Dr. Dobb's Journal August 1999
Eighty Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory employees diagnosed with possible carpal-tunnel syndrome or tendonitis participated in a six-month-long University of California experiment to determine which computer keyboards are most effective in reducing typing aches and pains. Among the keyboards studied by a team led by David Rempel, a UC Berkeley bioengineering professor and UC San Francisco professor of medicine, were the Apple Adjustable Keyboard, Microsoft Natural Keyboard, Comfort Keyboard System, and placebo keyboards made from the subject's own computer equipment, but modified to appear enhanced. The most effective? The Microsoft Natural Keyboard, which reduced hand pain by 50 percent over six months. What surprised the research team wasn't that one keyboard was any better or worse than the others, but the degree of difference among them. All three of keyboards are the type that are split in the middle. Rempel suspects that the reason the Microsoft keyboard was more effective is because its design holds the wrist in a "neutral" position, causing less stress on nerves and tendons at the wrist.
John Chambers, a Lucent Technologies/ Bell Labs statistician, has been awarded the ACM's Software System Award for creating the S System for statistical computing. According to the ACM, S has "forever altered how people analyze, visualize, and manipulate data." This is the first time the award has been given for data analysis software, and the first time it has been given to a statistician. Chambers plans to turn over his $10,000 award to the American Statistical Association to endow a new prize that will recognize outstanding student work in software for statistics. For more information on S, see http://cm.bell-labs.com/stat/S/index.html.
Neil Bauman took his wife and two kids on a Star Trek-themed cruise to Alaska last summer, and enjoyed it so much, he knew he had to go back. But his wife said no. So at a Perl Monger's meeting in Philadelphia last October, Bauman thought of the perfect excuse: Organize a Perl-themed cruise to Alaska. "I could still get the full benefit of Alaska, and learn something too!" said Bauman.
Bauman organized the self-proclaimed, "Perl Whirl 2000: An Alaska Adventure." The cruise, which takes place from May 29 to June 5, 2000 through the Alaska Inside Passage, will offer Perl and other related technical courses taught by Perl luminaries such as Tom Christiansen, Randal Schwartz, and Perl creator Larry Wall, as well as "constant cocktail parties with your favorite Perl celebrities." More information and registration is available at http://www.geekcruises.com/.
The Open eBook Authoring Group has released a draft recommendation of the Open eBook 1.0 Specification which defines the format that content takes when it is converted from print to electronic form. The group, which consists of publishers and computer software/hardware vendors, based the draft on the HTML and XML specifications. The standard is designed to let content providers deliver material in a single format accepted by all systems compliant with the Open eBook spec. The final standard was voted on in July, 1999, with the next eBook conference scheduled to be hosted by the U.S. Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in September, 1999. The specification and related information is available at http:// www.openebook.org/.
Even though the number of H1-B temporary visas for non U.S. high-tech workers has been increased from 65,000 to 115,000 annually, demand continues to outstrip supply with the entire 1999 allotment already exhausted. Consequently, Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas) is putting forward the New Workers for Economic Growth Act which proposes to raise the limit to 200,000 visas.
If your getting less and less done because of more and more interruptions, you're not alone, at least according to a recent report released by Pitney Bowes. According to the Institute for the Future and Gallup, which conducted the survey in the U.S., Great Britain, and Germany, workers are interrupted every 10 minutes by either an e-mail message, phone call, or fax. On average, U.S. workers receive an average of 200 e-mail messages per day, while those in the UK receive 171. The study also revealed that nearly all U.S. workers use voicemail daily, compared to about 33 percent of Germany workers. Likewise, twice as many UK workers use cell phones than their counterparts in the U.S. and Germany.
Supercomputer guru Danny Hillis and visionary Stewart Brand have teamed up to design a clock they hope will run for 10,000 years. The clock, which is actually being built by the Long Now Foundation (http://www.longnow.org/), will tick once a year for the next 10 millennia, measuring minutes, hours, years, centuries, and the movements of the stars. The prototype looks like a stack of CDs and is topped by a clock face displaying several dials. It is regulated by a torsional pendulum, which reverses direction twice a minute. The pendulum turns five rotating "adders" (plates) which revolve once per hour, thereby resetting pins that can be reprogrammed as binary 1s and 0s. The plan is that the clock will be accurate to within one day every 20,000 years. In addition to establishing the Foundation, Brand, who was author of The Whole Earth Catalog and founder of the Well (http://www.well.com/), has written a book entitled The Clock of the Long Now (Basic Books, 1999, ISBN 0-465-04-512-X).
It comes as no surprise that much Internet congestion is the result of flat-rate pricing policies. According to researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, Internet congestion can be cut by as much as 35 percent by charging subscribers a few extra pennies per megabyte for moving information across the Internet. For example, they said, America Online usage jumped from 6 to 22 hours when access charges were dropped in favor of a single monthly fee. For more information, see http://www .index.berkeley.edu/reports/99-010W.