That reminds me of the time I scared the hell out of my lazy neighbor. We were supposed to be up at 8:00 am to go play paintball and, as usual, he was still sound asleep when I went over to get him. So I removed the hopper from my paintball gun, walked into his bedroom, yelled something and began firing "blanks" (co2 bursts). He flopped around wildly for a second before falling off the side of his bed. Funniest damn thing I ever did to somebody.
If you want a simple way to mess someone up, take a screen shot of the desktop (with a window or two open).
Friend of mine at my last employer was an AutoCAD guy. He'd spend hours and hours painstakingly working on intricate drafts and would never save them. Every once in awhile I'd drop by his office and if he wasn't there, I took a snapshot of his desktop, added a fake Windows error message about "all data is lost" and full-size it in paint.
It freaked him out every single time. He never learned.
For the hardware and a lifetime subscription to a pager network? I'd wager that is more than a few bucks.
See, that's just it - it's not really a lifestime subscription to a pager network. Ambient's main technology is actually not the products, it's the method of transmission. Apparently they've developed ways to shrink data way down for broadcasting over a pager network, and of course they have bulk deals with the paging companies. The products don't come with a phone number that you can page, they can only be paged through Ambient's link to the network, and I believe they can target a huge number of devices with a single page. So while they do have a recurring cost there, it isn't like they're paying $x per orb every month to some paging company on your behalf.
I also pay $20 a quarter for access to their "premium channels", so they're making out like a bandit on me. One of these days I'm going to buy/build the serial cable for it and write a quick API to let me control it from my server. Then I can grab the weather data myself and change the Orb's color without Ambient. I haven't bothered yet because their subscription is so cheap.
Anyway, I'd wager that your cool orb is sitting in a room that is currently covered by wifi, right?
Of course! Would a true/. geek have it any other way? Yeah, I wish it had wifi built in. I'd buy several if they weren't coupled to Ambient's network. Even at $150 a pop.
I do have to wonder how low they could really get, though. The colors this thing can render are absolutely AMAZING. True, deep blues, purples, reds, etc... All with LEDs. And the Orb glows almost perfectly uniform throughout. There's got to be some cost there. It's so bright that the light from it in our family room bleeds into the master bedroom and keeps my wife awake at night, so she puts it on the lowest dim setting before going to bed.
For anyone who thinks this is cool and has the $150 to blow, I highly recommend it. I justified it because I have never bought a piece of overpriced art before and figured it was about time I did.
Not a cellular modem, silly: A pager. It doesn't add but a few bucks to the total cost. The real cost in Ambient devices is not material, it's intellectual: They're selling them as unique art, essentially, and if you want one you get to pay for it.
I have an Ambient Orb and love it. You can buy a cable to control it from your computer if you like. Personally, I would buy several more of these if they would lose the pager and put in 802.11 with a nice piece of backend software to grab the info you want and toss color changes to the various devices. But they're not targeting geeks, they're targeting executives and artsy types.
Area man constantly mentioning he's happy with dial-up.
NOWHERE, IL: Area resident Jimmy Jacobs does not have broadband, a fact he repeatedly points out to friends, family, and coworkers - as well as to his mailman, neighborhood convenience-store clerks, and the man who cleans the hallways in his apartment building.
"I, personally, would rather spend my time doing something useful than reading web sites," Jacobs told a random woman Monday. Last week, there was a printout of Ellen Feiss tacked to the bulletin board at his office, and Jimmy announced, "I have no idea who this woman is. Ellen who? Am I supposed to have heard of her? I'm sorry, but I haven't."
Tony Gerela, who lives in the apartment directly below Jacobs', is well aware of his neighbor's disdain for broadband.
"About a week after I met him, we were talking, and I made some kind of Red vs. Blue reference," Gerela said. "He asked me what I was talking about, and when I told him it was a movie from the Internet, he just went off, saying how the last time he was on the Internet he sent some text to a friend, and even then he thinks it transmitted too quickly."
My girlfriend would argue that she would rather me be a TV junkie, because at least that is something we can do together. She would never think Slashdot was interesting, so you can guess that gaming is out of the question.
Ok, so if some employee at microsoft who wrote some large chunk of the NTFS.SYS filesystem driver decided to release the code he wrote under the GPL, it *still* wouldn't be valid.
Assume Bill Gates wrote the NTFS.SYS filesystem driver and released it under the GPL. Would it be valid? Of course.
Now assume Steve Jobs buys Microsoft but lets them mostly run independently. Bill Gates writes NTFS.SYS and releases it. Would it still be valid? Most likely yes.
Frankel is effectively the top man at Nullsoft. He founded the damn company. The fact that AOL owns it doesn't mean squat: Frankel still holds a controlling position in the company. This gives him the right to release software under the GPL. The only way AOL could get themselves out of this mess is to claim that he doesn't have authority to release software, which is bullshit because he releases new versions of Winamp all the time.
AOL might not like what he did, but they can't take it back now. WASTE was released on behalf of Nullsoft by someone who had the authority to do so. Which makes the license completely valid.
Agreed. I know I can burn & re-rip, but I shouldn't have to. It wastes time, blank CDs, and degrades the quality of the music. If I can effectively "burn & re-rip" using a software program that doesn't have these problems, I should be allowed to.
Telling people they're immoral, law breaking bastards for doing this is stupid.
You make a good argument, however, it's really not related to the argument at hand. Forget the reason why I bought the tracks; the question is, now that I have them, should I not be able to do with them as I please?
The restrictions and usefulness of what you get for 99 cents are clearly and unambiguously disclosed before purchase.
Agreed, however, if I have a way to get around these restrictions and make my purchase more useful for me, is it immoral or unethical to do so? Assuming I don't distribute the music to others, this is just like modifying any other product. If I want to cut a hole in the top of my monitor for a cupholder, it's my business. Same game if I want to remove a "feature" (DRM) from my music files.
The Dennison iceLink thingie doesn't do much more than make an AUX and possibly a charger for your iPod.
Have you looked at it at all? It integrates your stereo with the iPod's controls. So you can use your factory steering wheel controls to change tracks on the iPod. If it was nothing more than an AUX and a charger people wouldn't be paying $200 for it.
Granted it doesn't report the song info back to your stereo's display, but integrating control alone is pretty cool.
people who are going out of their way to circumvent the MINIMAL DRM on iTunes are simply looking for a way to justify immoral/illegal behavior.
Will you quit with the accusations already? It's getting really old listening to you people carry on and on about "immoral/illegal behavior."
Let me give it to you straight, pal: I have the right, as a consumer, to listen to my music anywhere I damn well please. That means non-Apple MP3 players, of which I have many. If exercising that right means breaking someone's DRM, so be it.
Get off your high horse. The fact that you're willing to bend over and take your DRM like a man doesn't mean you are better than the rest of us, nor does it make us thieves.
Some kid breaks the DRM mechanism, and everyone jumps to his defence, because all they really want is FREE (gratis) music.
This has nothing to do with getting free music. All of the songs available on iTunes are freely available anywhere else on the Internet. Nobody is breaking iTunes' DRM for the purpose of "stealing": You have to pay for the song before you even get the chance to break the DRM.
No, the reason it's been broken, and the reason I am applauding their efforts to continue to do so, is because Fairplay isn't fair for me. I can't listen to it on portable MP3 players other than iPod. I can't put the files on my server and freely play them from any computer. I can't play them from standalone hardware players. I can't burn a hundred of them to a CD in data format and pop that disc in my in-car MP3 player.
These are for legally purchased songs that I own, and I should be able to do what I please with them. Playfair solves this.
If your cellphone in 2007 has a built in camcorder, and you pull it out to talk, and by the position of your hand the lens is pointed at the screen, does this mean you should be arrested and sent to jail for a year?
Yes... But not for piracy. Talking on cellular phones during a movie should be punishable by a year in a federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison.
I also explained that it would be required to do homework assigned by her father. Needless to say, not so 'cool'. Her first response after that was: 'Then what's the point? I'd rather just go to school.':) Doesn't surprise me. My daughter feels the same about public school. It's just what they know and are used to.
What I CAN say is that whatever I did worked, apparently, and they weren't home-schooled.
I wasn't home-schooled, either, and I grew up just fine. Millions of kids do. Homeschooling has a lot of benefits but it isn't for everybody, and there's no guarantee the child won't do better or worse at home vs. in the public school system. It's just another option.
The point of my responses wasn't to judge you or anyone else for putting their children in public schools, and I hope I did not come across in that manner. I simply wanted to defend the position of homeschooling in terms of social interaction, and I suppose I have accomplished that to some extent.
Of course you'll have like-minded children and adults all 'getting along' and making nice. They're all intellectually superior.
Oh, come on now. This isn't true at all. One of my daughter's homeschooled friends is a child with autism. He has learning difficulties and obvious social difficulties, so he's homeschooled. Every parent that chooses homeschooling does so for their own personal reasons; it has nothing to do with being "intellectually superior". Homeschoolers aren't a bunch of Mensa members raising their children to be little elitist pricks who think they're better than everyone else. These kids are the same as any other, they just receive their education differently.
Both my wife and I have more than several degrees between us and neither of us would/could attempt to take the place of the social interaction they would miss (with non-home-schooled children)
Why the focus on social interaction with non-home-schooled children?
Children are children. The various homeschooled kids we meet are of varied backgrounds, intelligence, etc. They are all homeschooled for various reasons: Some are gifted. Some have learning difficulties. Most are just normal kids. The only difference between homeschooled children and public schooled are the parents! A large number of children have parents who don't discipline, don't teach manners, etc. So the kids grow up to be brats. The entire nature of homeschooling is such that the parents are, in almost every case, striving to raise good children. Therefore the children behave better than most because the parents take the time to teach them right and wrong. Other than that, they're a big mix of different kids, just like anywhere else.
Furthermore, we don't restrict her to playing with "only home-schooled kids." She plays with neighbors that are in the public school system. We put her in all sorts of various activities - she's done horse riding lessons, swimming lessons, ballet, a music program, Awana, Sunday school, etc. I agree, people who only let their kids interact with half a dozen other carefully selected kids are doing them a social disservice. But that's not the case with any of the homeschoolers we know. We all have our kids in various programs.
You may think that's weak but look inward and tell me you're not doing the same.....molding your child's mind the way YOU want it to be.
Of course that happens. Public schooled children get the same thing. Parents teach their children morals and values and all sorts of things that are unique to the parents. Every parent forms the minds of their children the way the parent wants them to be to a large extent.
Now, strictly educationally speaking, this is not the case - at least not for us. We, like many homeschoolers, allow the child to explore subjects that interest her. My daughter loves science so she spends a lot of time reading science books and performing various science projects on my kitchen table. The idea is to let the child run with whatever he wants to learn. When she shows an interest in a particular subject, we encourage it. Right now she's interested in astronomy so we're buying star charts and letting her stay up later to gaze at the skies. In essence, we don't have a structured school day for her. The learning is all up to her.
That said, we do make her sit down and go through workbooks and such, as she has to learn even the subjects she doesn't like. But when we're satisfied she has progressed in a certain subject to the best of her ability at that time, we let her move on to doing something she enjoys.
I still stick to my original statement: it's a dangerous game.
I wish you could sit down and interact with these kids and their parents. An hour with my daughter and you'd change your mind in a heartbeat.
Clearly you think you know American law (but you don't)
On the contrary, sir: I know enough about American law to know they can't hold me indefinitely until I pay a traffic violation. They can charge me with a crime and put me in jail for a time, but even that has it's limitations. Whether I pay or not they have to let me go eventually.
and you've never been in a foreign country.
Clearly I've never been in a foreign country because I understand people in America can't be held indefinitely until they pay a fine? What kind of logic is that? The story is about a U.S. city and that's where my comments were directed. Some countries can hold you indefinitely because they don't like your haircut, so I certainly wouldn't argue on their holding you for violating a law. Though I fail to see how any of this has to do with my travels.
The cops aren't detaining you, they are holding the instrument of the crime. Don't want to pay? They'll store your vehicle in the municipal impound lot until your trial date. You are free to go, you can wait for a bus to the next major town, then hop a train home.
See, you're mixing words. Originally you said they would hold you. Now you're backtracking, saying they'll simply hold your vehicle. Had you said that in the first place we wouldn't be having this conversation because I wouldn't have responded. I'm in agreement with you on law enforcement being able to hold your vehicle until you pay. They just can't hold the person. Not in the U.S., anyway.
What is your daughter going to do when she eventually does hear other kids swear, or make dirty jokes? Are you willing to restrict her exposure to the world for the rest of her life so she never gets exposed to all that "nasty stuff"?
No, we don't restrict her exposure to the world. She has heard people swear (I swear from time to time, and our neighbor swears like a sailor), and I wouldn't be surprised if she overheard a dirty joke at some point in her life. The point is not to shelter her from the world, it's to shelter her from the glorification of it. In other words, she doesn't spend 8 hours a day with kids who constantly exhibit certain behaviors, and as a result there isn't that strong temptation for her to join them. As you know children are very impressionable and if they spend a lot of time with people who exhibit certain behaviors, they'll pick up on them, even learn that these might be acceptable. Since we spend a lot of time with other homeschoolers whose parents have similar core values as we do, the kids reinforce positive behaviors onto one another instead of negative.
Unfortunately, the world isn't perfect. It's filled with people who'd rather put you down, call you names, and degrade you so they feel better. Those people will exist regardless of how many kids are homeschooled, and you can't hide your children from them forever.
Agreed. My intention is not to hide my children from these people. It is to prevent them from becoming them.
I am saying that unless she understands why people tease and knows how to deal with it, she *does not* have the necessary social skills for life.
I absolutely agree with you. However, I don't believe a child should be forced to deal with teasing every single day in their learning environment, either. They have to learn to deal with it at some point in their lives - my daughter has played with enough children that she has certainly delt with it, and if she hasn't by now she's bound to eventually. However, she's not forced into it every day. She's free to spend time with children she likes and gets along with instead of those she doesn't. She can say, "I don't want to play with Billy anymore. He's mean." That doesn't mean she'll never see him again - he's bound to show up at a common event and she'll have to deal with him there, which is good for her. Dealing with him every single day at school, however, isn't.
Most parents will see their own kids as well mannered
Not just her. All of her home-schooled friends, too.
The fact that you ONLY expose your child to adults is a dangerous game.
When did I say I only expose her to adults? Did you miss this part: "My homeschooled daughter, now seven, can walk into a room with anyone - adults, older kids, kids her age, even young toddlers - and immediately make friends. Most of the homeschooled children she hangs out with exhibit similar characteristics." She spends plenty of time with other kids. It just isn't for 8 hours every single day.
I submit that social interaction with only adults is bad and socialization with other children is good; simple as that.
I agree; this is why she plays with other children several times a week. The key is the type of children: Other home-schooled children, whose parents care enough to discipline and teach their children proper behavior; and in structured, supervised activities (horse riding lessons, swimming lessons, Sunday school, etc). Not all of her friends are home-schooled, as she has made friends with neighbors and at various activities we take her to. However, we make sure the parents and the children are reasonable people before we let the kids spend too much time together.
By this same logic I could get upset that the Xbox games I paid for and legally own I can't play on my PC.
You could, but the REAL question is: Should you have a legal right to play them on your PC, since you own them? I say the answer is yes.
Obviously it's silly to be mad at Apple when you should have known damn well where the files would or wouldn't play when you bought them. However, that doesn't mean you should lie back and take it when they try to prevent you from engaging in fair use of your files (copying to a non-Apple MP3 player, for example).
The thing is, why do people WANT to strip the DRM off their purchased AAC files? Because they can. That's it. There's no other real, valid reason to do it. Posts like "I have 15 computers I want to play it on" are absurd.
How about "I don't have an iPod"? I suppose those hundreds of millions of people out there with less expensive MP3 players aren't a valid reason?
Slashdot Mirror
That reminds me of the time I scared the hell out of my lazy neighbor. We were supposed to be up at 8:00 am to go play paintball and, as usual, he was still sound asleep when I went over to get him. So I removed the hopper from my paintball gun, walked into his bedroom, yelled something and began firing "blanks" (co2 bursts). He flopped around wildly for a second before falling off the side of his bed. Funniest damn thing I ever did to somebody.
If you want a simple way to mess someone up, take a screen shot of the desktop (with a window or two open).
Friend of mine at my last employer was an AutoCAD guy. He'd spend hours and hours painstakingly working on intricate drafts and would never save them. Every once in awhile I'd drop by his office and if he wasn't there, I took a snapshot of his desktop, added a fake Windows error message about "all data is lost" and full-size it in paint.
It freaked him out every single time. He never learned.
For the hardware and a lifetime subscription to a pager network? I'd wager that is more than a few bucks.
/. geek have it any other way? Yeah, I wish it had wifi built in. I'd buy several if they weren't coupled to Ambient's network. Even at $150 a pop.
See, that's just it - it's not really a lifestime subscription to a pager network. Ambient's main technology is actually not the products, it's the method of transmission. Apparently they've developed ways to shrink data way down for broadcasting over a pager network, and of course they have bulk deals with the paging companies. The products don't come with a phone number that you can page, they can only be paged through Ambient's link to the network, and I believe they can target a huge number of devices with a single page. So while they do have a recurring cost there, it isn't like they're paying $x per orb every month to some paging company on your behalf.
I also pay $20 a quarter for access to their "premium channels", so they're making out like a bandit on me. One of these days I'm going to buy/build the serial cable for it and write a quick API to let me control it from my server. Then I can grab the weather data myself and change the Orb's color without Ambient. I haven't bothered yet because their subscription is so cheap.
Anyway, I'd wager that your cool orb is sitting in a room that is currently covered by wifi, right?
Of course! Would a true
I do have to wonder how low they could really get, though. The colors this thing can render are absolutely AMAZING. True, deep blues, purples, reds, etc... All with LEDs. And the Orb glows almost perfectly uniform throughout. There's got to be some cost there. It's so bright that the light from it in our family room bleeds into the master bedroom and keeps my wife awake at night, so she puts it on the lowest dim setting before going to bed.
For anyone who thinks this is cool and has the $150 to blow, I highly recommend it. I justified it because I have never bought a piece of overpriced art before and figured it was about time I did.
Not a cellular modem, silly: A pager. It doesn't add but a few bucks to the total cost. The real cost in Ambient devices is not material, it's intellectual: They're selling them as unique art, essentially, and if you want one you get to pay for it.
I have an Ambient Orb and love it. You can buy a cable to control it from your computer if you like. Personally, I would buy several more of these if they would lose the pager and put in 802.11 with a nice piece of backend software to grab the info you want and toss color changes to the various devices. But they're not targeting geeks, they're targeting executives and artsy types.
What's with all this "legal" talk? Nobody buys broadband for that crap. ;)
I envison a new Onion article:
Area man constantly mentioning he's happy with dial-up.
NOWHERE, IL: Area resident Jimmy Jacobs does not have broadband, a fact he repeatedly points out to friends, family, and coworkers - as well as to his mailman, neighborhood convenience-store clerks, and the man who cleans the hallways in his apartment building.
"I, personally, would rather spend my time doing something useful than reading web sites," Jacobs told a random woman Monday. Last week, there was a printout of Ellen Feiss tacked to the bulletin board at his office, and Jimmy announced, "I have no idea who this woman is. Ellen who? Am I supposed to have heard of her? I'm sorry, but I haven't."
Tony Gerela, who lives in the apartment directly below Jacobs', is well aware of his neighbor's disdain for broadband.
"About a week after I met him, we were talking, and I made some kind of Red vs. Blue reference," Gerela said. "He asked me what I was talking about, and when I told him it was a movie from the Internet, he just went off, saying how the last time he was on the Internet he sent some text to a friend, and even then he thinks it transmitted too quickly."
I am however completely happy to was lyrical about how much more enjoyable my life is now I control my viewing habits.
;)
Holy cow, that sentence is mind boggling. I'd guess you were engaging in 'recreation' while posting this.
My girlfriend would argue that she would rather me be a TV junkie, because at least that is something we can do together. She would never think Slashdot was interesting, so you can guess that gaming is out of the question.
Time for a new girlfriend, then!
Ok, so if some employee at microsoft who wrote some large chunk of the NTFS.SYS filesystem driver decided to release the code he wrote under the GPL, it *still* wouldn't be valid.
Assume Bill Gates wrote the NTFS.SYS filesystem driver and released it under the GPL. Would it be valid? Of course.
Now assume Steve Jobs buys Microsoft but lets them mostly run independently. Bill Gates writes NTFS.SYS and releases it. Would it still be valid? Most likely yes.
Frankel is effectively the top man at Nullsoft. He founded the damn company. The fact that AOL owns it doesn't mean squat: Frankel still holds a controlling position in the company. This gives him the right to release software under the GPL. The only way AOL could get themselves out of this mess is to claim that he doesn't have authority to release software, which is bullshit because he releases new versions of Winamp all the time.
AOL might not like what he did, but they can't take it back now. WASTE was released on behalf of Nullsoft by someone who had the authority to do so. Which makes the license completely valid.
Agreed. I know I can burn & re-rip, but I shouldn't have to. It wastes time, blank CDs, and degrades the quality of the music. If I can effectively "burn & re-rip" using a software program that doesn't have these problems, I should be allowed to.
Telling people they're immoral, law breaking bastards for doing this is stupid.
You make a good argument, however, it's really not related to the argument at hand. Forget the reason why I bought the tracks; the question is, now that I have them, should I not be able to do with them as I please?
The restrictions and usefulness of what you get for 99 cents are clearly and unambiguously disclosed before purchase.
Agreed, however, if I have a way to get around these restrictions and make my purchase more useful for me, is it immoral or unethical to do so? Assuming I don't distribute the music to others, this is just like modifying any other product. If I want to cut a hole in the top of my monitor for a cupholder, it's my business. Same game if I want to remove a "feature" (DRM) from my music files.
The Dennison iceLink thingie doesn't do much more than make an AUX and possibly a charger for your iPod.
Have you looked at it at all? It integrates your stereo with the iPod's controls. So you can use your factory steering wheel controls to change tracks on the iPod. If it was nothing more than an AUX and a charger people wouldn't be paying $200 for it.
Granted it doesn't report the song info back to your stereo's display, but integrating control alone is pretty cool.
If you don't like iTunes DRM, don't buy from them.
Or buy it and break the DRM. That's my right as a consumer, to listen to my music on any device I please.
people who are going out of their way to circumvent the MINIMAL DRM on iTunes are simply looking for a way to justify immoral/illegal behavior.
Will you quit with the accusations already? It's getting really old listening to you people carry on and on about "immoral/illegal behavior."
Let me give it to you straight, pal: I have the right, as a consumer, to listen to my music anywhere I damn well please. That means non-Apple MP3 players, of which I have many. If exercising that right means breaking someone's DRM, so be it.
Get off your high horse. The fact that you're willing to bend over and take your DRM like a man doesn't mean you are better than the rest of us, nor does it make us thieves.
mindless
<nitpick>Technically, if he were mindless, he would be unable to use a keyboard, let alone compose words.</nitpick>
Some kid breaks the DRM mechanism, and everyone jumps to his defence, because all they really want is FREE (gratis) music.
This has nothing to do with getting free music. All of the songs available on iTunes are freely available anywhere else on the Internet. Nobody is breaking iTunes' DRM for the purpose of "stealing": You have to pay for the song before you even get the chance to break the DRM.
No, the reason it's been broken, and the reason I am applauding their efforts to continue to do so, is because Fairplay isn't fair for me. I can't listen to it on portable MP3 players other than iPod. I can't put the files on my server and freely play them from any computer. I can't play them from standalone hardware players. I can't burn a hundred of them to a CD in data format and pop that disc in my in-car MP3 player.
These are for legally purchased songs that I own, and I should be able to do what I please with them. Playfair solves this.
If your cellphone in 2007 has a built in camcorder, and you pull it out to talk, and by the position of your hand the lens is pointed at the screen, does this mean you should be arrested and sent to jail for a year?
Yes... But not for piracy. Talking on cellular phones during a movie should be punishable by a year in a federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison.
I'm only half joking.
The _real_ solution is to have a widget that treats the iPod as a CD changer, ala Phatnoise.
What, like this?
I also explained that it would be required to do homework assigned by her father. Needless to say, not so 'cool'. Her first response after that was: 'Then what's the point? I'd rather just go to school.' :) Doesn't surprise me. My daughter feels the same about public school. It's just what they know and are used to.
:)
What I CAN say is that whatever I did worked, apparently, and they weren't home-schooled.
I wasn't home-schooled, either, and I grew up just fine. Millions of kids do. Homeschooling has a lot of benefits but it isn't for everybody, and there's no guarantee the child won't do better or worse at home vs. in the public school system. It's just another option.
The point of my responses wasn't to judge you or anyone else for putting their children in public schools, and I hope I did not come across in that manner. I simply wanted to defend the position of homeschooling in terms of social interaction, and I suppose I have accomplished that to some extent.
Thank you for the polite discussion.
Of course you'll have like-minded children and adults all 'getting along' and making nice. They're all intellectually superior.
Oh, come on now. This isn't true at all. One of my daughter's homeschooled friends is a child with autism. He has learning difficulties and obvious social difficulties, so he's homeschooled. Every parent that chooses homeschooling does so for their own personal reasons; it has nothing to do with being "intellectually superior". Homeschoolers aren't a bunch of Mensa members raising their children to be little elitist pricks who think they're better than everyone else. These kids are the same as any other, they just receive their education differently.
Both my wife and I have more than several degrees between us and neither of us would/could attempt to take the place of the social interaction they would miss (with non-home-schooled children)
Why the focus on social interaction with non-home-schooled children?
Children are children. The various homeschooled kids we meet are of varied backgrounds, intelligence, etc. They are all homeschooled for various reasons: Some are gifted. Some have learning difficulties. Most are just normal kids. The only difference between homeschooled children and public schooled are the parents! A large number of children have parents who don't discipline, don't teach manners, etc. So the kids grow up to be brats. The entire nature of homeschooling is such that the parents are, in almost every case, striving to raise good children. Therefore the children behave better than most because the parents take the time to teach them right and wrong. Other than that, they're a big mix of different kids, just like anywhere else.
Furthermore, we don't restrict her to playing with "only home-schooled kids." She plays with neighbors that are in the public school system. We put her in all sorts of various activities - she's done horse riding lessons, swimming lessons, ballet, a music program, Awana, Sunday school, etc. I agree, people who only let their kids interact with half a dozen other carefully selected kids are doing them a social disservice. But that's not the case with any of the homeschoolers we know. We all have our kids in various programs.
You may think that's weak but look inward and tell me you're not doing the same.....molding your child's mind the way YOU want it to be.
Of course that happens. Public schooled children get the same thing. Parents teach their children morals and values and all sorts of things that are unique to the parents. Every parent forms the minds of their children the way the parent wants them to be to a large extent.
Now, strictly educationally speaking, this is not the case - at least not for us. We, like many homeschoolers, allow the child to explore subjects that interest her. My daughter loves science so she spends a lot of time reading science books and performing various science projects on my kitchen table. The idea is to let the child run with whatever he wants to learn. When she shows an interest in a particular subject, we encourage it. Right now she's interested in astronomy so we're buying star charts and letting her stay up later to gaze at the skies. In essence, we don't have a structured school day for her. The learning is all up to her.
That said, we do make her sit down and go through workbooks and such, as she has to learn even the subjects she doesn't like. But when we're satisfied she has progressed in a certain subject to the best of her ability at that time, we let her move on to doing something she enjoys.
I still stick to my original statement: it's a dangerous game.
I wish you could sit down and interact with these kids and their parents. An hour with my daughter and you'd change your mind in a heartbeat.
Clearly you think you know American law (but you don't)
On the contrary, sir: I know enough about American law to know they can't hold me indefinitely until I pay a traffic violation. They can charge me with a crime and put me in jail for a time, but even that has it's limitations. Whether I pay or not they have to let me go eventually.
and you've never been in a foreign country.
Clearly I've never been in a foreign country because I understand people in America can't be held indefinitely until they pay a fine? What kind of logic is that? The story is about a U.S. city and that's where my comments were directed. Some countries can hold you indefinitely because they don't like your haircut, so I certainly wouldn't argue on their holding you for violating a law. Though I fail to see how any of this has to do with my travels.
The cops aren't detaining you, they are holding the instrument of the crime. Don't want to pay? They'll store your vehicle in the municipal impound lot until your trial date. You are free to go, you can wait for a bus to the next major town, then hop a train home.
See, you're mixing words. Originally you said they would hold you. Now you're backtracking, saying they'll simply hold your vehicle. Had you said that in the first place we wouldn't be having this conversation because I wouldn't have responded. I'm in agreement with you on law enforcement being able to hold your vehicle until you pay. They just can't hold the person. Not in the U.S., anyway.
What is your daughter going to do when she eventually does hear other kids swear, or make dirty jokes? Are you willing to restrict her exposure to the world for the rest of her life so she never gets exposed to all that "nasty stuff"?
No, we don't restrict her exposure to the world. She has heard people swear (I swear from time to time, and our neighbor swears like a sailor), and I wouldn't be surprised if she overheard a dirty joke at some point in her life. The point is not to shelter her from the world, it's to shelter her from the glorification of it. In other words, she doesn't spend 8 hours a day with kids who constantly exhibit certain behaviors, and as a result there isn't that strong temptation for her to join them. As you know children are very impressionable and if they spend a lot of time with people who exhibit certain behaviors, they'll pick up on them, even learn that these might be acceptable. Since we spend a lot of time with other homeschoolers whose parents have similar core values as we do, the kids reinforce positive behaviors onto one another instead of negative.
Unfortunately, the world isn't perfect. It's filled with people who'd rather put you down, call you names, and degrade you so they feel better. Those people will exist regardless of how many kids are homeschooled, and you can't hide your children from them forever.
Agreed. My intention is not to hide my children from these people. It is to prevent them from becoming them.
I am saying that unless she understands why people tease and knows how to deal with it, she *does not* have the necessary social skills for life.
I absolutely agree with you. However, I don't believe a child should be forced to deal with teasing every single day in their learning environment, either. They have to learn to deal with it at some point in their lives - my daughter has played with enough children that she has certainly delt with it, and if she hasn't by now she's bound to eventually. However, she's not forced into it every day. She's free to spend time with children she likes and gets along with instead of those she doesn't. She can say, "I don't want to play with Billy anymore. He's mean." That doesn't mean she'll never see him again - he's bound to show up at a common event and she'll have to deal with him there, which is good for her. Dealing with him every single day at school, however, isn't.
Most parents will see their own kids as well mannered
Not just her. All of her home-schooled friends, too.
The fact that you ONLY expose your child to adults is a dangerous game.
When did I say I only expose her to adults? Did you miss this part: "My homeschooled daughter, now seven, can walk into a room with anyone - adults, older kids, kids her age, even young toddlers - and immediately make friends. Most of the homeschooled children she hangs out with exhibit similar characteristics." She spends plenty of time with other kids. It just isn't for 8 hours every single day.
I submit that social interaction with only adults is bad and socialization with other children is good; simple as that.
I agree; this is why she plays with other children several times a week. The key is the type of children: Other home-schooled children, whose parents care enough to discipline and teach their children proper behavior; and in structured, supervised activities (horse riding lessons, swimming lessons, Sunday school, etc). Not all of her friends are home-schooled, as she has made friends with neighbors and at various activities we take her to. However, we make sure the parents and the children are reasonable people before we let the kids spend too much time together.
By this same logic I could get upset that the Xbox games I paid for and legally own I can't play on my PC.
You could, but the REAL question is: Should you have a legal right to play them on your PC, since you own them? I say the answer is yes.
Obviously it's silly to be mad at Apple when you should have known damn well where the files would or wouldn't play when you bought them. However, that doesn't mean you should lie back and take it when they try to prevent you from engaging in fair use of your files (copying to a non-Apple MP3 player, for example).
The thing is, why do people WANT to strip the DRM off their purchased AAC files? Because they can. That's it. There's no other real, valid reason to do it. Posts like "I have 15 computers I want to play it on" are absurd.
How about "I don't have an iPod"? I suppose those hundreds of millions of people out there with less expensive MP3 players aren't a valid reason?