I've found that Swype is a notable exception to the original article's statement that mobile is better for lefties. What makes Qwerty so good for lefties on a keyboard is what makes it so terrible for Swype.

First, the most common keys in Qwerty are on the left, which benefits from the angle at which a right-handed swype-motion attacks. Secondly, when using the right-hand, the keyboard is not as frequently obscured. The thumb always covers the least-used keys, exposing the more frequently used keys (those on the left) for navigation and selection. Still, with Swype, the right-thumb will eventually obscure keys for the right-handed user, but it is never as bad as it is for the lefty.

Lefties using Swype will most frequently cover the most frequently used keys, leaving the right-hand-side of the keyboard exposed, where the least-frequently-used keys reside. Also, the attack angle of the left-thumb is more likely to trigger false selections, both because of the nature of the angle itself, and (I presume) a bias in the software toward a right-thumbed attack angle.

These problems aren't so bad with two-thumb qwerty software keyboards, since they're intended to be used with both hands. In that case, it really don't matter, no more than with a standard keyboard. In fact, like with standard qwerty, the lefty might be at an advantage. Still, as a lefty, I haven't had much success with on-screen keyboards, so I do wonder if all those righties that have no problem have some hidden advantage that I haven't quite figured out yet.

I consider myself to be very left-hand oriented. I write, use my mouse/trackpad/trackball in my left, play a left-handed guitar, and golf lefty. I'm a switch-hitter in baseball, but prefer my left, and throw lefty. My shotgun is bottom-eject, because I shoot lefty, too.

Right-handed tools are the bane of my existence. I hire contractors to do all my home repairs/upgrades that involves power tools. I won't risk it. As a computer-oriented professional, my hands are too important to lose them, or any of my fingers, in an accident.

The problem with mice isn't that left-handed mice aren't available, it is that schools and businesses will blindly purchase right-handed mice. Even worse, none of the operating systems make it quick and easy to change the mousing preferences. This should be a clear and visible option on the login screen, but it isn't. In all Linux distributions, in MacOS, and Windows (through to at least 7), you can't switch your mouse binding without digging into relatively obscure options, that can only be accessed through use of the right-handed mouse, or relatively arcane keyboard-oriented knowledge. That is assuming the school/business hasn't wired the mouse in a way where it is difficult or impossible to use it on the other side of the keyboard. The average user will default to learning how to use the mouse right-handed before they figure out the mouse can be used left-handed, or spend the time to configure every public access-terminal.

The anarchist in me has left public computers configured for left-handed use after using it, for the sake of the next left-handed person, and for the education of the right-handers. If they can discriminate...

In the USA, businesses and schools are not required to provide left-handed computing facilities or otherwise assist left-handed employees, contractors, or students. The ADA does not protect left-handedness as it is a physical characteristic, and not an impairment. However, culturally, left-handed people ARE impaired and would benefit from government mandated accessibility in schools and businesses.

The iconic idea of flying cars and jetpacks shouldn't happen. It is of a bygone age of suburban sprawl, cheap and plentiful energy, and a disregard for the future of society. We should not and really cannot consider flying cars or jetpacks with any current means of energy generation. Even then, it is really a solution seeking a problems.

What we need is better public transportation, a virtual cottage where telecommuting replaces physical transportation, etc.

Everything else already exists in some form or another, except food in pill form (and that could be argued), and an underwater city. An underwater city would be neat...

Does it matter? This will enable developers to build applications to run on the RaspberryPi that will be portable to other Android devices. They'll also be able to use their existing knowledge of Android programming to write their apps, or if only learning, will be learning a skill that is transferrable to other hardware environments. That in itself is an amazing and useful thing.

No, I wouldn't recommend you make this your desktop. You could make it a set top, if you write your own apps or install open source applications available outside of the Play Store. In fact, for a set-top box, you'll probably want to write your own apps anyway, because you'll want things like IR receivers which are not part of the standard Sensors library. You'd need to integrate your own custom Open Accessories to sense/control additional hardware (say, for instance, through the GPIO pins)

The RaspberryPi actually seems to max at about 2MB/s per my tests at a 1500MTU, and over 4.4MB/s at 1492MTU.

Many protocols such as SSH have high overhead, but a low-overhead protocol can expect these numbers.

You hit the nail on the head. I'm sure that a hand-made shoe could be made just as well as these, they'll just be more expensive. Bespoke shoes aren't new, and I can't imagine they'd be a new thing to runners, either. This will just lower the bar for amateurs.

I believe this can be true versus standard off-the-shelf running shoes. However, the advantage may not be that they're a radical new design than that they're bespoke. They just happen to be a very cost-effective bespoke shoe, rather than at the several-thousand-dollar-value mark that I imagine must be paid by Olympic athletes (or their sponsors).

ActiveX was already on the way out for IE users, being replaced by Silverlight. I'm not sure it is really a much better option, but at least there is a Mac plugin. The Linux alternative (Moonlight) is dead, however.

Most forage grasses (such as Tifton 85) produce prussic acid (HCN) in the young plants and new shoots.

The level of prussic acid reduces as the plants mature, but the reducion of prussic acid levels is much less during drought conditions.

When establishing a forage plot, it is comon practice to apply the selective broadleaf killing herbicide 2,4-D. A side effect of 2,4-D application is an increase in prussic acid levels 3 hours and 6 hours after application.

The combination of drought conditions and 2,4-D application, as well as early grazing on this plot are likely to be the culprit here.

In terms that the slashdot crowd can understand: Operator Error and Not Reading the Documentation are likely to be the cause.

And yes, I am an Agricultural Worker.

(Also, I know how to google for facts before I post.)

Being somewhat (but not intimately) familiar with this cryptography methodology, what they're claiming to have done is broken the equivalent of a signing-authority key. This is worse than with a CA in PKI, however, because this key can be used for encryption and decryption, it isn't only a signature used for validation/verification.

Essentially, Identity-based systems use a single "master key" which is used to create all the other keys, and can be used to decrypt all of the messages encrypted with those keys, and to regenerate private keys. The advantage of this type of system is that given your own private key, you can deterministically solve for a peer's public key. This is why it is called pair-cryptography.

The disadvantage is that there is a single master key that can be compromised. Until now, it had been thought that this key would be difficult to compute.

I thought the bold text was a new Ask Slashdot feature to help everyone see the OPs replies! Thanks for doing that.

It sounds like any popular general purpose language will do just fine for you. There are more important concerns you should be spending your brain power on. Just flip a coin, pick a language, and do a project. If you don't have any specific goals right now, then don't worry about it. If you later decide you would like to make programming a full-time thing, then you can more carefully learn a language that fits well with the problem domain you are interested in.

As for suggestions, language that are presently popular and have have supporting libraries for just about everything include: Python, Ruby, Java, and C#. There are many more but these are a few safe suggestions no matter what platforms or types of projects interest you.

If only we could change our slashdot ids... alas!

To think, we invented the Descolada virus?

Most or all ebook formats and/or readers can now give you the location of text as it is in the printed form, which is arguably useful for citations. However, citing can be done without page numbers. MLA and APA guidelines are notoriously slow to update, but they'll catch up, if they haven't already. You could just specify by the chapter/paragraph/word count. Sticking to page numbers is like sticking to a desktop metaphor. It is a metaphor, it is limited and broken by design.

Preserved presentation only works if you're publishing on paper, or targeting a specific form factor (and thus device). iPads are homogenous enough that fixed-format magazines are available for it, for instance. You can make reflowable content work where you would traditionally use fixed layout. Reflowable doesn't necessitate linear, either, webpages can reflow so that they look similar to fixed-layout designs at wide enough resolutions, or become linear with narrow text. Those of us that have been around a while know how bad the web was when people thought they could just transfer their traditional media without redesigning... or when they thought that some high school kid with HTML experience and a copy of Photoshop could drive your online corporate image. Pushing paper design straight into eBooks has the same problem, but luckily, most of the big players have figured this out already.

That all said, yes, some works are better on something like an iPad which has good graphics, a large size screen, and touch. Others are better linear. Even books of the same sort can be written in different styles which extenuates this. Math textbooks as they're used in primary education work better on tablets, while masters-level mathematics books that concentrate on theory are better on an eReader. (As to which style is better would be a digression, lets not go there...)