It seems to me that it ought to be a function of the model. Yahoo is not "sending" packets to France, but rather France is "requesting" packets from Yahoo.
If the French don't want the traffic, it seems it should be the responsibility of their ISPs to filter it. Otherwise, this akin to saying "We don't like Marcel Marceau, so you can't transmit any programs with him in it", rather than us just telling cable carriers that we shall carry no programming with him in it (and we shouldn't. I hate mimes.)
Once again, this simply reflects the ignorance of the law (and government officials in general) of how the internet works. Websites don't "send" traffic, people request it. Solve the problem in your own country, not someone elses.
And while I'm certainly no fan of Nazi war memorabilia (I do want an Enigma machine, tho. Anyone got one for sale?), who is the government to tell their people what they can and cannot own? That's just censorship and oppression. And perhaps a violation of human rights. If YOU don't like war memorabilia, then how about YOU don't buy any? Don't inflict your viewpoints/religion/etc on me. Live it for yourself.
There are a couple of options, none of which seem particularly viable.
1) Amateur radio satellite: This can be done with a modest amount of equipment, and does NOT require steerable antennas. In fact, a number of hams are running mobile satellite from their cars. It's based on LEO (Low Earth Orbit) satellites, and can run at 1200 baud, 9600 baud, and a few cases, a downlink of 38.4K. You can NOT pass commercial traffic, good passes are infrequent for reliable communications, most cruise ships aren't going to let you set up a station, and the equipment cost, while modest by most standards, is still going to be in the $500-$1000 range. A tad expensive for a cruise, not too bad if you plan on being out for a number of months, and can amortize it.
2) Amateur HF radio: Pretty much limited to 300 or 1200 baud, again, no commerical traffic, antennas of the required gain are going to be either too long (1/2 wave 40 meter band dipole is 66 feet), or too large (a 40 meter beam). Again, most ship operators are not going to allow you to set up a HF station on board.
3) Iridium: Burn, baby, burn! As we all well know, offline, and soon to be de-orbited. You're mom may be in a good location to see one splash, if she's lucky. Even if Iridium was up, it was extremely poor at passing data, and cost prohibitive.
4) Inmarsat: Just what the doctor ordered. In fact, I believe it was designed for exactly this kind of use. Alas, it was not designed for most mortal persons budgets. It's feasible to run Inmarsat from a non-motion compensated antenna, assuming you're sailing straight and level.
5) Cell phones: A possibility, assuming that A) the carrier in your area supports digital, or, B) you have all necessary adapters to run as with a conventional modem (and 14.4K or 9.6K is acceptable), and, C) you're close to a cell station (I've heard that some cruise lines have micro-cells with relays to land, but I've never seen one. Of course, I can't afford to go on cruises, either). Cost prohibitive is a watch word here, also.
I expect in the near future that cruise ships may have some kind of cost-effective internet access, but it's not going to be cheap. Unless the ship itself has satellite uplinks, or a commercial HF connection (which won't be fast), you're not going to be checking/. on a hourly basis (or every 5 minutes, if you're more like me) and have any money left over at the end of the trip.
This whole deal we're talking about is one of the services that commercial LEO satellite operators want to provide. Besides Mom checking e-mail in the middle of the Pacific, there are tons of other uses. Reporters in the fields, remote telemetry from oil wells, cargo vessels, small countries that can't afford to run fiber to the mud-huts, etc. Unfortunately, these same people wanted to try to take a chuck of the amateur radio spectrum to do just that. We held them off, this time around (and remember, if you think cell phones are a replacement for amateur radio in times of emergency, well, just consider how cellular towers are connected to the lines they serve. Amateur radio has time and time again been the first to provide communications for disaster areas!).
Mom's best best, on this trip, may be to use a conventional shipboard phone, and use one of those new services that can read your e-mail back over the phone (just don't use a speakerphone. It's embarassing to hear Amber tell you about her hot slutty little friends while everyone in the board room is listening...) I don't have links for any of them, but I've heard them advertising. I'm sure a good websearch will turn up exactly what you need.
There are probably several other solutions that I don't know about. And while we can all argue that any of the above methods will work, they're not practical, not cost effective, or not legal for commercial traffic (such as web browsing).
I don't know how many of you are actually old enough to remember when: A) Hayes Microcomputer was still in business, and; B) manufactured a device called a Transet 1000.
This was one of Dennis' brilliant brain-childs that was basically a marketing flop. It was supposed to be a print buffer (which it did an OK job at), a mailbox (before real internet-type e-mail), and a couple of other things we never were really clear on.
After the product was launched, all the developers were issued a personal Transet. There were those who worked in the project that thought it was a dumb idea to begin with, and decided to make a point about it.
The actual Hayes employee, whom I'll call Chuck, another Hayes employee (not involved in the project, but working there at the time), and myself (not a Hayes employee until many years later), took said Transet 1000 out the ol' shooting range in Marietta, named aptly enough "The Bullet Stop".
Diversion The Bullet Stop was owned by Paul LaVista, an arms dealer and active mercenary. You may remember him being in the news about 6-7 years ago for shooting himself, them claiming to find a bomb in his Mercedes. All part of an attempt to divert attention of the ever-viligant IRS for not paying his taxes. (Doesn't everyone pay cash for their Stinger missles?). The first time we walked in there was with two 25lb (that's about 46 kilos) blocks of ice. Paul looked at us and said "You're sick puppies! I'd like to pop a couple of those!" That netted us two free magazines for the H&K MP5-A. We preceded to spend about $600, renting every dang weapon that was semi or full-auto in the place. The rule from then on was "Anything that's already dead, fits through the front door, and isn't in a Sherwin-Williams can" /Diversion
After removing the EPROM from the Transet (those were expensive then, 128K x 8, and as hardware hackers, we coveted any such useful hardware) we clipped the Transet into the target clamp, ran it out about 30 feet, and proceeded to try to kill it.
In those days, Hayes modems, Transets and Chronographs (a collectors item, fetching as much as $300 in the right market, these days. I have 15 of them!) came in very nice.125 aluminum cases. This makes for fairly effective PCB armor. We unloaded.30 cal from an M1 carbine,.45 ACP from a stainless Colt M1911A (with Pachmyre grips, Millet sites, ported and polished, and a 2.2lb trigger job), 9mm (from god-knows-what), and last but not least, a few 12 gauge shotgun slugs. The slugs ripped it out of the carrier, but never penetrated the case. The.45 and 9mm went deep, but not all the way through. The.30 cal did the most damage, actually punching through far enough to smash the 68008 CPU (it being ceramic made it particularly brittle).
All in all, it was an enjoyable afternoon spent killing a Transet, bowling pins, and few other odds-and-ends. But it didn't quite end there...
Chuck decided that rather than just kill a Transet, we (he) should make a point with it. It was placed on Dennis' desk, before Dennis arrived. Upon find a representative of his beloved project mercilessly slaughtered, he became a tad irate. Word is he never found out who dunnit, but many references were made, and comments such as "A project like that might wind up like a Transet" were occasionally heard. I wish we still had that ol' Transet. It's a bit of Hayes history now...
Other things we shot up: A running Nova 1200 (with 48K of core memory), a self-propelled vacuum cleaner (fun), platters from disc-packs (they spark when a high speed round goes through them), vinyl records (boring), and numerous other bits of obsolete technology.
One word of warning: Next to the Bullet Stop was a bar called the Pew-n-Brew. It's very important to get the order correct: Go shooting, *then* go drinking. One of establishments gets a little annoyed if you get these reversed.
It's an interesting idea, and certainly feasible from a technology standpoint.
However, the cost of getting the repeater there is extremely high. It's cost AMSAT a huge amount of money just to get Phase 3D into orbit, and it's not even up yet. Vibration testing, platforms costs, etc, etc, etc. So while I'm sure funding could be arrived at, I think it would actually be more difficult to raise the funds because of the perceived usefulness (Phase 3D promises usage with 5 watt handheld radios, versus steerable high gain antennas).
I wonder if using the Mars Lander airbag technique might not be a better method for safely delivering the payload to the lunar surface. While you certainly can't parachute it down, I wonder if something like a braking rocket with the payload suspended from it might work. Once some distance above the surface, the payload would be cut loose, the airbags inflated, and the device garanteed to arrive in a safe and upright condition (many people say that the Mars Lander landed softer than UPS handles most packages!)
For years, I've wanted a system for my house to make it smarter.
In particular, I've wanted to keep my complete music database on-line, and as tunes are played I can assign them a rating. "Computer, never play this Metallica crap again!" The system would scan the existing database and any new music added, and would assign a probabilty to it as to how I would like it (based on rhythm, preponderance of bass, etc), and what category it might belong in (background MP3 downloads come to mind).
Songs with a lower rating would be played much less, and if I specify a genre, the music would be drawn primarily from tunes match the genre. Then, assuming that my mood changes over time (having learned what I "normally" do), the system might start adding tunes from other genres over a period of time, until it's playing my normal rating.
If it sees me doing something totally out of character (say, playing crappy Metallica...), then it would know that ridiculous excursions shouldn't be added to it's "knowledge" of me.
It should also know that if it detects a high quantity of airborne THC particles then it should only play tracks from "Dark Side Of The Moon". Oh yeah, and automatically dim the lights.
I don't know if it really qualifies as an AI project or not, but I'd like a search engine that looks at what I've clicked, then picks the most likely candidates that I might pick again (realizing this make take a couple of clicks for it to develop the pattern), then in realtime starts checking sites to see if the other URLs I might choose actually still exists or not.
I'm really sick and tired of AltaVista and WebFerret returning thousands of broken links. I've maintained for a while that the first 200 (or so) hits returned for each search each day should be put in a list and checked for validity.
I get really tired of these knee-jerk reactions about how to manage children and young adults. People want to blame TV, guns, movies, and anything else they can think of except themselves. I, personally, think that the reason for a large percentage of the problems we see in children today is a complete lack of parental involvement.
If you are a responsible parent, you know what your child is doing. You know where s/he is, you know who his/her friends are, you know what time they'll be home, and you know if they're acting differently than they used to. If you are a responsible parent, you lay down the law. If the law is broken, the child is punished. Negative reinforcement has worked for millions of years with the rest of nature, and there is no reason to think that humans are somehow exempt from it.
Ever seen a errant puppy get nipped by its mother? And the errant puppy learns not to do what it was doing. Now, you might say "but children aren't puppies!". Actually, yes, in a manner of speaking, they are. When a child is errant, you don't say "Now, Johnny, that was bad". You explain to the kid what s/he did, then you pop thier butt. I'm not talking child abuse, I'm talking simple spankings. There's no reason to maim the child, but as in nature, a little pain goes a long way towards re-inforcing a point.
Along these lines, it is also my personal belief that Dr. Spock (now deceased) had done more to ruin child rearing in the last 30 years than any other factor, with the possible exception of a lack of a parent at home. Now, I realize is this day and age of both parents having to work that a parent can't always be home to ride herd on the children. But it's NOT an excuse for not being involved with your children.
An interesting story was on CNN a few months ago. The teaser started out something like 'One of the highest rated schools in the nation'. I turned to my wife and said "You can bet it's not in Georgia!". I was wrong! Amazingly enough, this school was in DeKalb county (or nearby. One of the big 7 counties). Turns out the new principal came in, looked around, and got parents involved. Parents helped in the library, in the sports events, in the cafeteria, on the school grounds, etc.
At first, the kids thought it was way-uncool to have their parents hanging around. But then it sort of became a status symbol. The school has a virtually non-existent dropout rate. 95% of all seniors graduate, and 90% of them go into college (I may have those last two numbers reversed, I'm working from memory). School crime? Again, virtually none.
And (to re-iterate) why? Because of parental involvement. Because parents know what their children are doing, and participate in their lives. Not dropping them off at the mall, where mall security can baby-sit them, not dumping them off here or there to act irresponsibly, but knowing, caring, and participating in the childrens lives.
Which school was it the kids got caught with bomb building supplies? And the parents didn't notice that junior was acting a little strange? Gimme a break, for all the parents seemed to care, they didn't even have kids. Make parents responsible for the kids actions, and the kids will behave.
There's something else that goes with this, besides just parental responsibility. I realize parents can't do it *all*. Educators need to be responsible. But in this litigatious age, teachers are afraid to do *anything*. Lawsuit for slapping a child. Lawsuit for yelling at a child. Hell, lawsuits for suggesting a child shut up, sit down, and pay attention. Teachers need authority (and a pay raise, quite frankly) to be effective.
Just like a wolf pack, a child will test his superiors. It's one of the ways children grow to be leaders (or followers). The alpha is always being tested. It's our duty as alphas to make sure the pup is held in check until the time it's ready to take it's place in society. Lawyers have done a helluva lot of damage in this respect, preventing parents, teachers, and even society in general from disciplining the errant pup.
Take back control. Know your child. Be there for your child. PARTICIPATE IN YOUR CHILDS LIFE.
I'm really surprised that no one has mentioned wanting these consumer devices (TiVos, DSS, etc) to support Ethernet. I realize the majority of consumers don't *yet* have full time connections up, but with xDSL, cable modems, etc, that's changing. I'd like to plug my widgies into the ethernet, and keep them off the ol' analog phone line.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems to me that it ought to be a function of the model. Yahoo is not "sending" packets to France, but rather France is "requesting" packets from Yahoo.
If the French don't want the traffic, it seems it should be the responsibility of their ISPs to filter it. Otherwise, this akin to saying "We don't like Marcel Marceau, so you can't transmit any programs with him in it", rather than us just telling cable carriers that we shall carry no programming with him in it (and we shouldn't. I hate mimes.)
Once again, this simply reflects the ignorance of the law (and government officials in general) of how the internet works. Websites don't "send" traffic, people request it. Solve the problem in your own country, not someone elses.
And while I'm certainly no fan of Nazi war memorabilia (I do want an Enigma machine, tho. Anyone got one for sale?), who is the government to tell their people what they can and cannot own? That's just censorship and oppression. And perhaps a violation of human rights. If YOU don't like war memorabilia, then how about YOU don't buy any? Don't inflict your viewpoints/religion/etc on me. Live it for yourself.
--jcwren
There are a couple of options, none of which seem particularly viable.
/. on a hourly basis (or every 5 minutes, if you're more like me) and have any money left over at the end of the trip.
1) Amateur radio satellite: This can be done with a modest amount of equipment, and does NOT require steerable antennas. In fact, a number of hams are running mobile satellite from their cars. It's based on LEO (Low Earth Orbit) satellites, and can run at 1200 baud, 9600 baud, and a few cases, a downlink of 38.4K. You can NOT pass commercial traffic, good passes are infrequent for reliable communications, most cruise ships aren't going to let you set up a station, and the equipment cost, while modest by most standards, is still going to be in the $500-$1000 range. A tad expensive for a cruise, not too bad if you plan on being out for a number of months, and can amortize it.
2) Amateur HF radio: Pretty much limited to 300 or 1200 baud, again, no commerical traffic, antennas of the required gain are going to be either too long (1/2 wave 40 meter band dipole is 66 feet), or too large (a 40 meter beam). Again, most ship operators are not going to allow you to set up a HF station on board.
3) Iridium: Burn, baby, burn! As we all well know, offline, and soon to be de-orbited. You're mom may be in a good location to see one splash, if she's lucky. Even if Iridium was up, it was extremely poor at passing data, and cost prohibitive.
4) Inmarsat: Just what the doctor ordered. In fact, I believe it was designed for exactly this kind of use. Alas, it was not designed for most mortal persons budgets. It's feasible to run Inmarsat from a non-motion compensated antenna, assuming you're sailing straight and level.
5) Cell phones: A possibility, assuming that A) the carrier in your area supports digital, or, B) you have all necessary adapters to run as with a conventional modem (and 14.4K or 9.6K is acceptable), and, C) you're close to a cell station (I've heard that some cruise lines have micro-cells with relays to land, but I've never seen one. Of course, I can't afford to go on cruises, either). Cost prohibitive is a watch word here, also.
I expect in the near future that cruise ships may have some kind of cost-effective internet access, but it's not going to be cheap. Unless the ship itself has satellite uplinks, or a commercial HF connection (which won't be fast), you're not going to be checking
This whole deal we're talking about is one of the services that commercial LEO satellite operators want to provide. Besides Mom checking e-mail in the middle of the Pacific, there are tons of other uses. Reporters in the fields, remote telemetry from oil wells, cargo vessels, small countries that can't afford to run fiber to the mud-huts, etc. Unfortunately, these same people wanted to try to take a chuck of the amateur radio spectrum to do just that. We held them off, this time around (and remember, if you think cell phones are a replacement for amateur radio in times of emergency, well, just consider how cellular towers are connected to the lines they serve. Amateur radio has time and time again been the first to provide communications for disaster areas!).
Mom's best best, on this trip, may be to use a conventional shipboard phone, and use one of those new services that can read your e-mail back over the phone (just don't use a speakerphone. It's embarassing to hear Amber tell you about her hot slutty little friends while everyone in the board room is listening...) I don't have links for any of them, but I've heard them advertising. I'm sure a good websearch will turn up exactly what you need.
There are probably several other solutions that I don't know about. And while we can all argue that any of the above methods will work, they're not practical, not cost effective, or not legal for commercial traffic (such as web browsing).
Hope this helped some.
I don't know how many of you are actually old enough to remember when: A) Hayes Microcomputer was still in business, and; B) manufactured a device called a Transet 1000.
/Diversion
.125 aluminum cases. This makes for fairly effective PCB armor. We unloaded .30 cal from an M1 carbine, .45 ACP from a stainless Colt M1911A (with Pachmyre grips, Millet sites, ported and polished, and a 2.2lb trigger job), 9mm (from god-knows-what), and last but not least, a few 12 gauge shotgun slugs. The slugs ripped it out of the carrier, but never penetrated the case. The .45 and 9mm went deep, but not all the way through. The .30 cal did the most damage, actually punching through far enough to smash the 68008 CPU (it being ceramic made it particularly brittle).
This was one of Dennis' brilliant brain-childs that was basically a marketing flop. It was supposed to be a print buffer (which it did an OK job at), a mailbox (before real internet-type e-mail), and a couple of other things we never were really clear on.
After the product was launched, all the developers were issued a personal Transet. There were those who worked in the project that thought it was a dumb idea to begin with, and decided to make a point about it.
The actual Hayes employee, whom I'll call Chuck, another Hayes employee (not involved in the project, but working there at the time), and myself (not a Hayes employee until many years later), took said Transet 1000 out the ol' shooting range in Marietta, named aptly enough "The Bullet Stop".
Diversion
The Bullet Stop was owned by Paul LaVista, an arms dealer and active mercenary. You may remember him being in the news about 6-7 years ago for shooting himself, them claiming to find a bomb in his Mercedes. All part of an attempt to divert attention of the ever-viligant IRS for not paying his taxes. (Doesn't everyone pay cash for their Stinger missles?). The first time we walked in there was with two 25lb (that's about 46 kilos) blocks of ice. Paul looked at us and said "You're sick puppies! I'd like to pop a couple of those!" That netted us two free magazines for the H&K MP5-A. We preceded to spend about $600, renting every dang weapon that was semi or full-auto in the place. The rule from then on was "Anything that's already dead, fits through the front door, and isn't in a Sherwin-Williams can"
After removing the EPROM from the Transet (those were expensive then, 128K x 8, and as hardware hackers, we coveted any such useful hardware) we clipped the Transet into the target clamp, ran it out about 30 feet, and proceeded to try to kill it.
In those days, Hayes modems, Transets and Chronographs (a collectors item, fetching as much as $300 in the right market, these days. I have 15 of them!) came in very nice
All in all, it was an enjoyable afternoon spent killing a Transet, bowling pins, and few other odds-and-ends. But it didn't quite end there...
Chuck decided that rather than just kill a Transet, we (he) should make a point with it. It was placed on Dennis' desk, before Dennis arrived. Upon find a representative of his beloved project mercilessly slaughtered, he became a tad irate. Word is he never found out who dunnit, but many references were made, and comments such as "A project like that might wind up like a Transet" were occasionally heard. I wish we still had that ol' Transet. It's a bit of Hayes history now...
Other things we shot up: A running Nova 1200 (with 48K of core memory), a self-propelled vacuum cleaner (fun), platters from disc-packs (they spark when a high speed round goes through them), vinyl records (boring), and numerous other bits of obsolete technology.
One word of warning: Next to the Bullet Stop was a bar called the Pew-n-Brew. It's very important to get the order correct: Go shooting, *then* go drinking. One of establishments gets a little annoyed if you get these reversed.
It's an interesting idea, and certainly feasible from a technology standpoint.
However, the cost of getting the repeater there is extremely high. It's cost AMSAT a huge amount of money just to get Phase 3D into orbit, and it's not even up yet. Vibration testing, platforms costs, etc, etc, etc. So while I'm sure funding could be arrived at, I think it would actually be more difficult to raise the funds because of the perceived usefulness (Phase 3D promises usage with 5 watt handheld radios, versus steerable high gain antennas).
I wonder if using the Mars Lander airbag technique might not be a better method for safely delivering the payload to the lunar surface. While you certainly can't parachute it down, I wonder if something like a braking rocket with the payload suspended from it might work. Once some distance above the surface, the payload would be cut loose, the airbags inflated, and the device garanteed to arrive in a safe and upright condition (many people say that the Mars Lander landed softer than UPS handles most packages!)
-- Chris, K4JCW
For years, I've wanted a system for my house to make it smarter.
In particular, I've wanted to keep my complete music database on-line, and as tunes are played I can assign them a rating. "Computer, never play this Metallica crap again!" The system would scan the existing database and any new music added, and would assign a probabilty to it as to how I would like it (based on rhythm, preponderance of bass, etc), and what category it might belong in (background MP3 downloads come to mind).
Songs with a lower rating would be played much less, and if I specify a genre, the music would be drawn primarily from tunes match the genre. Then, assuming that my mood changes over time (having learned what I "normally" do), the system might start adding tunes from other genres over a period of time, until it's playing my normal rating.
If it sees me doing something totally out of character (say, playing crappy Metallica...), then it would know that ridiculous excursions shouldn't be added to it's "knowledge" of me.
It should also know that if it detects a high quantity of airborne THC particles then it should only play tracks from "Dark Side Of The Moon". Oh yeah, and automatically dim the lights.
I don't know if it really qualifies as an AI project or not, but I'd like a search engine
that looks at what I've clicked, then picks the most likely candidates that I might pick again
(realizing this make take a couple of clicks for it to develop the pattern), then in realtime
starts checking sites to see if the other URLs I might choose actually still exists or not.
I'm really sick and tired of AltaVista and WebFerret returning thousands of broken links.
I've maintained for a while that the first 200 (or so) hits returned for each search each day
should be put in a list and checked for validity.
Someone needs to teach that woman how to put a finger on a trigger.
Use the pad of the finger, not the 2nd joint. Much better control.
I get really tired of these knee-jerk reactions about how to manage children and young adults. People want to blame TV, guns, movies, and anything else they can think of except themselves. I, personally, think that the reason for a large percentage of the problems we see in children today is a complete lack of parental involvement.
If you are a responsible parent, you know what your child is doing. You know where s/he is, you know who his/her friends are, you know what time they'll be home, and you know if they're acting differently than they used to. If you are a responsible parent, you lay down the law. If the law is broken, the child is punished. Negative reinforcement has worked for millions of years with the rest of nature, and there is no reason to think that humans are somehow exempt from it.
Ever seen a errant puppy get nipped by its mother? And the errant puppy learns not to do what it was doing. Now, you might say "but children aren't puppies!". Actually, yes, in a manner of speaking, they are. When a child is errant, you don't say "Now, Johnny, that was bad". You explain to the kid what s/he did, then you pop thier butt. I'm not talking child abuse, I'm talking simple spankings. There's no reason to maim the child, but as in nature, a little pain goes a long way towards re-inforcing a point.
Along these lines, it is also my personal belief that Dr. Spock (now deceased) had done more to ruin child rearing in the last 30 years than any other factor, with the possible exception of a lack of a parent at home. Now, I realize is this day and age of both parents having to work that a parent can't always be home to ride herd on the children. But it's NOT an excuse for not being involved with your children.
An interesting story was on CNN a few months ago. The teaser started out something like 'One of the highest rated schools in the nation'. I turned to my wife and said "You can bet it's not in Georgia!". I was wrong! Amazingly enough, this school was in DeKalb county (or nearby. One of the big 7 counties). Turns out the new principal came in, looked around, and got parents involved. Parents helped in the library, in the sports events, in the cafeteria, on the school grounds, etc.
At first, the kids thought it was way-uncool to have their parents hanging around. But then it sort of became a status symbol. The school has a virtually non-existent dropout rate. 95% of all seniors graduate, and 90% of them go into college (I may have those last two numbers reversed, I'm working from memory). School crime? Again, virtually none.
And (to re-iterate) why? Because of parental involvement. Because parents know what their children are doing, and participate in their lives. Not dropping them off at the mall, where mall security can baby-sit them, not dumping them off here or there to act irresponsibly, but knowing, caring, and participating in the childrens lives.
Which school was it the kids got caught with bomb building supplies? And the parents didn't notice that junior was acting a little strange? Gimme a break, for all the parents seemed to care, they didn't even have kids. Make parents responsible for the kids actions, and the kids will behave.
There's something else that goes with this, besides just parental responsibility. I realize parents can't do it *all*. Educators need to be responsible. But in this litigatious age, teachers are afraid to do *anything*. Lawsuit for slapping a child. Lawsuit for yelling at a child. Hell, lawsuits for suggesting a child shut up, sit down, and pay attention. Teachers need authority (and a pay raise, quite frankly) to be effective.
Just like a wolf pack, a child will test his superiors. It's one of the ways children grow to be leaders (or followers). The alpha is always being tested. It's our duty as alphas to make sure the pup is held in check until the time it's ready to take it's place in society. Lawyers have done a helluva lot of damage in this respect, preventing parents, teachers, and even society in general from disciplining the errant pup.
Take back control. Know your child. Be there for your child. PARTICIPATE IN YOUR CHILDS LIFE.
-- John
I'm really surprised that no one has mentioned wanting these consumer devices (TiVos, DSS, etc) to support Ethernet. I realize the majority of consumers don't *yet* have full time connections up, but with xDSL, cable modems, etc, that's changing. I'd like to plug my widgies into the ethernet, and keep them off the ol' analog phone line.