I was going to post something about "not this BS again" (article title implies that non-hybrids are magically not affected by the new ratings), but instead - THANK YOU for posting some common sense tips. Use them in your daily commutes and watch your mileage increase. Get a real-time mileage readout gauge, if your car doesn't have one. If you're not driving in snow, inflate your tires to the max sidewall pressure (on the tire itself) and see better traction and another mileage bump. Learn the timing of stoplights on your common routes so you hit as many as possible all green. There's more, but these plus the ones posted above are the big ones. And most can be applied to any car, hybrid or otherwise.
Full disclosure: I am a Prius owner, currently 400 miles into a tank.... at 75 MPG. EPA ratings don't mean squat if people put some effort into driving efficiently.
I switched a few years back to only Dvorak. It took maybe 3-4 months before my Dvorak speed surpassed Qwerty (not by much - even today it's no more than 15% faster). The biggest improvement has been with ease of typing. In terms of coding, what was annoying for a while was the rearrangement of/=[]{}, but eventually that became touch-typable. On my mac laptop I have the layout set to Dvorak with Qwerty commands, which I find a little faster then having to think of the remapped letter, *then* hit the command. (Also it leaves things like command-C and command-V on one hand.)
There's a handy little app called DVAssist http://www.clabs.org/blogki/index.cgi?page=/Comput ersAndTechnology/DvAssist that allows switching the layout on the fly on windows machines without needing admin access. Great for at work when someone needs to type on your machine and you need to flip it back to Qwerty for a sec, or when I need to use a different machine. I can still do Qwerty respectably if needed, but not by touch anymore - though I haven't tried to switch back for any appreciable length of time.
One last note. I think everybody should be forced to learn to drive stick on an underpowered car.
Absolutely. My first car was a 5-speed Geo Metro... can't get much more underpowered than that. Learning to drive on that car meant
driving stick on anything else later was a walk in the park,
defensive driving was a necessary skill, and something that continues today,
I was forced to concentrate completely on driving.
My current car has most of the assistive features you would expect today, the point is by learning on a car without them, people will know what they are doing, and hopefully be able to drive more safely if they ever need to drive a car without them again.
What about people who download PDFs to view offline? I hope they won't actually *force* people to be online just to read a document, or these people are screwed.
DVORAK probably isn't an answer to all the problems, but it helps a lot. You really do move your hands a lot less.
Agreed.
After seeing all the rumors, counter-rumors etc. about Dvorak being faster, I tried it for myself. After about 5 months of not-really-intensive training (an hour a day or less), I'm at about 90% of my original QWERTY top speed, with very small improvements suggesting I might top out at 100% or maybe a little faster. Switching back and forth at will is not a problem.
But the real benefit is less wasted movement. That part has never been disputed, and it translates directly to greater comfort.
To the grandparent post, having letter combinations like "sh", "th", "wh", "ou", etc on alternating hands (as they are in QWERTY) is fast, but I would argue that having them on the same hand as in a 'strumming' pattern (as they are in Dvorak) is possibly even faster, and can be done with about the least hand movement you can imagine.
The only real complaint I have with Dvorak is how much it is NOT suited to coding. Most of the symbols, e.g. []{}=\/+<> have all been rearranged and some have been placed even farther out of the way. And of course the standard keyboard shortcuts, but that has been addressed in other posts.
I agree. But when you have a flawed voting system that encourages "tactical voting" more than voting for who you think is actually best, what can you do?
Fastmail also has this... also you get your own subdomain so you can to things like
folder.subfolder@user.fastmail.fm
which will file any mail sent to that address into the specified subfolder. The syntax 'folder@user.fastmail.fm' is semantically equivalent to user+folder@fastmail.fm (you can use both).
I'd call SpywareBlaster "required" for those still using IE... it prevents [mostly ActiveX] spyware installation instead of just cleaning it up (referring to free versions of AdAware/Spybot only).
Of course I think we all know the *real* alternative...:)
I have to agree with that. It has a clean interface that's designed to be...well... fast. There are things like one-click moving to folders for speed, external POP and hotmail links for convenience, and extra file storage space at the higher account levels, separate from your mail storage. The member account (one-time fee) is enough to get rid of tag-lines on emails and gives decent storage. It's also a one-time fee for increasing your space or bandwidth. The one thing I would like to see with it is better searching.
"The act of publishing instructions under the cloak of "academic research" showing how to defeat MediaMax such as those instructions found in Halderman's report is, at best, duplicitous and, at worst, a felony."
I Guess I've Been Doing A Lot Of "Academic Research" Lately.
Slashdot Mirror
I was going to post something about "not this BS again" (article title implies that non-hybrids are magically not affected by the new ratings), but instead - THANK YOU for posting some common sense tips. Use them in your daily commutes and watch your mileage increase. Get a real-time mileage readout gauge, if your car doesn't have one. If you're not driving in snow, inflate your tires to the max sidewall pressure (on the tire itself) and see better traction and another mileage bump. Learn the timing of stoplights on your common routes so you hit as many as possible all green. There's more, but these plus the ones posted above are the big ones. And most can be applied to any car, hybrid or otherwise.
Full disclosure: I am a Prius owner, currently 400 miles into a tank.... at 75 MPG. EPA ratings don't mean squat if people put some effort into driving efficiently.
I switched a few years back to only Dvorak. It took maybe 3-4 months before my Dvorak speed surpassed Qwerty (not by much - even today it's no more than 15% faster). The biggest improvement has been with ease of typing. In terms of coding, what was annoying for a while was the rearrangement of /=[]{}, but eventually that became touch-typable. On my mac laptop I have the layout set to Dvorak with Qwerty commands, which I find a little faster then having to think of the remapped letter, *then* hit the command. (Also it leaves things like command-C and command-V on one hand.)
t ersAndTechnology/DvAssist that allows switching the layout on the fly on windows machines without needing admin access. Great for at work when someone needs to type on your machine and you need to flip it back to Qwerty for a sec, or when I need to use a different machine. I can still do Qwerty respectably if needed, but not by touch anymore - though I haven't tried to switch back for any appreciable length of time.
There's a handy little app called DVAssist http://www.clabs.org/blogki/index.cgi?page=/Compu
Absolutely. My first car was a 5-speed Geo Metro... can't get much more underpowered than that. Learning to drive on that car meant
- driving stick on anything else later was a walk in the park,
- defensive driving was a necessary skill, and something that continues today,
- I was forced to concentrate completely on driving.
My current car has most of the assistive features you would expect today, the point is by learning on a car without them, people will know what they are doing, and hopefully be able to drive more safely if they ever need to drive a car without them again.What about people who download PDFs to view offline? I hope they won't actually *force* people to be online just to read a document, or these people are screwed.
It's an unfortunate acronym...
The full title is USA PATRIOT Act = Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism
DVORAK probably isn't an answer to all the problems, but it helps a lot. You really do move your hands a lot less.
Agreed.
After seeing all the rumors, counter-rumors etc. about Dvorak being faster, I tried it for myself. After about 5 months of not-really-intensive training (an hour a day or less), I'm at about 90% of my original QWERTY top speed, with very small improvements suggesting I might top out at 100% or maybe a little faster. Switching back and forth at will is not a problem.
But the real benefit is less wasted movement. That part has never been disputed, and it translates directly to greater comfort.
To the grandparent post, having letter combinations like "sh", "th", "wh", "ou", etc on alternating hands (as they are in QWERTY) is fast, but I would argue that having them on the same hand as in a 'strumming' pattern (as they are in Dvorak) is possibly even faster, and can be done with about the least hand movement you can imagine.
The only real complaint I have with Dvorak is how much it is NOT suited to coding. Most of the symbols, e.g. []{}=\/+<> have all been rearranged and some have been placed even farther out of the way. And of course the standard keyboard shortcuts, but that has been addressed in other posts.
I agree. But when you have a flawed voting system that encourages "tactical voting" more than voting for who you think is actually best, what can you do?
Fastmail also has this... also you get your own subdomain so you can to things like
folder.subfolder@user.fastmail.fm
which will file any mail sent to that address into the specified subfolder. The syntax 'folder@user.fastmail.fm' is semantically equivalent to user+folder@fastmail.fm (you can use both).
I'd call SpywareBlaster "required" for those still using IE... it prevents [mostly ActiveX] spyware installation instead of just cleaning it up (referring to free versions of AdAware/Spybot only).
:)
Of course I think we all know the *real* alternative...
I have to agree with that. It has a clean interface that's designed to be ...well... fast. There are things like one-click moving to folders for speed, external POP and hotmail links for convenience, and extra file storage space at the higher account levels, separate from your mail storage. The member account (one-time fee) is enough to get rid of tag-lines on emails and gives decent storage. It's also a one-time fee for increasing your space or bandwidth. The one thing I would like to see with it is better searching.
"The act of publishing instructions under the cloak of "academic research" showing how to defeat MediaMax such as those instructions found in Halderman's report is, at best, duplicitous and, at worst, a felony."
I Guess I've Been Doing A Lot Of "Academic Research" Lately.