Only typists, dictators and secretaries would truly benefit from spending hours learning that over say learning how a computer works.
That is such bullshit. I learned to touch type in grade ten because it was a prereq for computer classes, it didn't take very long, and it's a permanent skill that you never lose. I am SO glad that I was forced to learn.
Now, everyone I know, and I mean zero exceptions, uses a computer almost every day. Writing reports, emails, instant messaging, etc.
If you spend 30 minutes a day at your computer, and you can learn to touch type and cut that time by just 10 minutes (a VERY conservative estimate I would say) you regain 60 hours of free time a year. Thats and entire long weekend a year, free for the rest of your life by learning to type faster.
Anyone who is a student or works in an office job and doesn't learn to touch type is, in my opinion, a fucking idiot. Such people are literally wasting WEEKS of their lives every single year because they don't pick up a skill that is incredibly easy to learn.
I would think it fair to say that anyone who is reading this post is sitting at a keyboard way more than the average person, and should for their own sake learn to touch type if they can't already. Yes, this means you...
People today will pay for a crap flash MP3 player or low-to-medium-end digital camera, but balk at paying a premium for a mobile phone with loads of features.
Personally, I'd be happy to get a good phone for free, but there's not a chance in hell i'd sign one of those long-term contracts they have on offer. Your circumstances change, your free phone ends up costing you a lot of money. Happens to most ppl i know that sign up.
Most likely a flawed "usability study" which said people want less complexity. But taking something complex and leaving it complex while hiding the options to be "discovered" at some random future time is not really reducing the complexity: it's increasing it.
I've had lots of conflicts with one of my former managers over this issue. And both of us were very good interface designers in our ways.
As a developer, I always think of my users, and I try to develop a package that will be easy to use the third time you use it. A little challenging to get the hang of, but accomplishing any task is both fast and easy once you get the hang of it. Generally, things I build are things that will be used daily by those that will be using it, so I think this is the most appropriate thing to do.
However, the managers have a different priority, and it's dollar driven not quality driven: They want the person that's going to sign the cheque to find it easy to use and follow during a board meeting demonstration. This means hiding all the power of the app and holding the users hand, because most of the time, the one using the app doesn't do any of the nitty gritty work in the business and doesn't know what's going on in the day to day lives of those that do.
It all boils down to knowing your user. If you've gotten "authority figure" status in the minds of the person paying, use my approach and let them find out later how much more productive it makes their workers. Otherwise, shut up, use my former managers approach and get paid.
This is assuming that you're the sort that cares about your users, of course.
(hey, I thought the word "conservative" meant you didn't want to move forward
Conservative means "financially conservative" or small government, fewer laws, smaller taxes and less government involvement in the affairs of the country. Liberal means "financially liberal" or big government, big taxes, and larger government involvement in the affairs of the citizenry.
Video game designers. They can release their audio in vorbis and their video in theora and not have to pay anyone for that aspect of their game. Which means if you're a game player, you've probably already used vorbis.
They are talking about music because, while patents, software or otherwise are important and need to be discussed, music is also important and needs to be discussed.
Furthermore, addressing music is more important than directly addressing software patents because the general voting public doesn't see or care about the impact of or alternatives to software patents, but they sure care about their music. If the general population and the politicians see open licencing successful, and it manages to dominate distribution, it will be visibly in use by their idols and a part of their day to day life. People will then extend the attitudes they develop towards anything remotely similar, just like they always do.
I don't see any more effective strategy for making sweeping changes to patent law in the face of such powerful vested interests... do you?
There are all sorts of programming situations where having a caps lock key helps keep things readable. For example...
SELECT * FROM tblWhatever a INNER JOIN tblYaddaYadda b ON a.ID = b.ID WHERE b.foo = 1
Not to mention data entry work... lots of places that do data entry use all caps.
Oh, and did I mention that THIS IS A STUPID ARTICLE? SURELY THERE MUST BE SOMETHING EXCITING ENOUGH GOING ON IN THE WORLD THAT WE DON'T NEED TO PUT THIS CRAP ON THE FRONT PAGE OF THE SITE?
Standards allow interoperation, communication and migration. They do stifle innovation, but they make things useful instead of just cool. If you're being innovative and bucking standards, either your innovation is useful enough to become or overcome the standard, or no one uses it.
Now I can download and share my virus and trojan ridden child porn communist terrorist snuff films written by steven spielburg with soundtrack performed by britney spears without fear!
I'll even pay extra so I don't have to watch commercials, and I'll be happy to tell the networks which shows I watch, when I watch them, and if I thought they sucked or not.
If you're not watching any commercials, why would they give a shit which shows you watched or what you thought about them?
This is the first success for Microsoft's Antivirus Award Program, a $5 million fund to reward people for coming forward with information about those who release major worms and viruses."
One area of international competition involves patents. Americans still win large numbers of them, but the percentage is falling as foreigners, especially Asians, have become more active and in some fields have seized the innovation lead. The United States' share of its own industrial patents has fallen steadily over the decades and now stands at 52 percent.
Slashdot Mirror
Only typists, dictators and secretaries would truly benefit from spending hours learning that over say learning how a computer works.
That is such bullshit. I learned to touch type in grade ten because it was a prereq for computer classes, it didn't take very long, and it's a permanent skill that you never lose. I am SO glad that I was forced to learn.
Now, everyone I know, and I mean zero exceptions, uses a computer almost every day. Writing reports, emails, instant messaging, etc.
If you spend 30 minutes a day at your computer, and you can learn to touch type and cut that time by just 10 minutes (a VERY conservative estimate I would say) you regain 60 hours of free time a year. Thats and entire long weekend a year, free for the rest of your life by learning to type faster.
Anyone who is a student or works in an office job and doesn't learn to touch type is, in my opinion, a fucking idiot. Such people are literally wasting WEEKS of their lives every single year because they don't pick up a skill that is incredibly easy to learn.
I would think it fair to say that anyone who is reading this post is sitting at a keyboard way more than the average person, and should for their own sake learn to touch type if they can't already. Yes, this means you...
People today will pay for a crap flash MP3 player or low-to-medium-end digital camera, but balk at paying a premium for a mobile phone with loads of features.
Personally, I'd be happy to get a good phone for free, but there's not a chance in hell i'd sign one of those long-term contracts they have on offer. Your circumstances change, your free phone ends up costing you a lot of money. Happens to most ppl i know that sign up.
I think I'll pay for my phones thanks...
Most likely a flawed "usability study" which said people want less complexity. But taking something complex and leaving it complex while hiding the options to be "discovered" at some random future time is not really reducing the complexity: it's increasing it.
I've had lots of conflicts with one of my former managers over this issue. And both of us were very good interface designers in our ways.
As a developer, I always think of my users, and I try to develop a package that will be easy to use the third time you use it. A little challenging to get the hang of, but accomplishing any task is both fast and easy once you get the hang of it. Generally, things I build are things that will be used daily by those that will be using it, so I think this is the most appropriate thing to do.
However, the managers have a different priority, and it's dollar driven not quality driven: They want the person that's going to sign the cheque to find it easy to use and follow during a board meeting demonstration. This means hiding all the power of the app and holding the users hand, because most of the time, the one using the app doesn't do any of the nitty gritty work in the business and doesn't know what's going on in the day to day lives of those that do.
It all boils down to knowing your user. If you've gotten "authority figure" status in the minds of the person paying, use my approach and let them find out later how much more productive it makes their workers. Otherwise, shut up, use my former managers approach and get paid.
This is assuming that you're the sort that cares about your users, of course.
(hey, I thought the word "conservative" meant you didn't want to move forward
Conservative means "financially conservative" or small government, fewer laws, smaller taxes and less government involvement in the affairs of the country. Liberal means "financially liberal" or big government, big taxes, and larger government involvement in the affairs of the citizenry.
"O.K. We're going to use 2 digits to store the date, because the first 2 digits are always going to be 19"
"But, that will break in 2000!"
Correct response is:
a) "Oh my god!!! You're a genius! I never would have thought of that if I didn't have you here to think of these things!"
b) "Yeah, I know, but who gives a shit? No one's going to be using this software in 29 years anyway."
Who honestly cares about or uses Ogg?
Video game designers. They can release their audio in vorbis and their video in theora and not have to pay anyone for that aspect of their game. Which means if you're a game player, you've probably already used vorbis.
They are talking about music because, while patents, software or otherwise are important and need to be discussed, music is also important and needs to be discussed.
Furthermore, addressing music is more important than directly addressing software patents because the general voting public doesn't see or care about the impact of or alternatives to software patents, but they sure care about their music. If the general population and the politicians see open licencing successful, and it manages to dominate distribution, it will be visibly in use by their idols and a part of their day to day life. People will then extend the attitudes they develop towards anything remotely similar, just like they always do.
I don't see any more effective strategy for making sweeping changes to patent law in the face of such powerful vested interests... do you?
Basically, Fate has poor impulse control.
...it would be considerably more productive if people limited their interactions with journalists to the subjects they have actually been educated in
No room for genius in your world view?
You've trained yourself not to be able to use the key, so that's a good reason to remove it from the keyboard?
Who modded this insightful?
There are all sorts of programming situations where having a caps lock key helps keep things readable. For example...
SELECT *
FROM tblWhatever a
INNER JOIN tblYaddaYadda b
ON a.ID = b.ID
WHERE b.foo = 1
Not to mention data entry work... lots of places that do data entry use all caps.
Oh, and did I mention that THIS IS A STUPID ARTICLE? SURELY THERE MUST BE SOMETHING EXCITING ENOUGH GOING ON IN THE WORLD THAT WE DON'T NEED TO PUT THIS CRAP ON THE FRONT PAGE OF THE SITE?
Another non-profit organization funded by Microsoft ;)
Oh, a survey by an east asian magazine... now that's what i'd use to deterimine the quality of education!
:D
You've certainly convinced me
but what kind of competitive advantage do Taiwanese companies have in the innovation?
An education system that works?
But really, standards tend to stifle innovation.
Standards allow interoperation, communication and migration. They do stifle innovation, but they make things useful instead of just cool. If you're being innovative and bucking standards, either your innovation is useful enough to become or overcome the standard, or no one uses it.
You'd find lots of them in canada... they keep fresh brewed pots of more than a dozen different blends so you can get the sort you like
Personally, i can't stand candy coffee, but to each their own
All you need to do is drink another coffee every hour and a half from wake to sleep and you can code forever
Thats awesome!
:P
Now I can download and share my virus and trojan ridden child porn communist terrorist snuff films written by steven spielburg with soundtrack performed by britney spears without fear!
I'll just go park outside this guys house
Gee, musta taken you all day to come up with that one
It's the best in the world, and if they catch you smoking it, you get a ticket!
I'll even pay extra so I don't have to watch commercials, and I'll be happy to tell the networks which shows I watch, when I watch them, and if I thought they sucked or not.
If you're not watching any commercials, why would they give a shit which shows you watched or what you thought about them?
This is the first success for Microsoft's Antivirus Award Program, a $5 million fund to reward people for coming forward with information about those who release major worms and viruses."
Reward Money: $5,000,000.00
Perps Pay: $5,000,000.00
Psychological Effect: Priceless!
Where are we Dad?
Dad, are we there yet?
Is it much farther, Dad?
Dad, how much farther is it?
Where are we Dad?
One area of international competition involves patents. Americans still win large numbers of them, but the percentage is falling as foreigners, especially Asians, have become more active and in some fields have seized the innovation lead. The United States' share of its own industrial patents has fallen steadily over the decades and now stands at 52 percent.
:P
So much for patents
If I could effect any change, it would be to encourage more women to enter the Linux ecosystem.
What's not to like?