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Technorama takes a light hearted look at the world of tech, science, sci-fi, and all things geek. You can get the stories about software releases and corporate mergers anywhere, but the Technorama team digs out the truly fun and interesting stories, combining education with entertaining. Find out more about us, our interests, and our show.

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2 Responses to Contact Us

  1. Dennis Patnaude says:

    Long time listner and wanted to send a note to correct a statement made in show 229 about Drunk Driving laws being a federal law. Driving under the influence, Seatbelts, and Motorcycle helmet laws are all state laws.

    I believe that the federal government only makes recommendations as to what the best practice is for laws and sets standards for laws that enable a state to receive federal funding for programs for enforcing the above laws.

  2. Cujo says:

    Great show, guys. Keep it up.

    I’ve been wading through my podcast backlog and I’ve been following the various keyboard discussions. A couple of comments for you…

    The various international keyboard layouts originated with typewriters and not computers. As you said, they were created to help prevent jamming the typebars. Since different languages tend to have a different distribution of the letters, the keyboards tended to get reorganized by language. (You can see this distribution issue in foreign language Scrabble sets. eg: A Polish scrabble set has 5 Zs, K & W are among the highest scoring letters in French and there are no Js or Ks in an Italian set)

    There was a minor dig at Apple for using a “non standard” keyboard This is actually the “standard” that most computer terminals and computer equipment used prior to the IBM PC. Smith-Corona, Underwood, Remington, etc. all followed a similar layout in typwriters. It was the IBM Selectric that used the oddball layout which carried through to the IBM PC. You can still see the “standard” keyboard layout in the UK and on many other international english keyboards. This is a fine example of a short-lived IBM advertising campaign from the late 70’s “We don’t follow standards, we make them”. (or something to that effect)

    101

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