yesterday a non programmer friend of mine, asked me about shortcuts. He wants to know why certain actions are binded to some typical shortcut combination.
I know that every program has it's own keyboard shortcuts but there are some that are common to almost all program:
CTRL+X/CTRL + C/ CTRL+V : cut,copy,paste
CTRL+Z / CTRL+Y : undo/redo
So, I was wondering, does anyone know about the origins of these conventions? Have these conventions ever been formalized somewhere? Are there any practical or historical reason why these shortcut combinations have been chosen instead of others?
That's just curiosity..
The origins of ctrl z,x,c, and v originate from Xerox PARC. They created the shortcuts way back when in their text editors. They were a R&D group, and their standards became widely adopted. Not sure why though.
I guess this link should help -
Taken from wiki link below -
"Common User Access (CUA) is a standard for user interfaces to operating systems and computer programs. It was developed by IBM and first published in 1987 as part of their Systems Application Architecture. Used originally in the OS/MVS, VM/CMS, OS/400, OS/2 and Microsoft Windows operating systems, parts of the CUA standard are now implemented in programs for other operating systems, including variants of Unix. It is also used by Java AWT and Swing."
More details - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_User_Access
Related
I am trying to create a website where users can view and interact with room-furnishings in a 3D environment in a browser. Now, I do not wish to create anything from scratch, if it is possible to build upon existing open source efforts. So far, my research shows that:
The most established open source project I could build upon, that allows me to show 3D scenes on the browser and have users interact with them, uses Java3D for browser view, encapsulated in a java applet (sweethome3Dviewer).
Java 3D itself seems to be out of vogue, with most people recommending HTML5+WebGL (where unfortunately, I can't find any solutions that are as developed).
So here are my questions for this forum:
1) Are there any serious drawbacks of using a Java3D based approach?
I am talking of ANY drawbacks here, for example: "it is too slow"; "it is not stable"; "is limited by the number of concurrent users", etc.
2) What would you suggest I start with and build upon, if not the one based on Java3D?
Please note my preference for not re-inventing the wheel!
Yes, there is a serious drawback to using Java applets today: they are likely to simply not work at all.
The biggest problem is that the Java security system, which is intended to prevent programs like applets from accessing other parts of your computer (modifying files, running additional unsandboxed programs, etc.), has a history of security holes. Because of this history, there is a general consensus that permitting Java applets is simply not an acceptable security policy for the current day. Therefore, many browsers omit the Java plug-in or disable it by default.
And there are also browsers which simply have never had a Java browser plug-in at all, such as those on Android and iOS devices. Besides the security risk, there is also the issue that Java is “heavyweight” as web content goes — it can be seen as a waste of limited resources, for portable devices.
Thus, using Java applets is not a good choice: your applet will never work for many users, and those it does work for are taking an unnecessary security risk.
WebGL, on the other hand, is “just” another JavaScript-based API, which only does graphics, not lots of other things that have to be turned off by a “security manager” element. There are risks inherent to WebGL (GPU drivers are not the most security-minded thing out there) but in the current state of things it's unlikely that WebGL will be simply shut off rather than being fixed, if a problem is found.
I am helping someone recovering from an accident that makes it difficult for her to type and control the mouse with much precision. I'm not familiar with scripting languages used within browsers but would like to know if the following is possible:
A keyboard shortcut or function key is pressed that will, 1) create a new tab and open google.com in it and then, 2) Automatically "select" the microphone to start Voice Search without the user having to either select it directly or use the "Shift-CMD-." shortcut so she can start talking in the search command with no further keyboard interaction.
The computer being used is a mac running OS X 10.8.x and the browser is Chrome. I've searched for chrome extensions that do this but haven't been able to find any that would help.
Any ideas are much appreciated.
Thank-you.
Have you considered programmable keypads? For someone with limited dexterity / precision these devices may offer the solution you require and simplify keyboarding by limiting the number of keys to a small subset mapped to specific functions.
This 24-key keypad offers complete programability, though some reviewers remarked it is complicated to program.
http://www.amazon.com/XK-24-USB-Programmable-Keypad-Windows/dp/B003MB780E/
A cheaper option, which may be simpler to program, is to look at keyboards with a few programmable hot keys. A benefit of this keyboard it that it can pair with 3 devices and works with Macs, iPad/ods, Win PCs, etc. So, if your friend is also having difficulty using a phone as well this could be a huge help.
http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Bluetooth-Illuminated-Keyboard-Smartphones/dp/B0099SMFVQ/
This might be a ridiculous question but is there a way to Upgrade the bios of multiple machines via the network?
-We have multiple Lenovo machines that require BIOS updates that we are doing manually.
-We use GhostCast to cast Windows images on our computers.
I've searched around and found people asking similar questions but no response.
Any possibilities or is this just not possible to do?
Depends on the BIOS and the company - I have no idea what options Lenovo provides.
Certain Dell business class (Optiplex/Lattitude/???) you can, using one of a couple different Dell-provided tools, ranging from a simple util that lets you spit out an .exe with updated code and settings (including password if required) that you can then push out using your favorite method, up to server-based monstrosities that wants a whole SQL server to itself. (But once it's working it scans network and reports what out there, compares to its internal repository, etc.)
It the comps support vPro or whatever Out of Band Management, and/or you can implement PXE booting, you could probably hack something together - depends on how many comps you're talking about, and again, how lenovo implements things.
I'm doing a mobile WebApp using HTML5. My problem is that the "post-login" pages cached by the HTML5 application cache, from what i understand, remain still unsafe. Is there a solution? What is the best way to ensure an offline authentication hiding user/pass and "post-login" pages from intruders?
I am just starting to delve into HTML5 usage of local storage via the Manifest option (http://diveintohtml5.info/offline.html) and this too is a concern for me as much for privacy as security. Two things came to mind: Ezncrypt and the Editor's Draft on Web Storage (Privacy and Security), links to both below...
While I do not know if this will be the 'best' answer, figured anything would be better than nothing and after all you posted this question back on Feb 2, 2012 and no one else has offered anything.
Caveats (ezNcrypt):
It works on Linux
Its a Commercial product with a 30 day trial, honestly do not know the cost as I am not affiliated with them, just heard of what they do via a local meetup, LAPHP, LAMySQL or LAWebspeed last year, and it sounded interesting enough to note for future reference. Transparent encryption will be huge.
Google Ezncrypt products to get a link, I am limited to two here.
Even if its not the 'right' solution for you or others, perhaps it will point you in a good direction with some decent search terms to find more.
If the encryption is handled "transparently" below the application / data layers, it will just work regardless of the IT knowledge of the user.
If you are willing to share some contact information with them, you get this PDF file with 4 case studies, FTP, NoSQL, SQL and something else... its free.
http://blog.gazzang.com/white-paper-unifying-data-encryption-liberating-transparent-encryption-for-any-purpose-/?utm_campaign=Whitepaper&utm_source=Whitepaper
I should get a commission, lol. Hey if it helps us find a solution, that is all that matters.
Whatever your decision make sure you go through the Editor's Draft, Privacy and Security to dot your i's and cross your T's, especially sections 6 Privacy and 7 Security.
http://dev.w3.org/html5/webstorage/#the-localstorage-attribute
Just thought of another, I did not look except to provide a URL to their checklists (cheat sheets) , but my guess is OWASP would have one or two checklists that might lead you to something. Just think of your device as a little desktop/server and see if any of those apply. To bad my Nokia N800 broke on me, a full blown Linux computer in my hand circa 2006 and the new Linux handhelds circa 2012 are so much more powerful. Just use a Linux distro with a small footprint on a device with exchangeable storage (Micro SSD Cards would work...the Nokia N800 had two slots in 2006) and there is no limit to what you could store locally and run offline. Here is the URL to the OWASP checklists:
Sorry limited to two links, google OWASP cheet sheets and you will find them.
If a handheld is truly 'smart' you will have root (administrator) access to the device and underlying operating system / file system. Every operating system has methods to encrypt data on the fly, but you have to have access to utilize them. A device that does not give you this access (usually for proprietary reasons, most often to force you to buy a new device in 6 mos to 1 year) is limiting your options artificially for the wrong reasons and is simply not smart. Remember that all versions of Android (Linux) are not open and rootable, so do your homework or you will end up with an expensive paper weight in the near future.
I would recommend only buying smart handhelds that allow for root/admin access.
I friend asked me this today.
Picasa Web has a cool (and frightening :-) feature where it will recognize all the faces in your photo album.
But the PC (desktop) version doesn't have this.
Several reasons I can think of:
They just haven't gotten around to writing the PC version of the code.
They are licensing that feature and it costs a lot more (or isn't available) on the PC.
Takes a lot of processing power (this seems odd b/c MY PC cycles are free to Google, but they have to pay for for cycles consumed on their server.
Any other thoughts?
I'm certain it'll make it out in coming releases but Google is a funny company when it comes to its own competing/complementing services. One thing is for sure, only somebody on the Picasa team could give an accurate answer.
But we could hypothesise several things...
They don't want their code reverse-engineered.
(As you say), they aren't licensed to redist
It's blocked in the dev version by other new features that aren't complete yet
They don't want to release it because they want people to use PicasaWeb as a social photo network.
I don't think processing power is an issue. If they're running it in bulk on their own servers for free, a modern desktop could probably run it without issue.
From my limited contact with face recognition software, it's probably the redistribution issue. When I dealt with it, face recognition was its own little world with extremely high per-CPU licensing costs and tremendous paranoia about code getting loose.
I'm not so sure it's not a processing issue. It took Google's massive servers 30 minutes to run through all my photos. I can only imagine that same task would have taken days on my local machine.
Actually, its in, just in limited functionality when you do a search, there's an icon to find only photos with faces. The experimental passport feature also works that way.
So the answer is:
Not the same base (APIs) available or used and not the same language so its not directly portable.
Not the same software and there are no stated goals to make both apps feature equivalent.
Programmers are limited and their time is too. They make choices as to what implement now.
No idea if this is the case for Picasa, but there's another case where licensing could be the issue. If the server-side code is using code with a restrictive license with DRM (GPL, for example) which restricts how you can distribute modules using the code. Running that module on a web server, where the user only gets the output, is legal under such licenses. If that code was distributed, there would be many legal requirements attached which would likely be very undesirable for commercial software companies, including google. This is one very good reason to have some capabilities only accessible through web services.
This was also the case with Riya (who was arguably the first to market with reliable facial recognition for consumer photo collections).
The biggest reasons are likely:
Processing Time (they can't control
how fast your CPU is and therefore
they can't control the experience).
Facial recognition is very likely to
be process intensive (this was Riya's
stated reason for not doing it
client-side)
The recognition process requires a
LARGE volume of data for processing
that is only accessible on the
server? (In other words, the process needs to spin through millions of faces, not just the faces that you have on your hard drive?)