I want to see an easily administered field test (preferably with an unbiased number attached to it) that can be used to say when someone has had too much.

I certainly agree with that. No one should be driving while impaired, and I'd like something better than sobriety field tests.

If that person is in public wandering around they get to spend the evening in detox with the drunks who committed the same offense, and pay a small fine (say $50 or so) to discourage them from doing it again and cover the cost of keeping them in detox overnight.

Why should wandering around in public, whether drunk, stoned, or sober, be against the law? If they're jaywalking, ticket them. If they're harassing people, arrest them.

Marijuana is completely different than alcohol in almost every way. Beerheads will keep drinking until they pass out. This doesn't happen with pot, although if you eat it you could get higher than you want.

Pot doesn't make people rowdy or obnoxious like alcohol does. Someone who's had too much pot will just sit there smiling peacefully. That's one reason crime rates have dropped so much in Colorado since legalization.

And unlike alcohol, pot doesn't ruin lives unless the user starts before adulthood. All the potheads I've known were gainfully employed or retired, unless they started young or were on some other drug, such as alcohol.

Perhaps most importantly if they want to stay home (or at a friends house, or in the pot equivalent of a bar - with a sober ride home, or any other place other than in public) they can get as fucking stoned as they want, I don't give a shit.

That's actually what pot smokers do. When you're stoned you don't want to go anywhere, you want to watch that funny TV show or listen to music.

For some reason this opinion pisses off both the pro-pot and the anti-pot crowds.

I can see why it pisses off prohibitionists, but don't see why it would anger the anti-prohibition camp. It's a reasonable opinion.

Take a look at evolution. Sexual reproduction has so many hurdles to jump through before a beneficial mutation could find a toehold. In asexual reproduction individuals can rapidly and radically adjust to the changing environment and pass on the beneficial mutations to the next generations.

The late writer and biochemist Isaac Asimov would have disagreed with you vehemently. Asimov held a PhD in biochemistry and did cancer research at Boston University.

The above linked short sci-fi story was originally titled "Playboy and the Slime God".

Worse is better is basically the KISS principle for software.

Huh? It seems the opposite of the KISS principle. Making my old code no longer work is hardly keeping it simple. Most modern, ugly web design is as confusing and complicated and bloated as they can make it.

I always followed the KISS principle, it's the easiest way to write bug-free code. Hard to write a buggy version of "hello, world".

This guy is an idiot.

I certainly don't disagree there.

It's always been that way. Fewer than 1% of Americans are illiterate, but something like 97% are aliterate. When I was in school, very few kids wore glasses; no computers or cell phones and the TV was across the room. Reading (or any other close up work) at a young age makes you nearsighted.

We had FoxPro 6 and Windows 98, when XP hit our desks, FoxPro no longer worked. They made me use (ugh!) MS Access.

So I have a few dozen Access apps when they "upgraded" to Office '03, and not a single one would run. Access had become a completely different program with completely different code and was completely incompatible with Access '98. I had to rewrite every God damned program!

OTOH the NOMAD mainframe databases seldom had glitches. I'd been a PC kind of guy, but NOMAD on the mainframe and Microsoft's stupid, anti-user bullshit started changing my mind.

Since when has slashdot ever been news? Its masthead may be "news for nerds" but its news is seldom very new. It's about seeing one's fellow nerds' views on that topic.

since tobacco causes less harm than weed

Tobacco kills most of its addicts.

Indeed, smoking anything is bad for your lungs. I haven't seen anything about gastric problems from eating it, although I've read you shouldn't eat it raw. I've eaten it without problems, but I have a cast iron stomach, most people who down as many aspirins as I did in Delaware for my arthritis would have had terrible health effects from all those aspirins.

Well, any controversy is going to have a vi-emacs fight between the extremists. Pot is certainly not for everyone. If mental illness runs in your family you might want to be wary, because someone on the edge of madness is in a dangerous place.

And yes, there are lies on both sides, but the pro-pot lies are usually ignorance, while the Partnership for a Drug Free America has nothing but bald faced liars.

The lies started with Harry Anslinger, who ran the federal narcotics bureau and wanted more money to funnel to the fight against heroin. Also Randolph Hearst, who was against not pot but hemp, which threatened his timber holdings.

The anti-pot camp has historically been corrupt. Have a look at this 1930s propaganda.

Pot that smells bad usually won't get you very high. The good stuff smells green.

That said, it isn't for everyone. It is good for inspiration for writing, it's a lot easier for me to get in my "writing trance" after a couple of tokes. It was the same with programming at first, also (I was never high at work, that is certainly drug abuse, just like going to work drunk is).

I wouldn't know, I've never been normal. Actually, I'm not sure "normal" actually exists.

Almost every tech site on the planet has that story and you pick the National Enquirer styled tech site?

Tsk, tsk. The submitter should be ashamed. The Register has shown itself to be completely untrustworthy.

Plants don't need sunlight, they just need light. Scientists and engineers (Michael Massimino, the engineer who fixed the Hubble, praised it) who have been in space say they see nothing unrealistic about Andy Wier's The Martian. Michael Massimino, the engineer who fixed the Hubble, praised it. You can light your plants with electric lighting. The problem would be how to generate the electricity.

It appears to be completely different up there. Do Canadians have to pay to register a copyright? It seems that down here we have to pay for everything.