Delicious LiveJournal Links for 9-20-2010

[andrewducker]

• Daily Mail believes that men should control their wives.
  (tags: DailyMail feminism EpicFail)
• Pay survey: What people think we should really earn
  (tags: pay income uk money work)
• It's The Software, Stupid. Where Nokia's problem comes from.
  (tags: nokia mobile_phones technology)
• A secularist manifesto
  (tags: religion philosophy uk)
• Some negative stats about decriminalisation of drugs in Portugal. Anyone got further commentary?
  (tags: drugs portugal decriminalization)
• Goverment launches 'ruthless' tax evasion clampdown
  (tags: tax politics government uk)

Comments

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

Totally anecdotal but about three or four years ago when it became clear that the cops were not longer going to bother people about small amounts of cocaine and hash, the usage went up dramatically on a temporary basis (seriously, suddenly everyone I knew was doing coke all the time) and then about 18 months later went back to the previous level of just a few people doing it.

Most people, myself included, got bored of it or realized it was turning us into assholes and just stopped.

My guy feeling is that that is pretty much what would happen anywhere. Temporary big spike in people willing to try cocaine and play around with it, then people realizing it's not worth it and things going back to normal.

[khoth.livejournal.com]

In 2006, the total number of deaths as a consequence of overdose did not diminish radically compared to 2000, nor did the percentage of drug addicts with AIDS decrease significantly (from 57% to 43%). The opposite occurred.

What does that even mean? I haven't come across statistics so confusingly badly-worded for ages.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, it's presented by an anti-drug foundation, so I'm sceptical of it. I was hoping there might be a rebuttal somewhere.

[naath.livejournal.com]

I read a largely positive account of the Portuguese drug situation in the Economist months back (so obviously I'm failing to find it now) the general thrust being that people with drug problems were finding it easier to seek help (and to receive that help once they sought it).

[andrewducker]

Dammit. I had a link to that at one point, but I don't ever seem to have stored it to Delicious. It was a lot more positive than this one. And I'm sceptical that this one is presented by an anti-drug foundation.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

> Bottom Line: Nokia is a hardware company that hates software.

Well didn't they start off making wellies...?

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Yep - I have a pair. They're great.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Ah but hardware is key with wellies!

[dreema.livejournal.com]

hardwear, surely? ;)

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

In the realm of Wellington boots, hardwear and softwear are probably just two different kinds of boot sole or something. Not surprising Nokia have got a bit confused then!

[matgb]

That article on Nokia is interesting but...

"they'll have to buy in from elsewhere".

Well, yes, they already do, Symbian may be a bit shit, but it's Open Source. If the problem is the software team develope something to one spec and then the hardware team throttle the spec, that's not a software problem. That's a "the stupid, it burns" problem.

And the 5800, which is what I've got, is definitely underspecced for the softare it's running, it just can't handle doing different things. Running ht epodcast client, which is designed to run in the background, in the background, pretty much stops you doing anything else, including listening to podcasts.

It doesn't surprise me that the hardware team throttle the specs. But Symbian, in and of itself, is actually pretty good, it just needs a few UI tweaks and hardware capable of running it properly.

[0olong.livejournal.com]

Daily Mail in 'written by hateful scumbags' shocker!!