Rather that think about malicious intent, I prefer to interpret this question as: Despite our best efforts, what can still go wrong?
In that respect, I think the answer it "plenty".
The reason is that as we gain better-and-better understanding of how stuff works, we design in less-and-less safety margin. Eventually, someone's design point will cut it too close, something bad happens as a result, we learn about some previously unknown phenomenon, adapt our models, improve out safety margins, and move on.
I don't think it's so much a case of a scientist setting out to prove or disprove phenomenon "A" and being surprised by the result.
It's that the process of proving/disproving "A" results in the accidental discovery of previously unknown phenomena "X", "Y", and "Z".
I think there is room for improvement without totally ditching the QWERTY keyboard.
For instance, if I'm only typing English text, such as this comment, then I find QWERTY to be quite comfortable.
But if I'm entering a lot of source code that uses a lot of symbols and brackets, like this "wire [N-1:0] gated_one_hot = {N{gate}} & (2**i);", I find that my hands and wrists fatigue rather quickly.
So I would like to see some task-specific keyboard layouts where the QWERTY part is unchanged, but the symbols important to the task are more-optimally placed.
Maybe a little off topic, but I find this story sort of sums up Comcast's competence at logistics...
I have a relative who moved into a rented house and ordered Comcast CATV+Internet the day they moved in. The installer showed up a day or two later, got everything hooked up, and they were all set. About a week later, the CATV and Internet went offline. After spending a bunch of time on the phone talking to customer support they learned that Comcast prioritizes connection work orders over disconnect work orders, and the disconnect work order of the previous renter wasn't carried out until that day, and that was what caused their outtage. So Comcast had to roll a third truck to reconnect the service.
Comcast could have saved themselves money, and not pissed off a customer, if they'd had enough logistical sense to cancel the disconnect order of the previous renter.
When I was in college back in the early 90's, my floor would host an annual party for the dorm. Someone had a HiFi Stereo VHS deck, so we would pre-record the playlist to that (reel-to-reel and cassette would've been the only other options at the time; the former was prohibitively expensive and the latter had inferior audio qualify).
... with a friend where I was describing what I do for work. I design logic by coding algorithms in Verilog, which gets turned into CMOS circuits by a synthesis tool (effectively a software compiler that turns the programming constructs into CMOS circuits rather than pre-defined instructions for general purpose processor). But this is a very clumsy method of describing even the simplest things. At some point, we concluded, the synthesis tools will get good enough that I will need to merely describe to it at a very high level, perhaps just a spec document, or via a natural language "conversation", and then it takes care of all the ugly details under the hood to implement the idea and turn it the hardware.
The thing is, at one point in time, a large company like IBM would invest in its employees by helping them to develop their skills. Over the duration of their career, they could move within the company to put their evolving skill set to use. But nowadays, if IBM has a bunch of people with outdated skill "X" and they want a bunch of people with sexy, new skill "Y", they fire the "X" people and hire the "Y" people from outside the company. Or, more likely, acquire a handful of startups and small companies that specialize in skill "Y". They save themselves the trouble of having to teach the "X" people how to be "Y" people.
No matter what the FCC decides, the cable companies will eventually find a way to make up a new fee that replaces the lost lease income.
For instance, I lease an STB from Dish Network to the tune of about $7/mo. I could buy the exact name model of STB on eBay and send back the leased unit, but to authorize it for use with Dish they would change me a, you guessed it, $7/mo BYOSTB "access fee."
You simply can't watch these movies through the eyes of an adult. You need to be a kid again. I provide the following counterpoint, which totally gets it...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
One thing to consider is whether or not your employer has a program for matching employees' charitable contributions. If they do, check with them for what types of organizations they will or will not match contributions to. It's a great way to make your giving go further.
Quite some time ago I worked at a small company, and we had a PC in a remote location that we would occasionally connect to by directly dialing it up by modem. (this is in the pre-ubiquitous-Internet days). Well, of course, every now and then the computer would crash leaving us unable to perform its intended task, and also unable to answer our calls. After having to drive out there a few times just to hit the Reset button, I installed a circuit inside that "eavesdropped" on the phone line. If the phone rang more than X number of times within some period of time (meaning the computer had crash and was not answering), it reset the computer by way of a relay connect in parallel with the case button.
I have a theory.... Corporations are becoming more and more averse to risk. They expect every product they develop to be successful to justify the expense. So instead of developing products and talent internally, they're letting newbies take on all the risk of starting up new companies and new technologies, and then they swoop in and cherry-pick the ones that are successful.
Although IBM spun off their PC business to Lenovo a few years ago, IBM still almost exclusively buys Lenovo PCs for internal use. What are the 2 operating system images that IBM employees can choose to have installed on their PCs? MS Windows and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
The OP said "I wouldn't really need a GUI, but something that filled out PDF forms would be nice."
If you go to irs.gov, download the forms you need as PDFs, and open them with Adobe Reader, the boxes in the forms can be filled out within the software. Iit won't do any of the calculations for you, though, but at least it's a tad better than printing them and filling them out by hand.
These animated images are very reminiscent of the moving photos in the Harry Potter movies. If they could only figure out how to do that in a print medium....
This made me nostalgic for my Ensoniq Soundscape playing the amazing MIDI soundtrack to LucasArts' Tie Fighter on my first PC, a 75MHz Pentium w/ ~16MB DRAM.
Slashdot Mirror
Rather that think about malicious intent, I prefer to interpret this question as: Despite our best efforts, what can still go wrong?
In that respect, I think the answer it "plenty".
The reason is that as we gain better-and-better understanding of how stuff works, we design in less-and-less safety margin. Eventually, someone's design point will cut it too close, something bad happens as a result, we learn about some previously unknown phenomenon, adapt our models, improve out safety margins, and move on.
I don't think it's so much a case of a scientist setting out to prove or disprove phenomenon "A" and being surprised by the result. It's that the process of proving/disproving "A" results in the accidental discovery of previously unknown phenomena "X", "Y", and "Z".
I think there is room for improvement without totally ditching the QWERTY keyboard.
For instance, if I'm only typing English text, such as this comment, then I find QWERTY to be quite comfortable.
But if I'm entering a lot of source code that uses a lot of symbols and brackets, like this "wire [N-1:0] gated_one_hot = {N{gate}} & (2**i);", I find that my hands and wrists fatigue rather quickly.
So I would like to see some task-specific keyboard layouts where the QWERTY part is unchanged, but the symbols important to the task are more-optimally placed.
Maybe a little off topic, but I find this story sort of sums up Comcast's competence at logistics ...
I have a relative who moved into a rented house and ordered Comcast CATV+Internet the day they moved in. The installer showed up a day or two later, got everything hooked up, and they were all set. About a week later, the CATV and Internet went offline. After spending a bunch of time on the phone talking to customer support they learned that Comcast prioritizes connection work orders over disconnect work orders, and the disconnect work order of the previous renter wasn't carried out until that day, and that was what caused their outtage. So Comcast had to roll a third truck to reconnect the service.
Comcast could have saved themselves money, and not pissed off a customer, if they'd had enough logistical sense to cancel the disconnect order of the previous renter.
Wasn't there talk of replacing payphones with payphone/WiFi hotspot hybrid units? Whatever came of that?
When I was in college back in the early 90's, my floor would host an annual party for the dorm. Someone had a HiFi Stereo VHS deck, so we would pre-record the playlist to that (reel-to-reel and cassette would've been the only other options at the time; the former was prohibitively expensive and the latter had inferior audio qualify).
Vermont's largest city, Burlington, has done it, and it's been a big headache... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
... with a friend where I was describing what I do for work. I design logic by coding algorithms in Verilog, which gets turned into CMOS circuits by a synthesis tool (effectively a software compiler that turns the programming constructs into CMOS circuits rather than pre-defined instructions for general purpose processor). But this is a very clumsy method of describing even the simplest things. At some point, we concluded, the synthesis tools will get good enough that I will need to merely describe to it at a very high level, perhaps just a spec document, or via a natural language "conversation", and then it takes care of all the ugly details under the hood to implement the idea and turn it the hardware.
The thing is, at one point in time, a large company like IBM would invest in its employees by helping them to develop their skills. Over the duration of their career, they could move within the company to put their evolving skill set to use. But nowadays, if IBM has a bunch of people with outdated skill "X" and they want a bunch of people with sexy, new skill "Y", they fire the "X" people and hire the "Y" people from outside the company. Or, more likely, acquire a handful of startups and small companies that specialize in skill "Y". They save themselves the trouble of having to teach the "X" people how to be "Y" people.
No matter what the FCC decides, the cable companies will eventually find a way to make up a new fee that replaces the lost lease income. For instance, I lease an STB from Dish Network to the tune of about $7/mo. I could buy the exact name model of STB on eBay and send back the leased unit, but to authorize it for use with Dish they would change me a, you guessed it, $7/mo BYOSTB "access fee."
You simply can't watch these movies through the eyes of an adult. You need to be a kid again. I provide the following counterpoint, which totally gets it... https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
One thing to consider is whether or not your employer has a program for matching employees' charitable contributions. If they do, check with them for what types of organizations they will or will not match contributions to. It's a great way to make your giving go further.
Quite some time ago I worked at a small company, and we had a PC in a remote location that we would occasionally connect to by directly dialing it up by modem. (this is in the pre-ubiquitous-Internet days). Well, of course, every now and then the computer would crash leaving us unable to perform its intended task, and also unable to answer our calls. After having to drive out there a few times just to hit the Reset button, I installed a circuit inside that "eavesdropped" on the phone line. If the phone rang more than X number of times within some period of time (meaning the computer had crash and was not answering), it reset the computer by way of a relay connect in parallel with the case button.
These sound like real-world Tracker Jackers!
Found the document here... http://cryptome.org/2013/06/NSA-WasntAllMagic_2002.pdf
I have a theory.... Corporations are becoming more and more averse to risk. They expect every product they develop to be successful to justify the expense. So instead of developing products and talent internally, they're letting newbies take on all the risk of starting up new companies and new technologies, and then they swoop in and cherry-pick the ones that are successful.
Watching the clip next to the story immediately reminded me of this opening scene from Real Genius... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTx_qTwQqjU
Although IBM spun off their PC business to Lenovo a few years ago, IBM still almost exclusively buys Lenovo PCs for internal use. What are the 2 operating system images that IBM employees can choose to have installed on their PCs? MS Windows and Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
Visit your local (or school) library and ask the librarian what other kids your son's age are reading....
Costco
The OP said "I wouldn't really need a GUI, but something that filled out PDF forms would be nice." If you go to irs.gov, download the forms you need as PDFs, and open them with Adobe Reader, the boxes in the forms can be filled out within the software. Iit won't do any of the calculations for you, though, but at least it's a tad better than printing them and filling them out by hand.
This (and Prezi) totally make me motion-sick. I hope this fad passes quickly.
I drove occasionally in Cambridge, MA, for a couple of years in the early 90's. The Alewife Brook Parkway has a pair of inter-connected traffic circles (here they are in Google Maps - http://www.google.com/maps?q=cambridge,+mass&hl=en&ll=42.387688,-71.142134&spn=0.003633,0.004769&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=62.61328,78.134766&t=h&z=18) which have been there for a very long time. This particular highway is trafficked by daily commuters, so they know the routine. The deft entering/exiting/maneuvering was actually a thing of beauty to behold.
These animated images are very reminiscent of the moving photos in the Harry Potter movies. If they could only figure out how to do that in a print medium....
This made me nostalgic for my Ensoniq Soundscape playing the amazing MIDI soundtrack to LucasArts' Tie Fighter on my first PC, a 75MHz Pentium w/ ~16MB DRAM.