001208.html

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Mon, 28 May 2001 12:21:00 GMT
I'm surfing today with Opera 5.0, now available for free download. You can use it for free it you're willing to put up with ads, or pay $39 to get rid of them. For paid users of version 4.x, the upgrade is free. There is one bad bug. It doesn't properly handle target="_blank" in links or in the BASE header tag. I use this on my links page to force (formerly) a new page for each click there. There is a workaround, however. Shift-click forces a link to open in a new window. shift-control-click opens the new window behind the current one. I sent a bug report, but haven't yet received a response. They also changed the table layout code, forcing me to replace a bunch of spaces with   to defeat undesired word wrapping.

From my friend Brad in Wyoming in a list of "Cowboy Logic":

There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.

David Koehler - Distortions: twisted images of famous people. Especially good are Al Gore and Dick Cheney & George W. Bush. The fun T-shirts are also good for a laugh, especially "I'm with stupid." Hehe.

David Doull at urbanev.com - Driving Over Jakob Nielsen: a Flash animation where you drive a truck around a track and try to run over images of Jakob Neilsen. Good for a laugh. [script]

Michelle Malkin at TownHall.com - The Amish Vs. the Feds The Amish earned exemption from social security withholding back in 1956. Now they're fighting federal child labor laws. Good for them. [market]

Regulators say that children must be protected from "safety hazards." But the real danger to the Amish -- and to all Americans -- is continued encroachment by Big Government on the fundamental freedom to practice their faith, make a living, and raise their families in peace.

Leonard Sax, M.D. at World and I Magazine - Ritalin: Better Living Through Chemistry?: Why is Johnny a speed freak? Long article. I just skimmed it. [market]

This year some six million children in the U.S.--one in eight-- will take Ritalin. With 5 percent of the world's population, the U.S. consumes 85 percent of this drug. Have we considered the consequences?

...

But the truth is that there is not a huge illicit market for Ritalin. Why not? The answer is in the way the drug reaches your bloodstream. For a drug to be highly addictive, it's got to hit your system all at once, in a "rush." Ritalin, when taken by mouth, is absorbed fairly slowly. You won't get a rush. If the pills are ground up and snorted up the nose, however, then the user can achieve a high--similar to what's experienced by snorting cocaine. Some older students are now doing precisely that with their Ritalin tablets, according to Dr. Roger Weiss, clinical director of the drug abuse treatment program at McLean Hospital near Boston: they are grinding Ritalin tablets into a fine powder and snorting the powder up the nose.

Todd Bensman at The Dallas Morning News Gun laws being foiled, ATF says: Surprise, surprise. Gun laws do not prevent criminals from getting guns. [market]

John Velleco, spokesman for Gun Owners of America, said the ATF study proves the need for less regulation.

"Going after more restrictions to the overwhelming majority of people who never use guns illegally is counterproductive," Mr. Velleco said. "We'd rather have the Dallas police out there chasing real criminals and not spending so much time harassing law-abiding gun owners and doing more paperwork."

Declan McCullagh and Nicholas Morehead at Wired - Privacy a Likely Loser in Treaty: a new cybercrime treaty will likely trample internet privacy. Hopefully, Bush will refuse to even let it get to the Senate. Big Brother lives. [market]

Danny Kalev at Linux World - The future according to Dennis Ritchie: Mr. Kalev interviews the co-inventor of C/Unix. Plan 9, C99, other computer languages.

On the other hand, the "open evolution" idea has its own drawbacks, whether in official standards bodies or more informally, say over the Web or mailing lists. When I read commentary about suggestions for where C should go, I often think back and give thanks that it wasn't developed under the advice of a worldwide crowd. C is peculiar in a lot of ways, but it, like many other successful things, has a certain unity of approach that stems from development in a small group. To tell the truth, I don't know how Linus and his merry band manage so well -- I couldn't have stood it with C.

John Holden at the University of Sydney Department of Psychology - YAPP - Yet another PDP-11 Page: a tribute to the PDP-11 series of processors. I programmed PDP-11s from 1975-1983. It was a nice machine.

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