Just bought my first Episode I toys (small review)
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Star Wars Toy Mania
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Just went to Toys are us here in Melbourne FL during lunch. As expected, it wasn't too full, nor were there any big lines since this is a pretty small town.
Here's what I bought...
Darth Maul action figure - My favorite character. Looks way cool, I imagine there'll be different versions. I'm hoping they come out with one where he has his hood on (like Mace Windu).
Ki Adi Mundi - I wasn't expecting to buy this Jedi knight figure, but this cone head alien guy looks pretty neat + plus has a purple lightsaber.
Sebulba's Pod Racer - Nice ! Another vehicle I wasn't expecting to like, but these pod racers just look too cool !!! However, the only podracer of this size (Action fleet with stand) is this one. WE NEED MORE PODRACERS !!! They have about 6 podracers in micro machine styles, but they're too little.
That's it, for a total of $26.47. I didn't want to spend too much until I ask my wife:) Overall, the action figures look really nice. The have more articulation than the old ones and have a "stand". The stand is the COMMTECH chip, which I don't really like. The idea is nice, the toy can talk and interact with other toys, but you have to buy a commtech reader (separate) and the voices sounds like crap !!! Oh well... (everybody sounds like a robot, even C3PO sounds more like a robot:)
I might get the Naboo starfighter later and a couple of more figures, however I'm waiting for the Sith Infiltrator (looks like a tie fighter).
One final note, these toys are a little bit too expensive, I hope the prices will go down in the future. The lightsabers are %20.00 and the double edge lightsaber (Darth Maul's) is %30.00 . Ouch ! C'mon George we all want to "feel the force", but it's too expensive !!!
Anyways, I'll be buying more of these toys in the future;)
I buy starwars toys (and Marvel action figures) because they look cool. I put them in my "study" room in my apartment or at my office. I like how they look and they're lots of fun.
One of the favorites in my office is my Star Destroyer, we push a button to play the "alarm" siren whenever we get frustrated or want to scare away some marketing people:)
So no, many don't buy these for invesment, to invest I rather buy stock !
Still, I doubt these toys will be worth that much in the future. There are too many copies, and too many "collector". But , hey, if you have the money go ahead.
No *way*, open them up and start playing :)
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Star Wars Toy Mania
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Toys are for playing !!! If you buy it, open it up and put it somewhere where it looks cool. Or *gulp* play with it, after all, it's a toy.
I get really irked with "collecting" types. It's like with comic books, some people buy them and don't ever read the books !!!
BTW - There are so many of these produced that I think most won't be worth a lot like the early ones are.
As for feeling like a using a gun on others or yourself, I can understand that. I know how it feels to be helpless and you just want to explode. However, you didn't do it, and most probably you wouldn't have done what these 2 did.
In light of that, my point still stands, whatever these kids went through, doesn't matter in the context of the actions they took. They killed anybody, and they enjoyed it. If that's not evil I don't know what is. Their actions made them monsters. Their actions were delibarate and planned (for a year). Also, I'm sure people don't have a problem calling Hitler a monster. Hey, you don't know, maybe he was also a geek and was abused as a child. Maybe the jocks were jews !
If a woman is being abused by her husband (verbally and/or physically) and in a moment of rage and without planning kills the husband , it doesn't make it right, but it's a more understandable situation. However, if you plan for more than a year to kill, and instead of killing the perpetrators of your pain, you just kill, well that's very different, it's evil. Those 2 cowards killed innocent people, girls that more than likely never picked on them. Geeks that were studying in the library, and yes some jocks who it seems they didn't recognize (except for maybe one).
As bad as your expirience was in high school, it does not compare at all to what the parents of the victims are and will go through. Neither does it compare to the wounded who would probably not be able to walk, and may have mental problems as a result of this.
In a way , you're lucky, they aren't.
ps - english is my second language too. cool, no ?
Who the hell do you think was behind the military junta in Panama? Noriega and George Bush went way back, up until we illegal invaded Panama in 89 to clean up our little mess. The US prefers to establish police states in countries that are far from our borders -- such behavior doesn't go on here, but we sure benefit from it.
Sure, I agree with you, since I lived through it:) Of course most North Americans don't know about this (which speaks to my point on the educational system). This also happened in most of Central America, but that's another story for another time.
The police state here is a little more subtle. The US has the highest incarceration rate of any industrial country. There are millions in prison and millions more who are legally bound to the criminal justice system. The entire system is racist and classist.
I won't go to into that since it's a little off topic (albeit a very interesting discussion). All I'll say is that the school system is far far far from a police state. Not letting kids wear whatever they want, and do whatever they want to do in highschool is not equivalent to a real police state. My point , and the examples I posted, are that the system is lax and probably is one of the least strict systems in the world. Also North American high school kids are way behind the curve in areas of math, science, geography, history , etc. Wheter this is related to the non-strict educational system, is an exercise best left for the reader.
... are like the one I described. I went to school in Tampa, FL in the 90s . The kid who said "it's a police state" is currently going to school, I'm sure it hasn't changed that much.
Some clarifications:
3. It has been proven that the level of education in US teens is very low. Coming from another country, it was upsetting that most of my classmates didn't know where Panama (canal-zone-US-territory-occupied) is on the world map. The parents might want kids to have good grades, but the high school culture really doesn't push for this like other countries. ie - Japan, as an extreme, has so much pressure that kids kill themselves for not so perfect grades (not a good situation either).
4. You have to ask yourself, do we really need to bring highschools down to the lowest level, or encourage people to work hard at achieving the highest levels. When you challenge kids they usually strive. If you give them easy choices they will take those, it's their nature. I think we should expect more of our next generations. We're falling behind !!!
5. Most public schools have free books. Not that I think it's bad BTW, but definetly more accomodating than other countries.
My point is that kids are complaining that there are too many rules, when in reality and from a world view, there are probably not enough rules. This should be a hint as to why other countries are surpassing the US in elementary/highschool education. BTW - When and were did you go to school ? Just curious.
I agree. Something had to happen for them to snap, but also there was more. I'm sure there are millions (billions) of people who have endured even worse treatment, and they've not done what these 2 did.
I was just trying to bring out the "monster part", like you said "Keep humans from breaking, and you reduce the monster population in the world." To do that you must be able to recognize monstruosity whenever it appears, not hide it.
We can all do something about high school abuse, and we can help reduce it. Maybe, that's a big step. However, there's little we can do about people who are just plain *evil*.
Evil is something very hard to quantify, and I guess the only people who can describe it would be the victims of these atrocities. Like jews who survived the Holocaust or one girl who survived this event while one of the killers pointed a gun to her head while laughing and having the time of his life.
"Yesterday I watched a show where people thought about "what if Eric and Dylan were alive still". Everyone was saying they wanted them dead. Isn't it somewhat ironic that the same people who don't want to see football players, etc. get killed are the same ones who want goths/nerds to die?"
Your argument (if it can be called that) is that if the killers were popular (jocks, for example) people wouldn't want them dead, as opposed to the geeks. I hope you were kidding, if not you've got a serious persecution complex.
The reality here is that they would want them dead because they murdered a bunch of _INNOCENT_ people, nobody cares they were geeks. Do you think the parents of the victims cared if the killers were geeks/jocks/cheerleaders/whatever ???? Get real! There's a larger world beyond your small vision, get some perspective (and a grip) man !!!
BTW1 - Many of the kids killed and injured were geeks. Not that it matters, the important thing is that they were human beings BTW2 - I'm against the death penalty, so if they survived I wouldn't want them dead. Of course life in prision would be the minimum punishment these 2 earened. Unfortunately, the cowards killed themselves.
A police state... that's what one of the Kids says in Katz' article. Wow.
I'm originally from Panama (Central America, kids), and came during the Noriega fiasco to finish high school (10-12th), so I was in high school not too long ago and I know a little about "police states" (or military juntas)
Here are some observations;
No school uniforms. This bothered me at first, I didn't have enough clothes, I loved using uniforms since nobody had to "compete" clothes wise. So, I had to spend more money in what I consired a waste, clothes. Also , I had many friends working just to buy clothes, instead of studying. Ridiculous.
You can take whatever classes you want. Just like college, this could be good or bad. I tought it was mainly bad since many kids tried to take the easier classes. In Panama, you took whatever everybody else took until 10th grade. By then you had to decide between Science, Arts, Letters(Law), and others. If you choose science you had to take the same courses as everybody else in science. If you didn't like some of the classes, too bad !
It's cool to fail and get bad grades. Kids bragged about doing bad,failing and going to summer school !!! In Panama, getting bad grades (like a D or F) was a cause for shame. Plus, if you wore a school uniform during summer, it was obvious you failed. There was great peer pressure to do ok in school.
High school is too easy ! I had average grades in my school, when I came to the US I had a 4.0 average, and I didn't have to study !!!
And those are just some of the negative comparisons from the dozens I can make. Other more positive differences are here you have free food, free books, lots of clubs (french, art, computer, chess, acting, etc), and lots of "extra" goodies. Surely you can see that the system here is less represive than my native land , which I'm sure Panamanian schools are very similar to the rest of Latin America and probably Europe.
So, I like universities (went to USF) in the US, but high school is a joke. However, it's far from a "police state". Kids in this country are way too spoiled, and many are lazy. When I hear about kids being repressed because they can't wear a hat, trenchcoat, or dress like a vampire to school I feel little sympathy. School is a place to learn, and like a workplace it has rules you must follow.
Katz writes; Although many expressed sympathy for the killers as well as the victims in Littleton (unlike, say Time Magazine, which accompanied cover photos of the killers with the headline "The Monsters Next Door"), no one threatened violence, supported it, or approved of it. And what are you saying, that they were not monsters ??? Did you read what they did and how the did it ? How they killed 13 human beings while laughing ? Did you hear the stories about them killing a girl while she was crying and begging for her life ? How about them thinking it was "cool" how the brains of one student looked after shooting him on the head ? Or the laughs they got by killing a girl and saying "peekaboo".
I'm all for forgiveness and understanding, but these to killers earned the title "monsters". Please, your intentions seem kind of honest, but your language and tone is starting to betray you.
BTW - You fail to mention that the Time edition is very fair, and has very well balanced (and positive) articles about Goths, violent videogames and movies.
I was in high school , 7 years ago , I doubt it's changed that much. If you just walk away and do nothing, they'll keep spitting on him and trying to CHOKE HIM !!!!
Sorry but running away is not the way to go. Ignoring the problem is not the solution, if the school officials don't do anything then they're not doing their job. The colorado thing could have been prevented, if officials followed up on the report of PIPE BOMBS.
When I came to this country, a kid tried to intimidate me. I was lucky that most high school kids in the US are pretty ignorant about the rest of the world. I told him I was from Panama (true) and like everybody in Central America I was a guerrilla fighter (false). He stopped bothering me.
If having an admiration and devotion to Hitler (in this day an age) does not make one a racists, I don't know what else would.
And when people use that word, that usually is meant to disrespect your race. If you were to call me a "spik" , I would certainly accuse you of being racists.
Please...
BTW - I'm not saying racism caused this tragedy. The cause was madness, I was just addressing another point (long lost in this thread)
The police have confirmed that the diary indicates the date was chosen because of Hitlers birthdate, plus the police have also mentioned there were "Nazi" materials (posters, book ? don'tknow) in the room (of both?).
The student in question was also a popular athlete. Last I'd heard, the kid's father was blaming race, but there was no other evidence.
o Let's see, before they killed him the said, "there's the little _N_WORD" o These "geeks" workshiped Hitler, hardly a model for racial tolerance.
Also, several of the kids killed and or injured happend to be in a christian youth group. And we all know one of the was asked if she believed in God, and was shot for it !
Somehow, I doubt that particular girl was making fun of them...
The reality here is that these kids had ***way*** more problems than people teasing them....
... in a positive way. Make sure your teachers+principal+parents know about this. If the jerk doesn't get a punishment from the school, you and your parents have a good lawsuit waiting for assault.
Hey, I know it's bad now, but it'll get better later. Wait until you get to college, you'll have lots of fun.
But for now, don't keep quiet, this kind of abuse should not be tolerated.
While I find it nice and productive to talk about geek opression, I find it repulsive that some people are using the word "sympathize" wrt some of the killers.
These guys were not your typical "geeks", if they were "geeks" at all.
From Andrew in Alaska: "To be honest, I sympathized much more with the shooters than the shootees. I am them. They are me. This is not to say I will end the lives of my classmates in a hail of bullets, but that their former situation bears a striking resemblance to my own...."
Andrew, I understand what you're saying, and in a way, I know what you're feeling. But I can not fathom how can someone "sympathize" with these monsters !!! This is like saying you sympathize with Adolph Hitler, who knows, maybe he too was mocked as a child (it seems he did suffer from rejection...). Try to sympathize with the people killed or injured, or maybe even try to sympathize with one of the "geeks" killed in the library. It makes you wonder if they hated jocks like this, why didn't they do this at a football game or gym ? I think theres more than people just making fun of them here, there was some real hate, evil and problems we might never understand in the minds of these killers.
They would've still done it. They wanted to die, and anyways, they knew police would be at the school soon enough.
These kids wanted to commit suicide and have as much fun & revenge as they could before dying. It's sick, but obviously their motives were clear. Kill and destroy as much as possible before killing themselves.
I used to play Doom & Duke Nukem back in college, and I though they were pretty cool games. I certainly know these games don't make people killers, if they did, we would have a bigger problem right now.
However, when I heard about the shootings and the type of weapons I could not help but notice the similarities to some of those games. For example, we all know that one of the weapons in Doom 1&2 is the shotgun. And then, in Duke Nukem, one of the "innovations" was the use of pipe bombs to blow away enemies.
While more likely these games didn't cause the killings, I can't in all honesty say there was no influence here from them. (And the level of use was high, the "Eric" guy made a bunch of wad files back in '96 & '97)
As games become more and more violent and much more realistic, we're going to have to deal with the fact that sometimes, some games are not appropiate for certain age groups and certain types of kids. Wheter it's soley up to the parents, or a rating system or whatever, we can't not thinking about this issue.
Yesterday I got my copy of Half-Life, which I've been itching to play. However, I couldn't install it. I probably will sometime, but for now, I could use a lot of thinking and reflect on what's going on in this world.
... keep being very negative. I know Sun is no saint, but a strong java vm could only help Linux and not hurt it. Specially considering that the current fastest java platform is a PC running Windows.
The theory that running Linux on multiple hardware is "cross platform" is not as good as running cross-hardware , cross-OS, like Java promises to do.
Anyways, the article comments on the "splitering" of Java which is really a bunch of FUD and I'm surprised Linus mentions this. C'mon , one of the "splinters" listed is *IBM*. Now when did they release an incompatible VM ???
I mean, how are they going to kill all the jedi ? It would have been cool if the Sith were as large a group as the jedi , led by vader at the end of the prequels.
Oh well, at least Darth Maul is cool. I'm hoping there's more to Darth Sidious than the obvious...
Servlets are pretty cool and this book covers the subject perfectly.
Oh , and I bought it for 9.95$ including shipping at www.fatbrain.com and using the FATBRAIN code (plus got a cool cap).
[ but if you want to contribute to Ron, get it from amazon with the link provided above ]
What's the point of grouping people like this ?
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Keep in mind the "hacker profile" was originally written when there were, maybe, no more than a few thousand hackers around the country. Things are different now. It's even cool to be a hacker (which is sort of at odds with the whole idea of being one).
True, so the ideas are outdated. Ok.
.... so, are you an outsider, a larval stage hacker, or just a wannabe?
I'm definetly not a wannabe anything, nor did I claim to be a hacker (you don't decleare yourself one, others do, IMHO). I've been coding since I was 10 as a hobby and now I get paid to do it as an adult... hacking should be defined by your technical abilities and not the food you eat, the president you vote for, nor the God you pray to.
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Here's what I bought
- Darth Maul action figure - My favorite character. Looks way cool, I imagine there'll be different versions. I'm hoping they come out with one where he has his hood on (like Mace Windu).
- Ki Adi Mundi - I wasn't expecting to buy this Jedi knight figure, but this cone head alien guy looks pretty neat + plus has a purple lightsaber.
- Sebulba's Pod Racer - Nice ! Another vehicle I wasn't expecting to like, but these pod racers just look too cool !!! However, the only podracer of this size (Action fleet with stand) is this one. WE NEED MORE PODRACERS !!! They have about 6 podracers in micro machine styles, but they're too little.
That's it, for a total of $26.47. I didn't want to spend too much until I ask my wifeOverall, the action figures look really nice. The have more articulation than the old ones and have a "stand". The stand is the COMMTECH chip, which I don't really like. The idea is nice, the toy can talk and interact with other toys, but you have to buy a commtech reader (separate) and the voices sounds like crap !!! Oh well
I might get the Naboo starfighter later and a couple of more figures, however I'm waiting for the Sith Infiltrator (looks like a tie fighter).
One final note, these toys are a little bit too expensive, I hope the prices will go down in the future. The lightsabers are %20.00 and the double edge lightsaber (Darth Maul's) is %30.00 . Ouch ! C'mon George we all want to "feel the force", but it's too expensive !!!
Anyways, I'll be buying more of these toys in the future
*LOL*
... no probably not. These stories are popping up now because of the recent events, but probably they'll quite down in a few months ...
ahem
I buy starwars toys (and Marvel action figures) because they look cool. I put them in my "study" room in my apartment or at my office. I like how they look and they're lots of fun.
:)
One of the favorites in my office is my Star Destroyer, we push a button to play the "alarm" siren whenever we get frustrated or want to scare away some marketing people
So no, many don't buy these for invesment, to invest I rather buy stock !
Still, I doubt these toys will be worth that much in the future. There are too many copies, and too many "collector". But , hey, if you have the money go ahead.
Toys are for playing !!! If you buy it, open it up and put it somewhere where it looks cool. Or *gulp* play with it, after all, it's a toy.
I get really irked with "collecting" types. It's like with comic books, some people buy them and don't ever read the books !!!
BTW - There are so many of these produced that I think most won't be worth a lot like the early ones are.
As for feeling like a using a gun on others or yourself, I can understand that. I know how it feels to be helpless and you just want to explode. However, you didn't do it, and most probably you wouldn't have done what these 2 did.
In light of that, my point still stands, whatever these kids went through, doesn't matter in the context of the actions they took. They killed anybody, and they enjoyed it. If that's not evil I don't know what is. Their actions made them monsters. Their actions were delibarate and planned (for a year). Also, I'm sure people don't have a problem calling Hitler a monster. Hey, you don't know, maybe he was also a geek and was abused as a child. Maybe the jocks were jews !
If a woman is being abused by her husband (verbally and/or physically) and in a moment of rage and without planning kills the husband , it doesn't make it right, but it's a more understandable situation. However, if you plan for more than a year to kill, and instead of killing the perpetrators of your pain, you just kill, well that's very different, it's evil. Those 2 cowards killed innocent people, girls that more than likely never picked on them. Geeks that were studying in the library, and yes some jocks who it seems they didn't recognize (except for maybe one).
As bad as your expirience was in high school, it does not compare at all to what the parents of the victims are and will go through. Neither does it compare to the wounded who would probably not be able to walk, and may have mental problems as a result of this.
In a way , you're lucky, they aren't.
ps - english is my second language too. cool, no ?
Who the hell do you think was behind the military junta in Panama? Noriega and George Bush went way back, up until we illegal invaded Panama in 89 to clean up our little mess. The US prefers to establish police states in countries that are far from our borders -- such behavior doesn't go on here, but we sure benefit from it.
:) Of course most North Americans don't know about this (which speaks to my point on the educational system). This also happened in most of Central America, but that's another story for another time.
Sure, I agree with you, since I lived through it
The police state here is a little more subtle. The US has the highest incarceration rate of any industrial country. There are millions in prison and millions more who are legally bound to the criminal justice system. The entire system is racist and classist.
I won't go to into that since it's a little off topic (albeit a very interesting discussion). All I'll say is that the school system is far far far from a police state. Not letting kids wear whatever they want, and do whatever they want to do in highschool is not equivalent to a real police state. My point , and the examples I posted, are that the system is lax and probably is one of the least strict systems in the world. Also North American high school kids are way behind the curve in areas of math, science, geography, history , etc. Wheter this is related to the non-strict educational system, is an exercise best left for the reader.
... are like the one I described. I went to school in Tampa, FL in the 90s . The kid who said "it's a police state" is currently going to school, I'm sure it hasn't changed that much.
Some clarifications:
3. It has been proven that the level of education in US teens is very low. Coming from another country, it was upsetting that most of my classmates didn't know where Panama (canal-zone-US-territory-occupied) is on the world map. The parents might want kids to have good grades, but the high school culture really doesn't push for this like other countries. ie - Japan, as an extreme, has so much pressure that kids kill themselves for not so perfect grades (not a good situation either).
4. You have to ask yourself, do we really need to bring highschools down to the lowest level, or encourage people to work hard at achieving the highest levels. When you challenge kids they usually strive. If you give them easy choices they will take those, it's their nature. I think we should expect more of our next generations. We're falling behind !!!
5. Most public schools have free books. Not that I think it's bad BTW, but definetly more accomodating than other countries.
My point is that kids are complaining that there are too many rules, when in reality and from a world view, there are probably not enough rules. This should be a hint as to why other countries are surpassing the US in elementary/highschool education.
BTW - When and were did you go to school ? Just curious.
I agree. Something had to happen for them to snap, but also there was more. I'm sure there are millions (billions) of people who have endured even worse treatment, and they've not done what these 2 did.
I was just trying to bring out the "monster part", like you said "Keep humans from breaking, and you reduce the monster population in the world." To do that you must be able to recognize monstruosity whenever it appears, not hide it.
We can all do something about high school abuse, and we can help reduce it. Maybe, that's a big step. However, there's little we can do about people who are just plain *evil*.
Evil is something very hard to quantify, and I guess the only people who can describe it would be the victims of these atrocities. Like jews who survived the Holocaust or one girl who survived this event while one of the killers pointed a gun to her head while laughing and having the time of his life.
... is not out to *kill* geeks.
...
You said
"Yesterday I watched a show where people thought about "what if Eric and Dylan were alive still". Everyone was saying they wanted them dead. Isn't it somewhat ironic that the same people who don't want to see football players, etc. get killed are the same ones who want goths/nerds to die?"
Your argument (if it can be called that) is that if the killers were popular (jocks, for example) people wouldn't want them dead, as opposed to the geeks. I hope you were kidding, if not you've got a serious persecution complex.
The reality here is that they would want them dead because they murdered a bunch of _INNOCENT_ people, nobody cares they were geeks. Do you think the parents of the victims cared if the killers were geeks/jocks/cheerleaders/whatever ???? Get real! There's a larger world beyond your small vision, get some perspective (and a grip) man !!!
BTW1 - Many of the kids killed and injured were geeks. Not that it matters, the important thing is that they were human beings
BTW2 - I'm against the death penalty, so if they survived I wouldn't want them dead. Of course life in prision would be the minimum punishment these 2 earened. Unfortunately, the cowards killed themselves.
I'm originally from Panama (Central America, kids), and came during the Noriega fiasco to finish high school (10-12th), so I was in high school not too long ago and I know a little about "police states" (or military juntas)
Here are some observations;
No school uniforms.
This bothered me at first, I didn't have enough clothes, I loved using uniforms since nobody had to "compete" clothes wise. So, I had to spend more money in what I consired a waste, clothes. Also , I had many friends working just to buy clothes, instead of studying. Ridiculous.
You can take whatever classes you want.
Just like college, this could be good or bad. I tought it was mainly bad since many kids tried to take the easier classes. In Panama, you took whatever everybody else took until 10th grade. By then you had to decide between Science, Arts, Letters(Law), and others. If you choose science you had to take the same courses as everybody else in science. If you didn't like some of the classes, too bad !
It's cool to fail and get bad grades. ,failing and going to summer school !!! In Panama, getting bad grades (like a D or F) was a cause for shame. Plus, if you wore a school uniform during summer, it was obvious you failed. There was great peer pressure to do ok in school.
Kids bragged about doing bad
High school is too easy !
I had average grades in my school, when I came to the US I had a 4.0 average, and I didn't have to study !!!
And those are just some of the negative comparisons from the dozens I can make. Other more positive differences are here you have free food, free books, lots of clubs (french, art, computer, chess, acting, etc), and lots of "extra" goodies. Surely you can see that the system here is less represive than my native land , which I'm sure Panamanian schools are very similar to the rest of Latin America and probably Europe.
So, I like universities (went to USF) in the US, but high school is a joke. However, it's far from a "police state". Kids in this country are way too spoiled, and many are lazy. When I hear about kids being repressed because they can't wear a hat, trenchcoat, or dress like a vampire to school I feel little sympathy. School is a place to learn, and like a workplace it has rules you must follow.
Katz writes;
Although many expressed sympathy for the killers as well as the victims in Littleton (unlike, say Time Magazine, which accompanied cover photos of the killers with the headline "The Monsters Next Door"), no one threatened violence, supported it, or approved of it.
And what are you saying, that they were not monsters ??? Did you read what they did and how the did it ? How they killed 13 human beings while laughing ? Did you hear the stories about them killing a girl while she was crying and begging for her life ? How about them thinking it was "cool" how the brains of one student looked after shooting him on the head ? Or the laughs they got by killing a girl and saying "peekaboo".
I'm all for forgiveness and understanding, but these to killers earned the title "monsters". Please, your intentions seem kind of honest, but your language and tone is starting to betray you.
BTW - You fail to mention that the Time edition is very fair, and has very well balanced (and positive) articles about Goths, violent videogames and movies.
I was in high school , 7 years ago , I doubt it's changed that much. If you just walk away and do nothing, they'll keep spitting on him and trying to CHOKE HIM !!!!
Sorry but running away is not the way to go. Ignoring the problem is not the solution, if the school officials don't do anything then they're not doing their job. The colorado thing could have been prevented, if officials followed up on the report of PIPE BOMBS.
When I came to this country, a kid tried to intimidate me. I was lucky that most high school kids in the US are pretty ignorant about the rest of the world. I told him I was from Panama (true) and like everybody in Central America I was a guerrilla fighter (false). He stopped bothering me.
If having an admiration and devotion to Hitler (in this day an age) does not make one a racists, I don't know what else would.
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And when people use that word, that usually is meant to disrespect your race. If you were to call me a "spik" , I would certainly accuse you of being racists.
Please
BTW - I'm not saying racism caused this tragedy. The cause was madness, I was just addressing another point (long lost in this thread)
The police have confirmed that the diary indicates the date was chosen because of Hitlers birthdate, plus the police have also mentioned there were "Nazi" materials (posters, book ? don'tknow) in the room (of both?).
The student in question was also a popular athlete.
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Last I'd heard, the kid's father was blaming race, but there was no other evidence.
o Let's see, before they killed him the said, "there's the little _N_WORD"
o These "geeks" workshiped Hitler, hardly a model for racial tolerance.
Also, several of the kids killed and or injured happend to be in a christian youth group. And we all know one of the was asked if she believed in God, and was shot for it !
Somehow, I doubt that particular girl was making fun of them
The reality here is that these kids had ***way*** more problems than people teasing them
... in a positive way. Make sure your teachers+principal+parents know about this. If the jerk doesn't get a punishment from the school, you and your parents have a good lawsuit waiting for assault.
Hey, I know it's bad now, but it'll get better later. Wait until you get to college, you'll have lots of fun.
But for now, don't keep quiet, this kind of abuse should not be tolerated.
While I find it nice and productive to talk about geek opression, I find it repulsive that some people are using the word "sympathize" wrt some of the killers.
These guys were not your typical "geeks", if they were "geeks" at all.
From Andrew in Alaska: ..."
...).
"To be honest, I sympathized much more with the shooters than the shootees. I am them. They are me. This is not to say I will end the lives of my classmates in a hail of bullets, but that their former situation bears a striking resemblance to my own.
Andrew,
I understand what you're saying, and in a way, I know what you're feeling. But I can not fathom how can someone "sympathize" with these monsters !!! This is like saying you sympathize with Adolph Hitler, who knows, maybe he too was mocked as a child (it seems he did suffer from rejection
Try to sympathize with the people killed or injured, or maybe even try to sympathize with one of the "geeks" killed in the library. It makes you wonder if they hated jocks like this, why didn't they do this at a football game or gym ? I think theres more than people just making fun of them here, there was some real hate, evil and problems we might never understand in the minds of these killers.
Please people, let's get some perspective here.
They would've still done it. They wanted to die, and anyways, they knew police would be at the school soon enough.
These kids wanted to commit suicide and have as much fun & revenge as they could before dying. It's sick, but obviously their motives were clear. Kill and destroy as much as possible before killing themselves.
I used to play Doom & Duke Nukem back in college, and I though they were pretty cool games. I certainly know these games don't make people killers, if they did, we would have a bigger problem right now.
However, when I heard about the shootings and the type of weapons I could not help but notice the similarities to some of those games. For example, we all know that one of the weapons in Doom 1&2 is the shotgun. And then, in Duke Nukem, one of the "innovations" was the use of pipe bombs to blow away enemies.
While more likely these games didn't cause the killings, I can't in all honesty say there was no influence here from them. (And the level of use was high, the "Eric" guy made a bunch of wad files back in '96 & '97)
As games become more and more violent and much more realistic, we're going to have to deal with the fact that sometimes, some games are not appropiate for certain age groups and certain types of kids. Wheter it's soley up to the parents, or a rating system or whatever, we can't not thinking about this issue.
Yesterday I got my copy of Half-Life, which I've been itching to play. However, I couldn't install it. I probably will sometime, but for now, I could use a lot of thinking and reflect on what's going on in this world.
... keep being very negative. I know Sun is no saint, but a strong java vm could only help Linux and not hurt it. Specially considering that the current fastest java platform is a PC running Windows.
The theory that running Linux on multiple hardware is "cross platform" is not as good as running cross-hardware , cross-OS, like Java promises to do.
Anyways, the article comments on the "splitering" of Java which is really a bunch of FUD and I'm surprised Linus mentions this. C'mon , one of the "splinters" listed is *IBM*. Now when did they release an incompatible VM ???
I mean, how are they going to kill all the jedi ? It would have been cool if the Sith were as large a group as the jedi , led by vader at the end of the prequels.
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Oh well, at least Darth Maul is cool. I'm hoping there's more to Darth Sidious than the obvious
Servlets are pretty cool and this book covers the subject perfectly.
Oh , and I bought it for 9.95$ including shipping at www.fatbrain.com and using the FATBRAIN code (plus got a cool cap).
[ but if you want to contribute to Ron, get it from amazon with the link provided above ]
Keep in mind the "hacker profile" was originally written when there were, maybe, no more than a few thousand hackers around the country. Things are different now. It's even cool to be a hacker (which is sort of at odds with the whole idea of being one).
.... so, are you an outsider, a larval stage hacker, or just a wannabe?
... hacking should be defined by your technical abilities and not the food you eat, the president you vote for, nor the God you pray to.
True, so the ideas are outdated. Ok.
I'm definetly not a wannabe anything, nor did I claim to be a hacker (you don't decleare yourself one, others do, IMHO). I've been coding since I was 10 as a hobby and now I get paid to do it as an adult