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Comment Re:Sun Type 5c Keyboard (Score 2) 166

The innards are regular Fujitsu rubber dome. Nothing special. Quite mushy and horrible to type on.

But it is sure one of the most beautiful keyboards in the world. I love the colour scheme and font choices. It sure has style.
The attention to detail, the size of it and the layout feels professional - this is a workstation keyboard indeed.
I bought one just to have to look at.

Comment Re:Hacking = Curiosity (Score 1) 153

Actually, the etymological origin of the word "hacker" is from "hacksaw".
To use a hacksaw is called to "hack". Sometimes the use of a hacksaw is to do a quick fix that is not necessarily particularly elegant, for instance to cut a table leg shorter to make it more level.
Therefore to "hack" something is to tinker with something.
A computer hacker is someone who tinkers with computer/systems, and not necessarily in the intended way.

A student prank at MIT is also traditionally called a "hack". It could involve hacking something off with a hacksaw, but these days is often something more constructive, not computer-related at all.

Comment Re:Missing option (Score 1) 224

Indeed US-centric ... but the poll was not about if you got it or not, but how much bandwidth you would use if you weren't limited. Apparently 1Gb/s is an astronomic figure to an American ...

I recently got upgraded from 100Mbit/s to 1Gb/s, and I did not even ask for it - Internet is included in the rent in the apartment block where I live and there was no price increase. The portion is around $15/month or so.
Indeed I was surprised recently when I heard how much US:ians pay for their low-speed Internet. Apparently, it is because networks were deregulated in 1995 in a way that allowed the largest providers to consolidate into an oligopoly, quashing the competitors by buying them instead of competing with better prices and/or services. The Tek Explains it.

Comment The smartest smartwatch is dumb (Score 1) 93

I think that Samsung and Google are doing it all wrong.
They are still making smartwatches be "companion devices" to smartphones, yet you still have to write custom code to run on the device.

I think that the best type of smartwatch would be one that would act as a dumb terminal to the phone. Let it act as a second screen to the phone with a few button/touch actions plus a few sensors that feed data in the other direction. That would satisfy the most common use cases where a smartwatch would be useful. The others could be hard-coded not as apps but as system features.
This would be best for the developer, as you would only have to develop one app - not two.
This would be best for the user, as the program code on the "watch" could be simple you would need only a microcontroller that runs at tens of megahertz, and you get long battery life approaching what you are used to get in a watch.
But of course, such a device would be too cheap to make and Samsung would not be able to sell it at a premium...

Comment Re:Kinesis Advantage Keyboard (Score 1) 702

I would say that the Kinesis is in a class above any Microsoft keyboard in terms of ergonomics.

Not only are the hands slanted, but there is more separation between the hands.
It has low-force mechanical Cherry MX Brown key switches that are relatively smooth, where as the Microsoft keyboard's keys bind horribly on off-centre key presses. (Cherry MX key switches are all the rage among PC gamers right now... ;) )
The lack of numeric keypad is actually ergonomically better in that it allows you to keep your mouse closer to your centre.
The keyboard layout can be fully remapped (without drivers, stored in the keyboard) and it can record macros.

Drawbacks is that 1) you must touch-type properly using all fingers and that 2) the keyboard is quite high because of its curved key wells.
#1 isn't really a drawback in the long term though, as learning proper touch typing will make you a better typist overall. It is easier to learn touch-typing on a Kinesis than on a flat keyboard.

Comment Re:Model M Keyboard FTW (Score 1) 702

Nah. The plastic nubs holding the barrel plate to the steel backplane tend to break one by one, and then the barrel plate cracks at the hinges. (it was moulded flat)
Enthusiasts often "bolt mod" their Model M keyboards with missing nubs: cut off the remaining nubs, drill up through the barrel plate and install proper nuts and bolts of steel instead. (not necessarily all in that order)

Comment Re:APL (Score 1) 189

Large systems are still being done in APL.

The Swedish medical journal system TakeCare is one example. It handles practically all journals in the greater Stockholm area. It has sure had its slew of security problems, although I don't think that those could be attributed so much to the language as to sloppy sysadmins.

But hey... a few years ago I thought that nobody would use Erlang for anything significant, until it became a popular language for web services.

Comment Re:Nah...TL:DR (Score 1) 115

The only option would be "some other wavelet-based image format".

JPEG-2000 is completely different to ordinary JPEG. It is crippled in that the encoding is quite complex, has a tonne of different ways it can be encoded and is therefore difficult to do at speed. The software decoders that are not dead-slow are proprietary.
You wouldn't really win anything with using JPEG-2000.

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