[HN Gopher] Mavis Beacon was the top typing teacher in the US, t...
___________________________________________________________________
Mavis Beacon was the top typing teacher in the US, then she
vanished
Author : ducaale
Score : 134 points
Date : 2022-03-13 15:59 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.independent.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.independent.co.uk)
| [deleted]
| cols wrote:
| Archive:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220313160742/https://www.indep...
|
| Mavis Beacon taught me to type. I don't really care if she's real
| or not, I'll always have a soft spot for that CD!
| tiahura wrote:
| iratewizard wrote:
| "America is racist" is a narrative sold by racists to sow
| racial division.
|
| Shirkey's principle. Any institution (or career race-baiter)
| tasked with solving a problem will instead preserve the
| problem so they can continue to solve it.
| lozenge wrote:
| What year did America go from actually being racist to just
| pretending?
| tiahura wrote:
| I think a strong argument is to be made that in the early
| '70s the tide turned and racism became viewed as old
| fashioned and embarrassing.
| sangnoir wrote:
| I think a subtle distinction has to be made: being
| _labelled_ a racist became the worst thing ever. Which
| has led to absurd scenes where someone conducts
| themselves in blatantly racist ways and then says
| "That's not who I am". It has become a noun, rather than
| a verb
| ketzo wrote:
| There's a significant divide between "America is racist"
| and "America was founded on, and still preserves, many
| institutions that are fundamentally biased against some
| people."
|
| I don't know many people who seriously claim that every
| single atom of American life is racist.
| iratewizard wrote:
| People and the institutions they create are fundamentally
| biased, period. Race isn't more important than the other
| biases because some propaganda you saw on TV says so.
| Stop enabling division.
| _3u10 wrote:
| No actual person thinks this but it's the take away when
| you compress it down to memes / read about it in media.
|
| America has no room for nuance, it's either every police
| shooting is justified or every shooting isn't justified.
| It's probably not a great way to actually run a country
| but it makes for great media sales / entertaining
| politics.
| andrewzah wrote:
| No. In daily life America and Americans are typically
| nuanced. Like literally any other country.
|
| It's the internet that disposes of context and nuance.
| syshum wrote:
| No the internet can do that just fine, the twitterization
| of social media in to short quippy "bumper sicker" took
| the worst aspects of politics (sound bites and bumper
| stickers") and normalized that in to the "correct" way to
| debate or discuss topics.
|
| Gone where the long form threaded topics of forums,
| usenet, etc, replaced with 180 characters quips
| bbarnett wrote:
| I'm sorry, I didn't get that, it was cut off at 180
| chars.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Twitter has never had a 180 character limit. It was 140
| characters (based on the 160 character limit of SMS), but
| it's now 380 characters.
| _3u10 wrote:
| Yes well said, that's exactly what I was trying to
| convey.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I think the meta-commentary re: the current zeitgeist of
| misinformation and nonsense. Being inspired to write a
| comment like this is probably more revealing of human
| character.
| umanwizard wrote:
| The US isn't some kind of Nazi state. Black people holding
| professional jobs has been considered culturally acceptable
| for many decades. (And this by no means proves that racism
| doesn't exist).
| xattt wrote:
| My hypothesis is that the groups that were typically
| associated with steadfast racist views were typically
| technically illiterate, so this intersection with Mavis
| Beacon just didn't happen.
| pessimizer wrote:
| And let's be serious, this is a fictional black typist.
| Secretary isn't the most high-status job. Teacher is a bit
| more status (she's a typing teacher!), but typist could
| also mean data entry, which is significantly worse.
|
| The US has never had a problem with black servants, but
| that's not a indicator of not being racist.
| sangnoir wrote:
| That makes sense. Polling in the early 90's showed half the
| country was against black/white interracial marriages, but
| no one had a problem with a black secretary/typist (which
| did not disrupt the "social hierarchy" in people's minds)
| unboxingelf wrote:
| Blank key caps taught me to type
| bladegash wrote:
| Same here - I would likely be finger pecking to this day if not
| for Mavis Beacon.
| jrib wrote:
| I had Mavis Beacon but AOL Instant Messenger taught me. I later
| relearned using gtypist when I switched to dvorak 10 years
| later though.
|
| https://www.gnu.org/software/gtypist/
| Ansil849 wrote:
| > I don't really care if she's real or not
|
| I don't understand comments like this. Why go through the
| effort of articulating your lack of interest in a topic? "I
| have no intellectual curiosity about this topic, but I figure I
| should still comment letting the world know I have no interest
| in this".
| cjaybo wrote:
| "They taught me how to type" sounds a lot more like fond
| recollection than disinterest to me, but I guess we all read
| things differently. Your way seems needlessly uncharitable,
| though!
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| > I don't understand comments like this.
|
| Interestingly, I suspect you understand it fully.
| gunfighthacksaw wrote:
| "I don't really care if" can be replaced with "regardless of
| whether" if you have a pathological case of semantic
| pedantry.
| interestica wrote:
| I think you missed the point of the comment. I don't think
| this is a lack of interest in the topic per se -- it's
| demonstrating that when using the software, there was a clear
| separation between the 'teacher' and just using the software.
| I had no idea she was a 'real' person (or interpreted as such
| anyways) and always presumed it was just a 'character'.
| Jaruzel wrote:
| I think something is lost in translation here, the OP is
| saying that emotionally it doesn't matter to them if she
| wasn't real, they still hold her in high regard.
|
| They are not saying, "I have no interest in this."
| HideousKojima wrote:
| StarCraft taught me how to type, gotta type fast if you're
| going to trash-talk on Battle.Net
| jen729w wrote:
| Copying my mate's work (hi, mjoc101) at uni taught me to
| type. Too many headaches looking at his printout, my screen,
| my keyboard, forced me to use whatever tool was available on
| the uni *nix systems.
|
| One of the best things I ever did for myself. If you're
| reading this and you don't touch-type, learn. Now.
|
| (They kicked me out eventually, so nothing good came of the
| copying.)
| monkeybutton wrote:
| ICQ and MSN messenger did it for me.
| effingwewt wrote:
| Definitely messenger apps that did it for me. Back in the
| AOL online CD days!
|
| No one I knew could type, so I had to learn myself. By the
| time it was taught in HS, my habits and muscle memory
| weren't having it. I could type 'properly' but far slower,
| so I gave up.
|
| To this day I've never had a RSI from typing (and some of
| the marathons were crazy!), and it's rampant among 'proper'
| typers.
| iszomer wrote:
| Are you sure it wasn't all about the APM and macros? :)
|
| I remember briefly learning to type from a Mavis Beacon book
| but practicing on those clicker mechanical keyboards drove my
| parents nuts!
| interestica wrote:
| I had no idea there was a potential "real person" there any more
| than I thought Mario/Luigi were real. Maybe I'd never even seen
| an image or box to make that connection? I remember that the
| software was really useful early on -- and game modes even made
| it a bit competitive.
|
| For a left-field alternative for super young kids (3? 4?) just
| being introduced to letters/keyboard try out Typatone
| (https://typatone.com/). Get a wireless keyboard and throw it up
| on a big screen. Something interesting happens when there's the
| added layer of reactive sound tied to what they've typed. It's a
| really good way of recognizing letters, and learning where to
| find them on a keyboard. And then common words take on a specific
| "song". There's probably something to this in an education space
| for someone to build on.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| It has been claimed Mario is based on someone that worked for
| (edit: rented property to) Nintendo. Not sure I belive that
| though.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2018/11/02/663372770/mario-segale-inspir...
| LukeShu wrote:
| I've never heard that the character was "based on" Mario
| Segale, just named after him.
|
| It is my dim recollection from reading _Game Over_ by David
| Sheff many years ago that the incident when "Segale was said
| to have made an impression on his tenants when he allegedly
| stormed into Nintendo's offices in Tukwila, Wash., demanding
| they catch up on late rent" (as the NPR article writes)
| happened when they already had the Donkey Kong cabinets in
| their final form.
|
| The article from Benj Edwards cited at the end of the NPR
| article says
|
| > Legend has it that NOA President Minoru Arakawa noticed
| physical similarities between Donkey Kong's short, dark-
| haired protagonist and the landlord. So the crew at NOA
| nicknamed the character Mario, and it stuck.
|
| And that seams eminently plausible to me; that someone said
| to Shigeru Miyamoto (Mario's creator) "hey, they guys at the
| American office have started calling the character 'Mario'
| because he looks like our landlord who is named Mario" and
| Miyamoto ran with it.
| staticassertion wrote:
| The best typing teacher was AIM and Runescape.
| LukeShu wrote:
| If anyone else is confused by some of the years in the article, I
| have submitted the following to The Independent:
|
| Subject: Inaccuracy in article on Mavis Beacon
|
| The article at
| https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/mavis-beac...
| states that The Software Toolworks was "founded in 1990." I
| believe this to be a mistake; it does not make sense in the
| context of the article discussing things that they did in 1986
| and 1987. Wikipedia tells me that The Software Toolworks was
| founded in 1980.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| I told a coworker that I was dismayed to learn that Mavis Beacon
| wasn't real. She had a good laugh at my expense.
|
| her: "Really??? You thought she was a real person? JOHN. Come
| on."
|
| me: "I thought she was a real person, like Orville Redenbacher. I
| didn't know she was made up like Betty Crocker."
|
| her: "WAIT, BETTY CROCKER WASN'T REAL??"
|
| oh, the laughs
| interestica wrote:
| There's probably a list somewhere. Aunt Jemima? Uncle Ben?
| Colonel Sanders? Betty Crocker? The Quaker oats guy?
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Oh boy wait until you hear about the Cream of Wheat guy
| namdnay wrote:
| Mr Kipling
| Jtsummers wrote:
| A couple lists from Wikipedia:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Female_characters_in_.
| ..
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Male_characters_in_ad.
| ..
|
| Unfortunately they mix the obviously fictional in with the
| less obviously fictional (like cartoon characters with more
| plausible characters).
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Wendy Thomas is real though.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| I didn't make the list, just found it. Fortunately, it's
| Wikipedia so you can edit it if you want.
| lupire wrote:
| The name is real (and maybe the portrait is close enough)
| but the character in commercials isn't.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| The one I was most surprised to learn was a real person
| was Chef Boyardee.
| slavik81 wrote:
| From Wikipedia:
|
| > After leaving his position as head chef at the Plaza
| Hotel in New York City, Boiardi opened a restaurant
| called Il Giardino d'Italia in 1924 at East 9th Street
| and Woodland Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio. The idea for Chef
| Boyardee came about when restaurant customers began
| asking Boiardi for his spaghetti sauce, which he began to
| distribute in milk bottles. Four years later, in 1928,
| Boiardi opened a factory and moved production to Milton,
| Pennsylvania, where he could grow his own tomatoes and
| mushrooms. He decided to name his product "Boy-Ar-Dee" to
| help Americans pronounce his name correctly. The first
| product to be sold was a "ready-to-heat spaghetti kit" in
| 1928. The kit included uncooked pasta, tomato sauce, and
| a container of pre-grated cheese.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chef_Boyardee
| asperous wrote:
| It says female/male characters in advertising; not
| necessarily fictional.
| deutschew wrote:
| damn i thought those were the founders
| lmkg wrote:
| Colonel Sanders was the real founder, although not a real
| Colonel.
| netr0ute wrote:
| He was technically a real Colonel, just not a
| conventional one.
| shoo wrote:
| a convolutional kernel, maybe
| SaberTail wrote:
| He was a Kentucky Colonel:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kentucky_Colonel
| sbuttgereit wrote:
| Colonel Harland David Sanders (September 9, 1890 - December
| 16, 1980)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonel_Sanders
| dehrmann wrote:
| Dave Thomas of Wendy's was also a Kentucky Colonel.
| rob74 wrote:
| Peter Norton?
| userbinator wrote:
| He's real. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Norton
| [deleted]
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| And then there is John McAfee who passed recently in a
| Spanish jail cell.
| fuzzer37 wrote:
| Was assassinated.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Back in the 1980s, when my company Zortech was located in
| London, my partner set up a "Meet Walter Bright" with the tech
| press there. After all, my picture was on the Zortech ads and
| the compiler manual.
|
| When I arrived at the meet & greet, the journalists thought I
| was a model (!) hired to be a figurehead. I had to show them my
| passport to convince them that was my real name, and answer a
| bunch of tech questions to show I knew all about C++ and
| compilers.
|
| It was a very amusing experience for me, especially that some
| people thought I was handsome enough to be a model, LOL.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| I wonder how handsome you would have to be to play a model
| playing yourself.
|
| This is a great story. I'm wondering if any of them had
| techie friends that set them up.
|
| "I'm going to interview Walter Bright!"
|
| "Oh yeah? You know that's not a real person, right?"
|
| I think I would do that if I ever got the chance. "You think
| the guy who created Linux is named Linus? Really? Well, okay
| I guess"
| [deleted]
| mwattsun wrote:
| When I first got internet in the 90's I became aware of an
| art collective that was fronted by a personality name
| "Netochka Nezvanova". I got the impression that this kind of
| thing was nothing new. Maybe your last name "Bright" and
| programming skills were such that they thought you had to be
| more than one person!
|
| https://anthology.rhizome.org/m9ndfukc-0-99
| WalterBright wrote:
| They thought "Walter Bright" was a made up marketing name,
| like Mr. Goodwrench.
|
| P.S. I still have the green shirt!
| tomcam wrote:
| when I finish my next compiler I'm going to hire someone
| on Fiverr to steal--I mean, alter slightly--the George
| Brazil Plumbing guy (https://www.google.com/search?q=geor
| ge+brazil+plumbing&tbm=i...), put him on the website, and
| call him Walter Bright just to complete the circle
| tomcam wrote:
| What a great story. Also how nice is it that at one time
| journalists could ask something smart enough to discern your
| knowledge of C++
| wdurden wrote:
| Ima hafta call baloney on this one ... If WalterBright was
| real he would'a wrote a language ... even better than C!
| Maybe throw in some memory management. Just sayin'
|
| Plus, "Zortech" ... wth kind of name is that? Someone
| couldn't make this stuff up as fiction! And a journalist that
| knew the right question to see if you knew about C plus plus
| ... You almost had me til there.
| hasmanean wrote:
| I just assumed she was a software developer who decided to
| teach typing. Then I realized, she doesn't have to code it
| herself...maybe she hired someone to program it for her.
|
| It never crossed my mind that she was not an entrepreneur until
| I read this comment.
| [deleted]
| Aardwolf wrote:
| Also featured in a Lazy Game Reviews video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-6d6X4E-3w
| serf wrote:
| an aside, I miss old Broderbund software.
|
| I'm no longer of 'in-education' age so my opinion may be way off
| , but Broderbund seemed to fill an educational niche that is no
| longer as explored as it was.
| joshu wrote:
| what ever happened to carmen sandiego?
| savoytruffle wrote:
| Get on it, gumshoes
| aceazzameen wrote:
| You mean where in the world is Carmen Sandiego? She's at
| Netflix.
| techsupporter wrote:
| All these people want to know, "Where in the World is Carmen
| Sandiego?"
|
| That game show on PBS was my favorite and I was genuinely sad
| when Lynne Thigpen died. That show got me into Jeopardy!, and
| then into the trivia group I found on a local discussion
| forum, and then through a friendship made there into the job
| I've had for many years.
|
| Hit it, Rockapella.
| whitej125 wrote:
| She was captured in Argentina attempting to steal Iguazu Falls
| [0]. Fortunately a couple of super sleuths [1] were tipped off
| about the soon-to-be caper by none other than Dr. Brain [2].
|
| I miss the educational games of the 90s.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen_Sandiego_(video_game_se...
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_Mountain! [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_of_Dr._Brain
| na85 wrote:
| We had a copy of Mavis Beacon but I never really used it. What
| taught me typing:
|
| 1. Flirting with the girl I later married over ICQ
|
| 2. Getting rushed and begging for help in StarCraft 1
|
| Both things require timely and efficient typed communication!
| kevinventullo wrote:
| I believe AIM did more to teach my entire graduating class how
| to type than any educational software.
| Dalrymple wrote:
| My graduating class learned to type by producing thousands of
| punch cards on the IBM 026 punch card machine.
| vmception wrote:
| Trying to keep up with file servers and conversation on IRC
| taught me to type fast!
|
| Sink or swim scenarios work best for me.
| na85 wrote:
| Yes, the glory days of game rips (sorry, gamez and ripz) on
| DALnet channels full of uber-leet color codes and DCC-based
| fserv interfaces.
|
| I miss the old internet.
| joshspankit wrote:
| You married over ICQ? If so, that's quite notable!
| na85 wrote:
| No no, I meant the messaging was conducted over ICQ.
| good8675309 wrote:
| On a somewhat related note, if you're teaching your kids typing
| the current Mavis Beacon software has broken DRM purchased
| straight from Amazon. I was told by their support to buy it again
| directly from their website. I recommend the much superior
| Typing.com
| etataetaet wrote:
| Typing.com and nitrotype are AMAZING tools to learn how to type
| riffic wrote:
| are people still just now coming to the conclusion this was a
| fictional character? yikes.
| softwarebeware wrote:
| We also really need to find Carmen Sandiego!! :-p
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| Someone did: Janine LaManna
|
| https://www.huffpost.com/entry/carmen-sandiego-found_n_578e6...
| WhiteOwlEd wrote:
| Mavis Beacon taught my how to type between 60-75 wpm. The dictate
| feature of Microsoft Word within Office 365 gets me roughly to
| 100 wpm after corrections.
|
| Bottom line: Mavis Beacon helped me code faster, but Microsoft
| helped me write blogs faster.
| jker wrote:
| This is always interesting to me: I find that I can't dictate
| at all, I need to see the words and read them as I'm writing
| them, for some reason. Especially for writing fiction, it's
| just hard to imagine saying it out loud, I feel like that would
| engage a different and "wrong" part of my brain.
| WhiteOwlEd wrote:
| When I am coding, I feel the need to "type it out."
|
| If I am writing blogs or if I'm writing scripts, I find that
| I can dictate much faster and then just edit the sentences
| afterwards in order to clarify. The process of dictation plus
| editing is faster for me than if I were to type out
| everything.
| dang wrote:
| Past appearances by Mavis:
|
| _Mavis Beacon_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28767251 -
| Oct 2021 (4 comments)
|
| _What 's Mavis Beacon Up to These Days? (2015)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25530183 - Dec 2020 (58
| comments)
| ghaff wrote:
| Unfortunately, I never learned to touch type though I'm pretty
| fast so long as I'm not copying something. I don't think I ever
| touched a typewriter until senior year in high school and touch
| typing never seemed a sufficient priority to me to deliberately
| learn it. (Shorthand would probably have been useful too at
| various times.)
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| Next, we track down Waldo and ask him how it feels that people
| don't know he actually goes by Wally:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where's_Wally%3F
| narrator wrote:
| "The Spectacle is not a collection of images but a social
| relation among people mediated by images." - Guy Debord
|
| You could literally write a PhD thesis on this Mavis Beacon thing
| by running it through the lense of Debord's "Society of the
| Spectacle."
| _3u10 wrote:
| Through that lens she's more real than most. I loved his idea
| that JFK eulogized his own funeral.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Out of curiosity, have you ever publicly referred to the
| Society of the Spectacle more than 3 months ago? For whatever
| reason, I am seeing all sorts of references all over the
| internet to Debord and SotS in the past couple months, and I'm
| just trying to track down why this is happening. I don't think
| this is a yellow car phenomenon because I've been into
| Situationism for the past 20 years and am fairly attuned to
| references to it that I stumble across.
| narrator wrote:
| I think the "Contain" podcast (https://podbay.fm/p/contain-
| podcast) got me into it originally. It has a lot of guests
| who reference stuff like "commodity fetishism" and I just
| started looking that up to figure out what they were talking
| about and this eventually led to Debord.
|
| As an aside, The "Contain" podcast is great. Lots of
| interviews with lots of unusual intellectual people.
| 8b16380d wrote:
| Debord has been a well known figure in far right circles for
| a while now
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| I remember at some point in middle school in the early 90s we had
| typing instruction in the form of some sort of car drag racing
| video game. It was actually quite fun and motivated me to type
| correctly! The faster and more accurately you typed, the faster
| your car went. And you could use the money you won from winning
| to upgrade you car, or purchase faster ones.
|
| Does anyone remember this?
| codingclaws wrote:
| I still play:
|
| https://play.typeracer.com
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| That doesn't let you upgrade cars to faster ones though.
| cubix wrote:
| I guess now I know the story behind this flyer I saw in a Bay
| Area shop window a little over a year ago:
| https://files.catbox.moe/48giot.jpeg
| harel wrote:
| Real or not, I owe Mavis my touch typing ability. It's kinda like
| the "are we in a simulation" argument - does it matter if we are,
| if we can touch type like Mavis Beacon?
| gnicholas wrote:
| https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.independent.co.uk%...
| dheera wrote:
| I'm in my 30s and I grew up at a time in grade school when
| computers and internet access were just becoming more and more
| popular, but typing wasn't specifically a necessity for school.
|
| As such I'm EXTREMELY GLAD that I had the choice to learn how to
| type on my own and made a conscious choice to learn Dvorak
| instead of QWERTY.
|
| I feel that kids these days are forced into QWERTY as part of
| curriculum and I think that's a terrible forced propagation of a
| shitty standard.
| caymanjim wrote:
| There's no good evidence that Dvorak is better for either speed
| or RSI.
| dheera wrote:
| So what? There's no good evidence for QWERTY and it's based
| on assumptions about mechanical typewriters that are no
| longer true whereas Dvorak is at least based on something
| that applies to modern life.
|
| There's adecnotal evidence of both in favor of Dvorak which
| is more than good enough for me.
|
| Anyway, it was super easy to learn, I was lightyears ahead of
| my classmates in touch typing, so I'm happy.
| lazide wrote:
| Well, if you do something that doesn't match what 90% (or
| for Dvorak, more like 99.99%) of society does, especially
| if it is in a way that is incompatible, you end up having
| to do both ways or suffer significant friction in everyday
| life if it is a common skill or requirement.
|
| It does open some unique niches, but it's also easy to
| oversell that advantages while ignoring the disadvantages.
|
| Dvorak is even less useful than being a leftie (since
| lefties still have the same hands in the same orientation),
| it's more like if someone switched/mirrored the hands
| themselves.
|
| Which, if everyone had the same setup would be fine. But
| since not everyone does, better get used to constantly
| switching and adjusting things.
| dheera wrote:
| > suffer significant friction in everyday life
|
| I don't.
|
| > if it is a common skill or requirement
|
| It almost never is, in my personal experience.
|
| Dvorak is available as an option on all the major OSes on
| a per-user basis. It's literally zero issue.
| lazide wrote:
| Glad to hear it works for you!
|
| I travel frequently (well did not that long ago), and
| regularly work on a equipment that others use daily.
|
| I'd get nothing but hassles if I had to change keyboard
| layouts, especially since there is so much variation in
| keyboards I interact with sometimes that touch typing
| gets high error rates at first.
|
| And if I didn't switch someone's layout back before
| leaving, the anger would be non-trivial.
|
| Most folks I know at some point also need to use a
| computer at work, or did at school (but aren't techies),
| so not knowing QWERTY isn't going to go well for them. As
| would trying to switch keyboard layouts every time they
| go somewhere or do something. Most folks have zero time
| for that kind of thing.
| zamadatix wrote:
| I've used QWERTY, Dvorak, Colemak, and CarpalX (and even
| Workman for a short while) and have been using CarpalX as
| primary for nearly the last decade. I'd say it doesn't really
| matter at all which you learn first as by far the vast majority
| of what you learn is the motor skills which transfer to using
| any layout. Learning a particular layout after you've already
| learned how to type takes a miniscule amount of time in
| comparison (on the order of 1-2 weeks of use to reach full
| proficiency as the original layout regardless of the level of
| proficiency that was) while knowing QWERTY remains a handy
| fallback given it's never just going to disappear overnight.
| awinter-py wrote:
| yes carmen sandiego had a similar thing happen
|
| ppl are still looking
| gcheong wrote:
| I was never under the impression that she was a real person. I
| just assumed she was a marketing persona ala Betty Crocker et al.
| vmception wrote:
| Fta: you're correct
| smegsicle wrote:
| Tagbert wrote:
| You would be missing the amazing Mavis Staples
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuCF7BtGrEI
| RobertMiller wrote:
| It was a somewhat popular name for girls in the 30s and 40s.
| Mavis Beacon came out in the late 80s, one of the programmers
| might well have had a mother or aunt named Mavis.
| vmception wrote:
| (or just heard the name as not uncommon so it fit when they
| pulled it out of their mental random name generator)
| lazide wrote:
| Probably also somewhere between 'so common it can't be
| trademarked' and 'so uncommon it sounds bizarre and not
| like it could be a real person'.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >one of the programmers might well have had a mother or
| aunt named Mavis.
|
| Or a typing teacher.
| mmcgaha wrote:
| Or a dead milkmen album: "somebody kicked my dog Mavis
| and I'm gonna find out just who the hell it was"
| ralusek wrote:
| You're telling me that she's American McGee rather than Carmen
| San Diego? Sid Meier rather than Dr. Grordbort?
| lupire wrote:
| *Sandiego.
|
| And vice versa.
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| Francis Bacon teaches metallic transmutation
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Outside the OJ trial on a sign - "Save the Juice! Bacon Did It"
| (playing on the Shakespeare conspiracy theory)
| vxNsr wrote:
| I don't know anyone who thought mavis beacon was real, this feels
| like hype for the documentary and nothing else.
| rvz wrote:
| Indeed. It is just hype and that's it.
|
| The people who are investigating over this are trying to turn a
| non-issue into an industry problem.
|
| With them, everything is always a problem with no solutions and
| all it is about is just complaining. Especially about a
| character that doesn't even exist. Somehow it is a problem.
|
| But don't worry. Maybe one day, the Mavis Beacon actor might
| consider releasing an NFT collection for all her fans.
|
| Someday.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Is this really a topic you've interrogated your friends about?
| Why would you know anyone's perspective on Mavis Beacon?
|
| I thought Mavis Beacon was real back in the day, because why
| wouldn't she be? It was just a nice looking lady, not like a
| cartoon character who teaches you typing or anything like that.
| I assumed maybe she was just a world class typer when I was 10
| or so.
|
| If it is obvious that Mavis Beacon isn't real to some, I would
| love to know how they understand that Mavis is fake, but, say,
| the guy on the "Norton Utilities", "Norton Antivirus" is a real
| person.
| rvz wrote:
| There are three things that kids back then should now know that
| don't exist: The Tooth-fairy, Santa Claus and Mavis Beacon.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| Carmen San Diego also.
| RobertMiller wrote:
| Countless hours of Number Munchers taught me mental arithmetic.
| zamadatix wrote:
| That site of people trying to find her has some great 90s
| internet vibes https://seekingmavisbeacon.com/. No blinking
| sadly.
| owlninja wrote:
| The 'Future Thot Leader's site is interesting as well
|
| https://www.jazminjones.com/
| cols wrote:
| Wow this was really cool! A little slowish but very creative
| and different from the standard website experience. Highly
| enjoyed poking around.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| > Incarnating Mavis was a Haitian-born woman called Renee
| L'Esperance, spotted behind a cosmetics counter at Saks Fifth
| Avenue by one of the men behind the company that sold Mavis
| Beacon Teaches Typing.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-03-13 23:00 UTC)