driving on American roads that a significant minority of people have complete disregard not only for their own safety, but the safety of others as well. These people will continue to engage in dangerous behavior as long as they are physically allowed.
Forcing cars to operate within the legal constraints that have already been established for their operation regardless of the driver would make the roads much safer in my opinion. Further, the cost to individual freedoms would be minimal, because the only freedoms taken away would be a freedom that does not even exist from a legal standpoint, the freedom to violate the law.
Much arguing is happening within this discussion about copyright situations in which the law may be unjust or unclear. These are well founded. I am willing to allow a lot of flexibility in the making and enforcement of laws that do not involve life and limb, like copyright laws. But I have become rigid in my ideas of how traffic laws should be made and enforced, especially on busy highways. Let me give you a hint, without ambiguity.
Good lord, man! Listen to all your complicated specifications! I especially like the last one, whinging about how your current keyboard is black and that makes it hard to see in the dark. Want a super-1337 keyboard but can't touch type, eh? What are you doing that could possibly justify a ultra-custom keyboard? Oh, never mind, it appears you are adjusting the volume of your PC sound system, even muting it! Wow, it is pretty important to be able to do that quickly and efficiently, as it directly affects your productivity writing Perl scripts to automate tasks that each take 1/100,000th of the time it takes to produce the script. Clearly, you are planning for a future of repetitive, yet complex computing tasks that require more than a mere conventional keyboard and mouse interface. I advise that you begin working as hard as you can, nights and weekends, on the construction of a complete super keyboard system. Ultimately, it should be scriptable enough that you will just write a master script that performs all your daily work for you by invoking other scripts. And how will this master script be triggered? With a single button, my friend, a single button.
Actually, I'll write the master script for you, it shouldn't be all that complex.
"I lament how trackpoints are disappearing off laptop keyboards these days."
I can't second that, I hate those things. Maybe they are better when you get used to them, but I have had to spend zero amount of time learning to use the alternative, the trackpad. That is, IF the trackpad is a good one (most seem to be). I used one that was supposedly based on heat sensing on a friend's Dell laptop, and it was the most utterly unresponsive thing ever.
Brushing aside this isolated experience, I would like to make a generalization. Generally, I think trackpads take much less motor control and concentration than the alternative trackpoints, which are like a shortened, miniature joystick. Maybe you can develop skill with trackpoints, but it is not worth developing when the alternative is so much easier immediately. Undisputably you are making much larger muscle movements with the trackpad, but these still fall into the realm of the small and convenient. Whereas trackpoints respond to much more minute motions and therefore take greater skill to control, making them tedious to work with and master. You even mention in your post that they are less accurate too!
I speculate that the reason trackpoints are starting to disappear is because most people find them annoying for the reasons I stated.
Why is this funny?
All SCO is doing is blustering. This has been discussed to death here before.
Amen, brother. I think the cable modem folks at least are concerned about allowing anyone to become a provider of content, which is what running a webserver allows you to do. Put up a server, publish something interesting or useful for the world to see.
See the difference? Kazaa in essence allows you to do what the big media companies want you to do with your connection - suck down content of various kinds through the fast pipe they provide you with. Not all that different from cable tv. At the moment, much of the content people are downloading (or uploading for that matter) may be illegal, but they are working on that. They want to remain the main providers of content on your connection
Essentially, they are trying to control the technology so that it suits a projection of their business model. I think they have some kind of long range plan, anyway. Lord knows what they would be able to leverage in order to put it into effect - I don't even use the Road Runner startup page or any other service that is supposed to be provided to users beyond the bandwidth, but they might roll out something.
Or looking at it another way (minus the corporate control conspiracy theory), when broadband providers were just starting out, they had no Acceptable Use Policies and allowed pretty much anything. The result for cable modem providers was a disaster, with a couple of people running Hotline servers that sucked up all of the backbone bandwidth for entire towns. They want to make sure that kind of thing never happens again, hence the draconian AUP provisions against running servers of any kind. Viewed in light of cable modem providers early history, I can understand how these people view anything called a 'server' as potentially threatening their whole model of bandwidth reselling. They may not consider p2p in that league yet, but if it causes as severe a disruption as the first broadband Hotline servers did, they will start prohibiting it as well.
Really, the problem is that all ISPs, broadband or otherwise, operate by selling more bandwidth then they actually have in order to make a profit. There is nothing wrong with doing this, as long as their estimates of how much bandwidth people will actually use versus how much they will pay for correspond well with reality. Apparently, broadband ISPs have not gotten the formula right yet. One could argue convincingly that this is because the nature of the service they are offering is different than previous dialup ISPs. In essence, the economics of broadband are different - people use it differently than dialup when it is available. Therefore it is impossible to simply assume the numbers associated with dialup scale up proportionately to broadband.
So the broadband providers are going to have to change their business models.
Not all of them, smartass. What if I need to use apps that require hardware drivers that are only available on Linux, like ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) for instance? Incidentally, ALSA is going to be in the next Linux kernel (currently modules and other stuff). Fink will never give you access to the low level hardware functionality that some apps, particularly audio, require.
That renders the protocol nearly purposeless. It really isn't that much faster, to make it worth switching to from 802.11b. I am especially incensed because I opted to get the 'g' card in my Powerbook a few months ago. At least it is backwards compatible with 'b'.
PID COMMAND %CPU
190 Window Man 11.4%
538 ScreenSave 0.8%
Hmmm, running the Flurry screensaver on the desktop of my 867mhz G4 powerbook (with the Nvdia Geforce 4MX 32MB GPU) reveals the above numbers as approximately the average (selected output from 'top -u'). The most significant change in the CPU usage comes from the window manager, which changes from neglible to about 10% when the saver starts.
I think what people mean when they say things like this is that this CPU usage, while not always a low percentage, is both much lower than without Quartz Extreme (without which this number is about 3X greater), and moreover low enough that it does not interfere with most work. I run the screensaver engine with a considerably more CPU hungry saver nearly all the time, and the system is still as responsive as ever for everyday tasks. I turn it off for long code compiles and MP3 encoding, though.
I think perhaps the issue in your case is that you must have a certain amount of graphics memory to be able to take advantage of Quartz Extreme, which really does help quite a bit on systems that can. Dunno...
Screw that, I'm sick of so many shiny (but functionally useless) features being introduced into computers all the time. Next computer I buy (and OS it runs) is going to be based on a careful analysis of what I want to do with the machine (how much utility it will offer me), rather than based on whether it has X new features with accompanying buzzwords to describe them.
To hell with the computer industry that insists I must be buying new hardware and software all the time when my requirements for getting work done on a computer do not change that often. If they don't want to sell me a system that reliably provides me with the ability to perform the tasks I want to do, and does not change constantly so I have to keep relearning these tasks, I'll find an alternative.
I do not care what desktops will have achieved in the next two years. During this time, I don't see my requirements change to need some supposedly brilliant innovation which wastes all the time that it supposedly saves through the effort it takes to learn the system, which is going to change at the whim of some company anyway when they want to sell me something new.
What happened after the 18 month mark? Did the inefficiency 'stay off'? I am interested in this story, since I have often thought it plausible that the amount of time people spend with computerized systems could be wasted as it was just duplicating tasks that could be performed by other means. Sure, sometimes it is theoretically 'faster,' but this does not mean better. On the other hand, I wonder if the drastic changes you describe simply involved correcting the messed-up priorities of organizations, of which the computerization was the symptom, not the cause.
You've stumbled upon the real solution, it does indirectly relate to population. There is limitless potential for the creation of value in a world where the amount of human knowledge is allowed to grow without limits.
Allow me to explain. All value is created by human knowledge. A clear example is the value of copper. If we did not know that copper was useful, there could be so much copper in the world that we were tripping over hunks of it on the sidewalk, and it would continue to be worthless. Yet as soon as someone realized things could be made from copper, it would become quite useful to humans and therefore valuable.
It is the same way with all other value. Human knowledge creates it. Humans have nearly unlimited wants - Once you satisfy one, we immediately move on to another. Knowledge of how to satisfy more human wants is what creates value. Therefore, the more people we have using their brains to figure things out, the better our wants will be fulfilled.
We say economic growth has happened when the value of all the things we were provided with has increased over time, that is to say, in general, our wants were fulfilled increasingly better with time. This is a natural progression as certain problems of providing for our wants are solved, allowing us to use our brains (the most valuable resource we have is time spent thinking of solutions to problems) to solve the problems that remain. Economic growth is therefore a good indicator of whether society is on the right track to fulfilling the wants of its members.
Unless you what you want is to not have what you want, in which case I say you are perverse.
Much more closely than I do now. After 1.0 the improvements seemed less noticeable to me. I suppose this means the software has matured. Is anyone really excited about the new features? Are they interesting from an end user perspective?