Bah, 83% of people know that 91% of all statistics are made up on the spot, and that the Sturgeon quote is a bunch of hooey. The fact that the GP quotes it as a gospel truth on which to hang his own theories suggests that he is more likely part of the (mythical) 90%. Lies! No-- damn lies!
If I write a kernel driver and it gets incorporated into the official Linux source tree, and I don't explicitly release copyright of it to the Linux kernel project, then they need to talk to me before changing the license on that code. But if I license it under the GPLv2 and allow the clause that the code may be distributed under "any future version of the GPL", then they could switch to GPLv3 without having to get my permission again.
GPLv3 is considered problematic at this point because of a few things the FSF is trying to do with the new license. They're seeking to prevent people from exploiting GPL code in ways that still manage to lock out user control (Tivo is the typical example - they provide the source for the GPL code they're using, but you can't change the firmware on a Tivo yourself because they have hardware that requires crypto signatures on the installed software) and they're seeking to limit the ways software patents can affect free software. (For instance, you can't write a piece of code, release under the GPL, and restrict people's access to that with software patents. I think they're also looking to prevent people from using a piece of GPL software and simultaneously attacking others' use of it with software patents.) Various people have various problems with these clauses - and while I appreciate what they're trying to accomplish I'm not sure it's entirely a good thing, either.
First, suppose you're writing project Z under the GPL and you do want it to move over to the new version of the GPL when it becomes available. Or that otherwise that you want to keep that option open.
Next, assume that project Z is fairly complex, and becomes popular, and receives contributions from numerous developers, not all of whom stick with the project.
Now, when the new GPL comes along, you have a potential problem: do all the contributors to the project need to approve a license change? Including all the ones you can no longer get in touch with? This is where the clause comes in handy: by submitting code under GPL2, they already [i]have[/i] approved a license change to GPL3, so you don't need their permission.
'Course, that can be avoided if you simply make all contributors hand over copyright of their contributions to those managing the project, or otherwise get their agreement ahead of time to make certain licensing changes in the future.
And then from a user's perspective: this clause increases what users can do with the program, it doesn't restrict users' choices. People can continue to treat the program as GPL2 licensed for as long as it's licensed that way, or they can treat it as GPL3 if there's some clause in GPL3 they find favorable. The only way it's potentially restrictive is that it allows derivative works to choose GPL3, which then prevents users of the derivative version from going back to GPL2.
Agreeing to terms that aren't yet defined is a bit odd - it's basically just a bit of faith in the FSF that makes that work, that whatever they do with the future versions of the GPL will be for the best. But what's happening now is people aren't sure that's the case.
Indiana Jones and the Craftmatic Adjustable Bed. OK, there have been about a million "Indy is old" title jokes here so far but this is the only one so far that has made me chuckle. Good work.
A former President is dead and all we can comment on is the rightness or wrongness of a decision made to seek justice or move on. Now that's not true at all! Quite a lot of us have commented on the old Dana Carvey skit from SNL where Tom Brokaw talks about Gerald Ford dying.
And don't you think it's a little silly to talk to a dead man? People might think you're weird.:)
Tom Brokaw: Alright. "Gerald Ford is dead today, and I'm gay." Now, wait a minute!
Voice of Producer: What? That'd be a huge story - Ford dying, and you coming out!
Tom Brokaw: But I'm not gay!
Voice of Producer: Today you're not gay, you know.. but then one day you wake up, you like men, and Gerald Ford dies, and we're screwed. Everyone's hearing about it from Dan Rather!
You have my deepest condolences. I know that the Republican Party is a persecuted minority these days: Nobody gives the poor, innocent Republicans a fair shake. Everyone else in the world hates God and America and, therefore, Republicans as well. And there's the vast conspiracies, the lynchings, and all the inequities and indignities Republicans must suffer for no other reason than following the divine hand of God - appointed by holy power and elected by a clear majority choice. Oh, woe be the poor Republican, for he is a poor, battered victim of a world which is against him for no good reason at all.
This guy made Slashdot because he was especially stupid, not simply because he was caught, and not because he was a Republican. He tried to commit a crime, but went about it in a very idiotic way - made contact with someone he had no logical reason to trust and requested an illegal job, discussed details that were way out of his depth and technical expertise, freely gave away his personal information, went outside to take a picture of some pigeons (I guess to prove that he is one himself) - the whole story just shows an incredible lack of intelligence and sophistication - any kind of subtlety or careful discretion in how he sought criminal help - and he got completely suckered as a result. A tale like this is great "News For Nerds" fodder - dope who knows nothing about computers tries to contract for a system intrusion goes in over his head with someone who actually knows a thing or two, and gets exposed.
Stealing national security documents isn't "News for Nerds", it's just "News". Go watch some Fox News if you want to see that story, I'm sure they'll rattle their sabers and go on about it for weeks - because they are not part of the conspiracy. They are not biased. They will give you the straight story, just the facts, and let you draw your own conclusion. England Prevails!
The title for those who don't want to read the article:
"Harry Potter and the Death Knell of American Literature"
Get a grip. It's a children's book. (And, as others have noted, it's not American.)
Other alternative titles:
Harry Potter and The Jumping of the Shark Harry Potter and The Progressively Less Fun Fantasy Harry Potter and His Various Problems Which Are Worse Than Yours Harry Potter and The Revolving Door Of Father Figures Harry Potter and The Death of One Or Two People He Really Cares About Harry Potter and The Missing Period (had some fun with Ginny before dumping her, I guess) Harry Potter and The Many Obvious Clues Which Are Very Specific To What's Going On But Which He Doesn't Understand Until Hermione Gives Him The Answers Harry Potter and the Very Long Quidditch Scene Harry Potter and The Emotional Baggage Harry Potter and The Kiln of Nair Harry Potter and The Very Bad Man
I want to start a new political movement. Every time someone does something like this, you take their phone and smash it. Violence against the people who do it is also fully justified. The problem is that this doesn't solve the problem of that person being inconsiderate in public, and it creates new ones. Getting people angry seriously just makes them more defensive and more determined to "win", which means that they'll try even harder to be a nuisance.
Being polite as I suggest doesn't accomplish much, either, frankly. From experience it's very hard to ask politely and still not annoy people, and generally they still won't listen. But it's the most productive option - confronting with them with civility reminds them that the people around them matter - hopefully if they receive enough of this kind of response they'll clue in.
But dealing with these kinds of people as if they don't matter (for instance, by being rude), or grumbling, avoiding them, responding passively or passive-aggressively only reinforces their notion that they needn't concern themselves with the feelings of those around them. You're dealing with them as though their annoying traits are the only relevant part of them, and so they respond in kind. Lack of communication is the problem here.
Either that, or we just gotta get Billy Quan on their case.:) (Mind your manners, punk!)
Earplugs are good at muffling excessively loud sounds, particularly keeping them from damaging your ears. But you can still hear them.
People need to make two changes to their behavior in order to resolve this: 1: Be conscious of what effect your cell phone conversations, etc. are having on others, and be reasonable. Be courteous to them, and maybe don't talk on your phone in a crowded space. 2: If someone else is annoying you, confront them about it, but be polite. Getting them angry won't solve the problem, it'll make it worse. Sitting around being grouchy about it also won't solve the problem.
Palm OS is a great environment to work in specifically because it is not "feature rich". There is one way to create a button, one way to create a form, one way to talk to various OS services, etc...
The people I know who "hate" Palm OS coding are either trying to do wonky things that the device was not completely designed to do or they are use to working in another environment and are trying to force their (wrong) model of an OS onto the Palm APIs.
I disagree.
Palm's design emphasis on elegance was a great asset back in the 1990s - I still think it's a good thing, but it needs to be modernized. Handhelds are capable of a lot more than they were in 1998, and PalmOS 5 isn't adapting well to the new capabilities. The original PalmOS was basically designed for simple record view/edit tasks - which it does well, but the GUI of the OS doesn't provide much support for more complex views. It can be fairly limiting even for rather humble projects.
Look at it this way: back in the 1990s when you had a Win CE machine, the thing was built like a brick in order to provide the horsepower needed for the OS and GUI, and its level of complexity was (IMO) overreaching, and as a result the thing ran slow, too. Plus (IMO anyway - and this has long been Palm's party line) the UI of a Win CE machine wasn't well thought out for handheld use, and so the actual process you go through to get things done on that OS is more cumbersome, too. At that point, Palm's ability to run well on a humble M68K processor was a serious asset.
So fast-forward several years: Win CE machines have closed the gap in terms of form factor and battery life. Palm machines use ARM processors, but the platform as a whole still hasn't successfully made this transition. (People are generally still writing M68K code for Palms, about five years after they stopped making M68K Palms) Win CE machines are now a lot more responsive than they were, and so the depth they can provide is now a major asset. Palm's approach to backward compatibility is a liability, as every application is run under an emulation layer. Palm's approach of having one application run at a time and having each application retain its state between sessions still works, but people want more flexibility and the hardware is perfectly capable of providing it - people want background tasks, let their MP3 player keep playing or their web browser keep downloading while they go do something else. Palm's ability to do this is limited, and Palm OS still is not a protected environment - not adequately so for this kind of activity. If an application crashes, the device crashes. If Versamail (Palm's own E-Mail client) crashes while fetching mail in the background, your device crashes.
My contention is that Win CE's approach has finally paid off - the hardware has caught up, and the fact that the OS is more feature-rich than Palm's is now an asset rather than a liability. Conversely, Palm is burning up the advantages they had: the (memory and CPU) efficiency of their applications is now wasted through PACE emulation.
When I bought my Treo I seriously considered the Windows versions. (I generally don't like Windows - it as a platform just doesn't suit my tastes) The deal-breaker was the screen resolution, and so I got my 650. I think it was the right choice for me but it's agonizing that they haven't modernized the OS. I want international text support. I want decent multitasking support. (I want my device to be able to fetch my e-mail without crashing the whole device in the middle of whatever I'm doing.) I want the ability to write a non-emulated application in a straightforward manner. Palmtops still need to do what they've been doing efficiently (and I think Win CE has gotten much better at that - application designs have been streamlined, maybe one or two pages were cribbed from PalmOS) but there's also expectations - quite reasonable ones, I think, these days, that they should do more. Palm has used the intent of simple design as an excuse to avoid necessary renovations and avoid providing services that are becoming more important.
Hear, hear! Books want to be open! I find that when books can be open, as they should, they become much more accessible to people than if they were kept closed.
Well, that's what happens in a third-degree burn caused by fire. But the relevant point of the "degrees" of burns is how deep and extensive the damage is. Scalding burns will create different types of damage but if the extent is the same (near-total destruction of the dermal layers in the affected areas) it's still a third-degree burn.
(What, practically, is the difference between having a section of your skin burned to the point of being dead, versus boiled to the point of being dead? Either way it's a serious burn.)
I read that link a few posts back about "debunking" the idea that the coffee case was a frivolous lawsuit (reinforcing the notion that the person who spills the coffee is at fault, that people like hot coffee, etc.) - it's interesting. Since I heard about the third degree burns I've mostly been of the opinion that McDonald's was sufficiently at fault that the case had merit. I still lean in that direction but that link gave me some things to think about. (My opinion doesn't change quickly, but it can change.)
And then various drugs are forbidden for fear that a plentiful, easy supply of them would create too many addicts in our society and a dangerous trade deficit.
Prohibition leads to unhealthy usage patterns and makes it difficult for addicts to get help; it leads to more addiction and abuse, not less.
The "trade deficit" arguement is a new line of B.S.; since when does the state get to regulate people's lives in order to make them more efficient economic units? If that's the case, better ban TV.
I can think of worse ideas than banning TV. But I do believe the government has a certain responsibility to help ensure that the country as a whole is prosperous. I'm quite happy that the US is prosperous as that's the whole reason I can enjoy such a comfortable lifestyle.
It's not BS, it's something that has actually happened in the past to countries that imported a lot of narcotics.
Curiously, the existence of these laws hasn't made me a criminal.
Oh, really?
Never had oral or anal sex? The standard joke here is that you're asking this question on Slashdot, where clearly nobody has ever had any sex at all.:)
But these aren't the laws we were talking about, and the sodomy laws have already been struck down (sanity prevails!) - and I don't think it's a good analogy anyway. The practical implications of drugs are greater than those for consentual sex.
I accept the idea of a "war on drugs" primarily on the premise that plentiful supply of potent recreational drugs is detrimental to our society as a whole
I don't. That's not the reason for it anyway. It's a moral crusade, organized by the relgion (specifically methodist temperance), women's groups who want to dictate how people live, and opportunistic slimeballs like Hurst and every president since Nixon.
You accept denying marijuana to terminally ill people in states where it is legal? I don't buy your claim that it's a "moral crusade" - more likely that angle is being used to persuade people to support the agenda (which is still wrong, IMO) but I don't at all buy your theory that this is the real reason why some drugs are illegal.
And I never said anything about terminally ill people, did I? What you're doing here is trying to change the issue - recreational drugs vs. prescription drugs - and trying to suggest that anyone who believes that the War On Some Drugs may not be a bad thing is happy to see an old lady in pain rather than see her using marijuana.
Now, since you've asked the question: do I accept denying marijuana to someone who was granted the right to use it for medical purposes by her state government? No. It was a prescription, the rules for recreational drugs don't apply. Cultivation (as allowed under the California law) is a little more problematic - you've got federal law saying posession and cultivation is illegal and that it is to be forcibly repressed, and you've got California law saying posession and cultivation is legal for medicinal purposes - but privately grown marijuana can't be tracked or regulated. I think the proper compromise would be for medicinal usage to be legal, but with the limitation that it must be acquired through a pharmacy, as is the case with other prescription drugs. It sucks to have to pay more for no good reason, but when you're balancing conflicting interests, it's unreasonable to not make some kind of compromise.
But what's "right" and how does that correlate to what's "legal"? Is the government's destruction of the plants "right" just because it's "legal"? Is the woman's use of marijuana "right" just by virtue of the fact that it's "legal"? Or "wrong" because the federal government contends that it should be illegal? To me the question of whether it's "right" to allow or prohibit marijuana as a recreational drug is entirely subjective. Whether it's a good idea from a practical standpoint is debatable. Whether it's legal is fairly unambiguous.
Likewise, for marijuana as a prescription drug - whether it's "legal" is essentially still in contention due to the conflict surrounding it. Is it "right"? I think so. But considering the level of contention around the drug, the way it's being handled is way out of line with how other prescription drugs are managed. Telling people to go ahead and grow their own is downright irresponsible when there's a conflicting federal law saying that that's illegal. That's not necessarily a bad thing, if it gives people on either side the chance to make their contention in a way that actually has the potential to change the status quo - but for the people growing and using medical marijuana, to get caught up in the middle of that conflict is rather unfortunate....Which brings us back to the question of whether it's right that recreational marijuana is illegal (and so rigorously pursued) in the first place. If you feel like discussing that issue at any point, please let me know.:)
I accept the idea of a "war on drugs" primarily on the premise that plentiful supply of potent recreational drugs is detrimental to our society as a whole.
You mean like alcohol? I agree, people should smoke (or eat, or vapourise) more pot.
I actually considered whether to concede this point in my initial post - the fact that there are some state-sanctioned (and taxed) drugs - the question of whether they might actually be as dangerous or more dangerous than some of the drugs that are currently outlawed. But I figure the line has to be drawn somewhere. The question of whether it's in the right place is perhaps best argued by others - but to my mind it's not an important question. Alcohol and tobacco are state-sanctioned for reasons of tradition and money, and a few other drugs (like caffeine) exist that are neither taxed or forbidden. And then various drugs are forbidden for fear that a plentiful, easy supply of them would create too many addicts in our society and a dangerous trade deficit. And then, among those, may be a few that are harmless, or mostly harmless. Maybe the advocates of these are right and they should be legalized - but it's not a terribly important change. People who involve themselves with these drugs aren't just criminals because there's a law against what they're doing, they're criminals because they've chosen to break that law, and in the case of dealers, growers, importers, and such they've profited from the fact that legitimate business can't compete with them. They've profited from the fact that what they're doing is illegal (which limits supply, increasing prices). You live by the sword, you die by the sword, that's how it works, so I don't have sympathy for dealers, importers, etc. who have suddenly found the illegality of what they do inconvenient.
Now, supposing pot were legalized - would American society decay into ruin? Would the US experience a huge trade deficit and decline in power, and be destroyed by the enemies it made while powerful? I really don't think so - there'd just be another legal drug out there, and greater public nuisance from people smoking it all over the place - but what would be the positive benefit of this change? From a strictly practical standpoint I don't think there is one. I'm not satisfied that it's worthwhile to make that decision - even weighing minimal negative impact vs. minimal or no positive practical impact and a gain in personal liberty. Is it a good thing for us, as a country? Regardless of whether we have a million other bad things going on, is endorsing one more vice a good thing? I'm skeptical of that. Once we embrace it, if we later find it's a bad thing for us we may never be rid of it. It's pretty much a one-way deal - once it's legal it'll be big business, and the industries producing marijuana products will have power to protect their interests.
I would appreciate it if you (whoever the hell you are) didn't try to twist my words - if you'd like to argue that pot is less dangerous than booze, say so yourself. Don't tell me that I said it, because I didn't. But if you want to say it, you may find my mind to be more open to that possibility than you assume it is. Unless you're going for "funny" mod points (I love playing that game myself) this is also a much more productive way to proceed.
They aren't saints, but using drugs as an excuse to put "undesirable" people away is a very dangerous precedent.
Selective enforcement of laws that makes everyone a criminal is a sure road to oppression. Curiously, the existence of these laws hasn't made me a criminal. So I question (even interpreted as hyperbole) your assertion that the laws make "everyone" a criminal. People have the choice to not break the law, right?
'Course, at the same time I do appreciate that individuals ought to have the right to make up their own mind about what sorts of things they'd like to do to themselves. I accept the idea of a "war on drugs" primarily on the premise that plentiful supply of potent recreational drugs is detrimental to our society as a whole.
Is that premise true? I'd say there's at least good support for it in history - the Opium Wars, for instance.
Slashdot Mirror
And worse than that: the jerks who bitch about the bastards that complain about the people who constantly moan about grammar nazis!
...the Dutch!
And, you know, there's only one thing worse than them...
(but dude, seriously, learn to spell.)
Well, to be fair, the headline says the cure was patented - not that it actually works...
"I'm sorry I caused all that cancer"
If I write a kernel driver and it gets incorporated into the official Linux source tree, and I don't explicitly release copyright of it to the Linux kernel project, then they need to talk to me before changing the license on that code. But if I license it under the GPLv2 and allow the clause that the code may be distributed under "any future version of the GPL", then they could switch to GPLv3 without having to get my permission again.
GPLv3 is considered problematic at this point because of a few things the FSF is trying to do with the new license. They're seeking to prevent people from exploiting GPL code in ways that still manage to lock out user control (Tivo is the typical example - they provide the source for the GPL code they're using, but you can't change the firmware on a Tivo yourself because they have hardware that requires crypto signatures on the installed software) and they're seeking to limit the ways software patents can affect free software. (For instance, you can't write a piece of code, release under the GPL, and restrict people's access to that with software patents. I think they're also looking to prevent people from using a piece of GPL software and simultaneously attacking others' use of it with software patents.) Various people have various problems with these clauses - and while I appreciate what they're trying to accomplish I'm not sure it's entirely a good thing, either.
First, suppose you're writing project Z under the GPL and you do want it to move over to the new version of the GPL when it becomes available. Or that otherwise that you want to keep that option open.
Next, assume that project Z is fairly complex, and becomes popular, and receives contributions from numerous developers, not all of whom stick with the project.
Now, when the new GPL comes along, you have a potential problem: do all the contributors to the project need to approve a license change? Including all the ones you can no longer get in touch with? This is where the clause comes in handy: by submitting code under GPL2, they already [i]have[/i] approved a license change to GPL3, so you don't need their permission.
'Course, that can be avoided if you simply make all contributors hand over copyright of their contributions to those managing the project, or otherwise get their agreement ahead of time to make certain licensing changes in the future.
And then from a user's perspective: this clause increases what users can do with the program, it doesn't restrict users' choices. People can continue to treat the program as GPL2 licensed for as long as it's licensed that way, or they can treat it as GPL3 if there's some clause in GPL3 they find favorable. The only way it's potentially restrictive is that it allows derivative works to choose GPL3, which then prevents users of the derivative version from going back to GPL2.
Agreeing to terms that aren't yet defined is a bit odd - it's basically just a bit of faith in the FSF that makes that work, that whatever they do with the future versions of the GPL will be for the best. But what's happening now is people aren't sure that's the case.
(Just kidding!) <sigh>
He'd need a zoom lens if he were very tall - or if otherwise his dick or parts of it were very distant from the camera.
If it were small, he'd want a macro lens.
And don't you think it's a little silly to talk to a dead man? People might think you're weird.
Did someone say boobs? Where? Where??
Tom Brokaw: Alright. "Gerald Ford is dead today, and I'm gay." Now, wait a minute!
Voice of Producer: What? That'd be a huge story - Ford dying, and you coming out!
Tom Brokaw: But I'm not gay!
Voice of Producer: Today you're not gay, you know.. but then one day you wake up, you like men, and Gerald Ford dies, and we're screwed. Everyone's hearing about it from Dan Rather!
You have my deepest condolences. I know that the Republican Party is a persecuted minority these days: Nobody gives the poor, innocent Republicans a fair shake. Everyone else in the world hates God and America and, therefore, Republicans as well. And there's the vast conspiracies, the lynchings, and all the inequities and indignities Republicans must suffer for no other reason than following the divine hand of God - appointed by holy power and elected by a clear majority choice. Oh, woe be the poor Republican, for he is a poor, battered victim of a world which is against him for no good reason at all.
This guy made Slashdot because he was especially stupid, not simply because he was caught, and not because he was a Republican. He tried to commit a crime, but went about it in a very idiotic way - made contact with someone he had no logical reason to trust and requested an illegal job, discussed details that were way out of his depth and technical expertise, freely gave away his personal information, went outside to take a picture of some pigeons (I guess to prove that he is one himself) - the whole story just shows an incredible lack of intelligence and sophistication - any kind of subtlety or careful discretion in how he sought criminal help - and he got completely suckered as a result. A tale like this is great "News For Nerds" fodder - dope who knows nothing about computers tries to contract for a system intrusion goes in over his head with someone who actually knows a thing or two, and gets exposed.
Stealing national security documents isn't "News for Nerds", it's just "News". Go watch some Fox News if you want to see that story, I'm sure they'll rattle their sabers and go on about it for weeks - because they are not part of the conspiracy. They are not biased. They will give you the straight story, just the facts, and let you draw your own conclusion. England Prevails!
The title for those who don't want to read the article:
"Harry Potter and the Death Knell of American Literature"
Get a grip. It's a children's book. (And, as others have noted, it's not American.)Other alternative titles:
Harry Potter and The Jumping of the Shark
Harry Potter and The Progressively Less Fun Fantasy
Harry Potter and His Various Problems Which Are Worse Than Yours
Harry Potter and The Revolving Door Of Father Figures
Harry Potter and The Death of One Or Two People He Really Cares About
Harry Potter and The Missing Period (had some fun with Ginny before dumping her, I guess)
Harry Potter and The Many Obvious Clues Which Are Very Specific To What's Going On But Which He Doesn't Understand Until Hermione Gives Him The Answers
Harry Potter and the Very Long Quidditch Scene
Harry Potter and The Emotional Baggage
Harry Potter and The Kiln of Nair
Harry Potter and The Very Bad Man
Being polite as I suggest doesn't accomplish much, either, frankly. From experience it's very hard to ask politely and still not annoy people, and generally they still won't listen. But it's the most productive option - confronting with them with civility reminds them that the people around them matter - hopefully if they receive enough of this kind of response they'll clue in.
But dealing with these kinds of people as if they don't matter (for instance, by being rude), or grumbling, avoiding them, responding passively or passive-aggressively only reinforces their notion that they needn't concern themselves with the feelings of those around them. You're dealing with them as though their annoying traits are the only relevant part of them, and so they respond in kind. Lack of communication is the problem here.
Either that, or we just gotta get Billy Quan on their case.
Earplugs are good at muffling excessively loud sounds, particularly keeping them from damaging your ears. But you can still hear them.
People need to make two changes to their behavior in order to resolve this:
1: Be conscious of what effect your cell phone conversations, etc. are having on others, and be reasonable. Be courteous to them, and maybe don't talk on your phone in a crowded space.
2: If someone else is annoying you, confront them about it, but be polite. Getting them angry won't solve the problem, it'll make it worse. Sitting around being grouchy about it also won't solve the problem.
The people I know who "hate" Palm OS coding are either trying to do wonky things that the device was not completely designed to do or they are use to working in another environment and are trying to force their (wrong) model of an OS onto the Palm APIs.
I disagree.
Palm's design emphasis on elegance was a great asset back in the 1990s - I still think it's a good thing, but it needs to be modernized. Handhelds are capable of a lot more than they were in 1998, and PalmOS 5 isn't adapting well to the new capabilities. The original PalmOS was basically designed for simple record view/edit tasks - which it does well, but the GUI of the OS doesn't provide much support for more complex views. It can be fairly limiting even for rather humble projects.
Look at it this way: back in the 1990s when you had a Win CE machine, the thing was built like a brick in order to provide the horsepower needed for the OS and GUI, and its level of complexity was (IMO) overreaching, and as a result the thing ran slow, too. Plus (IMO anyway - and this has long been Palm's party line) the UI of a Win CE machine wasn't well thought out for handheld use, and so the actual process you go through to get things done on that OS is more cumbersome, too. At that point, Palm's ability to run well on a humble M68K processor was a serious asset.
So fast-forward several years: Win CE machines have closed the gap in terms of form factor and battery life. Palm machines use ARM processors, but the platform as a whole still hasn't successfully made this transition. (People are generally still writing M68K code for Palms, about five years after they stopped making M68K Palms) Win CE machines are now a lot more responsive than they were, and so the depth they can provide is now a major asset. Palm's approach to backward compatibility is a liability, as every application is run under an emulation layer. Palm's approach of having one application run at a time and having each application retain its state between sessions still works, but people want more flexibility and the hardware is perfectly capable of providing it - people want background tasks, let their MP3 player keep playing or their web browser keep downloading while they go do something else. Palm's ability to do this is limited, and Palm OS still is not a protected environment - not adequately so for this kind of activity. If an application crashes, the device crashes. If Versamail (Palm's own E-Mail client) crashes while fetching mail in the background, your device crashes.
My contention is that Win CE's approach has finally paid off - the hardware has caught up, and the fact that the OS is more feature-rich than Palm's is now an asset rather than a liability. Conversely, Palm is burning up the advantages they had: the (memory and CPU) efficiency of their applications is now wasted through PACE emulation.
When I bought my Treo I seriously considered the Windows versions. (I generally don't like Windows - it as a platform just doesn't suit my tastes) The deal-breaker was the screen resolution, and so I got my 650. I think it was the right choice for me but it's agonizing that they haven't modernized the OS. I want international text support. I want decent multitasking support. (I want my device to be able to fetch my e-mail without crashing the whole device in the middle of whatever I'm doing.) I want the ability to write a non-emulated application in a straightforward manner. Palmtops still need to do what they've been doing efficiently (and I think Win CE has gotten much better at that - application designs have been streamlined, maybe one or two pages were cribbed from PalmOS) but there's also expectations - quite reasonable ones, I think, these days, that they should do more. Palm has used the intent of simple design as an excuse to avoid necessary renovations and avoid providing services that are becoming more important.
Hear, hear! Books want to be open! I find that when books can be open, as they should, they become much more accessible to people than if they were kept closed.
Well, that's what happens in a third-degree burn caused by fire. But the relevant point of the "degrees" of burns is how deep and extensive the damage is. Scalding burns will create different types of damage but if the extent is the same (near-total destruction of the dermal layers in the affected areas) it's still a third-degree burn.
(What, practically, is the difference between having a section of your skin burned to the point of being dead, versus boiled to the point of being dead? Either way it's a serious burn.)
I read that link a few posts back about "debunking" the idea that the coffee case was a frivolous lawsuit (reinforcing the notion that the person who spills the coffee is at fault, that people like hot coffee, etc.) - it's interesting. Since I heard about the third degree burns I've mostly been of the opinion that McDonald's was sufficiently at fault that the case had merit. I still lean in that direction but that link gave me some things to think about. (My opinion doesn't change quickly, but it can change.)
It's not BS, it's something that has actually happened in the past to countries that imported a lot of narcotics.
Oh, really?
Never had oral or anal sex? The standard joke here is that you're asking this question on Slashdot, where clearly nobody has ever had any sex at all.
But these aren't the laws we were talking about, and the sodomy laws have already been struck down (sanity prevails!) - and I don't think it's a good analogy anyway. The practical implications of drugs are greater than those for consentual sex.
I accept the idea of a "war on drugs" primarily on the premise that plentiful supply of potent recreational drugs is detrimental to our society as a whole
I don't. That's not the reason for it anyway. It's a moral crusade, organized by the relgion (specifically methodist temperance), women's groups who want to dictate how people live, and opportunistic slimeballs like Hurst and every president since Nixon.
You accept denying marijuana to terminally ill people in states where it is legal? I don't buy your claim that it's a "moral crusade" - more likely that angle is being used to persuade people to support the agenda (which is still wrong, IMO) but I don't at all buy your theory that this is the real reason why some drugs are illegal.
And I never said anything about terminally ill people, did I? What you're doing here is trying to change the issue - recreational drugs vs. prescription drugs - and trying to suggest that anyone who believes that the War On Some Drugs may not be a bad thing is happy to see an old lady in pain rather than see her using marijuana.
Now, since you've asked the question: do I accept denying marijuana to someone who was granted the right to use it for medical purposes by her state government? No. It was a prescription, the rules for recreational drugs don't apply. Cultivation (as allowed under the California law) is a little more problematic - you've got federal law saying posession and cultivation is illegal and that it is to be forcibly repressed, and you've got California law saying posession and cultivation is legal for medicinal purposes - but privately grown marijuana can't be tracked or regulated. I think the proper compromise would be for medicinal usage to be legal, but with the limitation that it must be acquired through a pharmacy, as is the case with other prescription drugs. It sucks to have to pay more for no good reason, but when you're balancing conflicting interests, it's unreasonable to not make some kind of compromise.
But what's "right" and how does that correlate to what's "legal"? Is the government's destruction of the plants "right" just because it's "legal"? Is the woman's use of marijuana "right" just by virtue of the fact that it's "legal"? Or "wrong" because the federal government contends that it should be illegal? To me the question of whether it's "right" to allow or prohibit marijuana as a recreational drug is entirely subjective. Whether it's a good idea from a practical standpoint is debatable. Whether it's legal is fairly unambiguous.
Likewise, for marijuana as a prescription drug - whether it's "legal" is essentially still in contention due to the conflict surrounding it. Is it "right"? I think so. But considering the level of contention around the drug, the way it's being handled is way out of line with how other prescription drugs are managed. Telling people to go ahead and grow their own is downright irresponsible when there's a conflicting federal law saying that that's illegal. That's not necessarily a bad thing, if it gives people on either side the chance to make their contention in a way that actually has the potential to change the status quo - but for the people growing and using medical marijuana, to get caught up in the middle of that conflict is rather unfortunate.
You mean like alcohol? I agree, people should smoke (or eat, or vapourise) more pot.
I actually considered whether to concede this point in my initial post - the fact that there are some state-sanctioned (and taxed) drugs - the question of whether they might actually be as dangerous or more dangerous than some of the drugs that are currently outlawed. But I figure the line has to be drawn somewhere. The question of whether it's in the right place is perhaps best argued by others - but to my mind it's not an important question. Alcohol and tobacco are state-sanctioned for reasons of tradition and money, and a few other drugs (like caffeine) exist that are neither taxed or forbidden. And then various drugs are forbidden for fear that a plentiful, easy supply of them would create too many addicts in our society and a dangerous trade deficit. And then, among those, may be a few that are harmless, or mostly harmless. Maybe the advocates of these are right and they should be legalized - but it's not a terribly important change. People who involve themselves with these drugs aren't just criminals because there's a law against what they're doing, they're criminals because they've chosen to break that law, and in the case of dealers, growers, importers, and such they've profited from the fact that legitimate business can't compete with them. They've profited from the fact that what they're doing is illegal (which limits supply, increasing prices). You live by the sword, you die by the sword, that's how it works, so I don't have sympathy for dealers, importers, etc. who have suddenly found the illegality of what they do inconvenient.
Now, supposing pot were legalized - would American society decay into ruin? Would the US experience a huge trade deficit and decline in power, and be destroyed by the enemies it made while powerful? I really don't think so - there'd just be another legal drug out there, and greater public nuisance from people smoking it all over the place - but what would be the positive benefit of this change? From a strictly practical standpoint I don't think there is one. I'm not satisfied that it's worthwhile to make that decision - even weighing minimal negative impact vs. minimal or no positive practical impact and a gain in personal liberty. Is it a good thing for us, as a country? Regardless of whether we have a million other bad things going on, is endorsing one more vice a good thing? I'm skeptical of that. Once we embrace it, if we later find it's a bad thing for us we may never be rid of it. It's pretty much a one-way deal - once it's legal it'll be big business, and the industries producing marijuana products will have power to protect their interests.
I would appreciate it if you (whoever the hell you are) didn't try to twist my words - if you'd like to argue that pot is less dangerous than booze, say so yourself. Don't tell me that I said it, because I didn't. But if you want to say it, you may find my mind to be more open to that possibility than you assume it is. Unless you're going for "funny" mod points (I love playing that game myself) this is also a much more productive way to proceed.
The thing is, the cops were pretty skeptical about Reiser's story about a "one-armed man"...
Selective enforcement of laws that makes everyone a criminal is a sure road to oppression. Curiously, the existence of these laws hasn't made me a criminal. So I question (even interpreted as hyperbole) your assertion that the laws make "everyone" a criminal. People have the choice to not break the law, right?
'Course, at the same time I do appreciate that individuals ought to have the right to make up their own mind about what sorts of things they'd like to do to themselves. I accept the idea of a "war on drugs" primarily on the premise that plentiful supply of potent recreational drugs is detrimental to our society as a whole.
Is that premise true? I'd say there's at least good support for it in history - the Opium Wars, for instance.