Teen student texter busts 20-second tongue-twisty SMS barrier The nimblest texting fingers on the planet belong to a 15-year-old US student named Gaurav Sharma. Youtube Video Sharma has landed a Guinness World Record for typing a 25-word text message on a touchscreen of a mobile phone by writing his message in just 18.44 seconds. That message: The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera …
This strikes me as possibly leading to a similar thing to computer performance benchmarks, whereby manufacturers tweak their product specifically to get a better score on the benchmarks, but with little or no practical real-world improvement. If I create a phone keyboard which lets you "type" that piranha thing in a single press, could I claim that as a new world record?
Is this supposed to be a world record for the physical act (an athletic achievement), or for technological progress (like "fastest electric land vehicle")? AFAICT it seems to be a fairly meaningless munging of the two.
Isn't that exactly what 3Dfx used to do with OpenGL / Quake Benchmarks etc?
Eg: (circa 1999)
TomsHW : Is it correct that drivers can be easily optimised for one application?
3DFX: Yes - that's part of the benchmarking game.
Undoubtedly still goes on, according to Nvidia my GTX 690 seems get between 6% and 20% faster in most games with every driver iteration...
...is cheating. It has only ever served to slow me down by predicting wildly off target words or autocompleting words that were complete before the extra bits got tacked on.
As far as the test phrase goes, took me damn near 18.4 seconds to read it never mind try to type it!
Allow me:
Who the hell cares?
You, clearly, hence your post
What's the point?
Of what?
The world record? Simple one-upmanship which has been going on since the dawn of time
The Article? Entertainment and ad revenue
Your post? There is none apart from stoking your own ego
Is there any worth to this?
Again - you need to be more specific
The world record? In itself no but it does confirm that input methods into mobile computing devices is getting better
The Article? It will contribute to someones income
Your post? No
As someone who has worked with computers for a number of years I know the value of being clear and specific in my writing.
Maybe you should try the same
As a Swiftkey user, I know it learns the words I use ... so I'm pretty sure his keyboard app learned all those words, and was able to correctly guess what he was trying to type even if his finger motions did not hit all the correct letters ... thus the record is 'assisted' and not valid.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
