kbitz - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Following Google to Stupidity (Score 5, Insightful) 591

by kbitz on Wednesday May 25, 2011 @12:13PM (#36239948) Attached to: Mozilla Labs: the URL Bar Has To Go

If Mozilla is going to start "following Google" then there's no reason for me to use their browser when I could go straight to the source and use Chrome. I use Firefox because I don't like Chrome. There is no reason to start emulating it.

Comment Re:Spirit Rover: (Score 1) 95

by kbitz on Wednesday May 25, 2011 @11:38AM (#36239482) Attached to: Final Attempts To Contact Mars Spirit Rover Fail

Good night sweet prince?

Submission + - DOD Releases Open Source Development Guide (pcworld.com)

Submitted by

BrandiCook

on Wednesday May 25, 2011 @11:32AM

BrandiCook writes: "The Department of Defense (DoD) has weighed in with its own support for open source. The DoD provides a nice analogy: “Imagine if only the manufacturer of a rifle were allowed to clean, fix, modify or upgrade that rifle. The military often finds itself in this position wit taxpayer funded, contractor developed software: one contractor with a monopoly on the knowledge of a military software system and control of the software source code.” Open technology offers increased agility and flexibility, fast delivery, increased innovation, reduced risk, lower cost and information assurance and security, the DoD asserts."

Submission + - Towel Day is upon us! (towelday.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 25, 2011 @10:35AM

An anonymous reader writes: Douglas Adams died about ten years ago and fans have not forgotten about the beloved humorous science fiction author. On Towel Day (May 25th), they carry their best towel and organize events all over the planet.
Examples: a gladiator towel fight (France), concerts (Denmark & Russia), a march against Vogon Violence (Brazil), a talk on science in the Hitchhiker’s Guide (UK), guided tours (Germany & UK), etc. People are gathering in parks and bars, and there’s a lot of drinking, movie viewing, flashmobbing, hitchiking and creative work going on.

A Canadian group recently ran a contest to select an Intergalactic Towel Day Ambassador for Earth. The winner was Ms Deena Roth of Tennessee, USA.

Submission + - The Syrian War Is Raging on Facebook (ieee.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 18, 2011 @05:41PM

An anonymous reader writes: Meet the Syrian Electronic Army, a shadowy group devoted to hacking dissident Facebook pages and websites, and proclaiming the awesomeness of the Syrian government through Oprah's Facebook page. Oh yes, and the army also produces YouTube videos (with catchy synthesizer soundtracks) demonstrating its hacking mastery — watch in amazement as it brings a UK website for the Leamington Town Council to its knees!

Submission + - DHS Funds Open Source Cyber Security (pcmag.com)

Submitted by

BrandiCook

on Wednesday May 18, 2011 @05:41PM

BrandiCook writes: "A PCMag article reveals the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has named Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) to lead the five-year, $10 million Homeland Open Security Technology (HOST) program. HOST aims to find open approaches to handling the country's cyber security. An open solution could potentially save the government an enormous amount of money, although the primary objective is to protect the country with the best possible solutions. GTRI is leading HOST efforts in conjunction with the Open Technology Research Consortium (OTRC). OTRC members participating in the HOST program include: GTRI, University of Texas at Austin, the Open Information Security Foundation and the Open Source Software Institute."

Submission + - City Of San Fran Goes To Microsoft's Cloud (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by

gabbo529

on Wednesday May 18, 2011 @05:35PM

gabbo529 writes: "One of the biggest tech hubs on the planet, San Francisco, is adopting Microsoft's cloud based email service for approximately 23,000 city and county employees. Microsoft, which beat out Google and IBM for the email contract, provides San Francisco with easy interoperability between its other products such as Word, Excel, SharePoint, and Azure. The email service will cost the city $78 per user per year, or $1.2 million for the first year. This is significantly cheaper for the city than having to pay for its own servers. When the system is fully deployed, in about a year, it will cost $1.7 million per year."

Comment Switching (Score 1) 624

by kbitz on Sunday July 10, 2005 @11:25PM (#13030142) Attached to: Back and Forth Between Qwerty and Dvorak?

I switched to Dvorak over a year ago. It took me a week before I could even attempt to touchtype at all, but my speed picked up rapidly after that. By the first month, my speed was faster than my old QWERTY speed.

I will warn you: learning to be able to switch back and forth required me to re-learn QWERTY. I instantly forgot my QWERTY training. However, I gained the ability to switch by forcing myself to do just that.

I find that if I take a glance at my hands (my physical keyboards are all QWERTY, although they are mapped Dvorak), I can force myself to start typing QWERTY. At that point, I can look back at the screen without reverting to Dvorak.

I don't actually know the Dvorak layout with my eyes or mind. It's more like my hands know it all by themselves. I can't picture the Dvorak layout in my head. I can't really describe the order of the keys. I can't even say what the Dvorak mapping of a QWERTY key is.

Typing became for me like walking. Without actually studying how one's feet move, it's difficult to create a believable animation of a walking human, but walking isn't a problem at all--it's just something we do.

Even though I can switch layouts, I'm still more comfortable in Dvorak. Sometimes I find it easier to take the fifteen seconds required to change the layout than it would be to continue on in QWERTY.

--kbitz

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