studies show neither dvorak nor qwerty have an advantage.
That most probably shows these experiments were not well enough designed.
in fact they show almost any random arrangement of keys appears to work equally well
In other words, they show they've not been able to show anything (isolate any significant bias).
To have a point here, they would need to explain why known cognitive biases should not apply to keyboard matters.
One doesn't need to be a cognitive expert to understand that, granted letters in words don't follow eachother randomly, crafting these co-frequencies geographicaly on a keyboard must result in different typing patterns compared to random arrangements.
A bias might just be sensible when people don't exactly know where keys are, thus needing to look at the keyboard (visual field has a small focus zone of ~1 degree). They also have a smallest distance to cover between successive keys on a DVORAK.
It doesn't necessarily mean people will learn faster where keys are, for these co-frequencies don't mean much from a mnesic point of view. People won't gather keys in mnesic chunk units, thus they still have to learn the location of the same amount of indivual items.
Also, when people know where keys are (type without looking at the keyboard), another (smaller) source of bias might come up: successive moves are faster and more accurate when they involve distant parts of the body. You'll get faster response time with two keys, each controled by a different hand's finger, than one controlled by the ring finger and another by the pinky from the same hand.
Finally, this last bias disapears when people are very good at it (like musicians): even geographic distance (longer moves) don't mean much anymore.
Therefore a bad writer should be slightly faster on DVORAK, and a better one slightly faster on QWERTY. Excellent writers should perform the same. DVORAK and QWERTY should be as long/difficult to learn.
What about selling an OS full of holes, then selling the software to cure infections? If you can get to sell the malwares themselves, you've got the perfect business plan.
Writing source code and burning down a building the same? Yeah, and the WTC fell because of some GPL flight simulator activists? Following your analogy, i believe idiocy is just a special kind of intelligence.
do you only prohibit Microsoft from doing so, because their OS is so ubiquitous?
Precisely. It's a case against monopoly abuses.
It's not like people _have_ to use Microsoft's products. They choose to.
You should read again about what a monopoly is, and what consequences it has. If there truly was a choice, it wouldn't be monopoly. 90% of the market definitely is a monopoly.
Do you allow certain applications, but not others? Where do you draw the line?
That's another point. EU's ruling does not intend to define precisely where such line is. They have a case, and they try it. It states multimedia apps are clearly on the wrong side of this line, wherever it precisely is. Would you say it's fully part of an OS?
Anyway, again, nobody would really care if there wasn't an unfair use of a previously unfair monopoly.
I, myself, believe that Microsoft should be allowed to ship whatever the hack they want with Windows.
As for all the companies whose applications have been pushed out by Microsoft's, tough luck. You couldn't get your software bundled with Windows and couldn't compel users to switch. You simply lost. That's life.
Typical free-trade extremism. Too much free-trade kills the free-trade. As of anything else.
Funny how in the states we have to deify what we don't understand. "In god we trust" state our notes. When it's not about JC's god, it's about a economical "magic hand" one. No such things in real life.
Think of it from an evolutionary perspective. If you let the big kill the small and get bigger, you get a dinosaurs world. Evolution theory doesn't work without ecological niches.
If it was the way you see it, you wouldn't be here to comment on it.
Think of it from a justice perspective if you prefer. What would be justice for if letting the strong anihilate the weak was working better?
In fact, TV over phone lines has existed for more than one year in France, specially in Paris where it was first launched.
For all you guys who are fighting around who did invent (A)DSL, i'll remind you of this old Newton saying: "if I have seen further [than others] it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."
To me these (A)DSL guys, although it's quite usefull these days, are more like hair-riders. But it doesn't prevent proud/. readers to seek and battle for the louses. It seems showing off with "attitude" remains their motto...
Would the french surrender it if threatened? Not sure. What i'm sure about is that we'd go to war if told that any unsignificant and powerless third-world nation had a "proven" plot to take ours from us.
If you knew how MSN does file transfer, you wouldn't worry about it not working: it needs to transfer about 3 or 4 times the number of bytes you actually wanna send. Because it's a text protocol, and such an awfull one...
Say you have to transfer 0xFF: it would transfer 255 (3 bytes: '2', '5', '5'), plus the separator char (comma), plus all the data about the file and the transfer status, etc, etc.
Use everything but MSN file transfer. It's yet another great technical achievement from MS you want to avoid.
First, even though gaim is a nice little tool (it's my IM too), it's not a great jewel that could get hurt by such a plug-in. Legally, that would make no sense. Technically, Gaim is already full of security holes, and it seems it's gonna be that way for a while.
Second, sharing music with _real_ friends is a good idea, but it's an old one actually. Only "new" stuff here is to make this P2P extension a Gaim plug-in.
Nevertheless, sharing with friends you know in the real life still is a solution to the RIAA monitoring problem. I mean, a lot of people have been downloading like hell on global p2p networks, (at least until RIAA started to send some to court), and you probably have a couple of friends with huge music databases already. Well, i have.
Third, the coolest thing for a geek in using such IM networks to share p2p hasn't been mentioned yet. Actually, i've coded a small "IM" tool using the MSN network to exploit it: basically, when you open a conversation with one or more friends, you actually open a connection to a shared "MSN socket" on Microsoft servers. Everything you send to it (once) is then repeated by the server as many times as there are people taking part in the conversation.
You get it: what you have is actually a free broadcast socket. Considering lack of bandwith is the main problem with p2p, this is quite nice.
OK, i know it wouldn't work if everybody was doing the same, cause MS would have to prevent it.
So, please be nice: don't do it.
I'd like to go on using my tool as long as possible.:)
... 10 years ago, when it first popped out. It isn't the case anymore.
As far as i can see, there are two different concepts in that thing:
- The real FS part: ReiserFS-like storing of a file/dir architecture, which is nice, disk-space-savey and all, but has no consequences on the way people work. Furthermore it already exists: i'm using it right now.
- The self-organized document hierarchy and search capabilities, which might change the way people work for the best, as far as it's restrained to *very specific parts* of your data.
Who would trade a well crafted UNIX dirs architecture for a key indexed FS? What about dirs related documents, like a hierarchy of Java packages? What about URL accessible documents? What about implicit (not already keyword-based) relations between documents? And so on... In most cases, this stuff would have to emulate a standard file hierarchy anyway, which would probably result in system resource overhead only, or would require that you specify explicit keywords (not really knowing how they would impact the search algorythm), which would result in user resource overhead only.
You get my point: this stuff must be an option, and it belongs to the user interface, as in DBFS or Google, with a standard lib/API for easy re-usability by tiers software.
It would be of no use with MOST of the files, in my system anyway.
WinFS is not even a solution looking for a problem, it's a problem seeking naive clients for its solution, IMHO.
... to let machines count their votes don't deserve democracy.
Public counting is the first and the strongest base of democracy.
Interestingly enough, it's the first process in humankind where security has been achieved by transparence. And as such, the first open-source philosophy process in human history.
Anybody must be able to check the process. Originally, you had to able to count (raised hands). Then, with more candidates, more people voting and anonymous voting process, paper ballots implied you also had to know how to read. Fair enough, as 97% of US people over 15 can read, according to the CIA world factbook (it's doubtful weither the 3% left care at all about politics, blind people left appart).
It's a very powerfull process, for each and every vote is publicly checked, and can be checked by anyone (above defined). At best, voting machines let you check the process, but not every single vote anymore, which is waaaay weaker however you take it. Furthermore, this process itself, FOSS machine or not, can only be checked by a ridiculously small and elitist group of people.
Slashdot Mirror
Parent too can become President of the United States!
That most probably shows these experiments were not well enough designed.
In other words, they show they've not been able to show anything (isolate any significant bias).
To have a point here, they would need to explain why known cognitive biases should not apply to keyboard matters.
One doesn't need to be a cognitive expert to understand that, granted letters in words don't follow eachother randomly, crafting these co-frequencies geographicaly on a keyboard must result in different typing patterns compared to random arrangements.
A bias might just be sensible when people don't exactly know where keys are, thus needing to look at the keyboard (visual field has a small focus zone of ~1 degree). They also have a smallest distance to cover between successive keys on a DVORAK.
It doesn't necessarily mean people will learn faster where keys are, for these co-frequencies don't mean much from a mnesic point of view. People won't gather keys in mnesic chunk units, thus they still have to learn the location of the same amount of indivual items.
Also, when people know where keys are (type without looking at the keyboard), another (smaller) source of bias might come up: successive moves are faster and more accurate when they involve distant parts of the body. You'll get faster response time with two keys, each controled by a different hand's finger, than one controlled by the ring finger and another by the pinky from the same hand.
Finally, this last bias disapears when people are very good at it (like musicians): even geographic distance (longer moves) don't mean much anymore.
Therefore a bad writer should be slightly faster on DVORAK, and a better one slightly faster on QWERTY. Excellent writers should perform the same. DVORAK and QWERTY should be as long/difficult to learn.
What about selling an OS full of holes, then selling the software to cure infections?
If you can get to sell the malwares themselves, you've got the perfect business plan.
Writing source code and burning down a building the same? Yeah, and the WTC fell because of some GPL flight simulator activists?
Following your analogy, i believe idiocy is just a special kind of intelligence.
It's a case against monopoly abuses.
You should read again about what a monopoly is, and what consequences it has. If there truly was a choice, it wouldn't be monopoly. 90% of the market definitely is a monopoly.
That's another point. EU's ruling does not intend to define precisely where such line is. They have a case, and they try it. It states multimedia apps are clearly on the wrong side of this line, wherever it precisely is. Would you say it's fully part of an OS?
Anyway, again, nobody would really care if there wasn't an unfair use of a previously unfair monopoly.
Typical free-trade extremism. Too much free-trade kills the free-trade. As of anything else.
Funny how in the states we have to deify what we don't understand. "In god we trust" state our notes. When it's not about JC's god, it's about a economical "magic hand" one. No such things in real life.
Think of it from an evolutionary perspective. If you let the big kill the small and get bigger, you get a dinosaurs world. Evolution theory doesn't work without ecological niches.
If it was the way you see it, you wouldn't be here to comment on it.
Think of it from a justice perspective if you prefer. What would be justice for if letting the strong anihilate the weak was working better?
In fact, TV over phone lines has existed for more than one year in France, specially in Paris where it was first launched.
/. readers to seek and battle for the louses.
For all you guys who are fighting around who did invent (A)DSL, i'll remind you of this old Newton saying: "if I have seen further [than others] it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."
To me these (A)DSL guys, although it's quite usefull these days, are more like hair-riders.
But it doesn't prevent proud
It seems showing off with "attitude" remains their motto...
Would the french surrender it if threatened? Not sure.
What i'm sure about is that we'd go to war if told that any unsignificant and powerless third-world nation had a "proven" plot to take ours from us.
Wouldn't it be pure vapor then?
Oh wait, fahrenheits...
Self-heating or not, US of A still wander in the ice age.
If you knew how MSN does file transfer, you wouldn't worry about it not working: it needs to transfer about 3 or 4 times the number of bytes you actually wanna send. Because it's a text protocol, and such an awfull one...
Say you have to transfer 0xFF: it would transfer 255 (3 bytes: '2', '5', '5'), plus the separator char (comma), plus all the data about the file and the transfer status, etc, etc.
Use everything but MSN file transfer. It's yet another great technical achievement from MS you want to avoid.
First, even though gaim is a nice little tool (it's my IM too), it's not a great jewel that could get hurt by such a plug-in. Legally, that would make no sense. Technically, Gaim is already full of security holes, and it seems it's gonna be that way for a while. Second, sharing music with _real_ friends is a good idea, but it's an old one actually. Only "new" stuff here is to make this P2P extension a Gaim plug-in. Nevertheless, sharing with friends you know in the real life still is a solution to the RIAA monitoring problem. I mean, a lot of people have been downloading like hell on global p2p networks, (at least until RIAA started to send some to court), and you probably have a couple of friends with huge music databases already. Well, i have. Third, the coolest thing for a geek in using such IM networks to share p2p hasn't been mentioned yet. Actually, i've coded a small "IM" tool using the MSN network to exploit it: basically, when you open a conversation with one or more friends, you actually open a connection to a shared "MSN socket" on Microsoft servers. Everything you send to it (once) is then repeated by the server as many times as there are people taking part in the conversation. You get it: what you have is actually a free broadcast socket. Considering lack of bandwith is the main problem with p2p, this is quite nice. OK, i know it wouldn't work if everybody was doing the same, cause MS would have to prevent it. So, please be nice: don't do it. I'd like to go on using my tool as long as possible.:)
If you get to read the article, you'll learn that they call "friend" someone you've met face-to-face, buddy.
As far as i can see, there are two different concepts in that thing:
- The real FS part: ReiserFS-like storing of a file/dir architecture, which is nice, disk-space-savey and all, but has no consequences on the way people work. Furthermore it already exists: i'm using it right now.
- The self-organized document hierarchy and search capabilities, which might change the way people work for the best, as far as it's restrained to *very specific parts* of your data. Who would trade a well crafted UNIX dirs architecture for a key indexed FS? What about dirs related documents, like a hierarchy of Java packages? What about URL accessible documents? What about implicit (not already keyword-based) relations between documents? And so on... In most cases, this stuff would have to emulate a standard file hierarchy anyway, which would probably result in system resource overhead only, or would require that you specify explicit keywords (not really knowing how they would impact the search algorythm), which would result in user resource overhead only.
You get my point: this stuff must be an option, and it belongs to the user interface, as in DBFS or Google, with a standard lib/API for easy re-usability by tiers software. It would be of no use with MOST of the files, in my system anyway.
WinFS is not even a solution looking for a problem, it's a problem seeking naive clients for its solution, IMHO.
That's a brand new concept of anonymous voting i'd never thought about...
I suggest you get a candy whenever you happen to vote for the winner guy, and get spanked otherwise. What do you think?
... then you get a prez that's worth a 16MHz 80386.
Public counting is the first and the strongest base of democracy. Interestingly enough, it's the first process in humankind where security has been achieved by transparence. And as such, the first open-source philosophy process in human history. Anybody must be able to check the process. Originally, you had to able to count (raised hands). Then, with more candidates, more people voting and anonymous voting process, paper ballots implied you also had to know how to read. Fair enough, as 97% of US people over 15 can read, according to the CIA world factbook (it's doubtful weither the 3% left care at all about politics, blind people left appart). It's a very powerfull process, for each and every vote is publicly checked, and can be checked by anyone (above defined). At best, voting machines let you check the process, but not every single vote anymore, which is waaaay weaker however you take it. Furthermore, this process itself, FOSS machine or not, can only be checked by a ridiculously small and elitist group of people.