Logitech Marathon m705 mouse works in Linux 100%

A couple of weeks ago, my much-loved Logitech mx600 mouse died after a few years of extremely heavy use. So I went on a semi-obsessive research hunt for a replacement that would give me the features I wanted and a decent price.

I learned that the Marathon m705 was probably the best bet in terms of size, features, and price, so I was all geared up to buy one online...and then I saw conflicting reports on whether the thumb button registers in xev or not. Arrgh. More research didn't help matters, so I eventually just went out and picked one up at Staples to find out firsthand; if it didn't work, I'd return it.

Answer: yes, it works perfectly, the thumb button registers in xev as button 10 (same as on the Performance MX).  I'm in Debian Squeeze, but that shouldn't have anything to do with it. Hopefully noting this up on the web will save someone else frustration & research time (I've seen my posts show up on Google in similar circumstances before).

Ding Dong, Kevorkian's Dead

Shame the damn topic of assisted suicide won't die with him... Of course, there's articles cluelessly praising him all over the place, and here's my response to one:

[Writer] & fellow readers, PLEASE do some research on this guy. I did, and have bookmarks here:
http://www.diigo.com/user/xyzzyx/euthanasia

To summarize:

Kevorkian made it very clear in his book "Prescription: Medicide" and in court that his real goal was "making possible the performance of invaluable experiments" he described as "creative" and "of any kind or complexity" on disabled people from infancy onwards, because "...self-elimination of individual and mortally diseased or crippled lives taken collectively can only enhance the preservation of public health and welfare."  If the person wasn't capable of consent, it'd be "suicide by proxy."

He stated: "Intense emotionalism engendered by the concentration camp atrocities of World War II has unfairly stigmatized [human experimentation] and cloaked it in silence...Therefore, it seems reasonable to conclude that a few of the medical criminals did the right thing..."

In his plans, if the experiment wasn't lethal, "death may be induced" by things like "removal of organs for transplantation" or "lethal dose of new or untested drug to be administered by an official executioner." He proposed the idea of auctioning off the organs of people that were "hopelessly crippled" and giving a portion of the resulting proceeds to relatives, "whose financial burdens would be eased."

His first idea was to make it legal to perform fatal experiments on prisoners; when that failed, he realized that he needed to get society used to the idea of deliberately killing humans first, and chose to promote assisted suicide as that path. He placed advertisements offering to help "cripples" commit suicide, then picked "subjects" for their publicity value.

Repeated investigations showed that only 25% of those killed were terminally ill, most were not in untreatable pain, and some had no diagnosable condition.  Many had untreated depression or anxiety, were grieving the loss of a loved one, were in serious debt, or feared being a burden -- all things that aren't best handled by death.

He had *no* credentials in any field working with patients, and only worked with them as required for his residency to become a pathologist.  He wanted to be around death whenever possible as a student, liked to take pictures of dying people's eyes, and cadaver blood in his paintings.  His death videos show a lack of any emotion, totally the opposite of videos made by any orgs worldwide that truly do care about the patient.

As far as assisted suicide is concerned, there are solid reasons that most disabled people & virtually all of our orgs are against it... Rather than restate them here (this is long enough) I'll link to it:
http://bit.ly/l16hS2

If the real reason people want to legalize euthanasia is to alleviate poor quality of life, then they would advocate measures that uphold quality of life for terminal & disabled people and for more research into ways to alleviate suffering while science hunts for cures. 

Right now, the advocates end up discovering at the end that they don't really want to die unless they're depressed, and the folks that do ask for it (or in some cases, didn't ask) do so from the same motives as Kevorkian's subjects, often after subtle or blatant hints from others around them...