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Handhelds Hardware

Grafitti Causes Paralysis? 159

Posted by CmdrTaco from the that-ain't-so-hot dept.
wtpooh writes "Some researchers at Johns Hopkins have found that writing on PDAs like the PalmPilot can cause a special kind of paralysis, as your mind has to adjust to a new kind of writing. Check out the story "
(please don't send me flame mail for posting satire... I just thought it was funny, but considering I can't feel much below my neck after moving furniture all day, I might be wrong :)
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Grafitti Causes Paralysis? More

Grafitti Causes Paralysis?

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  • Stuttering & bad hand writting (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Have any of you ever started to stutter a lot right after you've been typing something or coding a lot? Or after you've been highly thinking for awhile?

    With me, say I've been coding for 2 hours and then I all of a sudden try talking to someone I can't hardly talk without saying, "Well I was going to, uh, I-I-I" it's like my mind is already 10 sentences ahead while what's coming out of my is still 10 sentences behind and then you forget where you are at the 1st half of what you're saying because you're thinking on the last half already. It's really weird, I have to put my mind on, "slow mode" to even speak correctly. People also say I speak kind of fast too and that's after I've been using the computer. Hmm weird stuff. Oh, plus I can't even read my own signature too. I just kinda scribble something and try to pass that off as my sig. :->

  • Dvorak-Qwerty mess is tougher (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Anyone with some psychology background would know about "encoding specificity," which says that recalling knowledge and skills is much easier when you have retrieval cues that are similar to those under which you learned the info and when you usually use the info.

    In other words, when holding a palm and the palm pen, your brain can switch to and from graffiti mode relatively easily.

    On the other hand, when typing at a keyboard, all your environmental cues are identical, whether you are using dvorak or qwerty. (That is, unless you only use dvorak or qwerty under certain specific settings, like one at home, the other at work.) Having to mental-mechanically memorize two sets of keymappings is much more challenging and torturous.
  • 'h','j','k,'l' would be very, very unhandy on a Dvorak.
    Actually, they're not that bad. j is c on qwerty, k is v, h is j, and l is p. So down/up is c/v (right close together, pretty handy), j is for left, and p is for right (index finger left, pinky finger (albeit up a row) to the right).

    I still use vi all the time. And EMACS. (Ctrl-X Ctrl-C isn't quite as convenient, as it's now a two hander). But do what's best for you.

  • one word (Score:1)

    by mosch ( 204 )
    satire.

    looks like somebody got their revenge for the 'every site in the world got simultaneously sued and taken off-line' april fools joke. :-)
  • So...the next thing we'll be reading is how a bunch of young "3l33t h4c3rs" have forgotten how to type in english and are stuck typing in weird strings of numbers and symbols that vaguely resemble english characters.

    Nice article...i laughed out loud when I read the disclaimer at the end.
    :)

  • I often find myself using the graffiti 'T' while writing. It's really annoying...

    ...and the Graffiti E, and the Graffiti K. People must think I learned writing not until a few weeks ago...

    Regards, Jochen

  • it's not so much my hands are unused to writing, but my mind has lost the ability to structure large bodies of text without the ability to move and modify freely anywhere in the document!
  • Gotta be FUD.

    I'll bet if one hired a PI to investigate this author, and the "doctors" cited therein, payola tracks would lead to Redmond.
  • Does this mean that people who write in both roman and non-roman languages (english and korean) are subject to this too? I don't understand how learning how to write a few different ways is linked to this disorder.
  • oh GAWD... I can't believe I bought it. I guess that'll teach me to read more carefully.

    ... and I thought that turning 23 yesterday would have made me wiser... LOL
  • after my last big CS assignment (a 2700 line
    program that I stupidly decided to do at in the
    last few days) I tried to write the manual, and
    realized after a while that I had been ending
    sentences with semicolons.......
  • >I would pick up the pen, start writing, and nothing but doodles would come out -- it was scary."

    When I saw that, I scrolled up to see if it was dated April 1. I saw that it wasn't and started looking around for some kind of BS flag and saw the disclaimer.

    Still funny.
  • I thought that some V.E.s were allowing keyboard copy for Morse code exams. I could be wrong... 73 de KF9FR
  • Yeah, whenever I am signing a check, I feel like I am trying to "forge my own signature" - since my signature is the only thing I ever write in script anyway. Capital-caps (big and small capital letters) for anything else, and not much of that either.

    But I don't own a PDA. I'll wait till they accept voice (or telepathic) input.

  • My signature is extremely unstable. What does this say about my personality? Besides, of course, the fact that I'll be driven crazy when signature biometrics become de rigeur...


    Once you pull the pin, Mr. Grenade is no longer your friend.
  • This is just rob's evil attempt to manipulate Palm Pad devices so he can pick em up real cheap.

    Good idea maybe Ill grab one too.
  • It is no longer a myth.

    Here [jps.net] is the proof.
  • Environmental cues. That explains my problem with two keymaps.

    Yes, I have noticed I will start typing qwerty on a soft keyboard, like the ones at work. When I'm on my spring click keyboard at home, its all dvorak.

    The problem is my laptop, which has a soft keyboard and I often type qwerty in error.
  • Joke or not, the use of electronic equipment does have an affect on "analogous" writing and similar operation. This was proved a couple of years ago, that overuse of electronic devices to write letters, versus good ol' pen-n-paper, gradually makes you inapt at writing with a pen.

    I can transpose this to other things I usually do on computers or other electronic devices; the other day, I had to do some divisions. No computers, no calculators around. Pen and paper was it. Well, damn! I couldn't remember how to divide on paper! Took me nearly half an hour to get this thing right. (I have since remembered properly how to devide on paper, but the point is that a couple of more years and I wouldn't have been able to teahc my kid.)
  • They should've mentioned something about noticing the same effect in secretaries that learned Shorthand. Not mentioning Shorthand tipped me off.
  • But even so, they have a point -- I type almost everything I do, either on my desktop machines or on my Psion portable. Now I've got my final exams coming up in a few weeks time and it's going to be the first time I've written more than a few sentances at a time since... well, my exams last year, come to think of it. And those were enough of a struggle.

    I guess I'm going to have to get some practice in between now and then (I've been meaning to for a while, and this article might just have done me a favour by prodding me in the right direction). But in the long term, I can't help wondering if (hand)written examinations are actually a fair way to assess people any more.

  • but then I saw the tiny text at the bottom of the article

    The South to the Future World Wide Wire Service is a weekly feed of technology and media news commentary and satire published by the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Quotations attributed to public figures who are satirized are often true, but sometimes invented. Some fictional statements may, in fact, be true. Any other use of real names is accidental and coincidental.

    Still, I wouldn't be surprised if M$ used this to get people to buy wince [god I love that name :-) ] instead of Palms. Me, I'm sticking with my Newton MP2100 and writting on it like I do on paper!

  • As i read this I was reminded of Steve Martin's "The Jerk", in which Steve's Character invents a little eye-glass grip on the nose piece, and gets ued cause It makes everyone cross-eyed.

    And then I saw It was a Satire, So its Art imitating Art .

  • yeah, same here. my first thought was excuse me... what about shorthand? or people who've learned to use different alphabets? seemed obviously bogus, though i thought it was fud, not satire, until seeing the disclaimer.

  • Exactly (Score:1)

    by edgy ( 5399 )

    This is what I would have liked for the April fools jokes recently. This is something everybody laughed at, which was flawlessly executed.


  • I enjoyed reading that. It's quite interesting trying to examine yourself while reading this.


  • Headline:

    Excessive use of Internet's point-and-click environment causes debilitating reading disorder in computer users. Thousands unable to read all the way to the end...

    They had me going for a while...

    (Hehe)
  • Amateur Radio Volunteer Examiners must make reasonable accommodations for people taking tests. You may have to supply the keyboard or typewriter for the test. Contact your preferred testing team for its policy. The team with which I work usually requires candidates to supply their own headphones or copying methods other than pen and paper.

    N5RDV - affiliated with ARRL and W5YI VECs as an occasional volunteer examiner.

    Michael S. Keller, green at null punct net.
  • I saw the disclaimer, but I agree on the possibility of having trouble based on making radical changes to one's normally-used motor skill set. I know Dvorak and Sholes keyboards. I use both. Sometimes I have to stop and breathe before switching layouts. Particularly when working a Unix shell from Dvorak.

    I also have to work sometimes to keep my handwriting usable.

    And I use a Newton MP2K, which, for the most part, accepts my handwriting.

    I'll wait for other natural handwriting interfaces, ala tablets, or verbal input, or break down and find a Gateway Handbook 486 and put Linux on it. But the battery life sucks.

    I loathe lugging around a computer that will run for only two hours, then require a recharge. So I keep my wildly versatile Newton.

    Take my ramble for what you paid for it.

    -Michael S. Keller
    green @ null punct net

  • leftshift pi 2 / leftshift sin

    It's normal. You've just been using your HP calculator for too long. :)

    RPN kicketh ass.
  • The real question is:

    Why does this guy have to write a check at the end of a date?

    Hmmm?
  • The Palm isn't intended to replace your computer; it's intended to supplant your computer. You can't put a keyboard in a shirt pocket (not a usable one, anyway). If you have to do much data entry with the Palm and you aren't entering it on your (real) computer and syncing it to the handheld, you're Doing It Wrong.

  • Hmmmm... I seem to recall an interview on 20/20 or something where a handwriting analyst (someone who can ID a person through comparing handwriting samples) likened scriptanalysis to astrology or "reading" the bumps on someone's skull (I forget the name of this "science")... In short, utter bunk.

  • Well, I was taken for a minute... but I really don't understand the problem anyway. I seem to be unique among my friends in that I routinely change my handwriting for different tasks: I write my lower-case x differently in math equations than I do in words, and I last week changed the way I wrote my 1s, 2s and Is... does anyone else out there do this? I consider all of my habits (from the way I brush my teeth to the way I tie my shoes) mutable and change them frequently to try and improve on them.

    One reason I have been working on my handwriting is for my comics - I don't want to have to use a lettering guide, so I just have been trying to write in straight lines in all cases...

    Graffiti is wonderful, though I find myself using the keyboard for long stretches of text (like copying quotes into my outliner). I tried using the Fitaly [fitaly.com] keyboard for a while but found it too small... or something. I just didn't like it. That gestural keyboard recently /.'d was interesting though, the NYU demo [slashdot.org]...

    I hate CSS! Come to my web site and find out why! [listen.to]
  • I have to admit, this had me going until near the end - nicely done, but the very last paragraph gives the game away (emphasis added):

    "The South to the Future World Wide Wire Service is a weekly feed of technology and media news commentary and *satire* published by the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Quotations attributed to public figures who are *satirized* are often true, but *sometimes invented*. Some fictional statements may, in fact, be true. Any other use of real names is accidental and coincidental."

    So... While Pilots may help to give you RSI, or exacerbate existing RSI, they definitely don't give you a debilitating neurological disorder (other than the compelling need to manage your entire life on them, of course ...).
  • Aren't they all aliens? I know Bill Gates just has to be. And what about that Balmer guy, what a lousy disguise. ;)
  • Try typing on one of those tiny, little, itsy, bitsy, tiny, weenie keyboards found on WinCE machines. Start -> Shutdown.....augghhhhhhh!
  • Whenever I have to help someone with a problem and they are running one of the many versions of Windows, I can't think straight. I start wondering if the system is working right or if the label of a button really means what it says. I get all confused, is another application causing the problem, a device driver, or maybe that paper-clip thing that keeps showing up. It is like being in the lower levels of LA in "Blade Runner". DON'T ASK ME ABOUT MY MOTHER! :)
    I can always look forward to the calming OS/2 desktop or my Linux developement system. ahhhhhh
    ;)
  • Go back and read the small print at the bottom of the page.....
  • I guess I get to be one of the few "Luddites" who once averaged 12 hours of logged-in-ness a day :)
  • that's why I use *PAPER* when I'm not in front of my computer! I don't want a damn PDA or whatever these things are called; for these cases where I have to write down a bit of info at a random place, a good old piece of paper, or a post-it note, will do. even laptops I find kind of distasteful; their keyboards suck, their screens suck, and they're way too expensive. I just don't care enough to play Tetris on a train, I'll read a book, or just think about how I'll do something (which is a very important part of work, and requires no computer).
  • I think thinking too fast might be my problem. I try to force my hands at the speed I usually type.

    Hmmm. Writing isn't much good if it is so slow.

    Interesting. Maybe I can convince my university to let us take our tests on a computer.

    (Sure miss having a backspace key when I write tho.)
  • SFBG is pretty funny, and their satire is quite convincing sometimes. I dunno how many people (myself included) were at first astounded by their article on THC-Enhanced Oranges [sfbg.com]. I kept seeing comments praising this "discovery", for weeks afterwards.. ;)
  • Did you just happen to read that in the jargon file ("You know you've been hacking too long when...") and think no one on /. reads the file, or are you one of the people ESR cites as living proof of this tendency? (When he first wrote it, he thought he was making it up.)
  • STTF are the same folks that put out that story about the THC-producing orange tree a few months back.
  • More importantly, vi would be pretty ugly on a Dvorak keyboard. 'h','j','k,'l' would be very, very unhandy on a Dvorak. And if I couldn't vi, I would probably die.

    Damn that rhymes!
  • hahah.. so true. i was reading through this and thought it was so bunk. i'd love for someone more creative than I to write a good segfault article on this. pretty funny stuff, amazing what writing letters on top of each other can do to a person. enuf to drive them mad!!! muahahah


  • issa joke (Score:1)

    by ./ ( 13859 )
    don't overflow your jiffies about it...
  • Say the Python (Monty, not the language) foot stomping a Palm Pilot?
  • That's why I use a newton!! It uses REAL handwriting and it's pretty accurate for me. I've noticed that other people dont' like it though :) Oh well....
  • phrenology - don't ask me how I know that.
  • I emailed the URL to some friends who own Palms, and then after I sent it I see everyone's comments about it being a joke. *Sigh* Now I'm gonna have to check and double-check every single story inside out before I ever forward a URL again.

  • Ok I'll admit to having, on ocasion, halted for a moment to *remember* how to write, before I can actually start doing it... but that's a LONG way from paralysis... I think this article is total and utter alarmist B.S., because if it were a mere bad choice of words they wouldn't stress the PARALYSIS mumbo-jumbo.

    So it is my opinion that this article has no credibility, both medical or scientifical, other than it could be the basis for a study, and not mere Supposition and Conjecture as it is in its present form.

    To those of you who see my point, I thank you for your understanding. To those who don't, don't bother to flame, and please try to think with your own heads.

    P.S.: If the problem with PDAs was related to their alphabet, what in blazes would happen to those of us who happen to write arabic, cantonese, cyrillic and western alphabets... boy would we be stumped.
  • I'm so unused to handwriting now, that I find it requires significant exertion to even write a simple sentance. I've just switched to doing only printing, which, although slower, is much more readable in the long run. The only thing I use cursive for is signing things. God help me if I every change my name :)

    ---

  • I've played bass and piano for a long time... It's only improved my muscle control and memory.

    The same is true of my handwriting since I've started using a Pilot.

    It's amazing what bullshit people will write, given a stupid thesis and some money to research with.
  • This particular article looks like a hoax, but I did experience a similar problem after months of using my Newton MP2K.

    I managed to narrow it down to a change in my hand position; I've never used Graffiti, so that couldn't have been the cause. I had slid my hand closer to the tip of the stylus/pen which, from what I experienced, caused my hand to cramp up when using the same position on "traditional" media. By consciously sliding my hand back up the stem, my style returned (mostly) to normal.

    Unfortunately, I have little opportunity or reason to write lengthy prose on paper anymore, so I haven't completely succeeded in making the position an unconscious one again.
  • Actually, it's your website, so you can do what you want. :^) But... (emphasis mine)

    "The South to the Future World Wide Wire Service is a weekly feed of technology and media news commentary and satire published by the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Quotations attributed to public figures who are satirized are often true, but sometimes invented. Some fictional statements may, in fact, be true. Any other use of real names is accidental and coincidental."
    --

  • Look at the very end of the article before panicing, foaks.
  • "By the time our signature stabilizes," explains Miezkowsky, "so does our personality. Hence, a change in signature often signals a major shift in personality.

    "Hence" usually implies a logical cause-and-effect relationship.
  • I have had that problem, to some extent, where I use the wrong word if I've been studying a foreign language too much. (I mix up french and spanish.) Calling this a neurological disorder would be a little excessive, though.

    I imagine that if I used a palm pilot I might accidentally write one letter on top of the other or something like that, too.

    I guess it's the slight amount of truth to this article that makes it so funny. This was really well done.
  • I see I'm not alone in not writing anymore. I never write anything in cursive other than my signature. I have piles of scratch paper by my computer at home and work, but I only write down diagrams, equations, bitpattens and other programming stuff. Writing an actual paragraph of english text, that hurts as much as keyboarding for 8 hours.

    I remember when I took the GRE, the hardest part was where you had to copy this paragraph, in cursive, about not cheating. I had to rest after every few words and by the time I was done my right hand hurt so much I had to fill in bubbles with my left hand for a while!
  • I hate those little finger keystrokes. That why I type with my right hand moved over 1 key, so it rests on kl;' instead of jkl; This way it's much closer to the keys like [];'./\ control, alt, enter and backspace, things I push a whole lot in UNIX and C programming that one did writing english on a typewriter 50 years ago.
  • read the bottom. Satire. Plus, a search of Johns Hopkins Medicine site shows no Miezkowsky in the Neurology/Neurosurgery/Neurosciences departments.
  • So I read the article, and thought "Hey, cool! I use a Pilot and I run the network for all these Johns Hopkins neuro-people." Then, I realized there's no such thing as Dr. Miezkowsky. Grumble.

    Maybe I should move over to the Psych department. Their researchers go on CNN. Neuro just gets made fun of in phony websites.

    -Chris
  • Well, if you were using aix, and typed "no" at the prompt, you'd be confused too. This is the AIX command for "network options"

  • Perhaps this PIP is a real phenomenon. I can barely print without transposition of letters. i also write entire functions backwards instead of :

    arcsin(pi/2) i'll write (pi/2)arcsin.. But i know what i'm writing, so it doesn't much matter.

    and i'll go between cursiveish and printingish, and get really mangled "the"s. like an h with a line through it c.
  • no credit card, and some resteraunts still take cheques.

    and besides, ho's don't take american express. I saw it in a commercial once.

  • Re:me too (Score:1)

    by cy ( 22200 )
    I agree. Everytime I need to actually write a reasonable amount (eg a note in a B'day card) my hand gets _really_ tired, _really_ fast.

    As for signing checks and credit card slips, well I'm lucky that most people don't even bother checking the signature these days :-)
  • As an owner of a 3x, I can only say it has helped my handwriting....

    My signature still seems to be illegible, though....
  • This is the best I've seen here in the last 6 months, less Katz' Hellmouth series. Way to go!
  • Yeah, me too. Can be quite a problem, in my case.

    Tom F^HD^H@^H(dammit)Gidden
  • I know this story is suppose to be serious, but doesn't sound a little like a Segfault [segfault.org] article?

    I have had every palm out there (with a V now) and this seems a bit extreem to me. Ofcourse my amount of use may be no where near or even simular to these users.
  • Wait a minute

    Its not serious

    Please disregard my last post and blame my lack of judgement on the fact that its the end of the day, and I really want to go home.
  • I went into it wondering if it was a joke, then after reading through the whole thing I caught the disclaimer near the bottom.
  • Its the first track off the last Radiohead album
    "OK Computer"

    The track is called "airbag" I I believe

  • "[this column is]...a weekly feed of technology and media news commentary _and satire_...some fictional statements may, in fact, be true."

  • too bad this is a hoax...
    People would start using their Newtons again -
    they don't require that you draw funny doodles instead of real characters...
  • No real researcher at Johns Hopkins would claim that handwriting changes indicate personality changes. Such meaningless babble is the mark of a pseudoscientist, such as a graphologist (handwriting analyst).
    Jeers to CommanderTaco, for not catching this piece of satire and marking as such.
    And Jeers to those who did not read the disclaimer and realize it's bogus.
  • I didn't lose my ability to write normally, but after getting to a high level in Giraffe, the strain of trying to remember some obscure graffito would trigger a kind of petit-mal seizure-like state. I fought it by deliberately not practicing Graffiti. It feels a lot better to just look at chart for anything non-alphanumeric.
  • I Can't belive how many times I have endorsed a check at the bank, only to realize that I have written my entire name in one block (each letter on top of each other), and in graffiti. It certenly shakes up the bank teller...

    Plus it happens a lot more at work...at work I cary a little notpad about the size of my palm pilot, and I naturlay write near the bottom every time...I have to actualy make shure I'm writing across...but I still have a hard time not writing in graffiti.
  • "written my entire name in one block (each letter on top of each other), and in graffiti. It certenly shakes up the bank teller"

    Back in my PDP-11 assembler days I spent three hours trying to figure out why my checkbook didn't balance, only to find that at some point I had started doing the arithmetic in octal. I fixed that problem - I stopped balancing my checkbook.

    sPh
  • "Did you just happen to read that in the jargon file"

    Nope - it actually happened to me. I was never at MIT and my PDP-11 days were long before the Jargon File was known to the outside world. I shredded those check registers last time I moved (3 years ago), though, so you will have to take my word for it. My concentration level is nowhere near as high as real hackers I have known; if it happened to me I imagine it must have happened to many others as well.

    sPh
  • I bought a Pilot this week and I started reading this in disbelief. I use both the dvorak and qwerty keyboard layouts without problem and I was thinking, what a bunch of wimps that cannot adapt to a minor handwriting dialect.

    Oh, this article had me fuming at the possible lawsuits about the latest technology. I hit the floor laughing when I saw this comment. This was a rich one that came a month and a week too late!
  • As far back as I can remember, my handwriting has been terrible - both cursive and printing. My cursive has always been much slower than my printing. Now if I have to write cursive for anything besides my illegible signature, I have to really really concentrate on it. My printing has suffered alot since I've switched to typing most everything. When I write things now, I have to watch as I write things, otherwise I don't get useful stuff on the paper. The really weird part is, sometimes I skip letters, and I havn't really thought about it much, but I think there's a correlation to which letters I miss... I think most of the letters I miss are ones that I would type with the other (left) hand... Now I'm gonna have to pay attention tommorow when I write something at work, and see if that theory holds up...
  • The more I think about it, part of it is probably that I type much faster than I can print... So I'm probably thinking too far ahead, and getting buffer overruns. Part of it might also be the fact that there's no backspace key on the paper.
    I'll definately have to do some tests at work tommorow and see if I can see the pattern.

    It's gonna be a royal pain to have to use paper for the exam when I finally get up to 13wpm with morse code... Wonder if I can convince them I have to use a keyboard/typewriter to copy code.
  • I'd say this post serves as a fairly accurate measure of how many slashdot readers actually read and/or finish the stories posted, and how many just skim the title, maybe the first paragraph, look at 1 or 2 comments, and then spout off.

    --
    Ian Peters
  • I suffer from this too, even writing a paragraph or two causes me considerable pain, but I can type a small novel on my M$ Natural (1.0) keyboard with out even minor irritation. Thank god I'm graduating in 48 hours, these last essay tests about did me in. I think if I have to ever write any essays again, I'm going to get special permission to bring a lap-top to class. Maybe this is something that should be seriously studied, even if the "PIP" is total crap, I could see how neglecting to write a substantial amount could lead to a loss of penmanship or rapid muscle fatigue when being forced to write. I too have a signature that is wildly variable, thank god no one checks.
  • Me too, me too...

    I've actually had someone question my signature. The bank computers asked me to do it again a while ago. I've recently radically simplified my signature, and I've _almost_ got it down. I'm 25 - pity me.

    Seriously, who writes anymore? I can't remember the last time I hand wrote more than a single sentence.

    Kris.

    Win a Rio [cjb.net] (or join the SETI Club via same link)
  • I noticed that if I ever write anything anymore I (besides having terrible handwriting) I tend to skip letters too.

    Do you tend to also swap letters around? That is begining to really get on my nerves. I haven't looked at the patern yet. Think I'll do that.
  • It might be real, but I dont buy the explanation.

    He says first: "By the time our signature stabilizes," explains Miezkowsky, "so does our
    personality. Hence, a change in signature often signals a major shift in personality." Ok,
    so changes in signature are an EFFECT of changes in personality. Fine.

    but then he says, tantamount thereto, imho, that forcing change in ones signature can CAUSE problems (with personality?): "With PIP, it's not a signature change but a radical departure from one's individual style of writing, and this alteration can lead to big, big problems."

    I dont know why he says "its not a signature change", because that links back to the first statement, suggesting he's thinking of it as a CAUSE to things similar to personality change.

    I dont think its a two way street bub.

    While I dont doubt that some people can get neurological impairment from various suprising
    things, and this may be one of them, I think his reasoning is off (or at least his attention to the logic grammar in his statements is incorrect).
  • Similar sindromes have been known with typing versus handwriting, stenography versus handwriting, etc.

    It just happens to some people (usually if they change the way they work after 30-35).

    And this does not mean that it happens to everyone of course.

  • I read through this article, getting a little nervous as I scrolled down. Then I stopped. Heck, I'm 17, addicted to caffeine, suffering from mild carpal tunnel, and I perpetually drive 80mph. Degenerative heart disease on my dad's side, diabetes on my mom's. I'm allergic to almost everything. I'll die young, leave a pretty corpse...
    I shrugged, took another swig of espresso and rubbed my wrists.


    Then I read the disclaimer.

    ...

    Dang.


    Thank you, Rob, for making everyone's day a little more surreal...

    --RawkettPenguiN

    "My Palm Pilot is named Arthur. Perhaps that's why it locks up."

  • me too (Score:2)

    by JEP ( 28735 )

    Of course, I get this already and I don't even have a PDA. I just type so much that my writing skills are vestigial. He talks about anxiety over signing a check - I got that. Well, maybe not the anxiety bit, but I take a long time to remember what the heck my hand is supposed to be doing.

    --

  • Heh, I find it hard to use a "normal" (algebraic) calculator... I'm so tempted to just do 1 2 3 + +

    As for writing, I transpose letters and drop them (or half-write them), which gets worse the faster I have to write (aka "taking notes"). No wonder my notes are so illegible to me.

    Better yet, I don't make much sense sometimes, when the ideas come too fast for the transcription medium (keyboard/writing/speaking)... What I need is a neural interface (and I can't upgrade the buffer... it's way too small for my needs now).

    Blah, I think it's getting to me, now.
  • I really hope Taco wasn't taking that at face value (viz. "from the that-ain't-so-hot dept.").
  • It really happens. Besides doing my checkbook in hex (and not always catching it later, since I was so used to seeing the digits 'A'-'F'), I kept overcounting in Korean during my exercise classes. I was focused elsewhere and knew I was supposed to count to "10", so I kept "accidently" repeating the middle numbers.

    But doing your math in hex is nothing. After playing 'go' intensely for a while, I found myself
    driving down the street and thinking about how you could change the landscape by putting a tree there (and remove some buildings), a short building over there (and remove a cluster of highrises), etc. Talk about baffled looks when you mention that to others...

  • Well don't that beat all.. (Score:3)

    by jabber ( 13196 ) on Thursday May 06, 1999 @08:46PM (#1901383) Homepage
    As I was reading it, I thought "gee, I wouldn't be surprised to read something like this in The Onion". Imagine my contentment at having my judgement about a 'news' story shown correct.

    Althought, there is something to be said for the concept. I know a little about scriptanalysis, and while the jury is still out on the completeness of the theory, there is something to it.

    Certain personality types seem to correlate with particular styles of writing pretty strongly.
    Intense people tend to have spiky, angular writing, while easy going people tend to write in rounder letters. The nuances of crossed t's and dotted i's suggest certain personality traits - but it's far from an exact science. It's pretty interpretive, much like dreams and free association exercises.

    But it makes me wonder. If there are in fact correlations, and one's writing style betrays one's personality, then why could it not work the other way? After all, it might be a bio-feedback mechanism - just like facial expression and posture.

    Consider that changing one's tempo of writing, slowing it down and concentrating more on the spacing between words and other penmanship artifacts just might feed back onto one's personality. This puts all those penmanship lessons in Catholic school into a different perspective. The good nuns intended for us all to have nice handwriting, but they were also shoehorning us into a uniform personality type. Another example of religious brainwashing.

    Now, a PDA, with it's typically jerky and disjointed grafitti might instill those tendencies in the user.

    Give a little thought to the appearance and style of your handwriting. Is it small and intense - focused on details and careless of the reader's experience? Is it permeated by short, angular upstrokes into sequencial letters in a word? How about that bursty tempo? And the afterthought crosed t and dotted i? Is it pretty and elegant, or more concerned with getting the meaning across?

    Congratulations, you intuitive, cerebral, stressed egomanical hacker type.

  • Did anyone else read the disclaimer? (Score:3)

    by _mythdraug_ ( 27158 ) on Thursday May 06, 1999 @04:58PM (#1901384)
    "The South to the Future World Wide Wire
    Service is a weekly feed of technology and media news commentary and satire published by the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Quotations attributed to public figures who are satirized are often true, but sometimes invented. Some fictional statements may, in fact, be true. Any other use of real names is accidental and coincidental. "

  • wtpooh is very embarassed (Score:4)

    by wtpooh ( 15154 ) on Thursday May 06, 1999 @05:07PM (#1901385) Homepage Journal
    Ha ha!
    Fooled you all!
    No, I must confess, I did not read the part at the end where they say they are a satire mag. Someone at work forwarded the link to me, and I fell for it all the way. I've got a feeling he'll be coming over and laughing at me any time now.

    Of course, if I had known it was a joke I would still have submitted it, but I wouldn't be quite so red-faced now :).

  • PIP's nothing, I get Dvorakitis! (Score:5)

    by NMSpaz ( 34277 ) <jaredr+slashdot@gmail.com> on Thursday May 06, 1999 @06:19PM (#1901386)
    I realize that the artice was a joke, but I've actually seen something similar. I decided to learn how to type on a Dvorak keyboard a few years ago, and almost totally immersed myself in it for a few months. At first, I could switch back to QWERTY without any problem, but once Dvorak felt "natural", it was suddenly a lot harder. I would sit at a QWERTY keyboard and know what I wanted to type, but my hands refused to move for a couple seconds while my brain "switched keymaps".

    Oddly enough, once I started typing a sentance (just a couple of letters in, even), it would come back to me effortlessly, but as soon as I stopped for a few seconds, I'd have that hesisation again!

    Oh, and for those who think that Dvorak is overhyped-- you're right. My objective with learning Dvorak wasn't speed. I was in a dorm room where *everybody* wants to check email on any computer they can beg their way onto. Changing the keymaps was a pretty effective deterrant.

    Humorous aside: Dvorak may be "optimized" for typing in English, but UNIX commands (and programming symbols like ";") are clearly optimized for typing in QWERTY! To type "ls\n" on a Dvorak keyboard, you hit the QWERTY keys "p;\n" -- three consecutive little finger keystrokes. Ick! And if you mess up while learning and accidently type in a QWERTY "ls", a dvorak keyboard will show "no". It's quite odd to be at a bash prompt, tell your computer a simple command like "ls" and have "no" appear on the screen. I thought my computer was rebelling against me the first time I did it!

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