Human-Nets-Request%rutgers@brl-bmd.UUCP (Human-Nets-Request@rutgers) (01/16/84)
HUMAN-NETS Digest Sunday, 15 Jan 1984 Volume 7 : Issue 11
Today's Topics:
Queries - Dvorak Documentation &
Silicon Gulch &
Terminal Elbow,
Computers and the Law - Thoughtcrime / known associates (2 msgs),
Input Devices - Toddler keyboard &
Programmable keyboards (2 msgs),
Computer Networks - Telex and Teletex,
Computers and People - Global Consciousness Model
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Date: 8 Jan 84 19:52:24 PST (Sunday)
Subject: Re: Dvorak keybords again (and again)
From: Bruce Hamilton <Hamilton.ES@PARC-MAXC.ARPA>
Would someone PLEASE supply this list with citations into the
human-factors literature re: Dvorak vs. Sholes keyboards, instead of
hearsay?
--Bruce
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Date: 13-Jan-84 00:52 PST
From: testing <WBD.TYM@OFFICE-2>
Subject: Silicon Gulch
Could someone tell me where the "gulch" is? Thanks, --Bi<<
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Date: 14-Jan-84 20:23 PST
From: William Daul - Tymshare Inc. Cupertino CA <WBD.TYM@OFFICE-2>
Subject: Am I the only one?
I have been developing VERY sore elbows. I think it is due to
terminal usage. Anyone others suffer from it...anyone have any clever
ways of dealing with it...outside of changing professions, having my
arms amputated, a perpetual anesthetic, bandaging my elbows or
meditation? Thanks, --Bi<<
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To: REM@MIT-MC
Date: 11 January 1984 05:32 EST
From: Jerry E. Pournelle <POURNE @ MIT-MC>
Subject: Thoughtcrime / known associates
Your scenario is reasonable, but the way police tend to think,
it's more:
Someone deals drugs; they find it out; watch them; and if you
spend a lot of time associating with their known dealer, they
begin to watch you too. This isn't necessarily an evil
practice; it's about the only way they could get evidence.
I'm not myself sure we ought to try to keep people from
taking drugs; it uses a lot of police resources, and puts a very
great deal of money into illegal activities, when otherwise the
stuff would cost less and could be taxed.
Ah, well. but I do tend to think of it as evolution in
action.
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To: Robert Elton Maas <REM@MIT-MC.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 11 Jan 84 13:08 EST
From: MJackson.Wbst@PARC-MAXC.ARPA
Subject: Re: Thoughtcrime / known associates
The database expansion being considered is rather ambitious:
Under a proposal under consideration, the National Crime
Information Center would have information on whether someone
was suspected of organized crime connections, terrorism or
narcotics or was a "known associate" of a drug trafficker, the
Times said.
Note that the NCIC is rather more than the "local" resource your
hypothetical case envisions. According to the NYT News Summary (Jan.
1, 1984):
The computer system is now used mainly to advise police
officers that an individual has been named in an arrest
warrant in another state.
The implication is that when the police apprehend someone for a minor
crime, they run that individual through the NCIC to check for "wants
and warrants." Are you comfortable with the thought that in future
they may run them for "wants, warrants, suspicious associates, and
terroristic or narcotized appearance"?
Frankly, I'm not particularly happy even with your scenario. When the
police are investigating a specific crime they now have to go around
talking to people, asking "Who was friends with Bob the Terrorist?"
and "Who did Ralph the Junkie room with at MIT?" This is not a casual
act--it requires effort, and more important it is subject to challenge
("Why, what's he supposed to have done?"), so that it is unlikely to
be widespread without justification. Casual tracking of *everyone's*
associations, as a matter of course, is not a legitimate police
function, in my view. Besides, what if it turns out you are one of
the few of Vicki's known associates who happens to have associated
with Sue, another suspected dealer (that folk dance club is a real
den. . .).
Incidentally, on what evidence was Vicki, "accused of dealing drugs",
convicted of being "Vicki the dealer" between the beginning of your
message and the end?
Mark
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Date: 11-Jan-1984 0826
To: rhea!usc-eclc!telecom@Shasta
From: (John Covert) <decwrl!rhea!castor!covert@Shasta>
Subject: As long as we're on keyboards; here is the keyboard used in
Subject: France
The following is the new DEC standard French keyboard, which should
correspond to the most common keyboards in France. All French type-
writers will have the letters in the same layout as shown. Note that
A, Z, Q, W, and M are moved from the positions the English QWERTY
keyboard uses. The French speaking parts of Canada use the QWERTY
keyboard with a few dead keys and only c cedilla and e acute directly
on the keyboard.
The key with the tilde and grave accent is a "dead" key, used for
combination with the next character (to generate those symbols
without a combined letter, the key must be pressed twice. Likewise
with the diaresis/circumflex key, though a stand-alone diaresis may
not be generated.
Since I doubt that you have a terminal which would represent the char-
acter codes of the DEC multinational set, I won't send those codes to
you. The letters will be represented by the base letter followed by
the mark. The section sign (under the 6) and the degree sign (over
the right parenthesis) will be represented as s and o.
The keyboard can be switched between normal mode and data processing
mode. In data processing mode, the section sign and e accent grave
go away and are replaced with left and right square bracket, and the
u accent grave goes away and is replaced with backslash.
Any codes not on the keyboard can be created using either the two dead
keys or the compose key followed by a two character sequence. In
France, the upper case versions of the accented letters must be
created with compose.
Standard French typewriters would correspond to this keyboard without
the compose (only the dead keys), without data processing mode, and
without the */$ and @/# key.
In France, you shift to get the numbers; the symbols are in the base
position.
~ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 o _ DEL
` & e' " ' ( s e` ! c, a` ) -
TAB A Z E R T Y U I O P .. *
^ $
CT LO Q S D F G H J K L M % @
RL CK u` #
SH > W X C V B N ? . / + SHI
FT < , ; : = FT
Compose S P A C E
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Date: 11-Jan-84 22:10 PST
From: Kirk Kelley <KIRK.TYM@OFFICE-2>
Subject: Toddler keyboard translation
When Shannon was two she loved to type her name on the 'puter. It is
extremely laborious to write legibly with a pencil at that age. But
is it moral to ingrain QUERTY into the mind of a two year old? Since
it is easy with AUGMENT to make an arbitrary character mapping from
one set to another, and then change the key caps correspondingly, I
decided to design an alphabeticly ordered keyboard. Unfortunately the
alphabetical order does not map at all directly into a typeable
spread, so I ended up fudging alot. Luckily Shannon likes fudge.
This is the best I could do. It is in alphabetical order, but you
have to find the sequence. It has the nice effect of giving the
vowels to the left hand for quick two-handed alternation with the
consonents. I dont use it myself. Too hard to unlearn QUERTY.
; :\A B C D , - 1 2 3
TAB Z Y\E F G H / + 4 5 6
CAPS X W\I J K L M N 7 8 9 RETURN
SHIFT V U\O P Q R S T . 0 SHIFT
-- kirk
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Date: Thu, 12 Jan 84 01:46:39 CST
From: Scott Comer <wert@rice>
Subject: Programmable keyboards...
It seems to me that we are moving in the direction of defining a
terminal keyboard and other input devices to be user supplied, like
calculators, favorite pens, etc. With a standard connector on
terminals (like the phone jack suggested by Greg), it would be a
simple matter for me to carry my favorite keyboard around with me, and
my mouse, light pen, etc, should plug into it.
Of course, that still leaves display technology in the realm of "what
you find is what you must use", and making the local system understand
what your keyboard is sending is left up to you.
Scott
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Date: 12 Jan 1984 1518-EST
From: Wang Zeep <G.ZEEP at MIT-EECS at MIT-MC>
Subject: Re: HUMAN-NETS Digest V7 #10
It would appear that the solution to everything concerning keyboard
layouts, portable computers and encryption would be a standardized
system for slaving portables to host computers which would allow for
encryption, etc. This way wou would walk around with your favorite
style keyboard, with your encryption setup, etc. Terminals would
evolve into big monitors with hookups for your portable to provide
intelligence. Funky gadgets like mice, trackballs, etc. would be
supported by your computer, not the terminal.
To some extent, this is already happening: Xerox's 1810 and Toshiba's
t100 portables both hook onto stationary computers and then serve as
smart keyboards.
Now all we need is a good distributed editor which takes advantage of
all the capabilities of a portable.
wz
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Date: 11-Jan-1984 1532
From: (John Covert) <decwrl!rhea!castor!covert@Shasta>
Subject: Telex and Teletex
Telex will soon be passe if Teletex catches on. Teletex is a
new service similar to Telex but which operates at significantly
higher data rates (Telex is 50 bps asynch; Teletex is 2400 bps
synch) and using a much larger character set.
Sending Teletex messages is much less expensive than Telex (for
example, from the U.S. to Germany compare MCI Mail's Telex mini-ounce
(400 characters) at $1.82 with a Teletex full page (8 1/2 x 11 or
DIN A4) for $1.00).
But the equipment is more expensive, and it may be (I'm not sure)
part of the requirement that the equipment have the full character
set defined in the CCITT recommendation for Teletex service which
includes the alphabets of all the European languages and a large
number of special characters.
I've asked for more details on the service in the U.S. Western
Union is the carrier which is providing the service today. There
are very few machines in service, though several contracts are in
effect waiting for installation.
All Telex terminals are reachable from any Teletex terminal, and
vice versa. I've communicated with a Teletex terminal located in
Germany from MCI Mail. Of course, since MCI Mail is considered
Telex, all the nice upper/lower case available on both MCI Mail
and Teletex disappears in the converter.
Last week I received the following statistics on the status of
Teletex in Germany:
Relatively shortly after the W-German Teletex Service has been
implemented by the DBP the number of network termination points
(NTP's) reached 3335 Ttx connections.
The growth rate within 2 months (Aug. to Oct.83) was 12%. The
highest connection density we will find in Munich with 502 NTP's
and Frankfurt with 375 NTP's. Above statistics are from Oct.83
and are representing DBP figures.
The list of DBP approved Ttx equipment is growing too. DBP informed
me that presently 35 different Ttx terminals or stations are permitted
for connection to the Teletex Service (General Connection Licenses
only; trial licenses are excluded). The above number reflects at
least 24 different manufacturers.
------------------------------
Date: 12-Jan-84 16:22 PST
From: Kirk Kelley <KIRK.TYM@OFFICE-2>
Subject: time increment for global consciousness model
This refers to the working definitions in V7 #2 for the augmented
global consciousness project.
From: Robert Elton Maas <REM @ MIT-MC>
I think one year is too coarse a step in a model of self-referent
network communications. An awful lot of bootstrapping can be done
in a month, after which previous extrapolations are invalid. ...
I agree that one year is too coarse. Unfortunately, the most
available (for incorporation) existing world models use one year
increments. Also, changing from a year to a month multiplies by
twelve the total simulation time for one run. We may not have CRAYs
at our disposal.
On the other hand, retrofiting the model to a shorter time increment
may not be trivial at a later time. Ideally we would be able to start
short and get long as the simulation gets further into the future, but
wouldn't that too much encumber expressing the relations as equations?
-- kirk
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End of HUMAN-NETS Digest
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