Re: PC or Mac?

[Greg Weston <gwestonREMOVE@CAPSattbi.com>]

In article <slrna5cps0.7o.byron@b60z27hbb464i.ab.hsia.telus.net>, Byron
Q. Desnoyers Winmill <byron@b60z27hbb464i.ab.hsia.telus.net> wrote:

> > Perhaps the QWERTY keyboard itself is one of the most awful
> > examples of standardization gone awry.  It's design objective was
> > to slow down human typists so that they would be less prone to
> > jamming the keys!
> 
> That is the biggest myth in the book.  QWERTY was designed to prevent
> the jamming of keys, slowing typists down is a *side effect*.  The
> consequences may be the same, but the motivations are very different.

It's not a myth, just confusion on your part. The GOAL of QWERTY was to
prevent keyjams. The METHOD chosen to achieve that goal was to slow
down the typists (thereby reducing the odds that keys would attempt to
violate physics). Hardly a side-effect.

Here: want an amusing standards question? Why are the numbers on
push-button phones arranged differently than they are on adding
machines and computer keyboards?

G (knows the answer, but is curious what people will suggest)