I'd say the fact that keypads being evenly split into two opposing formats makes using muscle memory/spatial patterns a decisively non-efficient memory technique, and the reason you're seeing ridicule is your insistence upon pursuing it anyway, even to the extreme of reordering your computer keypad and scraping the PCB of your calculator to create one-off device layouts no one else uses.

That's not true. There's no patent for the 1-2-3 keypad (nor was Bell/AT&T the only phone company in the US, but that's not relevant here). Calculators in the form of mechanical adding machines predated the DTMF keypad by decades. When Bell came up with the touch-tone system, they actually spent a lot of money researching whether it should be adding machine layout, or 1-2-3 from the top. As it turned out, even experienced ten-key operators were able to dial phone numbers faster on the 1-2-3 pad because everyone--- even tenkey operators--- approached the task of dialing a phone with their index finger alone, regardless of whether it was pushbuttons or dial, because they were already in the habit of doing so with dial phones. 1-2-3 keypads are faster to use when visually hunting and pecking with one finger. Given that no one was ever going to be doing rapid data entry on a phone, it made more sense to use top-to-bottom order, because the reverse order of tenkey exists only to make rapid multi-digit data entry faster (i.e. zero under the thumb, pinkie for enter, and most common digits under the fingers as per Benford's Law)

I don't know what the hell is wrong with the OP that his brain doesn't have room for two different keypad layouts.

I feel strongly that the site is a big waste of time, but I have absolutely no opinion on the ownership of the site.

I think the thing that voice recognition proponents are missing is that all non-text entry via a voice command system has to happen in band. This creates the problem of either a) systems that erroneously respond to conversations that aren't directed at them, or b) systems that are so tightly limited to very specific cues that they're difficult to use. The infuriatingly non-intuitive escape sequences necessary to switch between direct literal transcription and command entry just add fuel to that fire. Voice command is a great workaround for the problem of doing anything with a electronic device while driving, but my GPS still frequently thinks I said to it "voice command" when I am talking to my passenger and said something only vaguely similar.

That's always been the entire point of "science fiction", from the very beginning. Science fiction without even a token attempt to work from a basic factual grounding in *actual* science is just *fiction*. Fringe is so unimaginatively bad that it fails to leap even the low hurdle of suspension of disbelief found in early 30's pulp SF.

It's not illegal to count cards. Casinos, however, are under no obligation to allow a card counter to play.

The gaming commission has nothing to say on the matter of slot machine programmers using version control or any other facets of good programming practice. Gaming commission only cares that machines pay out honestly. If they can somehow make an honest machine by dumping /dev/random to a microcontroller, that's within their right.

They don't have to cry to the government to stop you winning by counting cards. They are allowed to simply bar you from gambling at their tables. There's no law that says they are REQUIRED to let everyone gamble. Truly effective card counters are so few that all the pit bosses know them on sight and instruct the dealers to not deal to them. That's why card counters write books on card counting, because they can't make money at cards anymore.

I have a Desire Z/Vision. Works great with connectbot. My only complaint is the lack of a dedicated number row on the keyboard. I would have preferred the HTC TYTN2 style keyboard they had for it in the early mockup.

You ever installed Windows 7? It practically installs itself. Your "02c" with its snide non-specific insinuations isn't worth anything.

Pretty much. I jumped ship to Reddit months ago. Between the perpetual obnoxification of the Slashdot interface, the stupidification of the Slashdot "editors" and their inscrutable logic in approving idiotic stories for the front page, and the hordes of trollish mundanes that have watered down the geek quotient, I hardly bother to check Slashdot anymore. Back when it was CmdrTaco posting cool dork/nerd shit he found on the internet it was pretty fun, but now... meh.

Because 1) the military never says "missile? what missile?" when they've done a very obvious launch, and 2) Vandenberg is 150miles northwest of Los Angeles and a launch from there wouldn't be seen to the west of Manhattan Beach. I've seen Vandenberg launches from that area, and they look like they're coming from land, as Vandenberg is effectively behind the Santa Monica Mountains from that vantage point.

This idiotic "Laura Ingalls Test" is utterly pointless. Some things--- including teaching elementary basics of reading, writing, math, etc.--- remain the same over the years because the efficient use of these things requires no additional technological complication. Laura Ingalls would also still recognize a kitchen table, a fancy restaurant, and a pair of fucking work boots in the modern age because the basics of such things simply do not change. Really, this article reeks of the same tripe we had to hear back when it was television that was going to revolutionize education. A TV in every classroom! It will change everything!

That's not as relevant as you'd like to believe. We cannot choose to follow an outdated law in lieu of the newer, more onerous one and still be considered "law abiding". If the law is going to be broken, why follow an arbitrary restriction?

That's not even getting into the greater point, which is that copyright is a favor, a boon granted to creators which they can leverage for some profit, and in exchange the public domain is enriched. Perpetual extension of copyright essentially eliminates the public's gain in that social contract. As there's simply no moral requirement to adhere to a bargain that's completely one-sided, there's nothing wrong with telling the publishers/jailors of our common culture the bargain is invalid and reverting to the natural state of information exchange. In fact, the only ethical course of action at this point is to refuse to obey the law. Because the legislators are all in the back pockets of the copyright industry, the only hope for change is in forcing a collapse of the system. Meekly obeying the law and hoping legislators someday decide the change the law isn't going to work.

That's not irony. That's just the nature of SCSI vs IDE. SCSI put the controller in the device because it's only a generic device interface, and since the device already has to be fairly complex and expensive to handle all its own I/O, it might as well do the dirty work error/defect tracking too. By contrast, IDE put it all on the IDE card/chip because it was designed to be solely an inexpensive data storage interface with all the work done in software by the OS. This makes it impossible to have a tailor-made fault detection system.