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Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Whose brilliant idea was this?

Ten key...


vs. phone pad...


..look up the word "proactive" and discover the true meaning. "Yeah, well, duh." Prior knowledge with a similar system may prevent you from having as easy a time with "X" if you didn't already know "Y." Which is why it is always fun to sit around in meetings where idiot managers throw the word "proactive" around without knowing from whence the word comes and its original meaning. i.e. A person going to the US from England or vice-versa is going to want to tend to drive on the "wrong" side of the road - because he is so ingrained with doing things a certain way, having learned to drive elsewhere 1st. Now, a Martian, on the other hand ....

Anyway, I'm SURE there's a good reason....but I can't think why the phone pad and 10 key are different.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

How very interesting--I never noticed this before--yeah, whose brilliant idea was that anyway!?

gemoftheocean said...

I don't know, but it's irritating the HELL out of me right now, as I'm having to do a lot of 10-key entry at the moment. Took me 2 days before I stopped typing 7 instead of 1, etc.

And while those ba$tard$ were at it getting their jollies off, could they NOT have put the little alphabet letters on the computer 10 key pad - that does come in handy believe it or not!

PJA said...

I have a huge(!!!) problem with this, especially when entering pin numbers into credit card machines!

Merry Christmas, almost.

Px

ArchAngel's Advocate said...

My understanding is that the phone company purposely arranged the numbers differently. They did it because 10 key users (a mechanical adding machine) using the 1st touch tone phones were entering the digits so quickly that the touch tone system would misdial. So they changed the number oder to slow those 10 keyers down.

Sarah - Kala said...

AA - instead of just telling them to slow down. C'mon! But, thanks for the interesting reason for this idiocy.

gemoftheocean said...

AA - okay...thanks. I remember reading something similar about the placement of the qwerty keys on the standard typewriter. The letters were placed to slow down typing speeds so the keys wouldn't get jammed. 55% of the work (in English, anyway) is on the left hand, any "normal" thinking person would put the "E" under the right index finger. But I've typed this way so long, no sense in going to Dvorak, God bless 'im.

Adrienne said...

AA is correct. As a very speedy ten keyer it drives me crazy too.

That's also, I believe, the reason for the QWERTY keyboard. There is another set up that is much faster but people were jamming up the letter wackers on the old typewriters. I Googled the other keyboard once but didn't think it woudl be a good idea to invest time in learning it when everone elses keyboard would still be QWERTY.

swissmiss said...

In high school, being the daughter of parents who were raised during the depression, I took a lot of "office practices" classes as a back-up plan. If the economy ever was really bad, I could always be one heck of a secretary...that was my thinking anyhoo. Well, I had to learn 10-key at the same time I was a "touch key professional" at Target...if you remember how the cashiers at Target used to have to ring in a zillion numbers and the price on every item until scanners came along...long after I was no longer working there. My teacher actually let me out of the 10-key drills at school because it was hoking up my speed at work!

gemoftheocean said...

Have to say that in many ways one of the most practical classes I took in HS was one semester of typing. It's stood me in great stead all these years. I typed about 44 words a minute THEN and I type on average about 60 words a minute now when I'm not pressing terribly fast. I can get it up close to 70, but then I start making too many mistakes.

gemoftheocean said...

Have to say that in many ways one of the most practical classes I took in HS was one semester of typing. It's stood me in great stead all these years. I typed about 44 words a minute THEN and I type on average about 60 words a minute now when I'm not pressing terribly fast. I can get it up close to 70, but then I start making too many mistakes.

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