Agendatastic, these folks don't care about typing.
on
Advocating Dvorak
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· Score: 1
Every conversation about Dvorak, these two supposedly genius contrarians get brought up.
The big thing is, their whole agenda was to show that the market doesn't make mistakes. Since everyone using an inferior keyboard is obviously a market making a mistake, they decided to grab the bull by the horns and attack that.
Go ahead and read it. Then google the search, and find people who don't have an economic point of view to push have addressed its sketchy (and often ad hominem) attacks.
It will point out that the Navy study is dubious, etc. It won't actually point out other important things, like that Sholes (the creator of the Qwerty keyboard) never intended it to become the defacto standard, and actually designed a somewhat Dvorak-like keyboard (vowels one place, consonants another, though he didn't have detailed statistics to get key placement) and intended for *that* to become the standard.
But, everyone already knew Qwerty by then! He knew his standard was substandard, but it was "good enough", and he couldn't move it. Dvorak, trying decades later, barely made a dent.
Anyway, Dvorak is better. The fastest typists in the world use it, and they know more than two guys who desperately want to show that the market is always right.
But I don't use it to type faster, I use it because my fingers hardly ever get tired (the mild performance increase is pretty much nothing). Typing is more pressing buttons and less fingers flying. I mean, just *look at the layouts with your own eyes*. What do you want to type a lot? J? K? How about H and T instead? Hey, "E" is the most common letter, get that the hell off the home row! Etc. Qwerty is a pretty arbitrary layout, meant for a specific purpose, over a century ago. If you don't want to learn to do it better because it's a big pain, then don't. But don't let these people go denying reality because it's convenient for them.
I use Dvorak, it's okish for *nix commands...
on
Advocating Dvorak
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· Score: 1
The problem is that the folks who created most of the old school Unix stuff were either lazy typists, or just happened to design a system very friendly to them.
ls on Qwerty is both ring fingers. Did they really mean list, or is it just easy to type and then the definition came afterward? I'm not really sure. Type those two keys on Dvorak, you get "no". O and N are both common, and both no and on are actually words. Even with a lot of sysadminning, you should really be typing on and no a lot more than you type ls.
Typing it on Dvorak maps to p; keys for the Qwerty folks.
Unix commands that are based on words except shortened by losing vowels don't work superfast either, being very right-handed centric (though I bet it's hard to get close to the left-handedness of a normal Qwerty board) without the vowels under the left hand being needed.
I bet it's slower by a bit, honestly. vi is harder to get around in too, because hjkl are nowhere near where they are on Qwerty. But then, vi is the only program where L means "Go Right", so whatever;)
That's to be expected when the names where chosen with the implicit assumption that Qwerty was the One Keyboard.
I don't think it matters. Assuming you type actual language ever, Dvorak will help you.
Warning to coders: hard to get used to location of [] keys (where - and = are normally). Underscore, however, doesn't wreck your day (it's where apostrophe/quote normally is).
It's technically a troll, but it's so far away from the topic of discussion that it's totally irrelevant. If someone had posted that GNOME versus KDE troll that always gets posted whenever GNOME gets brought up (it claims to be from a GNOME developer, but he ends up just making ridiculous claims), that would also be offtopic, not a troll.
Trolling requires some sophistication, and some attempt at riling people up to respond. It's a troll in the sense that *you* responded to it, but even then all you did was bitch about mods.
It's more flamebait than troll, but I think that Offtopic is more appropriate.
The ability of other people to chat with their friends (adjacent or miles away) is what they get for not being in school and under the auspices of an annoying teacher.
They don't have to be quiet for you.
If you want quiet, the solution is ear plugs for you, not the forced silencing of the rest of creation. Airlines should probably hand them out, if they don't already.
I also think it's hilarious how everyone I know that is opposed to cell phones in airplanes is fine with them on buses, which is the same damn thing.
The selfish people are the ones that are unwilling to wear two small pieces of rubber, and would instead have EVERYONE ELSE obey their will.
And the fact that it will disturb SETI actually does make me sad. But not sad enough that I think it's worth taking away a *great* ability (the ability to communicate with your friends and family, no matter where you and they are).
SETI is at best a shot in the dark. Cellphones are telepathy made practical, real, and affordable. Even with their flaws, they are one of the best chunks of technology to ever hit humanity.
Of course, let's be fair and scale the world correctly...
Though the visitor thinks that the lounge should be broad and nice, his hostforgets to tell him that he routinely runs horses through at high speeds, and the designer had only the one out to deal with the viscious user having somewhat odd requirements that they insist upon and think are normal.
The doors swing outwards because there are literally THOUSANDS of travelling salesmen per day, and if it swung inwards they would either force their way in to try to help you refinance your home, sell you vaccuum cleaner enhancements, or have an indecent proposal for your horses... and that's assuming they don't secretly drop self replicating robots inside that use your phones to call up a bunch of misguided teenagers across the world to give them orders like "tear up carpet" and "read house owner's diary to me".
The garden is plastic because the owner doesn't understand the basics of garden maintenance and anything else would die, and is underground because the sun gives off nova intensity light at random intervals for unforseen amounts of time.
Of course Microsoft has a stupid stance on patents. But that's immaterial here, unless you want to be some kind of active karmic agent or whatever.
I *would* agree that this kind of attack is possibly the only thing that will make Microsoft change its tune, but no one is out there urging everyone to patent every good idea they have and put them under a "if a proprietary company uses any of these ideas, we'll sue their nuts off" agreement. This would be expensive per patent, but would not be out of reach for a community that is so broad and has so much resources.
I suspect we *would* see such an effort (or see an existing effort come to light) if free / open source actually began to be attacked by patents seriously... but for now, everyone seems to take the tack that such patents are ridiculous, and that they should not be permitted.
Anyway, as long as Microsoft stands to gain more than lose on stupid patents, they will back stupid patents. But they still didn't do anything to *deserve* this lawsuit.
Microsoft obtains software product A. Microsoft obtains software product B. Microsoft begins making them work together. Guy beats Microsoft to market. Microsoft continues making their products work together. Guy sues Microsoft, wins millions for being first to patent obvious method made "novel" by the fact that it works on those confusin' new computers.
This would work against Linux.
This crap would work on anything.
Microsoft did *NOTHING* wrong here. They didn't steal his stuff or anything. They just made their own products work together. It probably wouldn't even have been an issue if Excel and Access had been marketed under the same freaking product name.
Unless Apple goes out of their way to lock out free software, they will have made the best Linux platform from a easy-to-install perspective. Their big trick, compatible homogenous hardware, will mean that as long as Linux supports the new Apple stuff, you are looking at a nifty PC that will work with your whatever distro, because all the hardware will be standard.
I'm looking forward to Apple becoming this kind of brand, even though I don't really think it will help them. But then, I'm not fully informed.
The parent is referring to a recent Star Wars parody where the emperor uses the line on all the senators, who are utterly naive about Palpatine being bad.
"You have no idea how ignorant that sounds." You have no idea how arrogant that is.
"Please leave trial law to the lawyers."
Perhaps I'll leave it to my elected officials instead?
I'll let you trust the lawyers. I know a few of them, so I'm smart enough not too. Additionally, I've gone to jury duty and seen them quizzing the jury, using every dishonest marketing technique they could (like picking someone who was going to parrot the view they wanted, and quizzing them on an issue so that the things they said sounded more reasonable not coming out of their own mouths).
What I mean, for those not smart enough to pick it up off the first read, is that I'm not sure if they mean "you can plausibly use presence of encryption software as something to establish guilt" or "in the presence of 'beyond a reasonable doubt' evidence, you can use the presence of encryption software to show that he was up to something bad".
EITHER ONE IS A BAD THING
The first, because it lets you paint technoknowledgeable people as criminals pretty much at will.
The second, because it takes what should be present in *every* household, standard on every device, and makes it questionable. In addition to the fact that it's undoubtably going to be used in the mindfuck game that is hypnotising the jury to come to the conclusion that you want- "LOOK HACKER UTILITY", etc.
And I don't watch shitty TV shows. But perhaps you do, what with your cowboy attitude.
I used Fedora Core 2. Encryption built right in, 256 bit in any of a few flavors. I encrypt my journal, which has nothing illegal in it. But, if I'm unwilling to let someone read my personal files, why not accuse me of any number of terrible things? Terrorist? Necrophile? Hell, rack'em up boys! If he has an encryption program, he's obviously a criminal?
Good citizens have nothing to hide, after all. Why don't we just ban encryption entirely? And we'll install the cameras here and here...
Seriously...
I'm not totally familiar with what this means legally, but I know it's a bad thing. And a reason for every OS to include it by default, PRONTO!
...I'll only be seeing it one additional time this weekend. Unless this other circle of friends of mine that isn't big on movies wants to go. Then I'd see it two more times this weekend.
Also, I'm using the gnutella network, which is less dishonest than bitorrent because it is slower.
Never mind best hardware in class, the thing had a hard drive bulit in, plus a great online service that is generally superior, being a mostly centralized solution to the every-game-has-a-different-interface of the PC world. Those two things would count as innovation in the console market.
Held to PC standards, no. But consoles aren't, being that they are totally not PCs.
I own a Gamecube and a PS2. I'd prefer to never give Microsoft money again, because they are monopolistic and abuse that fact. I'm not interested in a subscription service that I have to pay a reasonable chunk of money for, and I don't feel that the system accomodates casual gamers very well. Additionally, I don't see as much software experimentation as I'd like, IMHO only Nintendo gets that done consistently.
But the XBox did bring things fresh and new to the console world: it brought a lot of what was good about PC gaming to the market in a console. I was impressed, even though I'm not a customer. They certainly won over several of my friends. If I had been a big "Point-The-Screen" (First person shooter) fan, they might have won me over as well.
(Stupid controllers big enough to surf on! That was another innovation!)
My first thought was, Aha! Supreme Court... Wine... favorable... and for a tiny fraction of a second, I was trying to find out if they had said something bad or good about alternative Windows APIs.
Of course, this all happened real fast. I'm happy with this one too, because it gives the "more freedom" result.
CSS takes stuff and splits it across multiple files. It also zooms poorly, as it often seems to make assumptions about the resolution I'm running at.
Tables are fine for formatting a web page. CSS might be the perfect, but tables are definitely the good. And the good has been working and tested for some time, and the perfect is still a bit away from perfection.
Posting on slashdot doesn't count as a successful Turing test, ye mechanical automaton!
Seriously, it's good to see things like that work. I would say that we need a better, more permissive system for experimental drugs, one where they are clearly labelled as such. Steps would have to be taken to avoid something being labelled "experimental" indefinitely to dodge lawsuits, etc.... but it ticks me off to see Europe have a lifesaving technology for half a decade before it's allowed over here.
"Con" arguments are very familiar.
on
Revamping Freenet
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· Score: 1
They were the same reason we shouldn't have any of:
VCR BBS Internet Polaroid Digital Camera
Just because you can think of a sick use for them doesn't villify the technology. How long will we continue to see methods of speech propagation attacked because there are some things that are horrifying, which will be spread via them?
Short version: Give ethical/moral arguments opposed to Freenet that do not also apply to the Internet in general. Note that the Internet in general is a superset of Freenet, and therefore includes anonymous posting of information.
He hated EP1 so much that he refused to see EP2, won't even take a.avi and watch it for free. Claims Lucas is a horrible hack who doesn't deserve his time anymore.
I'm trying to persuade him to see 2 and 3, because 2 was good and 3 has the possibility of awesomeness.
Slashdot Mirror
Every conversation about Dvorak, these two supposedly genius contrarians get brought up.
The big thing is, their whole agenda was to show that the market doesn't make mistakes. Since everyone using an inferior keyboard is obviously a market making a mistake, they decided to grab the bull by the horns and attack that.
Go ahead and read it. Then google the search, and find people who don't have an economic point of view to push have addressed its sketchy (and often ad hominem) attacks.
(Oh, here's a link to a plaintext version:
http://wwwpub.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/keys1.html )
It will point out that the Navy study is dubious, etc. It won't actually point out other important things, like that Sholes (the creator of the Qwerty keyboard) never intended it to become the defacto standard, and actually designed a somewhat Dvorak-like keyboard (vowels one place, consonants another, though he didn't have detailed statistics to get key placement) and intended for *that* to become the standard.
But, everyone already knew Qwerty by then! He knew his standard was substandard, but it was "good enough", and he couldn't move it. Dvorak, trying decades later, barely made a dent.
Anyway, Dvorak is better. The fastest typists in the world use it, and they know more than two guys who desperately want to show that the market is always right.
But I don't use it to type faster, I use it because my fingers hardly ever get tired (the mild performance increase is pretty much nothing). Typing is more pressing buttons and less fingers flying. I mean, just *look at the layouts with your own eyes*. What do you want to type a lot? J? K? How about H and T instead? Hey, "E" is the most common letter, get that the hell off the home row! Etc. Qwerty is a pretty arbitrary layout, meant for a specific purpose, over a century ago. If you don't want to learn to do it better because it's a big pain, then don't. But don't let these people go denying reality because it's convenient for them.
Anyway, if you don't want to google Fable Of The Keys to find it debunked, here's at least one link:
http://www.dvorak-keyboard.com/dvorak2.html
The problem is that the folks who created most of the old school Unix stuff were either lazy typists, or just happened to design a system very friendly to them.
;)
ls on Qwerty is both ring fingers. Did they really mean list, or is it just easy to type and then the definition came afterward? I'm not really sure. Type those two keys on Dvorak, you get "no". O and N are both common, and both no and on are actually words. Even with a lot of sysadminning, you should really be typing on and no a lot more than you type ls.
Typing it on Dvorak maps to p; keys for the Qwerty folks.
Unix commands that are based on words except shortened by losing vowels don't work superfast either, being very right-handed centric (though I bet it's hard to get close to the left-handedness of a normal Qwerty board) without the vowels under the left hand being needed.
I bet it's slower by a bit, honestly. vi is harder to get around in too, because hjkl are nowhere near where they are on Qwerty. But then, vi is the only program where L means "Go Right", so whatever
That's to be expected when the names where chosen with the implicit assumption that Qwerty was the One Keyboard.
I don't think it matters. Assuming you type actual language ever, Dvorak will help you.
Warning to coders: hard to get used to location of [] keys (where - and = are normally). Underscore, however, doesn't wreck your day (it's where apostrophe/quote normally is).
It's all, but it's more offtopic than the others.
It's technically a troll, but it's so far away from the topic of discussion that it's totally irrelevant. If someone had posted that GNOME versus KDE troll that always gets posted whenever GNOME gets brought up (it claims to be from a GNOME developer, but he ends up just making ridiculous claims), that would also be offtopic, not a troll.
Trolling requires some sophistication, and some attempt at riling people up to respond. It's a troll in the sense that *you* responded to it, but even then all you did was bitch about mods.
It's more flamebait than troll, but I think that Offtopic is more appropriate.
-1, Asshole would be good too...
The ability of other people to chat with their friends (adjacent or miles away) is what they get for not being in school and under the auspices of an annoying teacher.
They don't have to be quiet for you.
If you want quiet, the solution is ear plugs for you, not the forced silencing of the rest of creation. Airlines should probably hand them out, if they don't already.
I also think it's hilarious how everyone I know that is opposed to cell phones in airplanes is fine with them on buses, which is the same damn thing.
The selfish people are the ones that are unwilling to wear two small pieces of rubber, and would instead have EVERYONE ELSE obey their will.
And the fact that it will disturb SETI actually does make me sad. But not sad enough that I think it's worth taking away a *great* ability (the ability to communicate with your friends and family, no matter where you and they are).
SETI is at best a shot in the dark. Cellphones are telepathy made practical, real, and affordable. Even with their flaws, they are one of the best chunks of technology to ever hit humanity.
Of course, let's be fair and scale the world correctly...
Though the visitor thinks that the lounge should be broad and nice, his hostforgets to tell him that he routinely runs horses through at high speeds, and the designer had only the one out to deal with the viscious user having somewhat odd requirements that they insist upon and think are normal.
The doors swing outwards because there are literally THOUSANDS of travelling salesmen per day, and if it swung inwards they would either force their way in to try to help you refinance your home, sell you vaccuum cleaner enhancements, or have an indecent proposal for your horses... and that's assuming they don't secretly drop self replicating robots inside that use your phones to call up a bunch of misguided teenagers across the world to give them orders like "tear up carpet" and "read house owner's diary to me".
The garden is plastic because the owner doesn't understand the basics of garden maintenance and anything else would die, and is underground because the sun gives off nova intensity light at random intervals for unforseen amounts of time.
---
Of course Microsoft has a stupid stance on patents. But that's immaterial here, unless you want to be some kind of active karmic agent or whatever.
I *would* agree that this kind of attack is possibly the only thing that will make Microsoft change its tune, but no one is out there urging everyone to patent every good idea they have and put them under a "if a proprietary company uses any of these ideas, we'll sue their nuts off" agreement. This would be expensive per patent, but would not be out of reach for a community that is so broad and has so much resources.
I suspect we *would* see such an effort (or see an existing effort come to light) if free / open source actually began to be attacked by patents seriously... but for now, everyone seems to take the tack that such patents are ridiculous, and that they should not be permitted.
Anyway, as long as Microsoft stands to gain more than lose on stupid patents, they will back stupid patents. But they still didn't do anything to *deserve* this lawsuit.
Basically, it went like this:
Microsoft obtains software product A.
Microsoft obtains software product B.
Microsoft begins making them work together.
Guy beats Microsoft to market.
Microsoft continues making their products work together.
Guy sues Microsoft, wins millions for being first to patent obvious method made "novel" by the fact that it works on those confusin' new computers.
This would work against Linux.
This crap would work on anything.
Microsoft did *NOTHING* wrong here. They didn't steal his stuff or anything. They just made their own products work together. It probably wouldn't even have been an issue if Excel and Access had been marketed under the same freaking product name.
Ludicrous.
Unless Apple goes out of their way to lock out free software, they will have made the best Linux platform from a easy-to-install perspective. Their big trick, compatible homogenous hardware, will mean that as long as Linux supports the new Apple stuff, you are looking at a nifty PC that will work with your whatever distro, because all the hardware will be standard.
I'm looking forward to Apple becoming this kind of brand, even though I don't really think it will help them. But then, I'm not fully informed.
The parent is referring to a recent Star Wars parody where the emperor uses the line on all the senators, who are utterly naive about Palpatine being bad.
;)
The movie had a pretty similar scene, actually
Well, by this logic, the government (whose laws govern copyright law) own at least all proprietary code, and probably all code period.
Seriously, what the hell?
You love grammar like a frat boy "loves" a drunk girl.
Just my $.02 there...
"You have no idea how ignorant that sounds."
You have no idea how arrogant that is.
"Please leave trial law to the lawyers."
Perhaps I'll leave it to my elected officials instead?
I'll let you trust the lawyers. I know a few of them, so I'm smart enough not too. Additionally, I've gone to jury duty and seen them quizzing the jury, using every dishonest marketing technique they could (like picking someone who was going to parrot the view they wanted, and quizzing them on an issue so that the things they said sounded more reasonable not coming out of their own mouths).
What I mean, for those not smart enough to pick it up off the first read, is that I'm not sure if they mean "you can plausibly use presence of encryption software as something to establish guilt" or "in the presence of 'beyond a reasonable doubt' evidence, you can use the presence of encryption software to show that he was up to something bad".
EITHER ONE IS A BAD THING
The first, because it lets you paint technoknowledgeable people as criminals pretty much at will.
The second, because it takes what should be present in *every* household, standard on every device, and makes it questionable. In addition to the fact that it's undoubtably going to be used in the mindfuck game that is hypnotising the jury to come to the conclusion that you want- "LOOK HACKER UTILITY", etc.
And I don't watch shitty TV shows. But perhaps you do, what with your cowboy attitude.
I used Fedora Core 2. Encryption built right in, 256 bit in any of a few flavors. I encrypt my journal, which has nothing illegal in it. But, if I'm unwilling to let someone read my personal files, why not accuse me of any number of terrible things? Terrorist? Necrophile? Hell, rack'em up boys! If he has an encryption program, he's obviously a criminal?
Good citizens have nothing to hide, after all. Why don't we just ban encryption entirely? And we'll install the cameras here and here...
Seriously...
I'm not totally familiar with what this means legally, but I know it's a bad thing. And a reason for every OS to include it by default, PRONTO!
If this stands up, privacy will take a beating.
If it weren't for them, the data would never get from the computer to the person (which is the same noble goal of DRM).
Clearly, we need some regulations on 400-800nm photons!
...I'll only be seeing it one additional time this weekend. Unless this other circle of friends of mine that isn't big on movies wants to go. Then I'd see it two more times this weekend.
Also, I'm using the gnutella network, which is less dishonest than bitorrent because it is slower.
That's sarcasm, thx.
It fell between PS2 and Xbox, and is a lot closer to the Xbox in power. It also shipped between them, but really at the same time as Xbox.
:(
This system looks to come out last, and be much less powerful
Never mind best hardware in class, the thing had a hard drive bulit in, plus a great online service that is generally superior, being a mostly centralized solution to the every-game-has-a-different-interface of the PC world. Those two things would count as innovation in the console market.
Held to PC standards, no. But consoles aren't, being that they are totally not PCs.
I own a Gamecube and a PS2. I'd prefer to never give Microsoft money again, because they are monopolistic and abuse that fact. I'm not interested in a subscription service that I have to pay a reasonable chunk of money for, and I don't feel that the system accomodates casual gamers very well. Additionally, I don't see as much software experimentation as I'd like, IMHO only Nintendo gets that done consistently.
But the XBox did bring things fresh and new to the console world: it brought a lot of what was good about PC gaming to the market in a console. I was impressed, even though I'm not a customer. They certainly won over several of my friends. If I had been a big "Point-The-Screen" (First person shooter) fan, they might have won me over as well.
(Stupid controllers big enough to surf on! That was another innovation!)
These new things don't even have blast processing...
My first thought was, Aha! Supreme Court... Wine... favorable... and for a tiny fraction of a second, I was trying to find out if they had said something bad or good about alternative Windows APIs.
Of course, this all happened real fast. I'm happy with this one too, because it gives the "more freedom" result.
CSS takes stuff and splits it across multiple files. It also zooms poorly, as it often seems to make assumptions about the resolution I'm running at.
Tables are fine for formatting a web page. CSS might be the perfect, but tables are definitely the good. And the good has been working and tested for some time, and the perfect is still a bit away from perfection.
Posting on slashdot doesn't count as a successful Turing test, ye mechanical automaton!
Seriously, it's good to see things like that work. I would say that we need a better, more permissive system for experimental drugs, one where they are clearly labelled as such. Steps would have to be taken to avoid something being labelled "experimental" indefinitely to dodge lawsuits, etc.... but it ticks me off to see Europe have a lifesaving technology for half a decade before it's allowed over here.
They were the same reason we shouldn't have any of:
VCR
BBS
Internet
Polaroid
Digital Camera
Just because you can think of a sick use for them doesn't villify the technology. How long will we continue to see methods of speech propagation attacked because there are some things that are horrifying, which will be spread via them?
Short version: Give ethical/moral arguments opposed to Freenet that do not also apply to the Internet in general. Note that the Internet in general is a superset of Freenet, and therefore includes anonymous posting of information.
We find a new species, and WE ARE ALREADY EATING IT.
"What do you know about this rodent?"
"Very little, we don't yet know where it diverged from modern rodentia. It is, however, *excellent* over rice."
He hated EP1 so much that he refused to see EP2, won't even take a .avi and watch it for free. Claims Lucas is a horrible hack who doesn't deserve his time anymore.
I'm trying to persuade him to see 2 and 3, because 2 was good and 3 has the possibility of awesomeness.