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Slashback: Legislation, Samplification, Knaves 111

Posted by timothy from the what-becomes-of-the-brokenhearted dept.
More information this evening (below) on Daniel Gomez-Ibanez' digital turntable, the Coble-Berman [T: not "Sherman," sorry] bill, moral-free domain registrars, Gator's un-requested link substitutions, and more. Enjoy!

Wouldn't be be nice if this didn't need to be a surprise? dklon writes: "I just got off the phone with Senate Warner's Office (R-VA). Senator Warner, and his compadre, Senator George Allen, both sit on the High Tech Committee, of which Senator Allen is the chairman. After sending them a strongly-worded letter yesterday, Mr. Warner's office was kind enough to call me back and let me know that the likelihood of Coble-Berman becoming law is slim-to-none. It is committee at the moment, and has only 1 sponsor at the moment in the Senate."

Make a joyful noise, and keep repeating it. mrspin writes "stage4 has an interview with Daniel Gomez-Ibanez a graduate from Stanford University who has designed and produced a 'Digital Turntable' that allows DJs to mix and scratch digital music using what looks like a conventional record player.

Daniel recently posted a short piece on Slashdot about his 'Digital Turntable'. In an email interview with stage4 he talks about what makes it different from other such products and the inspiration behind this hardware hack. stage4 is a community site dedicated to creative uses of technology and features a weekly music webcast via PirateTV"

Daniel also says (by email) that if "anyone would want a very unique sampling turntable I would sell more of them for around the cost of the parts because it would be fun to get them out there and get people playing with them." Even those parts aren't cheap (totaling around a thousand dollars) but handcrafted audio tools rarely are. Check his site for email address ;)

Please keep your Gator away from my eyeballs. EyesWideOpen writes "The New York Times is reporting that a preliminary injunction will be issued against Gator Corporation as a result of the company being sued by 10 web site publishers last month because they felt that the company's use of online pop-up ads violated copyright and trademark laws. 'In court Friday, Judge Hilton said that he found enough evidence to support the plaintiffs' claim that Gator's advertisements violated trademark laws in particular...he indicated that one issue was the proximity of Gator's pop-up ads to the publishers' trademarks.'"

You may already have won! We've had to run a number of pieces on unsavory renewal practices among the various registrars competing for your name-claiming business, but domain name scamming is sadly not confined to the U.S. kungfuftr writes: "I'm currently registering all my domains names through a company in the uk called 123reg who are very reasonable and run a good company. Today i got a letter from a company called "Domain Registry of Europe" saying that my domain name "kungfuftr.com" must be renewed. The form they sent looks like a bill and for someone who doesn't know too much about the DNS process it looks like something that should be filled in if they want to keep their domain. Of course if they do this their control of their domain will be transferred to a new registrar. Giving the company an official name as if they are the 'only' registrar in europe is pretty shady. Are companies reaching a new low?"

For when I get a larger hard drive ... TheRedHorse writes "The Yellow Dog Linux 2.3 ISO's have been released . Slashdot did a story about it YDL 2.3 before. Please remember to use the mirrors. Have fun."

You knew this would happen, right? JUSTONEMORELATTE writes "LightReading is reporting today that the EBone portion of KPNQwest's network has been bought for pennies on the dollar (or is that cents on the Euro?) by U.K.-based service provider Interoute Telecommunications. EBone had been valued at EU645 million back in March, today's deal is rumoured to be at about EU15 million, or about a 98% loss of value. Slashdot has covered the heroic efforts to keep the network alive, and talked about the shutdown of the same."

Genetics is never having to say "Am I your type, baby?" Teluial writes "Slashdot's previous story about ColonelPanic's genetic keyboard layout is taking an interesting development. *cue Spidey music* When we last left PMK he was trying his latest layout. Having found it "usable," he is now collecting Dvorak keystroke data and requesting volunteers of the QWERTY breed to also collect data to compare interesting findings against. Details near bottom of project page."
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Slashback: Legislation, Samplification, Knaves More

Slashback: Legislation, Samplification, Knaves

Comments Filter:

  • It's the Coble-Berman bill (Score:4, Informative)

    by noser ( 114367 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2002 @07:07PM (#3898494)

    I was wondering what the hell we were talking about here until I found this discussion [slashdot.org] of the Coble-Berman bill that would restrict fair use...

  • READ THE ONION RIGHT NOW (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Anti-Spam Legislation Opposed By Powerful Penis-Enlargement Lobby [theonion.com]

    Classic, classic onion.

  • No surprising.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by neksys ( 87486 ) <grphillips AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday July 16, 2002 @07:11PM (#3898515)
    Are companies reaching a new low?

    In an era where billions of dollars are misreported to show a profit, where companies trade our personal data as commodities, where advertising has become universally prevalent (let us not forget TV pop-ups), where predatory business practices are the norm and "moral" is a bad word.... is this truly a low? It seems to me that it is par for the course.

    • this is insightful? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by JeanBaptiste ( 537955 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2002 @08:31PM (#3898783)
      I agree the trading of personal data sucks, not sure I agree with the advertising statement, but

      predatory buisness practices are not the norm.
      Name me 50 companies that have predatory buisness practices and I will name you 50,000 that dont. This is the norm? I agree those that dont play by the rules need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. And you show me one person that says "moral" is a bad word and I can show you ~30 million.
      Buisness!=Evil, as much as some wish it was the case.
      • again: "nobody says moral is a bad word", not what I previously said in the parent...

        too late now... I think my slip up was funny though...
      • Clipped from the AC:

        "Name me 50 companies that have predatory buisness practices and I will name you 50,000 that dont.

        How do you know that the companies you'll name are not *also* performing illegal business or accounting practices?

        Around this time last year, nobody outside of Enron, WorldCom, Global Crossing, Tyco, Merrill Lynch, etc. etc. knew anything was wrong.

        Yet you indirectly claim knowledge of 50,000 companies' business practices and their legality..."

        I'm like to hear your answer, and I'm not an AC, so what is it?
      • "Name me 50 companies that have predatory buisness practices and I will name you 50,000 that dont"

        Name me 25 companies that have predatory business practices and I would name you 50,000 that have been destroyed by them (along with their countless displaced employees), if it weren't for the fact that when there's a big fish in the pond like that, the little fish never get big enough to have a name to for me to give you.

  • Not only in US and UK, but also Canada (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Sandman1971 ( 516283 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2002 @07:19PM (#3898545) Homepage Journal
    We've had to run a number of pieces on unsavory renewal practices among the various registrars competing for your name-claiming business, but domain name scamming is sadly not confined to the U.S


    This isn't just happening in the US or the UK. I received what looked like a bill from the Domain Registry Institute of Canada for one of my domains (which incidentally is a .org domain and not .ca). I couldn't believe I would receive such a thing after the big Verisign hoopla. I wrote them back stating that they had just ensured that I will never use their services for any of my domains (5 in all, all .org, .com or .net). What I found even more ironic is that the particular domain in question isn't due for another year and some months! What are these people thinking?
    • What I found even more ironic is that the particular domain in question isn't due for another year and some months!

      Yeah, but they want your money now! You don't expect scam artists to wait, do you? :)
    • Is funny that everyone assumes corrupt people doing unsavory things are only prevelant in the US and the UK. Corrupt assholes live everywhere.

      Unscrupolous people will alway try to take advantage of other people no matter where they live.

      It should come as no surprise.
      • Is funny that everyone assumes corrupt people doing unsavory things are only prevelant in the US and the UK.

        I think that is an incorrect assumption.

        The majority of the slashdot readership is from the US (probably followed by the UK), this is why most of the stories relate to those two areas. This does not mean because country X is not usually mentioned when people do "unsavory things" that "everyone" assumes they do not happen. The majority of slashdotters would be less interested. =)

        Corrupt assholes live everywhere.

        I am from Australia (have lived in the UK, Hong Kong and now live in the US), and do agree with your point here, but your first assumption is false.

  • keyboards (Score:5, Insightful)

    by YanceyAI ( 192279 ) <IAMYANCEY@yahoo.com> on Tuesday July 16, 2002 @07:19PM (#3898547)
    I'm glad to see someone is addressing the issue of poorly laid out keyboards. The only shortcoming that I can see is as follows:

    More and more in regular usage, I need easy access to numbers. Most of my passwords are number/letter combos, and I'm constantly having to type addresses (often my own for online registration). More importantly, it's nice to be able to quickly type 'l4m3r' into a console while gaming.

    Does anyone know of experiments being done to better incorporate numbers into regular type?

    • Re:keyboards (Score:4, Insightful)

      by bentini ( 161979 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2002 @07:51PM (#3898673)
      And it won't fix the problem. The reason those characters get used is because they weren't used before and hence can be given a new meaning without ruining old communication as well as seeming new.

      So what happens when we move x,z, other letters not frequently used to the outside and start writing uber-dense perl code where the $, [,], etc. keys are in the center of the keyboard?
      The x and z keys will be used in l33t speak. It's just language evolution, all over. They use the meta-characters in their meta-language to describe the language.

      Linguistics is cool.

      • this is something that is discussed in the original slashdot story,
        <http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/07/ 06/12442 04&tid=137>,
        in particular, these comments
        <http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=35481&cid=3 83 2443>
        and
        <http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3 5481&cid=383 2458>
        come to mind. i agree with your predicted outcome: perl 133t 5p34|< will look different from Lotta Indented Silly Parentheses elite speak, wich is probably OK.
        i mean, if a perl geek is trying to be incomprehensible to other perl programmers, it's probably just as well that the LISPers don't comprehend either.
      • So what happens when we move x,z, other letters not frequently used to the outside and start writing uber-dense perl code where the $, [,], etc. keys are in the center of the keyboard?
        What the true hacker really needs is a keyboard with lcd displays on the top of the keys, that automatically reorganises itself to move frequently-used keys near the 'home' positions.
        • Great... all that would require is me constantly remapping my WASD keys... I hope the keyboard wouldn't decide to 'remap' itself in the middle of a counterstrike game.

        • Why do the letters displayed on the keys need to reflect what you actually type? I don't understand this concept. If you type well enough to care about the placement of the keys then you should type well enough to not need to look at the keyboard.

          You can remap your keyboard without changing the letters on the caps. There's nothing special about the "J" keycap that makes the computer interpret it as a "J".

          The only problem I would have with remapping my keyboard is the movement of the vi keys hjkl. In my mind the movements are not mapped to the letters, but to the position that the keys are in.
    • Several split keyboard designs, including the Kinesis Contour and the FingerWorks Stealth, have an embedded numeric keypad in the right-hand home keys. For instance, the numeral 1 is available either in its usual location, or as a chord with the "Number" modifier and the J key. Same way you get a capital letter by chording with the "Shift" modifier.

      I don't have much use for easier access to numbers, but I do use the embedded punctuation pad on my Stealth. AltGr-K emits underscore, for instance. AltGr-Y emits double-slash, for URLs or C++/Java comments.

      I did something similar many years ago when I was using a Kinesis, abusing the reprogramming features to completely redefine the "numeric keypad". HJKL became arrow keys, left-hand home keys became tab and escape and such, other keys became various punctuation.

      Another way to make more characters easily accessible is to use gestures more heavily in combination with typing, in the same physical area. The FingerWorks devices do this, as do some PDA input methods which combine virtual keyboards and gesture strokes, but there's a lot more to explore in this area...

  • Shady Registrar Practices (Score:5, Informative)

    by dlek ( 324832 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2002 @07:22PM (#3898570)
    Giving the company an official name as if they are the 'only' registrar in europe is pretty shady. Are companies reaching a new low?

    A similar thing happened in Canada. A while back I got a renewal notice from "The domain registry of Canada". It was printed on letterhead deviously designed to look like stationery of the federal government. I'm sure many people got sucked in by the presentation alone.

    I got a notice similar to this one [bel.bc.ca] from my registrar. I'm sure a lot of those had to go out.

    Sending targeted junk mail is one thing; trying to appear to be a government service is another. I find the practice repugnant.

    dlek.

  • re: You may already have won... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Crash Gordon ( 233006 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2002 @07:28PM (#3898602)
    How come it's so easy for someone to transfer a domain registrar via social engineering and yet it's so hard to do it legitimately?

    My recent attempt to move a domain from Verisign [verisign.com] to Namesecure [namesecure.com] ended up taking the domain off the air for over a month... Namesecure has completely dropped telephone support -- their email support being consistently unhelpful and clueless I ended up moving the domain to Register.com [register.com] instead.
    • I ended up moving the domain to Register.com [register.com] instead.

      Which will promptly spam the crap out of *@yourdomain.com, forcing you to move to another registrar, thus continuing the cycle of registrar stupidity. If only ICANN would do something ... no wait, that would make things worse ....
      • I've registered various domains with Register.Com over the years and always given them unique contact emails. I have NEVER gotten spam on any of them. Are you sure you're not talking about some other registrar?

        FYI, it took me three months and a total of 7 faxes, 12 phone calls and an ungodly number of emails to get Verisign to turn loose of a domain awhile back. By the end of it I was ready to sic our legal eagle on them. God those bastards pissed me off!

        (But I never got spam from them either... Maybe I just lead a charmed life. :)
        • I initially had some trouble with my move of three domains away from Verisign (aka Network Solutions). They rejected my move request three times. In the end, it took a 2000 word short essay on how they are killing themselves and comparing them to early Prodigy (in terms of Customer Support) that made it happen. Verisign, as a company, sucks, but you can sometimes communicate with actual human beings if you push very hard.
        • The goal is to make it so expensive to switch, that it's cheaper just to pay their high prices.
      • I used to use Register.com, since it had what I thought was a good interface, and free DNS. Then I found out about directNIC [directnic.com], transferred all my domains without problems and have never looked back. directNIC has an awesome interface (great if you have lots of domains), is less than half the price ($15) and a lot of optional extras (free hosting, free email forwarding, free parking and redirection, DNS, POP3 accounts).

  • New Low ? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Catskul ( 323619 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2002 @07:31PM (#3898610) Homepage
    HA ! This in most certainly not a new low... Shady companies are not a new thing in the world...

    Im not sure if they still exist,
    but there used to be several phone companies that named themselves things like: "Idontcare", "Whatever", "Itdoesntmatter" so that when collect callers were asked what carrier they wished to use and they answer "I dont care" they would be put through "Idontcare" and charged exorbetant(sp?) amounts of money...
    • I used to work for one of the baby bells, and at one point I pulled up the valid PIC code listing for my home phone number. There was a HUGE number of legal LD carriers, but no "Whatever" "ItDoesntMatter" or the other apocryphal scam names. The closest thing to criminal was one company named "The Phone Company" although after talking to a few of the service reps, each and every one of them said that they wouldn't assume the customer was asking for that one by name. They'd likely do the same if someone registered "IDontCare"

      And before someone from The Phone Company sues me, let me just state that I can only assume their rates are reasonable, their customer service is exemplary and their ethics are beyond compare.
      Really
      Honest.
      • The information about the companies being named "whatever" and so forth was told to me via word of mouth. I did not experience it myself. The person who told me this lived in Texas and said that it only happend where they live and not here(Pennsylvania). The companies may not have been actual carriers, but just purchasing time on the phone networks and reselling it via collect calls. But then again maybe this person was only repeating a rumor. I dont know... I couldnt find any info about it via google, so I dont know what to think.
      • See
        this repost of a news story [google.com].

        In summary, back six years ago, there was a long-distance provider operating in Texas, KT&T Communications, registered under the names "I Don't Know", "I Don't Care", and "It Doesn't Matter".

        Frankly, it's unlikely that anybody was tricked, because the operator would, like in the quoted story, ask if you were sure. But you don't need to trick them, you just need the caller-who-doesn't-care to respond to the operator with "just put me through" or "why not" or "sure".

        Nothing that's going to translate to a lot of money even at 60% higher than AT&T rates, but it's a bit of buisness that doesn't require advertising to get.
        • Indeed, I remember seeing a dateline/20/60minutes/whatever segment about this company, complete with a raking-over-the-coals with the company's founder, Dennis Dees.
          The reason I call it an apocyphal scam is that nobody has yet produced a victim. The TV segment talked about how easy it would be to be tricked, but they didn't dig up anyone who HAD been tricked. The Houston Chronicle reporter placed a few test calls, and claims to have been scammed, but he was TRYING to get scammed. Even the BBB of Ft Worth (which had opened an investigation as of this article, 1996) admitted that they had not received any complaints.

          Sure, it's cheesy, but it's no Worldcom
    • Used to be the case in Texas [time.com], but doesn't look like it anymore [state.tx.us] ...
      In the past, when a customer dialed 0 (for operator) to make a long distance call, the customer was asked which long distance company should carry the call. If the caller said, "It Doesn't Matter," he might be billed by that company, a client company of KTNT, on his next telephone bill. Or if the caller actually has "no preference," his call might be carried by an unknown long distance carrier because the operator used a random list to assign the carrier. Such calls can occur on any phone, but are most frequent with pay phone long distance calls.


      ...also intervened on behalf of its 46 companies which include the client companies named "I Don't Know;" "I Don't Care;" "It Doesn't Matter;" "Any One is Okay." and "Whatever."

  • Domain Registry Of Europe (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hattig ( 47930 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2002 @07:42PM (#3898647) Journal
    Yes, I also work for a UK domain name registrar, and some of our customers have also received these bills from the Domain Registry of Europe.

    The addresses were harvested from whois records against the terms and conditions of using the whois records as far as I can see.

    Naturally I reported this to the registry we use, OpenSRS/Tucows, so they can handle it. UKReg also use OpenSRS/Tucows IIRC, so hopefully they are also reporting these letters their customers get.

    • I got a bunch from "Domain Registry of America". If I'd not already shredded and recycled them I would type in some of the text.

      From memory, though, it looks like a bill. First glance and it looks very much like the bills that NSI pumped out a couple of years ago.

      If, however, you read the first paragraph it says (perhaps even in bold) something to the effect of "this is not a bill", and then "you are free to register through any registrar, this is an easy method for you to choose us. check our details and decide for yourself".

      My first reaction was fury, but after READING THE FIRST PARAGRAPH I had calmed down over it.

      • I had gotten one of those. Verisign/Network Solutions is worse. I looked all over the "renewal bill" they sent me and couldn't find anything saying that it was a domain transfer. I finally found it, in tiny print on the back. The other one at least kept saying "Domain transfer and renewal" even if the form was designed to look like a bill.
      • READING THE FIRST PARAGRAPH

        It's fortunate for you that you got the chance to do that. It's a pain in the ass when you don't hear anything about it until after some stupid secretary that can't read puts it in a pile of bills, and the finance department just assumes it's a bill and pays it. Then, as the technical and administrative contact, you get an e-mail requesting the necissary PGP signed e-mail to allow the transfer and you have to figure out how to get the money back.
    • There have been several attempts in Germany with this scheme over the past, say 12 months to trick customers out of their money. A variation is to send bills for the entry of a domain/site into a "registry" which turns out to be little more than an ill-maintained "index" on a website. At best.

      Another sign that we have hit mainstream, I guess.

      All that is missing now is the sale of domains via TV informercials. ("For only 200 bucks this great .com address could be yours! call our friendly staff now!")

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2002 @07:46PM (#3898660)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • We have also got these from Verisign. We have like five years paid with Network Solutions. It's a bunch of #$%!! that a supposedly trusted company like Verisign would resort to these tactics.

      register.com did the same thing. Do they all do it or what?

  • Problably all Europe, maybe even more (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Because they're also sending those letters to Spain, for example. I got one, with really small print on the back. And they are so stupid to "offer" me a price that is arround the double of what I'm paying currently.

    Anybody with a bit of sense will contact their registrar, and try to pay next period with time. That's what means to me, a reminder, but the funny part is that a third party paid the paper. Did I commented my current registrar reminds me with time each time? OK, this year I get two reminders. :) Maybe they should have tried if I had not already renewed in the past, but I know my current registrar is fine, because they are demostrating it, and because I got it because friends told me it was fine.

    I just hope not to see a Michellin guy telling me to go buy new tires, because my Firestone'll be old soon. Yeah! Get a double price Michellin set, instead of going for the already planned Firestone change, great idea!

  • Congressional Politics 101 (Score:5, Informative)

    by timotten ( 5411 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2002 @08:05PM (#3898711) Homepage
    ...Senate Warner's Office (R-VA). Senator Warner, and his compadre, Senator George Allen, both sit on the High Tech Committee, of which Senator Allen is the chairman...

    Short answer: Um, no.

    Long answer: Senate Republicans have a para-legislative policy committee, which recommends "The Republican" positions on issues in the Senate. George Allen chairs a subunit of that organization, the high-tech task force [senate.gov]. The Democrats have a comparable organization [senate.gov], but they don't publicize it right now because they hold a majority [senate.gov] in the Senate.

    In fairness, Allen is labelled the ranking member of the Science, Technology, and Space [senate.gov] subcommittee. This, however, is misleading because Allen is only a freshman Senator, and all the other Republicans on that subcommittee are actually more senior than he.

  • Gator may be unsavory, but it looks to me like this lawsuit is yet another display of cluelessness by the Powers That Be. It ranks up there with deep linking in my sight.

    Displaying pop up ads over web sites without publisher's permission...

    So when I'm browsing in multiple windows, and a background page pops up an ad over top of someone else's page, that could be a violation of trademark law? (this is a far fetched analogy, but:)

    At best, it(Gator) is one program watching and responding to the actions of a separate program.
    • Someone buy this man a kick in the balls!
    • The issue is that it pops up ads *without* the permission of either the owner of the site's content or the person browsing (unless you consider that really really fine print when it's installed to be permission). If you go to a site that puts popups over another window, it's *your* fault for those popups since you went to that site and explicitly caused it.
      • This is true. However, if you look at the lawsuit, it's being filed by the advertisers and the websites that are selling the advertising. It is not being brought by the persons viewing the pages. Ergo, the advertisers, pending a win in court, will set a precedent that it violates copyright to alter the advertising. Follow that through to the next logical conclusion: Will it be a similar violation of copyright to use junkbuster proxies or Mozilla's "Block images from this server" option?

        For this reason, and this reason alone, I belive Gator is in the right -- Once the page is served up, we have the right to view it however we choose (with graphics, without graphics, in Courier New, 72-point font, without sound, through a translator, etc etc etc).

        Now, if the USERS were suing Gator for altering their web-browsing experience without their permission, Gator should lose.
        • It should be up to the end user what the experience of the content provided by a web site. If you want your style sheet to override theirs, it should. If you want to block the pop-ups, you should be able to. If you want to see Gator's ads instead of the sites' ads, you should be able to. Now the question of whether people want to see Gators' ads instead is a valid one, and the answer is probably no. But if asked whether they would be willing to do so in exchange for a free form-filler-outer, many would say yes. Ad supported freeware has a decently long tradition - as do hacks to then prevent the ads from actually being seen. I support those as well, while obviously there the ad supported freeware people don't. The test to apply is always "Does this increase the ability of the end user to control what's on their desktop?", and while Gator does very little on that front, this lawsuit against Gator could potentially do a lot to hurt that goal.

  • Meanwhile, on the CyberCrime Bill Front (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2002 @09:36PM (#3898988) Journal
    Meantime, the House Cyber Crime Bill has been under reported, althought it did make Wired (story here [wired.com])

    CNet reports on this with the Headline [com.com]: House OKs life sentences for hackers

    This seems to have almost no opposition, passing in the House passed 385-3 on Monday evening.

    features include new and improved (Tougher! Stronger!) survelliance provisions.

    It is very strange which bills get attention in tech forums, and which slipp through with barely a whisper.

    not that I care all that much any more.

  • The genetic keyboard layout's author says he doesn't want to go back and re-learn QWERTY.

    My observation is that in his attempt to pursue personal efficiency, he has effectively isolated himself from 99+% of the keyboards/layouts in the English speaking world.

    The irony is that when this guy leaves the safety of his office, his typing skills are reduced to those of a lowbrow backwoods hunt-and-pecker. That means chicks will laugh at him and won't reproduce with him, which puts him in the penalty box of natural selection. How do you feel about toying with genetics now, Brainiac?

    QWERTY isn't popular because it's pretty or efficient, but because of its popularity.

    Baudtender

    My opinions reflect those of the company I work for,
    because I own the goddamn company I work for.
    • wait, after this line:

      """
      QWERTY isn't popular because it's pretty or efficient, but because of its popularity.
      """

      you're calling HIM a brainiac? Whoa.

    • One person in my office uses a Dvork keyboard. Nobody can sit down at his desk and interface with his computer, nor can he do the same at anyone else's computer. Dvorak is a much better interface, but anytime you're in a social situation you choose the most universal solution, not the optimal solution.
  • I've been using Dvorak for awhile, and though it did help with my RSI (yey), I still feel there could be a layout more improved for programmers. (especially C programmers).

    { } ( ) all require shifting, then again, there isn't really any place you could move them down from. everything that isn't shifted is important to coding C.

    I'd be tempted to design a new keyboard layout using his program, but put in 4 extra keys, maybe between the backspace/enter/shift column and the rest of the board.

    It would atleast mean my pinky doesn't get stretched on almost every line of code. (how many C lines don't have a ( or { on them?

    I think the best solution other than 4 new keys would be moving the shift key on the left to the home row (switch with capslock).

    • On your comment about wanting four extra keys - I have a Kinesis ergonomic keyboard [kinesis-ergo.com] at home, and the layout [kinesis-ergo.com] gives you about 19 extra keys to use - eight in an extra row below the convention bottom row, and a full, useful keypad for each thumb with six each.

      This keyboard is sweet-looking, comfortable, and great for any game with key remapping and heavy mouse use, since you can actually get more commands under one hand than you can on a standard keyboard.

      You could probably find most of the same features in another keyboard called the Maltron, but I wasn't exactly inspired by either its industrial british look [teleprint.com], or the $350 price - I can get another Kinesis for about $180.

      It definitely has a nice look [talisman.org] deployed in a geek environment. My roommate has had one for years as well, and he's also quite pleased with it.

    • Try http://www.bbspot.com/News/2001/08/keyboard.html

  • keyboards ... and games (Score:3, Insightful)

    by drDugan ( 219551 ) on Tuesday July 16, 2002 @10:33PM (#3899190) Homepage
    As I break from America's Army Shooting Range (Try number 39 to qualify), I wonder:

    it seems that if I have a wierd (non QWERTY) keyboard layout, I'd have to remap
    the controls on all those games that use keyboard layout for controls (W == forward,
    S== back, A/D for left/right)

    That would get annoying and possibly would eliminate the time savings gained by
    normal typing. Just no way to win.
  • And this is why Nominets decision to require the names and addresses of domain holders, so that they can publish the information is so wrong.

    See No to Nominet [nominet-no.co.uk]
  • pennies on the dollar (or is that cents on the Euro?)

    Doesn't matter anymore, since 1$=1E now!

  • check out finalscratch.com!!!!!!!!

  • Very unique? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "if anyone would want a very unique sampling turntable I would sell more of them for around the cost of the parts"

    Damn, I want a unique turntable, but it has to be only a little bit unique...

  • Do something about domain slamming (Score:3, Interesting)

    by NetBoy ( 131975 ) on Wednesday July 17, 2002 @09:27AM (#3901372)
    At least here in Maine US, a solicitation
    sent in guise of an invoice is illegal.
    [state.me.us]
    link at state

    Check with your local AG, get some nastly letters
    sent, get them to get in touch with the powers
    that be where the registrar operates. Maybe get
    them shut down in your state.

    That will be the day, when a domain scammer gets
    busted on facial recognition software at your
    local airport. :-)

    STOP DOMAIN NAME TERRORISTS

  • From the genetic keyboard word frequency table:

    37358 :
    17483 ;
    11985 .

    Is this just 'cause of all the C code he fed in? In that case, that suggests that the resulting keyboard is rather specialized.

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