From a certain authoritative English dictionary, noting the first non-devil-fearing usage of this circa 1958:
"2. slang. In weakened sense: exceedingly, excessively; often of things bad, but now used as a gen. intensive. Cf. diabolical a. 3 and devilishly adv."
The good things about the M keyboard, you already know: it is solidly built (value) and provides good tactile response (the lack of which may contribute to RSI). You could also use it as a pry-bar and a snowboard.
The bad things about your beloved are: it's loud; its right-handedness (movement keys and number-pad on the right) became The Standard but is awkward for a significant percentage of people; the grid-layout of the letter keys forces the user's arms inward and straight ahead, or forces the wrists to bend outward -- either of these positions will cause physical pain given enough time.
By the way, bending an opponent's wrist outward the way your model M will bend your wrist is a very effective submission hold in ju-jitsu, judo, and likely in other fighting styles.
Microsoft did a good thing in selling the truly ergonomic Natural Keyboard. However, I was puzzled to see in stores recently a Microsoft keyboard labelled "ergonomic" that isn't ergonomic at all, except for a "wrist support".
Although this device may help, it's hard to take it seriously given that the site promotes an ergonomic "pointing" solution while showing pictures of exactly the sort of keyboard that is responsible for causing RSI in thousands of people.
For the most natural shoulder-arm-wrist alignment, the keyboard should have split keys.
I've tried TouchPads, trackballs, and various mice. After 20 years of computing, here are four things that I recommend to everyone:
1. Learn how to type by touch. It isn't difficult.
2. Reduce your clicks: use X-mouse focussing. (If you use Windows, install Microsoft's TweakUI Powertoy. If you use X, you have the setting somewhere.)
3. Keep your forearms flat on your desk. Adjust your chair's height if you must.
4. Use a REAL ergonomic keyboard, one with the split-key design. (Any keyboard that does not have the split-key design is ~not~ ergonomic.)
What you are saying is reversal of proven tendencies.
In short, I say... Rubbish!
There are excellent open-source programs as well as bad ones. But I don't know very many that are full of bloat caused by unnecessary, unoptimized code.
Microsoft is no idyllic ship of disciplined software engineering. When was the last time you found a **flight simulator** inside Gnumeric? When was the last time you discovered a half-brained implementation of a dialog or complete feature in Monoposoft Word? (Clippy isn't the only instance of useless crap.)
I don't find OO to be intolerably slow. However, for those who do, someone else has pointed out that disabling Java improves the performance of OO significantly.
Whatever the foregoing arguments, the TREMENDOUS advantage of OO and most FOSS is something that Microsoft cannot TOUCH: Cross-Platform Functionality.
I edit OO documents at work, take 'em home, edit in OS X and FreeBSD, and take 'em to work the next day. This kind of flexibility and convenience outweighs the few virtues that Redmond can claim for MS Office.
I love my OS X, but let's be honest -- in the 1990s, Apple ~was~ sinking, Apple was unable to execute, and no one imagined Jobs returning to save Apple.
Apple is great again -- maybe greater than ever. But it was in serious trouble and would not be here today if not for Jobs and the people around him.
Agreed - cubicles do not mean a disastrous job. Cubicles can even be configured agreably.
Cubicles may offend the aesthetic principles of the FA's author, but if you The Young Idealist are only going to look for jobs with companies for which using floorspace is no issue (even GOOGLE is using cubicles to partition space), you will have very limited options.
I've been with one of the stablest, hottest (not Google) and best-managed software companies in North America for a while now and it's all cubicles.
How much a company invests in its people, and whether it grinds them to dust or nutures them, are far better indications of a good employer.
Many tech people are talking about the increase in notebook sales.
We have to admit, Windows XP is very much superior to Linux and *BSD on notebooks for ease of use of Infrared, PCMCIA stuff, Bluetooth and USB. There's no reason to think that Windows Vista will diminish the usability of this hardware.
I love my FreeBSD and Ubuntu, but XP is on my notebook. Maybe Vista will be too one day, if there is a compelling reason for me to try it... and the hardware can run it.;o)
Your "murder by Smith and Wesson" metaphor is both extreme and ridiculous.
It is also extreme and ridiculous to suggest that ZDNet is staffed by children or sociopaths.
What the ZDNet reporter has done is to report publically available facts in a story. The facts were not unusual or disturbing facts.
The irony is that Google was the means of access to these facts. The reporter might just as well have used a different means to verify these facts.
Had the reporter done so, would Google have also punished people who corroborated facts, telephone companies whose line were used, printers of financial reports, the legislature for its disclosure laws, and so on?
The reporter may be a bad reporter. But Google is acting hypocritically.
Mr Schmidt might not like being talked about. But he is at the top of an important company.
It is Google's right to be hypocritical. But this contradicts the Google motto, "Don't Be Evil."
The fact that a company with so much influence over Internet users has a deteriorating ethical compass is disturbing.
Slashdot Mirror
I resent the weakening of our symbols of worship and connectivity.
As for your light-hearted use of "devilishly", you are an insensitive clod!
Nothing personal. 'Dotters are devilishly picky.
From a certain authoritative English dictionary, noting the first non-devil-fearing usage of this circa 1958:
"2. slang. In weakened sense: exceedingly, excessively; often of things bad, but now used as a gen. intensive. Cf. diabolical a. 3 and devilishly adv."
I initially installed it just to experiment with SQL and database normalization, but now I keep my comic book inventory on it.
/. O Kindred Spirit! Your journey has been long, but now you have found us and you may rest.
Welcome to
I know that this is like swatting a fly with a nuclear weapon
That's a game scheduled for release at Christmas.
The good things about the M keyboard, you already know: it is solidly built (value) and provides good tactile response (the lack of which may contribute to RSI). You could also use it as a pry-bar and a snowboard.
The bad things about your beloved are: it's loud; its right-handedness (movement keys and number-pad on the right) became The Standard but is awkward for a significant percentage of people; the grid-layout of the letter keys forces the user's arms inward and straight ahead, or forces the wrists to bend outward -- either of these positions will cause physical pain given enough time.
By the way, bending an opponent's wrist outward the way your model M will bend your wrist is a very effective submission hold in ju-jitsu, judo, and likely in other fighting styles.
Microsoft did a good thing in selling the truly ergonomic Natural Keyboard. However, I was puzzled to see in stores recently a Microsoft keyboard labelled "ergonomic" that isn't ergonomic at all, except for a "wrist support".
Although this device may help, it's hard to take it seriously given that the site promotes an ergonomic "pointing" solution while showing pictures of exactly the sort of keyboard that is responsible for causing RSI in thousands of people.
For the most natural shoulder-arm-wrist alignment, the keyboard should have split keys.
I've tried TouchPads, trackballs, and various mice. After 20 years of computing, here are four things that I recommend to everyone:
1. Learn how to type by touch. It isn't difficult.
2. Reduce your clicks: use X-mouse focussing. (If you use Windows, install Microsoft's TweakUI Powertoy. If you use X, you have the setting somewhere.)
3. Keep your forearms flat on your desk. Adjust your chair's height if you must.
4. Use a REAL ergonomic keyboard, one with the split-key design. (Any keyboard that does not have the split-key design is ~not~ ergonomic.)
What you are saying is reversal of proven tendencies.
In short, I say... Rubbish!
There are excellent open-source programs as well as bad ones. But I don't know very many that are full of bloat caused by unnecessary, unoptimized code.
Microsoft is no idyllic ship of disciplined software engineering. When was the last time you found a **flight simulator** inside Gnumeric? When was the last time you discovered a half-brained implementation of a dialog or complete feature in Monoposoft Word? (Clippy isn't the only instance of useless crap.)
I don't find OO to be intolerably slow. However, for those who do, someone else has pointed out that disabling Java improves the performance of OO significantly.
Whatever the foregoing arguments, the TREMENDOUS advantage of OO and most FOSS is something that Microsoft cannot TOUCH: Cross-Platform Functionality.
I edit OO documents at work, take 'em home, edit in OS X and FreeBSD, and take 'em to work the next day. This kind of flexibility and convenience outweighs the few virtues that Redmond can claim for MS Office.
Replace "Nokia" with your favourite bête-noire and mail it to all your friends!
Pictures, audio files, documents... BLOBs.
He probably should have said, "Data and other kinds of information."
Will they take a donation of some of the boxes of stuff that I have in the basement?
PHP has all the faults of Perl... and I ~like~ Perl.
As far as a language goes, PHP is a mess.
As far as capability goes, let me see PHP do something as good as this:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/azureus/
I love my OS X, but let's be honest -- in the 1990s, Apple ~was~ sinking, Apple was unable to execute, and no one imagined Jobs returning to save Apple.
Apple is great again -- maybe greater than ever. But it was in serious trouble and would not be here today if not for Jobs and the people around him.
the wheat outshines the chaff by a wide margin
Any Perl user can appreciate the loosely-typed metaphors in that sentence.
Hey folks, does anyone have an X version of OO 1.1.5 for OS X? I need one and I don't want NeoOffice.
If you have instructions for compiling OO 1.1.5 from source for OS X, that would help too.
What do you mean? Geeks are downloading them all the time!
"Metathesis can be compared to a dance in which the couples change partners."
Whoo hoo! Grubbs, Shrock and Chauvin have done a great service to married SlashDotters.
Agreed - cubicles do not mean a disastrous job. Cubicles can even be configured agreably.
Cubicles may offend the aesthetic principles of the FA's author, but if you The Young Idealist are only going to look for jobs with companies for which using floorspace is no issue (even GOOGLE is using cubicles to partition space), you will have very limited options.
I've been with one of the stablest, hottest (not Google) and best-managed software companies in North America for a while now and it's all cubicles.
How much a company invests in its people, and whether it grinds them to dust or nutures them, are far better indications of a good employer.
Do they work ~immediately~, post-installation, without any further manual changes or research being required?
I note that you do not mention infrared at all.
Many tech people are talking about the increase in notebook sales.
;o)
We have to admit, Windows XP is very much superior to Linux and *BSD on notebooks for ease of use of Infrared, PCMCIA stuff, Bluetooth and USB. There's no reason to think that Windows Vista will diminish the usability of this hardware.
I love my FreeBSD and Ubuntu, but XP is on my notebook. Maybe Vista will be too one day, if there is a compelling reason for me to try it... and the hardware can run it.
I have just plucked out my eyes, you bastard!
AJAX really changes the game.
Your "murder by Smith and Wesson" metaphor is both extreme and ridiculous.
It is also extreme and ridiculous to suggest that ZDNet is staffed by children or sociopaths.
What the ZDNet reporter has done is to report publically available facts in a story. The facts were not unusual or disturbing facts.
The irony is that Google was the means of access to these facts. The reporter might just as well have used a different means to verify these facts.
Had the reporter done so, would Google have also punished people who corroborated facts, telephone companies whose line were used, printers of financial reports, the legislature for its disclosure laws, and so on?
The reporter may be a bad reporter. But Google is acting hypocritically.
Mr Schmidt might not like being talked about. But he is at the top of an important company.
It is Google's right to be hypocritical. But this contradicts the Google motto, "Don't Be Evil."
The fact that a company with so much influence over Internet users has a deteriorating ethical compass is disturbing.
As you know, I am guessing, Microsoft was seen as the David fighting the Goliath IBM.
- 2,00.html?tw=wn_story_page_next1
One thing that Microsoft certainly did innovate is the XMLHTTPRequestObject.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,68403