Since quite a few are asking, I figured I'd provide the pertinent sections of TFAs.

According to an update in the Boing Boing article, Watts got out of the car to ask what was happening -- presumably because his car and/or person was being searched. When the officers refused to answer and told him to get back in the car, he asked the question again. At which point he was attacked, his property was seized, and he was asked to waive his Miranda rights.

Sounds like the unfortunate combination of a pissed off officer and a less-that-sympathetic citizen compounded by detectives/officers who get pissed when prisoners refuse to talk. I can empathize with both parties (first and second, not third -- right to remain silent means right to remain silent,) but -- assuming the accuracy of Watts' story -- the assault charge is probably trumped up. Convincing a judge of that is a whole different story.

actually, if you're primarily using the netbook at locations with an electrical hookup (ie, if battery life is not as large an issue) then using WDE would probably be the best approach.

Another solution would be to get a cheap VPS or shell hosting account and ssh -D 2020 host -X then run firefox from the shell acct. and treat the netbook like a thin(ner) client.

worksheets for pay = less worksheets = either less meaningless work or work with more meaning or both. In any case, stopping the proliferation of worksheets (even if just a little) is a good thing imho.

Insofar as there is nothing nefarious about lobbying period.

no, that's why google comes up with lots of great stuff that you don't even know you're paying for.

primarily because it hasn't. Corporations have been considered people for ages.

I feel like I have a good case-study to answer this question. I did policy debate for the past three years, which has meant hulling a printer around the state/country. When it wasn't being hulled to tournaments, it would go back a forth from school in friend's cars quite often. The files we regularly printed off on it were generally 50 - 100 pages long, sometimes longer, and sometimes (saturday morning updates, etc.) much smaller. Every now and again I would print off a book (300-500 pages) on it.

I'm using it at college now and I still haven't had a problem with it.

It works perfectly on osx and windows. I run linux, and installing the cups drivers is a bit of a pain but after the first time (during which I documented my own procedure) it hasn't taken more than 10 minutes.

Even if you were right, I'm sure there's plenty of searching and pattern matching in video games. Especially searching.

Regardless, video games are not nearly as interesting an encryption.

No. The lines hold legal meaning, and have nothing to do with the way in which one writes on those lines.

"Print name here" means "indicate the person to whom this form is pertinent"
"sign name here" means "indicate that you agree to these terms and make a sign that verifies your identity"

For example, If someone is being all nice and ritzy and filling out a form for me (someone selling me a car, insurance, etc.,) they can write my name on the "print your name" line. But only I can sign on the "sign your name" line. It has nothing to do with the font that is used on those lines.

Cursive, every time.

Unless you're left handed. Writing cursive left handed sucks, and made my hands ache after just a paragraph. I could write pages in print, but cursive was painful

Eh, more likely they were just blindsided by the sudden availability of word processors and really did think you'd have to hand-write everything indefinitely far into the future.

Nope. Because my teachers told me the same thing, but the computers and word processing software we used in 8th was bought by the school a year before my 4th grade year.

Everyone knows it's bull, but "you'll have to do this later" is the only thing that justifies teaching cursive.

Removing freedom does not make me "free".

I agree. So don't use non-GPL software. "free" doesn't mean something universally. The question that should always proceed the statement that something is free is, of course, what is this free from?

You would like to be free from others telling you what software you can use. Which is why I point out the contradiction between your goal and your choices. Because universal adherence to the GPL is the only thing that can truly free you from others telling you what software you can use.

The difference between Stallman telling you not to use a piece of software and Apple telling you not to use a piece of software is in the purpose for that restriction. And that is why Stallman does understand -- and at a much more fundamental level than the one at which you are basing your conclusions -- what free means.

You've gotten off topic -- the question is not whether "pragmatism" is better than "purity." The question is whether the argument itself is healthy for free software.

I claim that it isn't because the argument itself has legitimized the view that free software is just another "paradigm" for more cost-effective development. And that's bad because it misses the point of the entire free software movement -- that software shouldn't be treated as a commodity.

See my post here for an answer to the "purism isn't pragmatic" -- where it's actually on topic.

Just don't start with VB, PHP, Java or C# as it will screw the person up for lifetime.

I strongly disagree with this. Refusing to learn a new way of doing things will screw the person up for a lifetime. But the blame for that is on the person who is now screwed up, for being lazy.

I think that -- like any other question in pedagogy -- there is no right answer that applies to everyone. But I still find the reasoning in this article absurd.

You have to look at the source code to figure out what a Scheme program is doing? Isn't this true in.... every language? Even if the "source code" consists of little blocks you're dragging and dropping together?