They should either fields in Word or HTML. Both of those file formats have "fields" you can type in without screwing up formatting. If someone's making a line in Word by repeatedly using the underscore key, they have no clue what they're doing: even if they hate fields, you can just use the line tool to draw a line that won't screw up formatting.
Yeah, none of these require capitalization, but it makes reserved words stand out much better, constants easier to spot, and I'm pedantic enough to care about these things.
I think the point he was trying to make isn't "VIM is God", but more along the lines of, "if you like reserved words and constants in all-caps, why not have your editor do it for you?" Which seems to be a reasonable point to me. If you're not using an editor with a syntax highlighter,... well, WTF?
I actually didnt know that the US wasnt like this. Seems kinda (well *really*) stupid to me.:)
You're a little bit confused. The different US networks all overlap, so it actually does work like that for the US, as long as you're in the AT&T or T-Mobile network covered areas. (Which is something like 95% of the populated US.) While the US has some cell companies that use non-compatible networks, there are very few areas (if any) where that is the *only* network available. If you are in an area that's only covered by Verizon, though, all bets are all.
That all said, God only knows how much you'll be billed for the access, but you have the access.
Here's my list from a couple years experience in IT, supporting non-technical users. (Who still use some old CLI terminal apps, that will explain a few of these.)
Print Screen: It performs a useful function, but it's labeled wrong; in Windows, it doesn't print anything, it just saves the screen to the clipboard. In the CLI terminal apps, it actually does print the screen on the printer as expected. But these are supposed to be *Windows* keyboards, not terminal ones... let's get rid of it, and replace it with an Apple-esque multi-key shortcut.
Scroll Lock: A "why doesn't my computer work?" key. This has no use whatsoever other than to be hit accidentally and make people think their computer is broken.
Pause/Break: A "why doesn't my computer work?" key. Again, no use whatsoever other than to be hit by accident and make people think their computer is broken.
Insert: Another one. I've never seen anybody actually want to go into "insert mode," but I have been called several times about computers that didn't work because this key had accidentally been hit.
Num Lock: A "why doesn't my numpad work?" key. I hate this key; unlike the other keys on this list, there's no good way to disable it. (I even tried to write a little background application that would do nothing but turn it on when it got accidentally turned off, but I was never able to make it work right.) Again, Apple has the right idea here: The ONLY time you need this function is for video games, but video games can just hard-code the numpad to be arrows anyway, so why bother?
Caps Lock: 1) Mislabeled; should be something to the effect of "cap reverse". (On Apple computers, caps lock actually locks in capital letters, on Windows it reverses caps and lowercase.) 2) MOSTLY useless. I understand that there are some valid uses for this key, but they should be covered at this point in time by software/editor features. It's easier to type normally in Word, and then later set the text style to "all caps" than it is to use the Caps Lock key, mostly because with it on you have to be careful not to hit shift. (Which is very hard to wrap your brain around if you do a lot of typing.) I think this key should be removed, and any software that currently use it should be re-programmed to have this as a software feature, not a hardware feature. 3) Fortunately, it's trivial to disable in Windows Vista and OS X... finally some progress towards keyboard sanity!
Windows: The idea is sound but, 1) It can't decide whether it's a modifier key or a action key. Pressing it by itself performs an action, but it can also be used as a modifier. This is confusing to users, and leads to the second issue: 2) It's really poorly-placed. If it was ONLY a modifier, its placement would be fine as accidentally hitting it by itself would have no negatives. But since it also performs actions, it has a tendency to interrupt video games, annoy full-screen movie watchers, etc. I'm sure everybody's been bugged by this. My recommendation would be to make the Windows key a modifier-only, with it's "show the Start Menu" function relegated to:
Left-Click (LC) Key: Again, this key while a good idea is poorly-placed and can easily be hit by accident. I think the "Start Menu Launching" should be merged with this key with some combination like: LC = show Start Menu, CTRL-LC = left click. This kind of matches the mouse function where the left-click is a "secondary" action. It should also be moved away from the modifiers. As long as the Control key stayed wide, it could just switch places with Control on the right side of the keyboard.
As a coder and DBA, I often type out long strings of capitalized text, and without capslock, I'd likely shoot myself in the head.
You can do this easily enough in Vim and any other decent text editor.
Or just... not type in caps. The SQL parser doesn't care, why should you? I just write my queries in lowercase and let syntax highlighting take care of the confusing bits.
What are the odds that will happen at my house? One in a thousand? One in a million? One in a billion? How many people has this happened to, ever, in the history of wireless Internet connections?
I'll take the risk. Call me a gambler if you must.
Being a bank in Second Life isn't very attractive to real banks, because they can't create money in Second Life, like they can in the real world.
What stops a bank from making a loan (and collecting interest) in Second Life? What stops them from investing in some brilliant "object maker"?
In short, I don't follow your reasoning... if Second Life is ok with banks that register with them, then why can't that registered bank do everything a real life bank does?
This stuff is all run by the Democratic Party, not the Federal Government. Our actual election process is much simpler. The Democratic Party is free to make things as complicated as they want to (and they seem to relish it!)
Yes, it's utterly impossible that different locales could have different election results. Everyone knows every state is entirely homogeneous.
Nah, seriously, I'm glad people like you are keeping tabs on things related to computer voting, but this little statistic just doesn't sound significant to me.
I'm guessing (hoping!) that it's strategic voting. If Clinton is elected, and she actually does try to censor video games, I'm going to vote against Democrats the rest of my life out of spite. Fortunately, she's so two-faced, I'm sure she won't actually follow-through on anything she's promised, so I think I'm safe with this one.
I have nothing against woman politicians, but Hillary Clinton? She's no Margaret Thatcher.
The value of gold is just as arbitrary as fancy green paper. It's not used for anything, except jewelry (cultural value; completely arbitrary) and making a non-corroding coating on electronics (which while important, represents only a minuscule percentage of gold mined.) Gold has value because we decree it has value; Fancy green paper has value because we decree it has value, there's no difference between the two.
If you want to back our currency with something with value, use copper. At least copper's constantly in high demand. Or Aluminum. Or Uranium. But gold? Bah.
It doesn't help that the only press he's gotten recently has been about his connections to white supremacy groups. I have no clue whether it's true, or whether "CNN is out to get him," (I don't really care, since I'm not a fan of his positions anyway), but most people accept what the mainstream media says at face value.
Sadly, the best skill a potential politician needs is how to manage the press.
Dude, you're taking the whole thing way too seriously. If they renamed the feature "zingers" instead of "tags" would you be happy? (Slashdot: If you do that, pay me money.)
Well, it's a solution, but you're talking about taking the control of commercials away from the networks and putting it in the hands of Tivo/DVR vendors. Or, you're talking about a way of networks to communicate to Tivo/DVR vendors in a very smart, real-time way... either way, implementation's going to be a bitch.
The punchline was Dilbert, wearing that getup, sees another guy with super-thick glasses and waggling his fingers around. Dilbert asks, "are you using a wearable computer, too?" And the man replies, "no, I'm just a retard-- common mistake."
The problem is that people like you, who give the "thumbs down" to un-targeted ads, are generally the same person who's going to be the first one to erase your cookies, your usage history, anything that will give advertisers a hint of what you're interested in and how to deliver the message.
You can either have well-targeted advertising, or be anal about privacy, but you can't be both.
Re:The best tools stay out of the way...
on
Goodbye Cruel Word
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· Score: 1
Likely. Not every language spoken in the developed world uses terms for UI elements that literally translate to the corresponding English elements.
Well, two part answer here:
1) Considering the entire WIMP concept was invented in the US in American English, it would make sense to use the American English terminology.
2) In what nation do people say "sidebar" instead of "scrollbar?" Especially confusing, since Vista has a UI element specifically called the "sidebar."
Re:Hyperlinks, O God hyperlinks
on
Goodbye Cruel Word
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Because when they added those features to Word, they set them to be active by default so that people would know Word had those features. If you don't want them, then just TURN THEM THE HELL OFF. It's in the Settings menu.
I'm so sick of people complaining about all these horrible things Word does to them when it takes about ten seconds to turn all of those features off and get them entirely out of your life. It used to be the stupid Office Assistant, people would bitch and moan for hours and hours and I'd just finally get sick of it, go to their computer, and spend the 10 seconds to turn it off.
I'd try it if there was a Windows version. I'm always mildly surprised at writers of $40 products who don't even seem to care about the 85%+ of the market they're not supporting. For expensive software, like Final Cut Pro, it makes more sense since the software + hardware are likely to come as a set, but for cheap programs I don't see how it's economical.
Slashdot Mirror
They should either fields in Word or HTML. Both of those file formats have "fields" you can type in without screwing up formatting. If someone's making a line in Word by repeatedly using the underscore key, they have no clue what they're doing: even if they hate fields, you can just use the line tool to draw a line that won't screw up formatting.
Wow. First of all, relax, it's just a keyboard.
... well, WTF?
Yeah, none of these require capitalization, but it makes reserved words stand out much better, constants easier to spot, and I'm pedantic enough to care about these things.
I think the point he was trying to make isn't "VIM is God", but more along the lines of, "if you like reserved words and constants in all-caps, why not have your editor do it for you?" Which seems to be a reasonable point to me. If you're not using an editor with a syntax highlighter,
I actually didnt know that the US wasnt like this. :)
Seems kinda (well *really*) stupid to me.
You're a little bit confused. The different US networks all overlap, so it actually does work like that for the US, as long as you're in the AT&T or T-Mobile network covered areas. (Which is something like 95% of the populated US.) While the US has some cell companies that use non-compatible networks, there are very few areas (if any) where that is the *only* network available. If you are in an area that's only covered by Verizon, though, all bets are all.
That all said, God only knows how much you'll be billed for the access, but you have the access.
Here's my list from a couple years experience in IT, supporting non-technical users. (Who still use some old CLI terminal apps, that will explain a few of these.)
Print Screen: It performs a useful function, but it's labeled wrong; in Windows, it doesn't print anything, it just saves the screen to the clipboard. In the CLI terminal apps, it actually does print the screen on the printer as expected. But these are supposed to be *Windows* keyboards, not terminal ones... let's get rid of it, and replace it with an Apple-esque multi-key shortcut.
Scroll Lock: A "why doesn't my computer work?" key. This has no use whatsoever other than to be hit accidentally and make people think their computer is broken.
Pause/Break: A "why doesn't my computer work?" key. Again, no use whatsoever other than to be hit by accident and make people think their computer is broken.
Insert: Another one. I've never seen anybody actually want to go into "insert mode," but I have been called several times about computers that didn't work because this key had accidentally been hit.
Num Lock: A "why doesn't my numpad work?" key. I hate this key; unlike the other keys on this list, there's no good way to disable it. (I even tried to write a little background application that would do nothing but turn it on when it got accidentally turned off, but I was never able to make it work right.) Again, Apple has the right idea here: The ONLY time you need this function is for video games, but video games can just hard-code the numpad to be arrows anyway, so why bother?
Caps Lock:
1) Mislabeled; should be something to the effect of "cap reverse". (On Apple computers, caps lock actually locks in capital letters, on Windows it reverses caps and lowercase.)
2) MOSTLY useless. I understand that there are some valid uses for this key, but they should be covered at this point in time by software/editor features. It's easier to type normally in Word, and then later set the text style to "all caps" than it is to use the Caps Lock key, mostly because with it on you have to be careful not to hit shift. (Which is very hard to wrap your brain around if you do a lot of typing.) I think this key should be removed, and any software that currently use it should be re-programmed to have this as a software feature, not a hardware feature.
3) Fortunately, it's trivial to disable in Windows Vista and OS X... finally some progress towards keyboard sanity!
Windows: The idea is sound but,
1) It can't decide whether it's a modifier key or a action key. Pressing it by itself performs an action, but it can also be used as a modifier. This is confusing to users, and leads to the second issue:
2) It's really poorly-placed. If it was ONLY a modifier, its placement would be fine as accidentally hitting it by itself would have no negatives. But since it also performs actions, it has a tendency to interrupt video games, annoy full-screen movie watchers, etc. I'm sure everybody's been bugged by this.
My recommendation would be to make the Windows key a modifier-only, with it's "show the Start Menu" function relegated to:
Left-Click (LC) Key:
Again, this key while a good idea is poorly-placed and can easily be hit by accident. I think the "Start Menu Launching" should be merged with this key with some combination like: LC = show Start Menu, CTRL-LC = left click. This kind of matches the mouse function where the left-click is a "secondary" action. It should also be moved away from the modifiers. As long as the Control key stayed wide, it could just switch places with Control on the right side of the keyboard.
Wow, that was way too much detail.
As a coder and DBA, I often type out long strings of capitalized text, and without capslock, I'd likely shoot myself in the head.
... not type in caps. The SQL parser doesn't care, why should you? I just write my queries in lowercase and let syntax highlighting take care of the confusing bits.
You can do this easily enough in Vim and any other decent text editor.
Or just
I name my access point after my address, so people know whose door to knock on if they want to ask permission to use it. Or thank me. Or whatever.
Of course I live in a small town where all the people around me are decent folks.
What are the odds that will happen at my house? One in a thousand? One in a million? One in a billion? How many people has this happened to, ever, in the history of wireless Internet connections?
I'll take the risk. Call me a gambler if you must.
Do we really want to put people on new drugs like this? What if in 40 years all these people come down with some kind of cancer?
Is there a single person with Alzheimer's Disease and a life expectancy > 40 years? Somehow I think that's an acceptable risk.
It's funny. Laugh.
Oh yeah, cancer, Alzheimer's... it's a hoot!
You haven't really addressed the issue... does Linden have a "law" against that or what? What stops a SL bank from using fractional reserve banking?
Being a bank in Second Life isn't very attractive to real banks, because they can't create money in Second Life, like they can in the real world.
What stops a bank from making a loan (and collecting interest) in Second Life? What stops them from investing in some brilliant "object maker"?
In short, I don't follow your reasoning... if Second Life is ok with banks that register with them, then why can't that registered bank do everything a real life bank does?
It's sad that you have the whole internet in front of you and you didn't even bother to check how wrong you are.
I checked the internet, jackass.
Foozball: 60,100 http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=foozball&btnG=Google+Search
Obviously I figured that was enough. But I unfortunately didn't check all the alternatives:
Fooseball: 78,000 http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=fooseball&btnG=Google+Search
Foosball: 3,310,000 http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=foosball&btnG=Search
So for the goddamned record, the "most" correct spelling is "foosball" and both me and the original reviewer are wrong.
Also, it's spelled "Foozball." Since we're being critical and all.
So when everything related to computers is perfected beyond all hope of improvement, they'll all be running HURD?
Sorry I don't think that proverb works for everything.
This stuff is all run by the Democratic Party, not the Federal Government. Our actual election process is much simpler. The Democratic Party is free to make things as complicated as they want to (and they seem to relish it!)
Yes, it's utterly impossible that different locales could have different election results. Everyone knows every state is entirely homogeneous.
Nah, seriously, I'm glad people like you are keeping tabs on things related to computer voting, but this little statistic just doesn't sound significant to me.
I'm guessing (hoping!) that it's strategic voting. If Clinton is elected, and she actually does try to censor video games, I'm going to vote against Democrats the rest of my life out of spite. Fortunately, she's so two-faced, I'm sure she won't actually follow-through on anything she's promised, so I think I'm safe with this one.
I have nothing against woman politicians, but Hillary Clinton? She's no Margaret Thatcher.
The value of gold is just as arbitrary as fancy green paper. It's not used for anything, except jewelry (cultural value; completely arbitrary) and making a non-corroding coating on electronics (which while important, represents only a minuscule percentage of gold mined.) Gold has value because we decree it has value; Fancy green paper has value because we decree it has value, there's no difference between the two.
If you want to back our currency with something with value, use copper. At least copper's constantly in high demand. Or Aluminum. Or Uranium. But gold? Bah.
It doesn't help that the only press he's gotten recently has been about his connections to white supremacy groups. I have no clue whether it's true, or whether "CNN is out to get him," (I don't really care, since I'm not a fan of his positions anyway), but most people accept what the mainstream media says at face value.
Sadly, the best skill a potential politician needs is how to manage the press.
Dude, you're taking the whole thing way too seriously. If they renamed the feature "zingers" instead of "tags" would you be happy? (Slashdot: If you do that, pay me money.)
Well, it's a solution, but you're talking about taking the control of commercials away from the networks and putting it in the hands of Tivo/DVR vendors. Or, you're talking about a way of networks to communicate to Tivo/DVR vendors in a very smart, real-time way... either way, implementation's going to be a bitch.
Wasn't that a Dilbert comic?
The punchline was Dilbert, wearing that getup, sees another guy with super-thick glasses and waggling his fingers around. Dilbert asks, "are you using a wearable computer, too?" And the man replies, "no, I'm just a retard-- common mistake."
The problem is that people like you, who give the "thumbs down" to un-targeted ads, are generally the same person who's going to be the first one to erase your cookies, your usage history, anything that will give advertisers a hint of what you're interested in and how to deliver the message.
You can either have well-targeted advertising, or be anal about privacy, but you can't be both.
Likely. Not every language spoken in the developed world uses terms for UI elements that literally translate to the corresponding English elements.
Well, two part answer here:
1) Considering the entire WIMP concept was invented in the US in American English, it would make sense to use the American English terminology.
2) In what nation do people say "sidebar" instead of "scrollbar?" Especially confusing, since Vista has a UI element specifically called the "sidebar."
Because when they added those features to Word, they set them to be active by default so that people would know Word had those features. If you don't want them, then just TURN THEM THE HELL OFF. It's in the Settings menu.
I'm so sick of people complaining about all these horrible things Word does to them when it takes about ten seconds to turn all of those features off and get them entirely out of your life. It used to be the stupid Office Assistant, people would bitch and moan for hours and hours and I'd just finally get sick of it, go to their computer, and spend the 10 seconds to turn it off.
If you don't like it: TURN IT OFF! That is all.
I'd try it if there was a Windows version. I'm always mildly surprised at writers of $40 products who don't even seem to care about the 85%+ of the market they're not supporting. For expensive software, like Final Cut Pro, it makes more sense since the software + hardware are likely to come as a set, but for cheap programs I don't see how it's economical.