I don't understand what the issue is. The great majority of new features can be had by flashing your current iphone to 3.0, and then opening the little door and putting in a bigger...micro...sd...card... Oh, I forgot. Never mind.
The problem there is that we didn't know we were progressing towards microprocessors at the time, as nobody could even envision them. "Microprocessor" is something you buy in a box now, but it's the culmination of huge advances in many different areas. You don't just "research microprocessors". Especially if you don't know what you're researching.
Advances in techology generally come from trying to solve a problem. The bigger the problem, the bigger the advance. In this case, there was an overriding need to put certain functionality in a particular volume of space with not more than a certain weight. You could not make the space bigger, and you could not make the device heavier, but you had to do it, and you had the engineering and monetary resources of the largest nation on earth, in it's innovative prime, to get it done. Classically, that's the environment that's given impetus to radically new technologies. Once the pump is primed, consumer usage helps drive refinements, but in some cases you need a "moon shot" effort to get things started, if they're radical enough.
The classic environment for radical advancement is war. War also works really well as an engine for technological advancement. On the whole, however, I prefer space exploration.
Caveat: I'm still using Windows XP Media Center Edition. After reading reports about DRM, performance, media and network issues with Vista, I decided to wait for Windows 7. Parenthetically, if rumors turn out to be true and Windows 7 media center won't work with third party codecs, that's an automatic fail and I'll then be looking at MythTV and it's ilk.
So anyway, it's not that MCE is bad at playing video-on-demand. MCE (at least the XP version) has no awareness of the service. There just isn't any way to get from the blue menu to Netflix. You must dismiss media center, bring up explorer, navigate to the netflix site, log in, choose your video, start it going, hit fullscreen, then move the pointer out of the way. Your "remote" is the keyboard. Fine for laptops, sucks for home theater.
Last time I checked, (admittedly awhile ago) this was true for Vista as well. It's just not a feature. There exists a plugin, but it's for managing your queue, not for viewing content. If this has changed for Vista or Windows 7, it'd almost be a reason to upgrade.
As it currently works, Video on Demand is pointless for home theater, as it fails ergonomically. (Video quality sucked also, but one thing at a time.) The normal Netflix DVD delivery service works well enough, and Media Center will play a DVD directly, from the menu, with the remote.
I'd like to think that one would stop torrenting the moment a reasonable substitute becomes available at a reasonable price.
Potential providers have to realize what their competition is. Common codecs that play in many different players on practically every platform. Total lack of DRM (or total DRM transparency). High quality video and sound. A huge, easily searchable library of immediately available content. Seamless integration into your media center.
What legal services I've seen so far are:
Movie downloads that cost more than buying the DVD, and can't be backed up to DVD.
"Online" video with artificially reduced resolution, using proprietary players that only work on one operating system, and do not integrate with any media center package.
In general, just real piss-poor tries at providing online content, demonstrating an overriding take-it-or-leave-it mindset that's no better than the pay-for-view available for a decade on cable, and in some cases more expensive. Here, this is what we're offering. Deal with it. Is there any surprise that so many people decline?
The competition (in this case torrenting content encoded with standard, non-DRM-laden codecs) unquestionably has better quality and a better selection and better integration and better functionality. The practice of downloading content illegally doesn't even have to compete on price -- it can compete successfully on every other aspect of home entertainment.
For instance, it's so bizarre to me that Windows Media Center excels at playing illegal content seamlessly with a conventional remote, (I've seen it work -- download, drop in Movies folder, and it magically shows up in the menu) but when I try to go the legal route, with Netflix video on demand, I have to dink around with a wireless keyboard trying to play the movie in a browser. It's so incredibly inconvenient, I don't know why anyone would bother with it.
I wonder if they're intentionally calling attention to the documents, and have something in mind to try when the defense objects to the documents. Or am I on drugs?
On the one hand, this seems a brilliant and gutsy move by Palm. On the other hand, I really dislike devices or applications that pretend to be a competitor's. On the third hand, I dislike even more that this is sometimes necessary to provide some reasonable amount of interoperability.
What would be hilarious is if during the trial they break open a Pre and there's a Nano inside.:-)
You don't understand. I've been on an unlimited plan for a couple years now. My daughter's phone sends and receives over 2,000 text messages a month. I am not kidding. Without unlimited SMS I'd have to sell the house.
This is what I'm talking about: kgbkgb (http://www.kgb.com) is a pay sms service that's apparently a fad with the kids right now. You text a free-form question to # 542542 (kgbkgb) and receive an answer via return SMS. It costs 99 cents a question. 101 questions to kgbkgb costs $99.99. I could show you the bill. Has nothing to do with unlimited SMS.
I'm serious, if you have teenage kids who text, you need to be on the lookout for this. AT&T will lock out these services and provide you a passcode so you can still use them if necessary, but you have to ask them to do it. If your kid's friends have shown them how to use the service, it may already be too late.
Parenthetically, the AT&T rep I talked to said mine was the second complaint regarding kgb she'd received today. The previous one was regarding a kid who was using the service to cheat on a test.
If Avantgo is just the SMS charge, then fine, but if they're going to a per-SMS transaction charge, watch out!
> and weighs in on a controversial decision by Microsoft to block third party filter support in future versions of Windows media player
Wait wait wait. What?? How does this affect Windows Media Center? (I think it uses Media Player to play content, right?) If I can no longer use third party codecs, I will have no choice but to switch to something like MythTV. Wow, I'm glad I heard about this before upgrading to Windows 7. If this is really the case, continuing with Windows in the media center is absolutely out of the question.
Avantgo hasn't been working right for a long time anyway. I used to have it on my original Palm Pro and on every Palm device since then. It was great because it would give me content to read on the plane that didn't require wireless. But it was always quirky on the Treo and even more so on the Blackberry. When free content like Heavens Above disappeared, and sync problems increased, I finally lost interest. I had a good experience with Avantgo in the old days, but I guess their time has passed.
But, an SMS service? Sounds like another number I have to lock out of the family phones. $100 in charges to kgbkgb in one bill (kids!) has absolutely killed any interest I might have had in SMS services. They're for suckers. They're this century's AOL -- offering for a fee what anyone with an ounce of sense could get for free on the internet.
I think there is a use for fast, simple, text-only information services, but I don't think sms is the proper mechanism. If web designers would stop trying to make wap pages "a rich experience" and just provide the damned information in a simple and fast-loading manner, mobile web services would be a heck of a lot more practical.
> A transmitter powerful enough to be detected outside of a van or similar vechicle is not going to be under-the-skin but a tad larger. There are several locations where a quarter sized impant could go. Unless we are talking very sophisticated criminals they would first have to try and figure out where the transmitter is and remove it.
I think the basic problem here is that anything that's transmitting can be detected with less sophisticated (cheaper) equipment than that necessary to track and decode the signal. I imagine kidnappers as catching up with the technology very quickly, and then there's no place you can go -- as long as it's transmitting, no matter how sophisticated the transmitter, merely detecting and locating the transmission is relatively easy. Even if it's not transmitting at the time, locating a metal implant is fairly easy. Nope, all I can see homing implants causing is routine mutilation during kidnappings. It's one of those things that's useful only while it's rare and unknown.
Usually it's kids that make this argument, or idealistic single twenty-somethings who haven't thought through all the implications of parenting. It didn't wash when I first heard it in high school debates, and it still doesn't.
It's invalid to compare government to parenting. The government is not my parent, does not (or should not) have the same responsibilities as a parent, and in any case can not (or should not) exhibit parental controls over citizens of age. The government is also not my child's parent, and does not (or should not) have parental responsibilities unless I abdicate same. (And there should be penalties if I do that.)
Children do not have the same rights and responsibilities as adults. We could argue whether they should or not, but the fact is, they don't. As the adult I'm responsible for her actions, and to a certain extent that gives me more rights than she has. Again, you can argue whether this should be or not, it remains a fact. If she gets in trouble the authorities are going to... say it with me... hold me responsible. The moment she becomes of age, and becomes responsible for her own actions, the rules change. When she moves out, she's pretty much on her own. At that point, I can advise and assist, but not control.
That said, we maintain open communication and a high degree of mutual trust. The other day she surprised me by saying that she had never smoked or tried recreational drugs or had sex because I had not specifically forbidden her from doing these things. Instead, I tried to present realistic risks (which aren't necessarily the same risks taught in school) and that was enough for her. She says her friends who smoke do so because their parents had slammed the rule into place with no discussion and no explanation -- which reminds me more of government than parenting.
Let's not overthink this. The other part of the deal is that she gets her own phone/PDA, something I'm not required to provide and most of her friends don't have. Make no mistake, I am the parent, and she is the child. It's not a transaction between two consenting adults.
> How do you make sure your child doesn't get used to being tracked? When they grow up they might think it's natural to have a GPS on their wrist and a camera in their home.
You make sure by talking to your child and making sure they understand the implications, not just putting systems in place with no explanation. It's the difference between parenting and acting like an autocratic government. A suspicious person would point out that some of the techniques are the same, because they've missed all the communication between parent and child about intent, scope, trust, and ethics.
If the original poster's intent was just to lojack their child with no explanation and no boundaries, I'd say he should take a hard look at his own motives before proceeding.
Again, in the case of Latitude, it's a volunteer service, and we are mutually tracked -- she can see my position if she chooses to, and I can see hers if I need to. This is quite a bit different from some faceless flunky tracking our every move just because he can.
> This is in reply just to the part about summer camp. I do appreciate your reasoning, but I hope you tell her she can't just call you whenever she wants while at camp. Your camp may be different but at the one I worked at (and attended as a kid) we were in the wilderness and part of the point was to get away from the ubiquitous technology in regular life.
Understood, but this is today's world we live in, and a bunch of sequestered teenage girls with no communication to the outside world, presided over by a woman in her early twenties with no security experience is... say it with me... a target. Again, it's about managed risk, and having a cell at hand in case of emergency (there is service, I checked) is not an unreasonable precaution. She knows she's not to use it unless there's an emergency, and so far there hasn't been one. She doesn't get homesick.
My objection is not to forbid casual cell usage at camp -- I see the reasoning. What I object to is the camp's rules deliberately putting the kids in a state of complete helplessness. It's not necessary.
> Goodness...how did we EVER survive as a species before cell phones and GPS trackers??!?!
Well, if you remember your freshman biology, we survived as a species because there were enough children around to present a viable gene pool after the usual casualties thinned their ranks.
As a parent, it's natural to be primarily concerned with the survival of one's own progeny. It's not enough to say "Oh, there's plenty of children left to propagate the species", or as the redneck put it, "I'm not having more kids just to feed that damned alligator".
That parents are (usually) more concerned about their own offspring shouldn't come as a shock. It's a tightrope walk between providing sufficient protection and sufficient autonomy, as both are important.
I do admit to being a little conflicted about the use of these devices, even after admitting that I use them myself. It's one of those things where I want the ability to know the location of my child should I need to, but would fight against the government having the same information. It's like having a home security system -- OK if it's mine, and it's me being notified, but not OK if my "home security system" is a government CCTV.
> And let's not forget we as kids weren't drugged by our parents like they are today. Amazing we learned in school and survived at all, truly.
Agreed there. I fought the school district tooth and nail to keep her off Ritalin after the school diagnosed her as ADHD. But that's a whole 'nother story.
I remember reading somewhere that incandescent bulbs are made somewhere in America -- Tennessee? Whereas the great majority of CFLs come from China. If incandescent bulbs can be made significantly more efficient, and they're made locally, it sounds like a win-win to me.
I'm probably putting too much effort into this but ok...
* Twice on the wrong school bus being 11-13 years old
It's complicated. She and a bunch of students take a bus to a hub and transfer there. Then they all transfer at a different hub on the way home. That's four buses round trip and the hubs are usually a madhouse. I dunno why -- ask the school district.
* Lost at a parade at 11-13 years old.
That was a little younger, and she was carrying a (non-GPS) loaner at the time. We were attending an event in a strange town and got separated. She called me and got an attendant to tell me where she was. This was what decided us to make the arrangement permanent. She got her own phone on her next birthday.
* Afraid of the police? Afraid? What sort of incident makes you afraid of the police? Distrust should be the word you use?
Afraid when she was younger, distrust now. I've covered this elsewhere. She was traumatized, and although has mostly gotten over it, still avoids police. I didn't cause this, the police did. Talk to them.
* And you track your now teen aged daughter...
Hyperbole. She willingly carries a device that allows me to know her position in an emergency. (The side benefit for her was having her own cell phone at a young age.) I do *not* track her. I trust her and don't feel the need. I've used it to come get her when she's stuck or lost. What parent wouldn't do that if they could?
True, but I wonder if the original requester really meant "anywhere in the world". I think you could probably do "anywhere there is modern cell service" (IE, GPRS), but true "anywhere in the world" equipment would need a backpack at least.
I think some respondents are under the erroneous impression that there's a chip you can inject into someone's butt to track them anywhere on earth. If anything like that really existed, it'd be highly specialized and require a huge infrastructure to support. Only governments could afford it, and maybe not even that in this economy. Us normal humans are limited to more pedestrian technology.
Ok, this is really off topic, so feel free to mark it such. It was an incident when she was almost four years old. I had her on my hip at a Cinco De Mayo celebration downtown one year, and apparently some of the local cops didn't like my looks. Four cops in body armor surrounded me and demanded my ID. I set the kid down, and she clung to me while I proved who I was. I thought it was just a case of mistaken identity, but they persisted in harassing me, insulting me, shoulder- and chest-bumping me, apparently trying to elict a response. This went on for a long time. After awhile they grudgingly gave my papers back and wandered off, still trash-talking.
We immediately left and never went back there again. I'm reluctant now to take my family into the city for any event, so we pretty much stick to the suburbs. My daughter was deeply traumatized by the incident and has been fearful of people in uniform ever since. She's older now and the fear is mostly gone, but she still distrusts police to this day. (Arguably, she gets some of this attitude to me, as I was really freaked out by the incident also.)
Oddly, there was one woman officer in the group, and she was the most aggressive and had the foulest mouth.
No, I really don't know what the deal was. I've never had that kind of experience with police, before or since. I did some research, and that particular police force had had a bad rep before the incident. That was years ago and I don't know what they're like now, don't really want to know. I guess their slogan was "destroying our public image, one citizen at a time".
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I don't understand what the issue is. The great majority of new features can be had by flashing your current iphone to 3.0, and then opening the little door and putting in a bigger...micro...sd...card... Oh, I forgot. Never mind.
Perhaps, but he sure was annoying back then.
I remember ClariNet. I remember thinking, "why in God's name should I pay for something that I can get for free?"
But it turns out, there are people who will do that, and the rest is history.
The problem there is that we didn't know we were progressing towards microprocessors at the time, as nobody could even envision them. "Microprocessor" is something you buy in a box now, but it's the culmination of huge advances in many different areas. You don't just "research microprocessors". Especially if you don't know what you're researching.
Advances in techology generally come from trying to solve a problem. The bigger the problem, the bigger the advance. In this case, there was an overriding need to put certain functionality in a particular volume of space with not more than a certain weight. You could not make the space bigger, and you could not make the device heavier, but you had to do it, and you had the engineering and monetary resources of the largest nation on earth, in it's innovative prime, to get it done. Classically, that's the environment that's given impetus to radically new technologies. Once the pump is primed, consumer usage helps drive refinements, but in some cases you need a "moon shot" effort to get things started, if they're radical enough.
The classic environment for radical advancement is war. War also works really well as an engine for technological advancement. On the whole, however, I prefer space exploration.
Gotta update my blog.
Caveat: I'm still using Windows XP Media Center Edition. After reading reports about DRM, performance, media and network issues with Vista, I decided to wait for Windows 7. Parenthetically, if rumors turn out to be true and Windows 7 media center won't work with third party codecs, that's an automatic fail and I'll then be looking at MythTV and it's ilk.
So anyway, it's not that MCE is bad at playing video-on-demand. MCE (at least the XP version) has no awareness of the service. There just isn't any way to get from the blue menu to Netflix. You must dismiss media center, bring up explorer, navigate to the netflix site, log in, choose your video, start it going, hit fullscreen, then move the pointer out of the way. Your "remote" is the keyboard. Fine for laptops, sucks for home theater.
Last time I checked, (admittedly awhile ago) this was true for Vista as well. It's just not a feature. There exists a plugin, but it's for managing your queue, not for viewing content. If this has changed for Vista or Windows 7, it'd almost be a reason to upgrade.
As it currently works, Video on Demand is pointless for home theater, as it fails ergonomically. (Video quality sucked also, but one thing at a time.) The normal Netflix DVD delivery service works well enough, and Media Center will play a DVD directly, from the menu, with the remote.
I'd like to think that one would stop torrenting the moment a reasonable substitute becomes available at a reasonable price.
Potential providers have to realize what their competition is. Common codecs that play in many different players on practically every platform. Total lack of DRM (or total DRM transparency). High quality video and sound. A huge, easily searchable library of immediately available content. Seamless integration into your media center.
What legal services I've seen so far are:
Movie downloads that cost more than buying the DVD, and can't be backed up to DVD.
"Online" video with artificially reduced resolution, using proprietary players that only work on one operating system, and do not integrate with any media center package.
In general, just real piss-poor tries at providing online content, demonstrating an overriding take-it-or-leave-it mindset that's no better than the pay-for-view available for a decade on cable, and in some cases more expensive. Here, this is what we're offering. Deal with it. Is there any surprise that so many people decline?
The competition (in this case torrenting content encoded with standard, non-DRM-laden codecs) unquestionably has better quality and a better selection and better integration and better functionality. The practice of downloading content illegally doesn't even have to compete on price -- it can compete successfully on every other aspect of home entertainment.
For instance, it's so bizarre to me that Windows Media Center excels at playing illegal content seamlessly with a conventional remote, (I've seen it work -- download, drop in Movies folder, and it magically shows up in the menu) but when I try to go the legal route, with Netflix video on demand, I have to dink around with a wireless keyboard trying to play the movie in a browser. It's so incredibly inconvenient, I don't know why anyone would bother with it.
"The main downside of course is if your cable company decides not to plug this service in you will have no way to subscribe."
So, about half the internet population heaves a sigh and says to themselves, "well, I guess I'll just have to go back to torrenting".
I wonder if they're intentionally calling attention to the documents, and have something in mind to try when the defense objects to the documents. Or am I on drugs?
On the one hand, this seems a brilliant and gutsy move by Palm. On the other hand, I really dislike devices or applications that pretend to be a competitor's. On the third hand, I dislike even more that this is sometimes necessary to provide some reasonable amount of interoperability.
What would be hilarious is if during the trial they break open a Pre and there's a Nano inside. :-)
You don't understand. I've been on an unlimited plan for a couple years now. My daughter's phone sends and receives over 2,000 text messages a month. I am not kidding. Without unlimited SMS I'd have to sell the house.
This is what I'm talking about: kgbkgb (http://www.kgb.com) is a pay sms service that's apparently a fad with the kids right now. You text a free-form question to # 542542 (kgbkgb) and receive an answer via return SMS. It costs 99 cents a question. 101 questions to kgbkgb costs $99.99. I could show you the bill. Has nothing to do with unlimited SMS.
I'm serious, if you have teenage kids who text, you need to be on the lookout for this. AT&T will lock out these services and provide you a passcode so you can still use them if necessary, but you have to ask them to do it. If your kid's friends have shown them how to use the service, it may already be too late.
Parenthetically, the AT&T rep I talked to said mine was the second complaint regarding kgb she'd received today. The previous one was regarding a kid who was using the service to cheat on a test.
If Avantgo is just the SMS charge, then fine, but if they're going to a per-SMS transaction charge, watch out!
> and weighs in on a controversial decision by Microsoft to block third party filter support in future versions of Windows media player
Wait wait wait. What?? How does this affect Windows Media Center? (I think it uses Media Player to play content, right?) If I can no longer use third party codecs, I will have no choice but to switch to something like MythTV. Wow, I'm glad I heard about this before upgrading to Windows 7. If this is really the case, continuing with Windows in the media center is absolutely out of the question.
Avantgo hasn't been working right for a long time anyway. I used to have it on my original Palm Pro and on every Palm device since then. It was great because it would give me content to read on the plane that didn't require wireless. But it was always quirky on the Treo and even more so on the Blackberry. When free content like Heavens Above disappeared, and sync problems increased, I finally lost interest. I had a good experience with Avantgo in the old days, but I guess their time has passed.
But, an SMS service? Sounds like another number I have to lock out of the family phones. $100 in charges to kgbkgb in one bill (kids!) has absolutely killed any interest I might have had in SMS services. They're for suckers. They're this century's AOL -- offering for a fee what anyone with an ounce of sense could get for free on the internet.
I think there is a use for fast, simple, text-only information services, but I don't think sms is the proper mechanism. If web designers would stop trying to make wap pages "a rich experience" and just provide the damned information in a simple and fast-loading manner, mobile web services would be a heck of a lot more practical.
> A transmitter powerful enough to be detected outside of a van or similar vechicle is not going to be under-the-skin but a tad larger. There are several locations where a quarter sized impant could go. Unless we are talking very sophisticated criminals they would first have to try and figure out where the transmitter is and remove it.
I think the basic problem here is that anything that's transmitting can be detected with less sophisticated (cheaper) equipment than that necessary to track and decode the signal. I imagine kidnappers as catching up with the technology very quickly, and then there's no place you can go -- as long as it's transmitting, no matter how sophisticated the transmitter, merely detecting and locating the transmission is relatively easy. Even if it's not transmitting at the time, locating a metal implant is fairly easy. Nope, all I can see homing implants causing is routine mutilation during kidnappings. It's one of those things that's useful only while it's rare and unknown.
> It's irrelevant because they most likely won't have the money to hit a payphone or the knowledge to reverse the charges,
Usually it's kids that make this argument, or idealistic single twenty-somethings who haven't thought through all the implications of parenting. It didn't wash when I first heard it in high school debates, and it still doesn't.
It's invalid to compare government to parenting. The government is not my parent, does not (or should not) have the same responsibilities as a parent, and in any case can not (or should not) exhibit parental controls over citizens of age. The government is also not my child's parent, and does not (or should not) have parental responsibilities unless I abdicate same. (And there should be penalties if I do that.)
Children do not have the same rights and responsibilities as adults. We could argue whether they should or not, but the fact is, they don't. As the adult I'm responsible for her actions, and to a certain extent that gives me more rights than she has. Again, you can argue whether this should be or not, it remains a fact. If she gets in trouble the authorities are going to... say it with me... hold me responsible. The moment she becomes of age, and becomes responsible for her own actions, the rules change. When she moves out, she's pretty much on her own. At that point, I can advise and assist, but not control.
That said, we maintain open communication and a high degree of mutual trust. The other day she surprised me by saying that she had never smoked or tried recreational drugs or had sex because I had not specifically forbidden her from doing these things. Instead, I tried to present realistic risks (which aren't necessarily the same risks taught in school) and that was enough for her. She says her friends who smoke do so because their parents had slammed the rule into place with no discussion and no explanation -- which reminds me more of government than parenting.
Let's not overthink this. The other part of the deal is that she gets her own phone/PDA, something I'm not required to provide and most of her friends don't have. Make no mistake, I am the parent, and she is the child. It's not a transaction between two consenting adults.
> How do you make sure your child doesn't get used to being tracked? When they grow up they might think it's natural to have a GPS on their wrist and a camera in their home.
You make sure by talking to your child and making sure they understand the implications, not just putting systems in place with no explanation. It's the difference between parenting and acting like an autocratic government. A suspicious person would point out that some of the techniques are the same, because they've missed all the communication between parent and child about intent, scope, trust, and ethics.
If the original poster's intent was just to lojack their child with no explanation and no boundaries, I'd say he should take a hard look at his own motives before proceeding.
Again, in the case of Latitude, it's a volunteer service, and we are mutually tracked -- she can see my position if she chooses to, and I can see hers if I need to. This is quite a bit different from some faceless flunky tracking our every move just because he can.
> This is in reply just to the part about summer camp. I do appreciate your reasoning, but I hope you tell her she can't just call you whenever she wants while at camp. Your camp may be different but at the one I worked at (and attended as a kid) we were in the wilderness and part of the point was to get away from the ubiquitous technology in regular life.
Understood, but this is today's world we live in, and a bunch of sequestered teenage girls with no communication to the outside world, presided over by a woman in her early twenties with no security experience is... say it with me... a target. Again, it's about managed risk, and having a cell at hand in case of emergency (there is service, I checked) is not an unreasonable precaution. She knows she's not to use it unless there's an emergency, and so far there hasn't been one. She doesn't get homesick.
My objection is not to forbid casual cell usage at camp -- I see the reasoning. What I object to is the camp's rules deliberately putting the kids in a state of complete helplessness. It's not necessary.
> Goodness...how did we EVER survive as a species before cell phones and GPS trackers??!?!
Well, if you remember your freshman biology, we survived as a species because there were enough children around to present a viable gene pool after the usual casualties thinned their ranks.
As a parent, it's natural to be primarily concerned with the survival of one's own progeny. It's not enough to say "Oh, there's plenty of children left to propagate the species", or as the redneck put it, "I'm not having more kids just to feed that damned alligator".
That parents are (usually) more concerned about their own offspring shouldn't come as a shock. It's a tightrope walk between providing sufficient protection and sufficient autonomy, as both are important.
I do admit to being a little conflicted about the use of these devices, even after admitting that I use them myself. It's one of those things where I want the ability to know the location of my child should I need to, but would fight against the government having the same information. It's like having a home security system -- OK if it's mine, and it's me being notified, but not OK if my "home security system" is a government CCTV.
> And let's not forget we as kids weren't drugged by our parents like they are today. Amazing we learned in school and survived at all, truly.
Agreed there. I fought the school district tooth and nail to keep her off Ritalin after the school diagnosed her as ADHD. But that's a whole 'nother story.
I remember reading somewhere that incandescent bulbs are made somewhere in America -- Tennessee? Whereas the great majority of CFLs come from China. If incandescent bulbs can be made significantly more efficient, and they're made locally, it sounds like a win-win to me.
I'm probably putting too much effort into this but ok...
* Twice on the wrong school bus being 11-13 years old
It's complicated. She and a bunch of students take a bus to a hub and transfer there. Then they all transfer at a different hub on the way home. That's four buses round trip and the hubs are usually a madhouse. I dunno why -- ask the school district.
* Lost at a parade at 11-13 years old.
That was a little younger, and she was carrying a (non-GPS) loaner at the time. We were attending an event in a strange town and got separated. She called me and got an attendant to tell me where she was. This was what decided us to make the arrangement permanent. She got her own phone on her next birthday.
* Afraid of the police? Afraid? What sort of incident makes you afraid of the police? Distrust should be the word you use?
Afraid when she was younger, distrust now. I've covered this elsewhere. She was traumatized, and although has mostly gotten over it, still avoids police. I didn't cause this, the police did. Talk to them.
* And you track your now teen aged daughter...
Hyperbole. She willingly carries a device that allows me to know her position in an emergency. (The side benefit for her was having her own cell phone at a young age.) I do *not* track her. I trust her and don't feel the need. I've used it to come get her when she's stuck or lost. What parent wouldn't do that if they could?
True, but I wonder if the original requester really meant "anywhere in the world". I think you could probably do "anywhere there is modern cell service" (IE, GPRS), but true "anywhere in the world" equipment would need a backpack at least.
I think some respondents are under the erroneous impression that there's a chip you can inject into someone's butt to track them anywhere on earth. If anything like that really existed, it'd be highly specialized and require a huge infrastructure to support. Only governments could afford it, and maybe not even that in this economy. Us normal humans are limited to more pedestrian technology.
Ok, this is really off topic, so feel free to mark it such. It was an incident when she was almost four years old. I had her on my hip at a Cinco De Mayo celebration downtown one year, and apparently some of the local cops didn't like my looks. Four cops in body armor surrounded me and demanded my ID. I set the kid down, and she clung to me while I proved who I was. I thought it was just a case of mistaken identity, but they persisted in harassing me, insulting me, shoulder- and chest-bumping me, apparently trying to elict a response. This went on for a long time. After awhile they grudgingly gave my papers back and wandered off, still trash-talking.
We immediately left and never went back there again. I'm reluctant now to take my family into the city for any event, so we pretty much stick to the suburbs. My daughter was deeply traumatized by the incident and has been fearful of people in uniform ever since. She's older now and the fear is mostly gone, but she still distrusts police to this day. (Arguably, she gets some of this attitude to me, as I was really freaked out by the incident also.)
Oddly, there was one woman officer in the group, and she was the most aggressive and had the foulest mouth.
No, I really don't know what the deal was. I've never had that kind of experience with police, before or since. I did some research, and that particular police force had had a bad rep before the incident. That was years ago and I don't know what they're like now, don't really want to know. I guess their slogan was "destroying our public image, one citizen at a time".