I have a HP-15C purchased in 1985 and it is still running on the original batteries - 32 years! That is phenomenal low power design for the technology and knowledge at the time.
That's phenomenal even by today's design standards!
Typing on a flat surface is something that certainly takes some getting used to.
I wonder up to what point are we slaves of custom.
The primary reason we use a keyboard is because we use an alphabet. The alphabet serves as a major constraint in keyboard design, so you would need to address that you make any crazy changes. But that isn't really the issue...
We don't write with our fingers in the sand (or equivalent) for a reason. It is less efficient and more uncomfortable than current technologies. Try it on a touchscreen program that recognizes your handwriting. You will write incredibly slowly, messily, and you will hurt yourself after a month from overuse.
People are definitely willing to evolve, the new technology just needs to be better than the current one.
Scratching things on rocks sucked. Quills were better. But not as good as pens, because sharpening your quill and dipping it every three words is a pain in the ass when you're in a hurry. Fountain pens were great, but finicky and travel poorly. Ballpoint were much more robust, but with a slightly deficient writing experience (no line variation and have to press hard reducing writing quality). Rollerballs require less pressure.
We similarly went from typewriters to keyboards. And have been reducing the keyboard key press distance and feel for the last several years.
The key thing that most designers miss is that you actually need SOME feedback when you are writing or typing. If the pen is too slippery on the paper, or the keypress is too short (or nonexistent for a touchscreen), you lose track of things. "Did I press the key? Or just skim it? Did I hit the meta escape key or the F1 touch area? Did my pen run out of ink or did I miss the paper? Oh shit, I missed the paper and am writing on the table!"
Touchscreens let us type incredibly fast, but also wildly inaccurately and with no feeling. There's nothing wrote with touchscreen keys, but the existing designs are primitive. Put a touchscreen ON the key of a real keyboard. Let me control how high the key sits and how far I want to depress it for it to function. Keys need to actually have edges that you can feel for touch typing.
All of those features are standard on aftermarket keyboards for enthusiasts and professionals. They are the direction that the touchscreen technology needs to evolve. I currently feel that touchscreen keyboards are at the ballpoint pen level: They get the job done and are convenient, but are inaccurate, uncomfortable and provide no feedback.
How is the Apple car supposed to protect from being rear-ended?
It's always the person in back's fault in a rear end collision. ALWAYS. Even if the front driver is being a dick. It sucks, but that's how the law works: Did the car stop suddenly? Then you were following too closely. The the lead car hit another car an stop short, making you hit them? Then you were following too closely. Did the axle fall off the lead car and then you hit it? Then you were following too closely.
At best, Apple could only be at fault for a small percentage of the accident IF their car was doing weird things like stopping in an odd fashion or the brake lights were not working. But in a merging situation at around 15 mph, stopping suddenly would be expected.
It's called the Scunthorpe problem because it has the word "cunt" in it, and that prevented the good people of Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire, England from creating accounts with AOL back when that was relevant.
There, saved y'all a click, since that's probably the only thing you were interested in about this story anyway.
No, now I want to know why Scunthorpe was named Scunthorpe!
of the middle ages? They lacked bright artificial light so they would naturally fall asleep early, not blasting their eyes with 100 watt incandescent or equivalent or computer screens with blue light. Then they'd sleep for about four hours, wake up for a few hours and spend that time praying, reading, helping bring in another brother or sister for their children, keeping watch over the fort, invading the neighbors, etc. Then they'd fall asleep again for another four or so hours.
Natural. Healthy. Refreshing. What happened to it? Are we losing our culture and history?
I question your logic. Wasn't the average life expectancy during that period about 30 years?
There has been some controversy surrounding the use of the term "garbage patch" and photos taken off the coast of Manila in the Philippines in attempts to portray the patch in the media often misrepresenting the true scope of the problem and what could be done to solve it. Angelicque White, Associate Professor at Oregon State University, who has studied the "garbage patch" in depth, warns that "the use of the phrase 'garbage patch' is misleading.... It is not visible from space; there are no islands of trash; it is more akin to a diffuse soup of plastic floating in our oceans." In the article Dr. White and Professor Tamara Galloway, from the University of Exeter, call for regulation and cleanup and state that the focus should be on stemming the flow of plastic into the ocean from coastal sources.[49]
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) agrees, saying:
While "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" is a term often used by the media, it does not paint an accurate picture of the marine debris problem in the North Pacific Ocean. The name "Pacific Garbage Patch" has led many to believe that this area is a large and continuous patch of easily visible marine debris items such as bottles and other litter—akin to a literal island of trash that should be visible with satellite or aerial photographs. This is not the case.
—Ocean Facts, National Ocean Service[50]
The blurb (and even the article) is jaded and implies that blue light causes blindness to ride the anti-screen wave.
If you read it, you find that the issue is actually that the body makes alpha Tocopherol, a Vitamin E derivative, which keeps the photoreceptor cells from dying. Some people lose the ability to make that alpha Tocopherol as they age, leading to blindness.
So the issue isn't to avoid blue light and buy crazy glasses... (how are you really going to avoid blue light if you ever want to see white again anyway? Are you going to stop looking at white paper?) Rather it's to find a way to keep supplying alpha Tocopherol to the eye as people age.
I can't count the number of times I've tried to eject a USB drive, and Mac OS tells me it's "unable to eject the drive because it's in use."
Usually it's because Preview.app held onto some file descriptor for its stupid thumbnail of recent documents - not the list in the file menu, the one that pops up when you right-click on Preview in the Dock.
Apple used to promote the idea that the user is in charge. When I click "eject," the damn thing should eject!
You can generally solve this issue by killing the Finder app, as well.
You have to either be naive or stupid to not understand the long term strip mining game China is playing.
The poor guy is clearly naive and in giving him the benefit of the doubt. Scientists are good souls, but sometimes the, "For the sake of knowledge" types get used and abused in this cold world.
Do you really think scientists are "naive" and "good souls? Or do you think that the ones mentioned in the article are just playing both sides to increase their research budget?
If you have ever met an untenured or ambitious professor, you would choose the latter. Funding is tight; exploit all available sources.
So this year the population is down 80%, the next year it'll be down another 60%... but the following year 100% of the mosquito population will be immune, and there will be 10000% more of them because the bird population decreased 80% from starvation. To challenge nature on it's own terms is generally futile in the long run.
There are lots of other things for birds to eat. Also, bats eat many more mosquitoes than birds and there are many other insects for bats to eat.
Also, the mosquitoes they are eradicating were not a native species in Australia. So presumably the birds were fine eating native insects before this particular breed was introduced.
How long until the keyboard is just a giant touch pad with courageous gestures to enter text?
All text entry will be done with swiping. You'll thank us later.
Never.
They are going to jump straight to the anal probe. You have to squeeze it in different ways to get different gestures and keystrokes. Emphasis on strokes.
I believe this is all part of their grand plan to mitigate their large loss of third-party content which started several years ago.
They redesigned their website to be more graphical and less text based several years ago, making it hard to simply sort highly rate titles and scan though them quickly. I thought this was so that the user could not tell how limited their third party movie content was.
Then they introduced their "thumbs up/down" rating system supposedly because their users did not understand how their 5 star rating system was being used differently than the convention that the rest of the world follows. At that time, they also moved the reviews for each show to a separate (last) tab under each show's view.
This latest change completes the transformation. You can now only see what shows Netflix wants you to see unless you do a direct text search. No more sorting and no more reading reviews.
Personally, I am amazed that this is working for them, but I appear to be in the minority. Prior to their website redesign, I was a strong proponent of their service. After the redesign, I was convinced that they would tank and sold my stock in their company. However, their stock price has only gone up from there.
I'm curious to know what percentage of foodborne illnesses are caused by "didn't wash hands" and what percentage are caused by "saved money someplace in the food supply chain."
"didn't wash hands" = "saved money someplace in the food supply chain"
Seriously, what is the advantage of this over a removable insulating jacket?... or the mud that Arnold uses in the Predator?
Also, what are the relevant time constants? Once switched on, surely this material cannot maintain low thermal emmisivity forever when strapped to a hot object?
Make them help around the house on chores beyond what you would normally expect from them to earn money. Then it's their choice what they ultimately spend it on. You may have to hold your nose, but if you have done it right and given them real life money for the work, they will come to understand how useless those purchases are versus the work they needed to do to get that money.
Below a certain age, children have poor impulse control and it gradually gets better as they get older. There have been studies indicating, in fact, that males do not fully mature in this area until about 30.
So they will not relate doing chores to spending money IRL to spending money in a game, particularly when young.
But they will to habitually learn to spend money on loot boxes, a habit that may not serve them well when they are older and in a casino.
It's less about the money, and more about the bad habits being ingrained in their psyche.
Slashdot Mirror
I have a HP-15C purchased in 1985 and it is still running on the original batteries - 32 years!
That is phenomenal low power design for the technology and knowledge at the time.
That's phenomenal even by today's design standards!
Typing on a flat surface is something that certainly takes some getting used to.
I wonder up to what point are we slaves of custom.
The primary reason we use a keyboard is because we use an alphabet. The alphabet serves as a major constraint in keyboard design, so you would need to address that you make any crazy changes. But that isn't really the issue...
We don't write with our fingers in the sand (or equivalent) for a reason. It is less efficient and more uncomfortable than current technologies. Try it on a touchscreen program that recognizes your handwriting. You will write incredibly slowly, messily, and you will hurt yourself after a month from overuse.
People are definitely willing to evolve, the new technology just needs to be better than the current one.
Scratching things on rocks sucked. Quills were better. But not as good as pens, because sharpening your quill and dipping it every three words is a pain in the ass when you're in a hurry. Fountain pens were great, but finicky and travel poorly. Ballpoint were much more robust, but with a slightly deficient writing experience (no line variation and have to press hard reducing writing quality). Rollerballs require less pressure.
We similarly went from typewriters to keyboards. And have been reducing the keyboard key press distance and feel for the last several years.
The key thing that most designers miss is that you actually need SOME feedback when you are writing or typing. If the pen is too slippery on the paper, or the keypress is too short (or nonexistent for a touchscreen), you lose track of things. "Did I press the key? Or just skim it? Did I hit the meta escape key or the F1 touch area? Did my pen run out of ink or did I miss the paper? Oh shit, I missed the paper and am writing on the table!"
Touchscreens let us type incredibly fast, but also wildly inaccurately and with no feeling. There's nothing wrote with touchscreen keys, but the existing designs are primitive. Put a touchscreen ON the key of a real keyboard. Let me control how high the key sits and how far I want to depress it for it to function. Keys need to actually have edges that you can feel for touch typing.
All of those features are standard on aftermarket keyboards for enthusiasts and professionals. They are the direction that the touchscreen technology needs to evolve. I currently feel that touchscreen keyboards are at the ballpoint pen level: They get the job done and are convenient, but are inaccurate, uncomfortable and provide no feedback.
How is the Apple car supposed to protect from being rear-ended?
It's always the person in back's fault in a rear end collision. ALWAYS. Even if the front driver is being a dick. It sucks, but that's how the law works: Did the car stop suddenly? Then you were following too closely. The the lead car hit another car an stop short, making you hit them? Then you were following too closely. Did the axle fall off the lead car and then you hit it? Then you were following too closely.
At best, Apple could only be at fault for a small percentage of the accident IF their car was doing weird things like stopping in an odd fashion or the brake lights were not working. But in a merging situation at around 15 mph, stopping suddenly would be expected.
Here's my hypothesis: Wage increases and job security.
An old axiom about why buy the cow when you get the milf for free comes to mind...
Guess which one gets the raise. Guess who gets laid off when business is slow.
My guess would be neither and both respectively.
Wait, how do you get MILFs for free? We really want to know!
It's called the Scunthorpe problem because it has the word "cunt" in it, and that prevented the good people of Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire, England from creating accounts with AOL back when that was relevant.
There, saved y'all a click, since that's probably the only thing you were interested in about this story anyway.
No, now I want to know why Scunthorpe was named Scunthorpe!
The last thing we need is additional layers of minimally-tested software promising to protect people.
I don't understand why you would think that?
It works so well for the TSA!
of the middle ages? They lacked bright artificial light so they would naturally fall asleep early, not blasting their eyes with 100 watt incandescent or equivalent or computer screens with blue light. Then they'd sleep for about four hours, wake up for a few hours and spend that time praying, reading, helping bring in another brother or sister for their children, keeping watch over the fort, invading the neighbors, etc. Then they'd fall asleep again for another four or so hours.
Natural. Healthy. Refreshing. What happened to it? Are we losing our culture and history?
I question your logic. Wasn't the average life expectancy during that period about 30 years?
Edit: No, I was wrong. 31.3 years.
This plan sounds neither healthy or refreshing!
There has been some controversy surrounding the use of the term "garbage patch" and photos taken off the coast of Manila in the Philippines in attempts to portray the patch in the media often misrepresenting the true scope of the problem and what could be done to solve it. Angelicque White, Associate Professor at Oregon State University, who has studied the "garbage patch" in depth, warns that "the use of the phrase 'garbage patch' is misleading. ... It is not visible from space; there are no islands of trash; it is more akin to a diffuse soup of plastic floating in our oceans." In the article Dr. White and Professor Tamara Galloway, from the University of Exeter, call for regulation and cleanup and state that the focus should be on stemming the flow of plastic into the ocean from coastal sources.[49]
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) agrees, saying:
While "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" is a term often used by the media, it does not paint an accurate picture of the marine debris problem in the North Pacific Ocean. The name "Pacific Garbage Patch" has led many to believe that this area is a large and continuous patch of easily visible marine debris items such as bottles and other litter—akin to a literal island of trash that should be visible with satellite or aerial photographs. This is not the case.
—Ocean Facts, National Ocean Service[50]
from Wikipedia.
Also, when you say "pacific plastic mire", I think you mean North Pacific Gyre.
... once the blast decayed and the oxygen returned to the hot embers?
(That's a rhetorical question.)
The blurb (and even the article) is jaded and implies that blue light causes blindness to ride the anti-screen wave.
If you read it, you find that the issue is actually that the body makes alpha Tocopherol, a Vitamin E derivative, which keeps the photoreceptor cells from dying. Some people lose the ability to make that alpha Tocopherol as they age, leading to blindness.
So the issue isn't to avoid blue light and buy crazy glasses... (how are you really going to avoid blue light if you ever want to see white again anyway? Are you going to stop looking at white paper?) Rather it's to find a way to keep supplying alpha Tocopherol to the eye as people age.
I can't count the number of times I've tried to eject a USB drive, and Mac OS tells me it's "unable to eject the drive because it's in use."
Usually it's because Preview.app held onto some file descriptor for its stupid thumbnail of recent documents - not the list in the file menu, the one that pops up when you right-click on Preview in the Dock.
Apple used to promote the idea that the user is in charge. When I click "eject," the damn thing should eject!
You can generally solve this issue by killing the Finder app, as well.
As with all things, sadly.
You have to either be naive or stupid to not understand the long term strip mining game China is playing.
The poor guy is clearly naive and in giving him the benefit of the doubt. Scientists are good souls, but sometimes the, "For the sake of knowledge" types get used and abused in this cold world.
Do you really think scientists are "naive" and "good souls? Or do you think that the ones mentioned in the article are just playing both sides to increase their research budget?
If you have ever met an untenured or ambitious professor, you would choose the latter. Funding is tight; exploit all available sources.
Hopefully, the MBP keyboard will soon be as good as it was three generations ago!
I want magsafe so my toddler won't destroy my mac while crawling around, a few usb ports I can use without a dongle, my F-keys, and a sane keyboard.
And a physical escape key, so I know when I am pressing it.
So this year the population is down 80%, the next year it'll be down another 60%... but the following year 100% of the mosquito population will be immune, and there will be 10000% more of them because the bird population decreased 80% from starvation. To challenge nature on it's own terms is generally futile in the long run.
There are lots of other things for birds to eat. Also, bats eat many more mosquitoes than birds and there are many other insects for bats to eat.
Also, the mosquitoes they are eradicating were not a native species in Australia. So presumably the birds were fine eating native insects before this particular breed was introduced.
How long until the keyboard is just a giant touch pad with courageous gestures to enter text?
All text entry will be done with swiping. You'll thank us later.
Never.
They are going to jump straight to the anal probe. You have to squeeze it in different ways to get different gestures and keystrokes. Emphasis on strokes.
I know it seems scary, but courage.
Just go back to those.
You could actually tell when you pressed it too, since it moved 2 mm instead of 0.25 mm.
I don't understand why Apple is making their laptop keyboards have a different sensation from their desktop keyboards. It's incongruous and annoying.
You can't buy my data, but you can rent it via a subscription model.
I believe this is all part of their grand plan to mitigate their large loss of third-party content which started several years ago.
They redesigned their website to be more graphical and less text based several years ago, making it hard to simply sort highly rate titles and scan though them quickly. I thought this was so that the user could not tell how limited their third party movie content was.
Then they introduced their "thumbs up/down" rating system supposedly because their users did not understand how their 5 star rating system was being used differently than the convention that the rest of the world follows. At that time, they also moved the reviews for each show to a separate (last) tab under each show's view.
This latest change completes the transformation. You can now only see what shows Netflix wants you to see unless you do a direct text search. No more sorting and no more reading reviews.
Personally, I am amazed that this is working for them, but I appear to be in the minority. Prior to their website redesign, I was a strong proponent of their service. After the redesign, I was convinced that they would tank and sold my stock in their company. However, their stock price has only gone up from there.
You can delete your comments if you want anonymity.
I'm curious to know what percentage of foodborne illnesses are caused by "didn't wash hands" and what percentage are caused by "saved money someplace in the food supply chain."
"didn't wash hands" = "saved money someplace in the food supply chain"
Seriously, what is the advantage of this over a removable insulating jacket? ... or the mud that Arnold uses in the Predator?
Also, what are the relevant time constants? Once switched on, surely this material cannot maintain low thermal emmisivity forever when strapped to a hot object?
Come on Apple.
How about a new Mac Pro and Mac Mini? And adding the headphone jacks back into your products?
Just because you bought Beats, we don't all need $200 headphones.
We certainly don't need them in place of not refreshing your stagnant computer lineup.
Make them help around the house on chores beyond what you would normally expect from them to earn money. Then it's their choice what they ultimately spend it on. You may have to hold your nose, but if you have done it right and given them real life money for the work, they will come to understand how useless those purchases are versus the work they needed to do to get that money.
Below a certain age, children have poor impulse control and it gradually gets better as they get older. There have been studies indicating, in fact, that males do not fully mature in this area until about 30.
So they will not relate doing chores to spending money IRL to spending money in a game, particularly when young.
But they will to habitually learn to spend money on loot boxes, a habit that may not serve them well when they are older and in a casino.
It's less about the money, and more about the bad habits being ingrained in their psyche.