This seems like a good idea to me. It would make it hard on spammers and netkooks, though. Then again, that's not a bug, it's another feature.

[Via Geek Press]

The argument is on par with gun control advocates. It's not the user, it's the Caps Lock Key. I'll give them credit, they at least identify the appropriate people as villians, but some us know how to properly use our Caps Lock Key. For instance, I point to Rand's proper use to enhance the title of each of his comments.

From your cold, dead pinky, eh, Leland?

An article written by someone who lives only in his own world and therefore can't imagine anyone else needing this function. For one, notes on mechanical drawings are all caps.

For one, notes on mechanical drawings are all caps.

So how hard would it be for your typical $5,000 CAD package to add a software "caps-lock" function, anyhow? Sheesh.

Or for that matter, third parties to supply keyboard drivers which remap a key to function in that fashion. The problem is with having a physical, mechanical caps-loc key.

It made me think not of gun control but of laws against flag-burning. Taking the option away from the idiots doesn't make them less idiotic, it just makes them less likely to identify themselves by means of that particular behavior. Hence it's more of an inconvenience to the rest of us than to them, because we now have to read a few words before we know they're idiots and hit the delete key, where before we could tell at a glance (or even just put the test in our anti-spam software).

It wasn't at all hard to pull out the keyboard preferences menu on the Linux distribution I'm using and kind the 'interpret caps lock as another control key' option. Caps lock is all in software these days (the key doesn't latch mechanically), so what's the problem?

As I charter member of the "National Fortran Association" I will be writing my congressperson
about this outrage!

They should eliminate (: and ): and "lol" and every other hackneyed, overused netism. They should round up all the perps, lay them in the street, and back over them with a school bus... twice! Furthermore, they should eliminate the letter "p" button. Everytime I see a "p" I think of warm yellow fluid and it spoils my appetite.

From your cold, dead pinky, eh, Leland?

You bet. Instead of the NRA, it's NASA. They certainly promote the use of Caps Lock Key with hundreds and hundreds of acronyms. Than again, without the Caps Lock Key, would there be a nasa?

As a lefty CAD operator who does some technical writing as well as adding connection tables, I like the caps lock key. It is easier to use than mucking around in the prefernces settings for the software I use(Unigraphics). Also, at the previous client, a large engine company, we contractors were "Verboten" to muck with the settings; a committee at Corp HQ had decided how everything was to be set up. No one in the hinderlands was permitted to change the settings under any circumstances. The caps lock key helped me keep my (questionable) sanity during the course of that contract.