Q: What do you get when you cross an elephant and a banana? A: Elephant-banana-sine-theta in a direction perpendicular to both the elephant and the banana according to the right-hand rule.
Q: What do you get when you cross an mountain climber and a banana. A: You can't. A mountain climber is a scalar.
Q: What's a polar bear? A: A rectangular bear after a coordinate transform.
Their answer to "Clippy" will be the "Stapler". A PG-13 rated Easter Egg will feature the graphic torture of Clippy while being held down by a swarm of staples.
An killer feature will let you add your own notes and tips to applications and documents. (Like Stickies, but context aware.)
Mac OS X has a Dvorak-Querty hybrid layout (which I prefer). While the Apple key is depressed (used for the cut, copy, paste shortcuts), the layout switches to Querty. This mostly works, though Apple-+ has issues, and somehow, Photoshop is able to stay in Dvorak-only mode.
I've been using this on my PowerBook, and it generally works well. The *only* problem I have with the Dvorak-Querty mix is that apple-+ doesn't work, except on the number pad. (Used for zooming) Oddly enough, apple-=, apple-] and apple-shift-= may or may not work for enlarging/zooming in depending on the application. apple--, used for shrinking/zooming out, usually works as expected. Weird.
Oh, and Photoshop ignores the Querty-when-apple-pressed somehow, so it's basically straight Dvorak in Photoshop.
Having the cut, copy, paste in the Querty positions is worth it.
Touchstream is dead. The fan forums are hoping that 1) Apple bought the company and 2) Touchstream keyboard will be back on the market soon, but there isn't much hope at this point.
I'm disgruntled because I just fell in love with them over the last week or so, just a couple weeks after resellers sold their last Touchstreams, and hours before Touchstream announced their demise.
I've got a lengthier post here. (I apologise if this kind of link is frowned upon.)
My iGesture (Touchstream mouse) is in the mail. I've been using Dvorak since last year.
This is the ultimate geek keyboard. I've been trying to find an ergonomic keyboard for the last couple weeks and fell in love with the Touchstream last week. The keyboard is thin and flat, with no actual keys, just two large multi-touch sensitive pads. This allows for gestures based on multiple keypresses at once.
The gestures can be interesting, like pinching your fingers together to 'cut', twisting counter-clockwise to open a file. Shifting can be done by putting four fingers down on home row. Mousing is done right on the keyboard, with three fingers used for dragging.
The key locations (positions, sizes and mappings) are in an xml file. Software allows you to remap gestures based on the current application.
The Touchstream has won several awards, was developed by a professor at the University of Delaware, a few years ago. They also made a low power version that replaced the removable PowerBook keyboard (called the MacNTouch).
The Touchstream forums knew since April? that Fingerworks had been bought by a large corp, and rumors abounded. By late May, all the mainstream resellers had sold their last keyboards, snatched up by fans who couldn't bear to switch back to regular keyboards.
On June 10th, their website announced that they had discontinued manufacturing, and ebay bids jumped from $400 to $800. (Retail price was around $350)
I'm so annoyed. I find the perfect keyboard, and the company dies right in front me. If I'd done this a month ago, I could've gotten one from Thinkgeek.
The forums are still active. The official forum is now read-only, but before it died, someone setup an announced a fan-driven forum which is going strong.
Their mouse replacement, which has the mousing and gestures of the keyboard, but not the keys, is still available. It's called the iGesture. I bought one last week, and am waiting for it to show up.
Thanks. I had not realized that only the Cocoa apps would recompile with minimal issues. All the Carbon apps need some and maybe extensive development.
I just found out from a developer (on a well known app) that they need the extra time to migrate. They are also glad to know that any further development on Carbon will be wasted time.
So a year advanced notice is making sense now.
I'll also keep pushing my friends/coworkers towards the PPC (Mac Mini).
Cringly has a point. If the Mathmatica CEO can get called on Wednesday night the week before, asked to bring the source code to Apple, and turn around a native Intel program in two hours of changes, then your developers don't need a year advanced warning. Right?
The downside is that several people I've been talking into making the switch are now holding off another year until the Intel macs come out. (I'm persuading them for selfish reasons -- I get less support calls from my friends)
From a developers POV, isn't Panther->Tiger a bigger change? Except for getting the binaries available for customer systems when the system begin shipping?
My guess, Steve Jobs will announce an Intel laptop this year. I'm holding off on replacing my laptop until the Intels come out, and so is my partner. Even if they come out next year.
It worked well for me. (though the tracks arrived out of order, so sorting by Date Added gets them jumbled up.)
I'm against renting music myself, and I'm kinda burned out on mainstream music since our local Hear Music closed. Since then, I've stuck to CDBaby primarily, and iTunes mostly for singles. (ah, the eighties..)
Diamond-shaft bic pen. Also serves as for emergency tracheostomies, or as a really cool straw. You'll never again be embarrassed with broken pens in your pocket.
"Ten Thumbs Typing Tutor" worked well for me for learning Dvorak (they do Querty too).
Honesty, give Dvorak a chance if you do a lot of typing. It's a lot easier on your hands, and reduces the risk of RSI. Also, learning Dvorak on a Querty keyboard really encourages touch (no peeking) typing.
The Mac makes Dvorak easier with a Querty-when-the -Command-is-pressed keyboard, so all of the copy, paste shortcuts are in their original one-handed spots.
I have to use a lot of other keyboards at work (sys/net admin) that are Querty, but it's an easy enough trade off to have to watch my fingers for fast Querty typing when I need to. (15% of my typing time).
I did (only once) get over 60 mpg on a 5 mile round trip in town. But I do tend to about 75 on the freeway, and there's a big drop-off in efficiency the faster I go.
Nonetheless, I'll be looking into this. Thanks for the reply(s).
Just a reminder, the Theory of Evolution and Common Decent also does not address the origins of the universe, and does not need to explain the origin of the first lifeform on Earth. *That* explaination is in the hands of astrophysicists.
The Theory of Evolution and Common Decent merely attempts to explain the baffling findings of extinct dinosaur fossils and the tree-like structure of shared traits in species. It is corroborated by similarities in DNA sequences, radioactive isotope dating, and actual observed evolution.
The origin of life should be compatible with evolution, but evolution does not need to explain its origin, any more than the Theory of Gravity needs to explain the origins of that gravity.
Most people automatically assume that if a God existed, that he would be the God as told in the Jewish/Christian Bible. Frankly, I see no reason for that to be true. The lack of a divine apology for the December 26th tsunamis and cancer are some of my arguments against a detail-oriented God, who created man in his own image, and takes a personal interest in the salvation of every person. The existence of malaria, SIDS and spider-infesting wasps are good reasons not to believe in a benevolent God.
It may not be possible to prove/disprove the existence of a god or two who can subvert the physics of our realty. The specific personality of the God in the Bible can be judged against what we know. Judged, and found wanting.
We just switched away from McAfee because the updates require running IE in an insecure mode. Since we switched to Firefox, every update had to wrestled with to download in IE (with the redirects we couldn't just copy/paste the URLs either). Norton manages to download virus and program updates without opening any web browser.
It depends on how much effort you want to put into it, but here are some more suggestions.
No matter what, make it absolutely clear whenever they use something that can bite them hard on a normal terminal. Don't train them to fail later. Aliasing 'rm' to 'rm -i' can hurt them bad when they get used to typing 'rm *' to be prompted for which files to delete.
If you want to get really advanced, include two scripts that will switch them to 'normal' mode or back to 'training' mode.
Start them out in training mode. When they log in, they get: * an entire screen of help, including the command to leave training mode, and listing the safety nets you added. * their prompt contains "(TRAINING)" or "(NEWBIE)" or something * alias 'rm' to 'rm -i', etc. * any other safety nets * point out 'grep', 'find', 'head', 'tail', 'less' and the cute little 'wc' and where to discover more about unix commands.
When they switch to normal mode, after confirmation, their login only includes the command to return to training mode. (Which they can edit out of the.bashrc) And their prompt doesn't have "(TRAINING)" in it anymore.
The idea is that you make sure that they know which safety nets you create, that aren't on other systems. They also get a transistion period for as long as they want. Leaving the "TRAINING" in the prompt is a continual reminder that there setup is more 'safe' than other systems, and may add motivation to go into normal mode.
The rest of this is from my tcsh experience:
* set up 'complete' options for common, yet complex commands like 'find', 'alias', 'set', 'man', 'nethack'. (very cool in tcsh, is this feature in bash?)
* alias l=ls, ll=ls -l, la=ls -a (doesn't hurt anyone)
* set tab to autocomplete or list matches, if it doesn't already
* include apache-style comments (maximum verbosity) inside the.bashrc
* set prompt to "(time):: (path)\n(host) {(#)}% " (don't know bash)
* don't alias any DOS commands directly to Unix except for 'dir'. Alias the others DOS commands to mini-helps that remind them gently to use the proper Unix command.
It's my job (getting a paycheck) to babysit a couple dozen of these bad Microsoft babies at work. So I feel very justified in griping, griping, griping about the nastiness that is Microsoft.
And then, there's the viruses, and the spam, and the DoS attacks coming from infected *cough* *cough* Windows systems. Maybe you think it's like milk -- just mysteriously appearing in the store -- but the rest of us know to blame Microsoft.
If the entire company wasn't so entrenched in FoxPro programs, I probably could've convinced my company to switch to Apple a long time ago.
Slashdot Mirror
With bioengineering being the latest and greatest.. I'm hoping they introduce one of these.. http://www.robandelliot.cycomics.com/archive.php?i d=72
Rock on!
We decided we had to be radically different from Apple"
translation..
"We don't want to get sued by Apple."
Why would you buy the third one? /seriously
Q: What do you get when you cross an elephant and a banana?
A: Elephant-banana-sine-theta in a direction perpendicular to both the elephant and the banana according to the right-hand rule.
Q: What do you get when you cross an mountain climber and a banana.
A: You can't. A mountain climber is a scalar.
Q: What's a polar bear?
A: A rectangular bear after a coordinate transform.
Their answer to "Clippy" will be the "Stapler". A PG-13 rated Easter Egg will feature the graphic torture of Clippy while being held down by a swarm of staples.
An killer feature will let you add your own notes and tips to applications and documents. (Like Stickies, but context aware.)
Mac OS X has a Dvorak-Querty hybrid layout (which I prefer). While the Apple key is depressed (used for the cut, copy, paste shortcuts), the layout switches to Querty. This mostly works, though Apple-+ has issues, and somehow, Photoshop is able to stay in Dvorak-only mode.
I've been using this on my PowerBook, and it generally works well. The *only* problem I have with the Dvorak-Querty mix is that apple-+ doesn't work, except on the number pad. (Used for zooming) Oddly enough, apple-=, apple-] and apple-shift-= may or may not work for enlarging/zooming in depending on the application. apple--, used for shrinking/zooming out, usually works as expected. Weird.
Oh, and Photoshop ignores the Querty-when-apple-pressed somehow, so it's basically straight Dvorak in Photoshop.
Having the cut, copy, paste in the Querty positions is worth it.
Touchstream is dead. The fan forums are hoping that 1) Apple bought the company and 2) Touchstream keyboard will be back on the market soon, but there isn't much hope at this point.
I'm disgruntled because I just fell in love with them over the last week or so, just a couple weeks after resellers sold their last Touchstreams, and hours before Touchstream announced their demise.
I've got a lengthier post here. (I apologise if this kind of link is frowned upon.)
My iGesture (Touchstream mouse) is in the mail. I've been using Dvorak since last year.
Waaah!
This is the ultimate geek keyboard. I've been trying to find an ergonomic keyboard for the last couple weeks and fell in love with the Touchstream last week. The keyboard is thin and flat, with no actual keys, just two large multi-touch sensitive pads. This allows for gestures based on multiple keypresses at once.
The gestures can be interesting, like pinching your fingers together to 'cut', twisting counter-clockwise to open a file. Shifting can be done by putting four fingers down on home row. Mousing is done right on the keyboard, with three fingers used for dragging.
The key locations (positions, sizes and mappings) are in an xml file. Software allows you to remap gestures based on the current application.
The Touchstream has won several awards, was developed by a professor at the University of Delaware, a few years ago. They also made a low power version that replaced the removable PowerBook keyboard (called the MacNTouch).
The Touchstream forums knew since April? that Fingerworks had been bought by a large corp, and rumors abounded. By late May, all the mainstream resellers had sold their last keyboards, snatched up by fans who couldn't bear to switch back to regular keyboards.
On June 10th, their website announced that they had discontinued manufacturing, and ebay bids jumped from $400 to $800. (Retail price was around $350)
I'm so annoyed. I find the perfect keyboard, and the company dies right in front me. If I'd done this a month ago, I could've gotten one from Thinkgeek.
The forums are still active. The official forum is now read-only, but before it died, someone setup an announced a fan-driven forum which is going strong.
Their mouse replacement, which has the mousing and gestures of the keyboard, but not the keys, is still available. It's called the iGesture. I bought one last week, and am waiting for it to show up.
FYI, I switched to Dvorak last year.
Thanks. I had not realized that only the Cocoa apps would recompile with minimal issues. All the Carbon apps need some and maybe extensive development.
I just found out from a developer (on a well known app) that they need the extra time to migrate. They are also glad to know that any further development on Carbon will be wasted time.
So a year advanced notice is making sense now.
I'll also keep pushing my friends/coworkers towards the PPC (Mac Mini).
I like your answers.. except for Question 4.
Cringly has a point. If the Mathmatica CEO can get called on Wednesday night the week before, asked to bring the source code to Apple, and turn around a native Intel program in two hours of changes, then your developers don't need a year advanced warning. Right?
The downside is that several people I've been talking into making the switch are now holding off another year until the Intel macs come out. (I'm persuading them for selfish reasons -- I get less support calls from my friends)
From a developers POV, isn't Panther->Tiger a bigger change? Except for getting the binaries available for customer systems when the system begin shipping?
My guess, Steve Jobs will announce an Intel laptop this year. I'm holding off on replacing my laptop until the Intels come out, and so is my partner. Even if they come out next year.
It worked well for me. (though the tracks arrived out of order, so sorting by Date Added gets them jumbled up.)
I'm against renting music myself, and I'm kinda burned out on mainstream music since our local Hear Music closed. Since then, I've stuck to CDBaby primarily, and iTunes mostly for singles. (ah, the eighties..)
(I liked it so much, I bought the sig)
BURN IN HELL, WINDOWS LOSERS!
Diamond-shaft bic pen. Also serves as for emergency tracheostomies, or as a really cool straw. You'll never again be embarrassed with broken pens in your pocket.
"Ten Thumbs Typing Tutor" worked well for me for learning Dvorak (they do Querty too). Honesty, give Dvorak a chance if you do a lot of typing. It's a lot easier on your hands, and reduces the risk of RSI. Also, learning Dvorak on a Querty keyboard really encourages touch (no peeking) typing. The Mac makes Dvorak easier with a Querty-when-the -Command-is-pressed keyboard, so all of the copy, paste shortcuts are in their original one-handed spots. I have to use a lot of other keyboards at work (sys/net admin) that are Querty, but it's an easy enough trade off to have to watch my fingers for fast Querty typing when I need to. (15% of my typing time).
I did (only once) get over 60 mpg on a 5 mile round trip in town. But I do tend to about 75 on the freeway, and there's a big drop-off in efficiency the faster I go.
Nonetheless, I'll be looking into this. Thanks for the reply(s).
I get about 8-10 mpg improvement by using the cruise control at any speed. I have a 2005 Honda Civic Hybrid and get about 38-41 mpg on average.
Just a reminder, the Theory of Evolution and Common Decent also does not address the origins of the universe, and does not need to explain the origin of the first lifeform on Earth. *That* explaination is in the hands of astrophysicists.
The Theory of Evolution and Common Decent merely attempts to explain the baffling findings of extinct dinosaur fossils and the tree-like structure of shared traits in species. It is corroborated by similarities in DNA sequences, radioactive isotope dating, and actual observed evolution.
The origin of life should be compatible with evolution, but evolution does not need to explain its origin, any more than the Theory of Gravity needs to explain the origins of that gravity.
Most people automatically assume that if a God existed, that he would be the God as told in the Jewish/Christian Bible. Frankly, I see no reason for that to be true. The lack of a divine apology for the December 26th tsunamis and cancer are some of my arguments against a detail-oriented God, who created man in his own image, and takes a personal interest in the salvation of every person. The existence of malaria, SIDS and spider-infesting wasps are good reasons not to believe in a benevolent God.
It may not be possible to prove/disprove the existence of a god or two who can subvert the physics of our realty. The specific personality of the God in the Bible can be judged against what we know. Judged, and found wanting.
For a lighter note, I invite you to learn about Hank.
We just switched away from McAfee because the updates require running IE in an insecure mode. Since we switched to Firefox, every update had to wrestled with to download in IE (with the redirects we couldn't just copy/paste the URLs either). Norton manages to download virus and program updates without opening any web browser.
Both of the VPN softwares that I and my partner use are INCOMPATIBLE! *grimace* I wouldn't be surprised if all VPN software needed to be updated.
And what about desktop sharing apps like Webex? VNC?
CarbonCopyCloner?
No matter what, make it absolutely clear whenever they use something that can bite them hard on a normal terminal. Don't train them to fail later. Aliasing 'rm' to 'rm -i' can hurt them bad when they get used to typing 'rm *' to be prompted for which files to delete.
If you want to get really advanced, include two scripts that will switch them to 'normal' mode or back to 'training' mode.
Start them out in training mode. When they log in, they get:
* an entire screen of help, including the command to leave training mode, and listing the safety nets you added.
* their prompt contains "(TRAINING)" or "(NEWBIE)" or something
* alias 'rm' to 'rm -i', etc.
* any other safety nets
* point out 'grep', 'find', 'head', 'tail', 'less' and the cute little 'wc' and where to discover more about unix commands.
When they switch to normal mode, after confirmation, their login only includes the command to return to training mode. (Which they can edit out of the
The idea is that you make sure that they know which safety nets you create, that aren't on other systems. They also get a transistion period for as long as they want. Leaving the "TRAINING" in the prompt is a continual reminder that there setup is more 'safe' than other systems, and may add motivation to go into normal mode.
The rest of this is from my tcsh experience:
* set up 'complete' options for common, yet complex commands like 'find', 'alias', 'set', 'man', 'nethack'. (very cool in tcsh, is this feature in bash?)
* alias l=ls, ll=ls -l, la=ls -a (doesn't hurt anyone)
* set tab to autocomplete or list matches, if it doesn't already
* include apache-style comments (maximum verbosity) inside the
* set prompt to "(time)
* don't alias any DOS commands directly to Unix except for 'dir'. Alias the others DOS commands to mini-helps that remind them gently to use the proper Unix command.
* use nano
> copy old.txt new.txt
Try using 'cp <options> <source> <target>'. For example:
cp old.txt new.txt
Type 'man cp' for more help.
Consider AT, CHKDSK, CMD, COPY, DATE?, DEL, DIR, ECHO, EDIT, FC, MKDIR or MD, MOVE, RD, RENAME?, TIME?, XCOPY.
And then, there's the viruses, and the spam, and the DoS attacks coming from infected *cough* *cough* Windows systems. Maybe you think it's like milk -- just mysteriously appearing in the store -- but the rest of us know to blame Microsoft.
If the entire company wasn't so entrenched in FoxPro programs, I probably could've convinced my company to switch to Apple a long time ago.