Class of 2007 Mindset List

[entirelysonja]

Beloit College has published its annual Mindset List, providing those of us who are rather older than the average college freshman with some reminders of where they're coming from. While I don't think it's as good as it has been in some past years, my favorite items from this year's list are

Comments

[jpallan]

My God. I still believe in dressing appropriately for restaurants.

[pthalogreen]

me too. My 15 year old cousin looked at me strangly when I said "I can't go to a restaurant to eat I'm wearing my school clothes!" I was 17. 2 years ago. meh.

we used to have a datsun.

granted I wasn't born in 1985 like the people this list was made about (Where'd my english go?), I was born in 1984, but it's not that big of a difference.

"Bert and Ernie are old enough to be their parents." Bert and Ernie will always be five years old. They're puppets. :)

"An automatic is a weapon, not a transmission" not in hungary. :p

"19. They have never been able to find the “return” key." when I was 5, my teacher had us press the "return" key (The one adjacent to the keys you type on) and I preseed the "enter" key instead (the one by the number pad) and she yelled at me! and I said "it does the same thing!" and she said "but you didnt know that until you tried it" i'd been using computers for over a year at that point. grar. :)

[entirelysonja]

I was confused about the return key thing. My Mac keyboard has a return key on it, though I suppose the one on the PC doesn't. Do PC keyboards only have enter keys?

[pthalogreen]

On my laptop keyboard, I don't have a "return" key or an "enter" key, just a key with this symbol on it: http://callete.com/~pthalo/return.bmp

I think that's how the return key looks on most PCs. though I distinctly remember our PC in the late 80s having a return key. with "return" written on it.

[pthalogreen]

I've used PCs more recently than the late 80s, of course, but I cant remember what the keyboard looks like right now.

keyboards

[jlsgaladriel]

This interested me enough that I went on a hunt:

All of my mac keyboards, from the 1985 128k through the one that shipped with my G4, have "return" keys.

Mom's webTV keyboard has a "return" key. Even my old Coronet electric typewriter has a "return" key.

But the old IBM Thinkpad remaindered from the jschool has an "enter" key.

I think enter-only keyboards must be an IBM-compatible phenomenon, but I do lack one critical piece of data: my old TI 994a from the mid-eighties is too far buried in the basement for me to check its keyboard.

Re: keyboards

[jenjoelle]

Even my old Coronet electric typewriter has a "return" key.
Wouldn't it, though? I mean, the "Return" key came from typewriters when "to return" was to enter a "line or carriage return." (Like how I worked "enter" into that, too?) ;)

Re: keyboards

[jlsgaladriel]

I suppose this all feeds back into the ancient diference between carriage return and line feed? (CR without LF gets you nice overtyping, no?)