Topic: DRUGS - on May 19, 2012 at 9:17:00 AM CEST
Willie Nelson: 'If we made marijuana legal, we'd save a whole lotta money and lives'
The veteran musician on God, politics, his favourite singer and why weed should be decriminalised
What were the songs that made you realise you wanted to be a musician?
When I first started out, I sang a lot in church. Amazing Grace was the first song that I can remember ever singing. Gospel was probably the main kind of music I was into. Then I got into Bob Wills (1) and Hank Williams and Frank Sinatra and Louis Armstrong, all those great singers. Ray Charles came along – I loved him. Ray Price. The greatest singer there is, I think, is Ray Price (2).
Sinatra was a big hero of yours, of course.
Yes, he was. Still is. He is my favourite singer. And I read somewhere that I was his favourite singer, so that really made me happy.
There's no better compliment than that …
That was the big one.
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Topic: COMPUTER - on May 19, 2012 at 9:16:00 AM CEST
Wozniak's Original System Description of the Apple ][
Opening with the line, 'To me, a personal computer should be small, reliable, convenient to use and inexpensive,' Steve Wozniak gave his system description of the Apple-II in the May, 1977 issue of BYTE. It's instructive to read what was worth bragging about back then (PDF), such as integral graphics: 'A key part of the Apple-II design is an integral video display generator which directly accesses the system's programmable memory. Screen formatting and cursor controls are realized in my design in the form of about 200 bytes of read only memory.' And it shows what the limitations were in those days, 'While writing Apple BASIC, I ran into the problem of manipulating the 16 bit pointer data and its arithmetic in an 8 bit machine. My solution to this problem of handling 16 bit data, notably pointers, with an 8 bit microprocessor was to implement a nonexistent 16 bit processor in software, interpreter fashion.
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Topic: SECURITY - on May 19, 2012 at 9:14:00 AM CEST
UK government staff caught snooping on citizen data
What a surprise: the U.K. government was forced to reveal under Freedom of Information laws more than 1,000 civil servants have ’snooped’ on British citizens’ private data.
Don’t worry about hackers illegally accessing government systems. It turns out government workers and civil servants who are trusted with private citizen data are more likely to access your data illegally.
The U.K. government is haemorrhaging data — private and confidential citizen data — from medical records to social security details, and even criminal records, according to figures obtained through Freedom of Information requests.
Just shy of 1,000 civil servants working at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), were disciplined for accessing personal social security records. The Department for Health (DoH), which operates the U.K.’s National Health Service and more importantly all U.K. medical records, saw more than 150 breaches occur over a 13-month period.
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Topic: STRANGE - on May 19, 2012 at 9:11:00 AM CEST
Saudi Arabia bans using Gregorian dates
The use of the English language to answer calls or communicate, mainly in companies and hotels, has also been banned
Saudi Arabia has banned all government and private agencies from using the Gregorian calendar in official dealings.
The use of the English language to answer calls or communicate, mainly in companies and hotels, has also been banned, a local daily said.
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