Apparently there's no safety or scholarly reason for it.
Why? I can think of both.
And since they're willing to back down for religious reasons, it seems obvious to me that it was a dumb rule in the first place.
The rule has a benefit of X. Losing the ability to wear your hat costs Y, Y X.
Is that really a hard thing to imagine?
Which leads to the obvious question - why aren't hats allowed in school?
Well, in some cultures, it's considered rude to wear a hat indoors or in the presence of a teacher. Obviously, these cultures make religious exemptions... you aren't uncouth, you're following a religious ideal. I have no problems with a school enforcing common courtesy on their students.
Baseball caps are really easy to cheat with; write on the underside of the bill.
Lastly, hats are commonly used to display gang colors in inner cities.
It's not like dry cleaners have one set of laws, bakers another, consulting firms a third
That's probably a poor example, I believe all three of those have different laws they must comply with. Dry Cleaners have to clean up their chemicals; Bakeries are examined for food cleanliness; Consultants presumably have hourly billing laws to comply with as well as 1099s.
Not long ago I received a mailer as a friendly reminder to fill out the census form, which I haven't yet received (that will be a separate mailer). Now, I have no idea how much it costs to advertise, but I'm pretty sure a mailer is not the most efficient way to do it.
I agree it seems retarded, but studies show that those stupid pre-census mailers increase response rates by 6%. So, your problem is that other people are irrational... in which case I would question if a 50% increase in census related mail (2 to you, 1 back) every decade is your biggest concern.
If conducting a census is important, certainly mass-mailings are more efficient then sending door-to-door people. So how much money on mass marketing is it worth to save one door-to-door trip?
Last time I checked, "efficient government" was still an oxymoron, and the US government has virtually refined wasting money into an art form.
Why are Medicare's overhead rates so low compared to private insurance companies? In general government is pretty efficient... any large group has bureaucracy.
It almost doesn't sound right to say "government spending" without the adjective "wasteful" preceding it.
There are two reasons. You spend too much time among people of identical political leanings. You also apparently misinterpert government costs. Sometimes there are counter-intuitive cost saving measures (the census mailer). There are other reasons why an organization that spends hundreds of billions of dollars and has hundreds of thousands of employees may have more complicated financial statements than your credit card bill.
Why not make it like some states have it now? No alcohol until some age, except when provided by your parents.
I agree, that's a better law. However, if the choice is the original law with an exemption or without, I favor with.
I don't like living in a society where some groups are above the law.
Laws aren't written for 99% of society, they are written for the other 1%. If we can identify some of that 99% as being unfairly burdened (even if only at a specific time), isn't it a worse miscarriage of justice to keep binding them to the law?
After all, if the law can't apply to everyone equally, then there's something broken in the law (and those that ask for the exceptions).
And if your operating system allows any viruses, the OS is totally without merit. And if any bug shows up in your code, you're a horrible programmer. If you could codify a system of laws to deal with every contingency, you'd be making a fortune as a project lead. Or probably something more profitable than that.
So there is a rule, and an exemption. It's probably not worth it to get the law perfect. Big country, lotta laws, a lotta clarifications and qualifications of rules.
Somewhat unrelated, but how do you feel about small companies being exempt from some workplace laws? I mean, they cost a lot to put in place, so it's a high burden with 10 people, but trivial with 10,000
I think the government's job is to remove risk from my life, and allow to me to assume however much makes me comfortable at increasing profit. Part of that is disaster relief, both inside and outside the borders of the country.
I don't want to have to pass a collection plate every time something happens. It's inefficient. I want to write one check a year, instead of the overhead of a dozen. I'd rather pay a lump sum then get heckled into incremental payments.
If I want to help with disaster relief, you're saying a necessary precondition is that I should have to hear about the disaster? What if I want to help people, but not hear about it?
Also, the Red Cross seems to waste a far higher percentage of the money they take in. There are no ads saying "pay your taxes".
... libertarianism and agorism share a system of ethics which carefully delineates the boundary between (effectively) free-willed, self-owning agents and property/land. If that doesn't count as being concerned with both "man's nature" and "his place in the Universe", what does?
Well, religion tends to posit a reason for mankind's existence. It states truths about mankind. Libertarianism and agorism don't do those things. They are political philosophies. And that's nice and all, except philosophical disagreement doesn't qualify. What truth do you think they state "people shouldn't be owned (unless they voluntarily sell themselves into slavery?"
In defining a system of ethics it touches on the nature of mankind much as any other religion does. The fact that it touches on politics as well--though more as an anti-political philosophy
Show me how a system of ethics in any way necessitates it touching on the nature of mankind.
Being against the government is a political philosophy. It only works by convincing a large group of people of its truth.
Most of the acknowledged religions have far more to say regarding political matters
My point wasn't "it involves itself in politics, so it doesn't meet the criteria." My point was "it only involves itself in politics, so it doesn't meet the criteria.
They're against government social program. Private ones are just fine. The idea is that charity should be voluntary otherwise it's just another tax.
Which makes no sense. I'd happily pay higher taxes to help out the Haitian earthquake relief, but I don't want to donate to a private charity. Dammit Red Cross, I pay taxes so I don't have to think about depressing things!
The philosophies of classical liberalism / libertarianism (ref. For a New Liberty) and Agorism would seem to meet all three of these requirements. They're certainly based on theories "of man's nature
They don't seem to relate to man's nature vis-a-vis the Universe. It's clearly a political philosophy... where does it touch on anything to do with the nature of mankind?
Thanks. I had heard about the Supreme Court case (hence my use of the example) but not the subsequent act by Congress.
Under current US law while you don't need to belong to an organized church (Seshadri v. Kasraian for one example), it does need to be sincere and there has been some attempts to distinguish "personal creeds" from religions (Brown vs Pena gave:
Thank you (or rather thanks to the Supreme Court). Those are criteria I was attempting to articulate in my earlier post. I'm not sure about the institutional quality, but I presume that means other people who use the same tradition (e.g. other Baptists) agree that your interpretation is at least a valid possibility? So there's no "the Bible commands me to do heroin and hire prostitutes" arguments?
You're still an adult, who might interact with the kids as a role model. You still need to be trusted to treat the religious artifacts with the reverence required. I have no objection to non-profits requiring purity tests... or any organization requiring alignement with its core principles. Hedge funds should be able to discriminate for being bad at making money (their purpose for existing). Greenpeace because the person clubs baby seals in their spare time (since Greenpeace exists to counteract that). An organization to promote Catholicism should be allowed to offer jobs only to people who do that.
I have a problem when an organization conflates two goals; a business (designed to make money) should not be allowed to require a Catholicism purity test.
. Why is it that you're OK with that exception while taking Communion?
Because Communion is a small amount taken with parental supervision. Same reason I'm fine with wine on Friday night, or even four (presumably small) cups during the Seder. I only mentioned a specific example because I tend to think its easier to create an absolute rule with exceptions than be expected to realistic regulate underage drinking at some reasonable level.
- I read that as "people actually believe this."
I meant "people actually believe that there are supernatural reasons for doing this." As the supernatural is unfalsifiable, I am leery of attempting to regulate it. I'm fine regulating hat ownership for a variety of reasons in school, or forbidding gang colors. That limit on freedom of expression is minor. Limiting people's ability to practice religion/come to their own understanding of grand philosophical issues/go to heaven is a far more serious limitation.
For example, I see no reason not to simply allow wearing hats -- and if you don't, I see no reason to make an exception for religious reasons.
I don't recall what reason my school used. But nothing is so binary. Like I said, decent reason to restrict (in a minor way) expression, but not to infringe upon people's free exercise of religion.
nd if you want to take every Thursday off to drink, the question shouldn't be whether you have religious reasons, but whether... and some people simply work slightly longer days and take an extra day off each week.
But how much pressure ought be brought to bear to get that flexible time? Or to change company policy to allow a four-day work week as an exception. Most people would say it is more reasonable to allow people to have an exception for religious reasons, precisely because they are unverifiable. If you are forced to drink on Friday night instead of Thursday morning, that's a small loss. If you are forced to (consider yourself to) go to hell, that's a bigger loss.
notice your reaction to human sacrifice. It doesn't matter to you how strongly someone holds that belief, you simply dismiss it out of hand. Why? Because we're not willing to budge on the laws against murder that we've agreed on.
It's hard to find absolutes in this world. Often times, we have to decide which harms people less. So, it's perfectly consistent to say that there is a line between being allowed not to wear a helmet, and murdering someone. And that such a line depends on numerous outside factors, including how sincere someone is in their faith.
If I'm deluded into thinking there's a deity commanding me to take every Friday off to drink, why should I get special privilege over someone who simply wants to start the weekend early?
Because in one case you believe that you know something about the nature of the universe, and in the other case you simply want to drink more. One is allowing you to live in accordance with
For some reason in the UK we have exceptions for certain laws if you are a member of a religion
In the US as well. Some laws get exceptions (Sikhs can wear turbans to school, where hats are not allowed), some don't (Native Americans cannot use Peyote).
In a more outrageous exception, churches are allowed, when choosing a candidate for a job, to discriminate against gays and in the Catholic church's case women
How is that outrageous? Presumably those jobs have a requirement of "being a good Catholic". You can not hire a mute person as a lumberjack (they cannot shout warnings, a job requirement). Only discrimination not tied to job performance is important.
It's one rule for us, and another for them
I feel more comfortable living in a society where the rules are sensibly applied. No alcohol while under a certain age, fine. An exception when taking Communion, also fine.
Who defines what a religion is?
I think you just have to state that it is a religion, if all you want to do is call it that. I would you want an exemption, I would imagine the burden of proof that it's a real belief, and not one ginned up for the exemption is on a sliding scale. If your religion requires you to wear a hat, I think the burden of proof should be very low. If your religion requires that you take every Thursday off to drink, I would imagine it is quite high. If your religion requires human sacrifice, it shouldn't matter because it's beyond the pale.
Religious views, truly held, are unfalsifiable. The government should not stand in the way of people acting on their religious views, when its reasonable to make an exception to the law to pursue them. On the other hand, questioning the validity of the religious view as truly religious vs. pragmatic makes sense. The US Supreme Court holds that the same action can be constitutional or unconstitutional based on how the legislature decided to enact it.
That said, I've never heard of anybody going after currency defacement operations(even the overt ones. Those "souveneir penny" machines that crush a graphic associated with whatever attraction the machine is located in have been around for decades...
If you look on the front of the machine, it clearly spells out why its legal. There's an exception built into the law (I believe it requires a license), but they spell out why what they are doing is legit.
If you want that to work, include photocopies of recipts for games you did buy. Because otherwise everyone will assume you're the the guy on the right.
Revision control on 1920x1080(resolution)x4(colors)x30(fps) bytes per second of video? If you do have a good binary revision control, please let me know.
I actually like to see more of these from different companies. Most interestingly, Facebook has a lot personal data. And what about Google? Yahoo?
If anything, such openness is good for MS in this case (even while they don't seem to agree to it, until now that it's leaked).
Other companies policies are also on the site. And it is good for Microsoft. That's why they did it; Striesand effect, and then withdraw the objection...
There are two ways to make a lot of money. Commit big enough crimes, or inherit it. Favorite method: Have your ancestors commit the crimes and then inherit it.
Am I allowed to write off my FOSS development as a charitable donation on my taxes? Am I allowed to charge the $50 an hour I think I'm worth? I'm sure this has been asked before, but it's the first I've ever actually thought about it...
I don't see why not. Charge the open-source project $50 an hour, and then donate your salary to offset the cost of hiring you. Of course, that's a lot of paperwork for no net gain... and it only works if the FOSS is a registered non-profit.
If you're asking "can I work 40 hours a week for a charity, and 40 hours a week for a business, and thus pay no taxes" then the answer would be no. How would that make sense. You're working 80 hours a week. You're donating 40 of them. You therefore pay taxes on the other 40.
Responses specific to my locality, and my unprofessional (non-lawyer) assessment of the law.
Even an embedded kiosk machine with a touchscreen and no mouse or keyboard running XP Embedded, or that Windows Media Center computer with a remote and no mouse?
No. But all general-purpose computers do. Note I use the word "all" in the conversational sense, not logical sense; if you insist on an annoying level of precision please read "all" as "the super-majority of".
If there's a text entry field, tap it and the onscreen keyboard slides out
Works well for surfing the web, less if you want realtime user-input. A smaller point, I grant. However, I believe the importance would come from keyboard shortcuts.
- The Droid and Droid Eris both had support for multitouch in the OS at launch.
TFA said that the Droid required third-party apps to use multi-touch. I assumed that meant low-level third party drivers. Maybe I misunderstood the article.
Really. So the virus scanner that you wrote that worked on Windows 95 worked on Windows 98, 98 SE, Me, and 2000?
Well, every virus scanner I've ever written had worked... Point well taken that some programs work at such a low-level that even intra-OS builds break the system. On the other hand, most basic functionality splits based on the Win95/WinXP/Vista lines.
So tell me again how Windows is so much different and better than Android?
Not Windows Mobile. Just desktop computing. And if you want to say that the variety of Droid devices is as consistent as the desktop computing environment in Windows... well, I just don't believe it. With very few exceptions, such as games and low-level OS extensions (e.g. virus-scanners), any XP machine can do anything any other XP machine can do.
The problem with that analogy is that passwords are by default 2 factor authentication: you need a username and a password.
2 factor authentication implies two different types of authentication. These types are both information you know, and thus one-factor. It can easily be proven that a username(max length u1)/password(max length p1) combination is as secure as just a password(max length u1+p1).
But only some of the hardware does. My OS supports the "conquer world with nanobots" call, but only with world-conquering nanobot peripherals attached. Useful huh?
All of computers are laptops, and they all have some unique "touch" related software
Almost every app uses single-touch mouse emulating input. Ooh, my pointer is a touchpad! The different form factor doesn't change the core functionality.
Every multitouch input to a PC I've seen is interperted by the driver as a meta-command (e.g. scroll), and passed to the app as a singletouch mouse with a scrollwheel.
Right - because a plethora of unique PC machines hasn't worked out as well as apple's - more-expensive-all-the-time strategy.
All PCs have keyboard/mouse input. The different Droids have [keyboard or not]/[multitouch or singletouch]. Most PCs run some flavor of Windows, so the OS is constant for ~5-7 years; the Droid is already on the second (incompatible) version of the OS. If you developed for Windows 95, you were good until XP. If you developed for XP, you were good until Vista. If you developed for Droid, oops, redo.
The bottom line is PCs have essentially the same hardware, with a well-abstracted OS. Speed may vary, but most machines can do anything any other can. The Droids have so much different functionality it cannot be abstracted, so you cannot write-once run-everywhere. And until you can, the app market is going to be mcuh smaller. And since the only reason to get a smart-phone is to run apps, the Droid OS is in a state of flux.
However recently data shows that towns that host Olympics are actually losing out.
Every Olympics since at least 1996, this fact has been rediscovered.
But when the state is trying to "protect" something that is actually costing tax payer dollars, it's time to repeal laws
The state has a valid reason to protect money-losers... police protection seems like an obvious example where the state loses money and I don't want every idiot to declare themselves sherriff. The question is, are both of those costs worth it. If the Olympics really did prevent even one war, as they claim to help prevent, it would be money well spent. But I'm not sure how I feel about such an intense level of athletic competition being underwritten by the government. Even more annoying are the subsidies given to professional sports in America.
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Why? I can think of both.
The rule has a benefit of X. Losing the ability to wear your hat costs Y, Y X.
Is that really a hard thing to imagine?
Well, in some cultures, it's considered rude to wear a hat indoors or in the presence of a teacher. Obviously, these cultures make religious exemptions... you aren't uncouth, you're following a religious ideal. I have no problems with a school enforcing common courtesy on their students.
Baseball caps are really easy to cheat with; write on the underside of the bill.
Lastly, hats are commonly used to display gang colors in inner cities.
That's probably a poor example, I believe all three of those have different laws they must comply with. Dry Cleaners have to clean up their chemicals; Bakeries are examined for food cleanliness; Consultants presumably have hourly billing laws to comply with as well as 1099s.
I agree it seems retarded, but studies show that those stupid pre-census mailers increase response rates by 6%. So, your problem is that other people are irrational... in which case I would question if a 50% increase in census related mail (2 to you, 1 back) every decade is your biggest concern.
If conducting a census is important, certainly mass-mailings are more efficient then sending door-to-door people. So how much money on mass marketing is it worth to save one door-to-door trip?
Why are Medicare's overhead rates so low compared to private insurance companies? In general government is pretty efficient... any large group has bureaucracy.
There are two reasons. You spend too much time among people of identical political leanings. You also apparently misinterpert government costs. Sometimes there are counter-intuitive cost saving measures (the census mailer). There are other reasons why an organization that spends hundreds of billions of dollars and has hundreds of thousands of employees may have more complicated financial statements than your credit card bill.
I agree, that's a better law. However, if the choice is the original law with an exemption or without, I favor with.
Laws aren't written for 99% of society, they are written for the other 1%. If we can identify some of that 99% as being unfairly burdened (even if only at a specific time), isn't it a worse miscarriage of justice to keep binding them to the law?
And if your operating system allows any viruses, the OS is totally without merit. And if any bug shows up in your code, you're a horrible programmer. If you could codify a system of laws to deal with every contingency, you'd be making a fortune as a project lead. Or probably something more profitable than that.
So there is a rule, and an exemption. It's probably not worth it to get the law perfect. Big country, lotta laws, a lotta clarifications and qualifications of rules.
Somewhat unrelated, but how do you feel about small companies being exempt from some workplace laws? I mean, they cost a lot to put in place, so it's a high burden with 10 people, but trivial with 10,000
I think the government's job is to remove risk from my life, and allow to me to assume however much makes me comfortable at increasing profit. Part of that is disaster relief, both inside and outside the borders of the country.
I don't want to have to pass a collection plate every time something happens. It's inefficient. I want to write one check a year, instead of the overhead of a dozen. I'd rather pay a lump sum then get heckled into incremental payments.
If I want to help with disaster relief, you're saying a necessary precondition is that I should have to hear about the disaster? What if I want to help people, but not hear about it?
Also, the Red Cross seems to waste a far higher percentage of the money they take in. There are no ads saying "pay your taxes".
Well, religion tends to posit a reason for mankind's existence. It states truths about mankind. Libertarianism and agorism don't do those things. They are political philosophies. And that's nice and all, except philosophical disagreement doesn't qualify. What truth do you think they state "people shouldn't be owned (unless they voluntarily sell themselves into slavery?"
Show me how a system of ethics in any way necessitates it touching on the nature of mankind.
Being against the government is a political philosophy. It only works by convincing a large group of people of its truth.
My point wasn't "it involves itself in politics, so it doesn't meet the criteria." My point was "it only involves itself in politics, so it doesn't meet the criteria.
Which makes no sense. I'd happily pay higher taxes to help out the Haitian earthquake relief, but I don't want to donate to a private charity. Dammit Red Cross, I pay taxes so I don't have to think about depressing things!
They don't seem to relate to man's nature vis-a-vis the Universe. It's clearly a political philosophy... where does it touch on anything to do with the nature of mankind?
Thanks. I had heard about the Supreme Court case (hence my use of the example) but not the subsequent act by Congress.
Thank you (or rather thanks to the Supreme Court). Those are criteria I was attempting to articulate in my earlier post. I'm not sure about the institutional quality, but I presume that means other people who use the same tradition (e.g. other Baptists) agree that your interpretation is at least a valid possibility? So there's no "the Bible commands me to do heroin and hire prostitutes" arguments?
You're still an adult, who might interact with the kids as a role model. You still need to be trusted to treat the religious artifacts with the reverence required. I have no objection to non-profits requiring purity tests... or any organization requiring alignement with its core principles. Hedge funds should be able to discriminate for being bad at making money (their purpose for existing). Greenpeace because the person clubs baby seals in their spare time (since Greenpeace exists to counteract that). An organization to promote Catholicism should be allowed to offer jobs only to people who do that.
I have a problem when an organization conflates two goals; a business (designed to make money) should not be allowed to require a Catholicism purity test.
Because Communion is a small amount taken with parental supervision. Same reason I'm fine with wine on Friday night, or even four (presumably small) cups during the Seder. I only mentioned a specific example because I tend to think its easier to create an absolute rule with exceptions than be expected to realistic regulate underage drinking at some reasonable level.
I meant "people actually believe that there are supernatural reasons for doing this." As the supernatural is unfalsifiable, I am leery of attempting to regulate it. I'm fine regulating hat ownership for a variety of reasons in school, or forbidding gang colors. That limit on freedom of expression is minor. Limiting people's ability to practice religion/come to their own understanding of grand philosophical issues/go to heaven is a far more serious limitation.
I don't recall what reason my school used. But nothing is so binary. Like I said, decent reason to restrict (in a minor way) expression, but not to infringe upon people's free exercise of religion.
But how much pressure ought be brought to bear to get that flexible time? Or to change company policy to allow a four-day work week as an exception. Most people would say it is more reasonable to allow people to have an exception for religious reasons, precisely because they are unverifiable. If you are forced to drink on Friday night instead of Thursday morning, that's a small loss. If you are forced to (consider yourself to) go to hell, that's a bigger loss.
It's hard to find absolutes in this world. Often times, we have to decide which harms people less. So, it's perfectly consistent to say that there is a line between being allowed not to wear a helmet, and murdering someone. And that such a line depends on numerous outside factors, including how sincere someone is in their faith.
Because in one case you believe that you know something about the nature of the universe, and in the other case you simply want to drink more. One is allowing you to live in accordance with
In the US as well. Some laws get exceptions (Sikhs can wear turbans to school, where hats are not allowed), some don't (Native Americans cannot use Peyote).
How is that outrageous? Presumably those jobs have a requirement of "being a good Catholic". You can not hire a mute person as a lumberjack (they cannot shout warnings, a job requirement). Only discrimination not tied to job performance is important.
I feel more comfortable living in a society where the rules are sensibly applied. No alcohol while under a certain age, fine. An exception when taking Communion, also fine.
I think you just have to state that it is a religion, if all you want to do is call it that. I would you want an exemption, I would imagine the burden of proof that it's a real belief, and not one ginned up for the exemption is on a sliding scale. If your religion requires you to wear a hat, I think the burden of proof should be very low. If your religion requires that you take every Thursday off to drink, I would imagine it is quite high. If your religion requires human sacrifice, it shouldn't matter because it's beyond the pale.
Religious views, truly held, are unfalsifiable. The government should not stand in the way of people acting on their religious views, when its reasonable to make an exception to the law to pursue them. On the other hand, questioning the validity of the religious view as truly religious vs. pragmatic makes sense. The US Supreme Court holds that the same action can be constitutional or unconstitutional based on how the legislature decided to enact it.
If you look on the front of the machine, it clearly spells out why its legal. There's an exception built into the law (I believe it requires a license), but they spell out why what they are doing is legit.
Which country?
Sure it will. That's why companies love cloud-computing. It's DRM that works.
If you want that to work, include photocopies of recipts for games you did buy. Because otherwise everyone will assume you're the the guy on the right.
Revision control on 1920x1080(resolution)x4(colors)x30(fps) bytes per second of video? If you do have a good binary revision control, please let me know.
Other companies policies are also on the site. And it is good for Microsoft. That's why they did it; Striesand effect, and then withdraw the objection...
There are two ways to make a lot of money. Commit big enough crimes, or inherit it. Favorite method: Have your ancestors commit the crimes and then inherit it.
I don't see why not. Charge the open-source project $50 an hour, and then donate your salary to offset the cost of hiring you. Of course, that's a lot of paperwork for no net gain... and it only works if the FOSS is a registered non-profit.
If you're asking "can I work 40 hours a week for a charity, and 40 hours a week for a business, and thus pay no taxes" then the answer would be no. How would that make sense. You're working 80 hours a week. You're donating 40 of them. You therefore pay taxes on the other 40.
Responses specific to my locality, and my unprofessional (non-lawyer) assessment of the law.
No. But all general-purpose computers do. Note I use the word "all" in the conversational sense, not logical sense; if you insist on an annoying level of precision please read "all" as "the super-majority of".
Works well for surfing the web, less if you want realtime user-input. A smaller point, I grant. However, I believe the importance would come from keyboard shortcuts.
TFA said that the Droid required third-party apps to use multi-touch. I assumed that meant low-level third party drivers. Maybe I misunderstood the article.
Well, every virus scanner I've ever written had worked... Point well taken that some programs work at such a low-level that even intra-OS builds break the system. On the other hand, most basic functionality splits based on the Win95/WinXP/Vista lines.
Not Windows Mobile. Just desktop computing. And if you want to say that the variety of Droid devices is as consistent as the desktop computing environment in Windows... well, I just don't believe it. With very few exceptions, such as games and low-level OS extensions (e.g. virus-scanners), any XP machine can do anything any other XP machine can do.
2 factor authentication implies two different types of authentication. These types are both information you know, and thus one-factor. It can easily be proven that a username(max length u1)/password(max length p1) combination is as secure as just a password(max length u1+p1).
Well, it's an Apple product; I expect it to be hostile to heterosexual male sexuality.
But only some of the hardware does. My OS supports the "conquer world with nanobots" call, but only with world-conquering nanobot peripherals attached. Useful huh?
Almost every app uses single-touch mouse emulating input. Ooh, my pointer is a touchpad! The different form factor doesn't change the core functionality.
Every multitouch input to a PC I've seen is interperted by the driver as a meta-command (e.g. scroll), and passed to the app as a singletouch mouse with a scrollwheel.
All PCs have keyboard/mouse input. The different Droids have [keyboard or not]/[multitouch or singletouch]. Most PCs run some flavor of Windows, so the OS is constant for ~5-7 years; the Droid is already on the second (incompatible) version of the OS. If you developed for Windows 95, you were good until XP. If you developed for XP, you were good until Vista. If you developed for Droid, oops, redo.
The bottom line is PCs have essentially the same hardware, with a well-abstracted OS. Speed may vary, but most machines can do anything any other can. The Droids have so much different functionality it cannot be abstracted, so you cannot write-once run-everywhere. And until you can, the app market is going to be mcuh smaller. And since the only reason to get a smart-phone is to run apps, the Droid OS is in a state of flux.
Every Olympics since at least 1996, this fact has been rediscovered.
The state has a valid reason to protect money-losers... police protection seems like an obvious example where the state loses money and I don't want every idiot to declare themselves sherriff. The question is, are both of those costs worth it. If the Olympics really did prevent even one war, as they claim to help prevent, it would be money well spent. But I'm not sure how I feel about such an intense level of athletic competition being underwritten by the government. Even more annoying are the subsidies given to professional sports in America.