QUESTION

[davidn]

Plusnet decided to set fire to their servers or throw them about the room or something this morning, but it seems to be working again now. I'm still mystified as to why I have a static IP address even though I haven't paid for one.

A question came into my head the other day when we were talking about the Caps Lock key in the Security lecture. (Well, it beats talking about hypercube-shaped lattices.) How many people actually use it? I can't think of a time when I've needed it on my computer, or turned it on without it being accidental. It's just something annoying between Tab and Shift that messes up your typing when it's hit.

If you ask me we should take that key off along with the blatantly useless SysRq, and replace them with something useful, like "Write my essay for me" and "Kill the Microsoft paperclip". Or I'm sure there are other more feasible ones. Scroll Lock can stay - it may not have much use, but it does something in Excel and it's got an air of mystery to it.

Comments

[e-to-the-ipi.livejournal.com]

I've used Caps Lock in a couple of games for a button, and a few times for capitals. However, you have started me wondering whether or not it could be useful to do away with Caps Lock, replacing it with another button for some indeterminate purpose, and integrating a Caps Lock function into word processing software, e-mail clients, etc. It really doesn't make too much sense to have it on hardware, I'd have thought.