Does Fox still have first-air rights? Fox loves to take the best stuff and strangle it to death. Out of order episodes, random slot times, and only a dozen episodes before cancellation is extremely common. They're the ADD child of networks.
Fox doesn't deserve Futurama; if they aren't contractually obligated to bring it back to Fox, West should sell the rights to Adult Swim or Comedy Central. Adult Swim loved showing five hours of Futurama at a time, and Comedy Central just wants more animated filler. They'll both be better homes (though my confidence in [AS] is basically nil now, they've wasted all the class and personality that once made me interested in them).
My other concern is Family Guy syndrome. Maybe it was because the show was off the air for some time, but Family Guy just isn't as good as it once was. Partly it's because they've completely changed the dynamic of every character (usually for the worst--Stewie is now more about "hiding in the closet" now than "take over the world and kill Lois"). Partly it's that the seem to rely more and more on the "like that time when" skits. While Futurama has always had a much different way to go about humor than that, it could still fall flat.
Also, I'm worried that we'll lose all the great "under the table" jokes that require at least some college education to get.
to keep museums afloat, survival depends on big crowds
Why just make it a museum? I'm not familiar with navy tech, but I'd bet you could fix it up and turn it into some sort of roving marine research center or an interesting themed-cruise liner for the fairly-rich.
For the research center, with a floating dry dock you could probably modify it to also hold an unmanned underwater vessel.
For the cruise liner, you have something along the murder-mystery parties, but now it's a spy-theme. Everyone pays $X,000, and if you figure out who the spy is and what they're after, you get a prize of some sort (perhaps an extra cruise above the Shadow?).
Or combine the last two: a roving museum. Over a few days on the open seas, not only do you learn about the whole project and get to see some stuff in action, but you are also taken to various spots of interest. Sure, there won't be much to see out on the ocean, but I'm sure an enterprising individual could figure out how to keep attention for those moments. Everything in between is like a normal cruise liner, though I don't think they'd be able to install a pool on the ship.
I have thus far managed to stay completely below the radar and a search on Google has nothing on my real persona.
I actually have the opposite problem: my first and last name combination is so common that I doubt I actually appear anywhere in the first 50 pages of Google Results. Adding my middle name gets nothing. It's only when you add my university that you start getting hits that are me.
I used to think this was a cute benefit. However, with more and more employers doing searches, and my work being all about the web, I realized that having no results related to me could actually be negative. While I don't go out search for them, this insight has caused me to be much more lenient towards any site that is recommended to me, such as LinkedIn, or even an account on a career/job site. I still keep them fairly sparse, but it's better that I have something to point to ("No, that's some other FirstName RyoShin, I'm FirstName M. RyoShin, and THIS is my account on that site") to help ease any confusion.
I'm not gaining any privacy by doing this, but I don't think I'm losing any, either. Furthermore, I am gaining recognition and a firm reputation.
I could see this being easily pitched to leaders; they get the Big Brother power, some spiel about lowering taxes/tax burden through decreased police force, and positive national intention. They don't have to lead, because the citizens/police do all the work, and they get all the control. And if it fails, they can point to a lack of citizen involvement/police response and get off the hook. The main hurdle would be the extra cost for implementing a proper system for (inter?)national internet watching.
To be honest, I'm against the whole idea and would prefer 0 cameras, but if it's going to happen it might as well happen in the best possible way.
so they have some form of evidence to give police, not just hearsay.
So the police set up a system, the people record the system, then give the police their own feed? Instead, set the system up so that it records the previous five minutes. If someone is watching and sees a crime, they can hit a button on the website (which would use either AJAX or Java) that would start extra recording for that particular camera. After it's all gone down, they hit the stop button (or it stops after X minutes automatically) and they are given a video ID and a little form to fill out to explain what they just saw.
When they submit the form, the information is sent to a rookie/veteran stuck in the office whose job it is to watch the feeds and read/respond to citizen alerts. (If it doesn't work out to have the same person behind the desk 24/7, just make it a rotating shift where each cop takes 6 hours a week at it.) If a lot of citizens suddenly flag a camera, an alert is sent to both the cop on duty, the police chief, and an SMS is sent to any cop in the immediate area of that camera. Cops hopefully have access in their vehicles to the cameras, so they have to check the feed before speeding off (to stop/b/-style raids or some gang using social engineering to move cops from another area).
But getting the citizens interested might be a bit hard... so, instead of Neighborhood Watch, make it Neighborhood Survivor, or Neighborhood Real World, or Neighborhood Big Brother. Glitz the page up, and let people create accounts that can be tied to their successful report rate. (Make sure it has the ability to automatically downgrade reports from an abusive account or IP.) Have a weekly show on local cable about various incidents and those who reported them, along with the ability for people to "vote" on which camera area should get a make-over (regular city stuff, like re-paving a road, fixing fences/house sides, etc.) which will help to boost morale in an area.
Also, some comment on Chicago trying to outdo China on more than just the Olympics.
If you have no cat, I would recommend creating a contraption involving Lego Mindstorms and a Camera. You press a button, and the contraption rolls a pair of dice five times. If it ever rolls an even number, it presses the "accept" button. (Statistical probability is in your favor.) Furthermore, program it to recognize a EULA window so it starts automatically when one comes up.
If was playing any of those games and there was no violence, no blood, no swearing, no aggression of any kind, I would probably not even play the games in the first place. They are rated M, they are adult games, made by adults for adults. No need to strip them down and make them for children.
It seems like the aggression was still there in the "tag them" version, as you were still trying to get them before they got you. It's the same aggression and adrenaline rush as playing football or tag; real war just has a different set of consequences. Furthermore, it's unlikely that the aggression felt by most gamers is the same level as that felt by real soldiers.
And, honestly, you must have missed out on a whole generation of games. Have you never played Megaman? Legend of Zelda? Both had lots of violence, and I would certainly feel aggression while trying, but there was no blood, swearing, or even a hint of tits, even in the most modern of versions. (Well, Megaman Zero had some blood that was removed for some versions, and honestly it didn't diminish the game at all.)
I'm not saying that we should throw out M-Rated games and enjoy the next Grand Theft Balloon, but you can certainly have an aggressive and fun game without swearing and buckets of blood. Jet Force Gemini (does green blood count?), the aforementioned Zelda and Megaman, Street Fighter, and more. Even Half Life 2 didn't have much blood or swearing, from what I recall.
whose most famous mayor was busted for smoking crack.
And, once he got out of jail, was promptly re-elected. Smoking crack is one thing, and can be attributed to a specific person or small group, but then you have a majority vote to put this person back in office; this is much more telling of the state of D.C.
I've not been to D.C., but I hear all the horror stories, and I hope that if I ever do have to go there it's as an elected official so I can avoid driving myself around. It mixes the country's elite with tons of urban poor, both fighting within the city for their own views. That, and it houses the majority of lobbyists in the country.
That said, I won't apply the nastiness of D.C. to one guy I know nothing about. He may well be a proper individual for the job, and highly accomplished in his previous one.
Nuts to you, I was going to make the same reply. Too bad I don't have any mod points.
I think Microsoft is silly for having seven versions, though I don't think they should parry it down to one. More like three or four. As well, I think Linux might be more approachable by the common man if there weren't two thousand distros they had to choose from.
How about this: Instead of the Linux developers rallying behind a small handful of distros, the Linux community should. When someone goes to some major Linux download site (not a particular distro) they are presented with three distros, and each accompanied by a major use or uses for that distro that separates it from the other two (say "older computers", "gaming", "high end PCs" or something). At the bottom you have a link to "or choose from hundreds of other versions to meet your particular need" in normal-sized text. Those who are more technically-inclined and interested then are able to follow that, while everyone else just has to pick one of three.
DefenseLink is a DoD site that lists all DoD sites. Forge.mil(.com) is not on that list. Of course, it could be bureaucracy acting slow.
Second, WHOIS contact connects to an individual at collab.net, another sourceforge-like site. Were this a government site, I would think they would have it registered to a position in a department, or at least a c/o address for a military/goverment institution, not an individual.
Just to be sure, popping the given address into Google Maps returns what looks like a residential area.
So this is either a horribly managed project (not surprising for the government), or some weird scam of sorts.
So how long until some mother sues a company because their adbox recognized her 14 year old son as a 20 year old and offered him a discount on condoms or cigarettes?
(Yes, I know that US law forbids cigarette ads in various medias.)
They might have gone down for a few days, but surely they have recent system back-ups to restore from, and daily backups to restore the data from....Right? Please?
Another service to stop using. I'd rather pay/subscribe than listen to ads
Good, because Pandora has an ad-free, paid subscription service. Please put your money where your mouth is, then, and sign up for it.
Honestly, Slashdot is full of crybabies. Everyone would love to not deal with advertising, sure; but this is a free service, and it doesn't run on rainbows and unicorn farts. They can either be subscriber-only, or they can have a free version with a few hitches.
Plus, I don't see anyone talking about how this is actually an improvement to the free version (or at least none modded to +4). And it is! Previously, every dozen songs or so the player would just stop completely, and you'd have to click a little button saying "Yeah, I'm still here and listening". I didn't blame them for that, because they do have to pay for every song they play (not to mention related service fees), and so this helped to make sure someone didn't start it in the morning and then go to work.* However, it was still annoying because I would have to break my train of thought to realize the music had stopped completely (and it wasn't just a song that started soft) and switch over to turn it back on.
As I listened yesterday, I didn't have to do that a single time. I heard the ads, sure, but they merely interrupted the music briefly, not stopped it. Also, Pandora has music ads that would play whenever you switch stations (sometimes including a video that covered the player) which I found far more annoying.
Furthermore, these aren't invasive in any sense of the word. Unless you consider normal television or radio ads as "invasive". Which they're not.
For fucks sake, Slashdot, you're getting as bad as Fox News now.
* I should mention that it was every ten songs or so if you didn't do anything within the player, like rating a song. So if you rated every fifth song or so, you never had that. The caveat is that every first action you take after X minutes causes an ad change, though I don't mind that, either.
Everyone with an account that is X days old can write a review. However, those who have not purchased the product through the site are initially minimized, and the overall rating is made up only of those who have bought the product. By the rating, there's a small label that "This rating does not include reviews of users who have not bought this product from Amazon", and when you go to view one of the non-owner reviews you get a nice, bright, bold message above it that says "Amazon cannot verify that this user has actually purchased and owned this product."
There are people who write REAL reviews on places they didn't buy the product (I write the occasional review for ePinions.com, for instance) and may have some good points. However, by adding those disclaimers as well as not including "foreign" reviews in the overall ranking (the first one people see), reliability will shoot way up.
No, that's not it. It just has Spike, Jet, and Faye, and the stripes are slanted. It had really huge names for all three, and is old as the internets. Thanks, though.
There was another one I found trying to find it through google, and that fit the descriptions except that Spike's stripe was larger than the other two, and it's not the one, either.
On the one hand, considering Spike's normal nonchalant attitude, Keanu's lack of acting abilities could actually be a happy accident for the role.
On the other hand, I'm going to go cry somewhere for about an hour.
And a side note: Some time ago someone made a faux Live-action CB poster, rather well done, with their suggestions for casting. It had three stripes, going left to right, of equal size, one for Jet, Spike, and Faye. It circulated the internet quite a bit, but I can't seem to find it now. Anyone know where I can see the image of which I speak?
Sorry, but those bills will never pass. For one, they don't have cute acronyms, and so can't be summed up quickly. For two, they have nothing to do with children.
To guarantee they pass, they should be given cute acronyms and have riders about increasing government spending on child psychology related to gay couples.
I can see where you're coming from, but I wasn't talking about fights, I was talking about verbal bullying. Someone being called names in class, or getting nasty notes left in their locker, among other things. The majority of teachers turn a blind eye; I've seen only a small handful of teachers care enough to step in and try to stop it.
I applaud you for that. That is ideally how it's done: they put forth all the effort, but it proves futile. Yours is the way for physical; the equivalent verbal response is just to smile, maybe laugh a little, at every insult they throw.
However, both are incredibly hard to do, especially at the age where bullying is prevalent.
I would argue that fighting back physically does more to reduce public ridicule than verbally. Also, that fighting back physically has a far larger chance of success than verbally, regardless of the level.
Verbal responses require a very quick wit as well as not being afraid to speak in public. One or two good comebacks won't last very long, and no one but the bully will really take note.
A physical response has a much better chance of landing a lucky punch. Except in cases of a massive beatdown by the bully or a Perfect K.O. (the target lands no punches), the bully will still be wearing some bruises and scars for a week or two, which will make a much more lasting impression. Everyone will know who got some licks in on the bully, and the wounds will speak every time they are seen, rather than just when someone opens their mouth.
You're right, though, when you say that the classic victim sucks at both. I would think that they would learn faster from a physical attack than a verbal one. Since I can't compare, I may be wrong on this one.
True enough, but it's not always the case. And it's far more likely they'll get a deserving punishment afterwards, as well as expelled or perhaps spending some time in juvie.
Perhaps my childhood was different, but about an equal number of my bullies were solo as had a posse. The ones who seemed more likely to challenge me to a fight were the ones going solo.
When the torment is physical, you can easily fight back and have a fairly good chance of winning (especially if it's not your first time and/or it's not jock-on-dork). If you lose, yeah, it's not a great feeling psychologically, but you eventually wind up with the idea that you can take the guy if ever in another altercation. You're also less likely to be suspended/expelled if you fight back "in self defense"; whereas if you throw a punch because a bully said something that pushed your buttons, he gets a medal of commendation and you get a week's worth of detention.
With just word of mouth bullying, how do you fight it?
Your own retorts? The bullies will just laugh; they've spent lots of time thinking of good remarks to use on you, and find your response amusing, as it means they won.
Tell the teacher? Most teachers don't give half a shit. Same thing for the principal, and sometimes even the school counselor (if yours has one). If you succeed, the bully gets one or two detentions. It's nothing new for him (or her), and when it's over he comes back twice as hard because "you went crying to mommy".
Litigation/filing for assault just seems way out of proportion, and likely will have the same result as telling a teacher.
And then of course there are female bullies. From my experience and those related to me, male bullies are relatively fucking cheerful. Female bullies, especially towards other females, take the "passive aggressive" approach; rather than just making fun to a target's face, they'll take their time to, as a group, make up and spread rumors about the target. As these rumors get around, kids tend to take them more to heart. It also becomes much harder to find out who originally started the rumors (technically slander). And then everyone will start giving stares in the hallway or in class, and the target won't know exactly why, which just adds to it.
So you keep it pent up inside and it does stuff to you. As someone who was picked on often as a kid, I sure as hell wish my tormentors had turned physical so I would have had a good reason to fight back. Even if I lost, I would have given them a few shiners and would have lost a lot of my aggression/aggravation.
Physical bullying can have an emotional impact, but not nearly as hard or long-lasting as non-physical bullying.
On a somewhat-related note, should I ever have a kid (of either sex) I plan to tell them to do the following if they are bullied, each step if the previous doesn't stop it: 1) Tell the kid to stop. 2) Tell the closest teacher when an incident happens. 3) Tell the principal 4) Punch the kid in the nose
Every step they should tell me what's going on, and I'd probably be included in the discussion with the principal. If the school won't try to handle the situation (or does a bad job), I feel my kid is fully in the right to take matters into his own hand. One could try contacting the bully's parents, but, honestly, it's quite rare to find parents that will accept such accusations without hardcore proof (as a negative light on their child reflects back on them.)
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for the correction; How could I forget it's Matt Groening? Someone mod parent up, please!
Does Fox still have first-air rights? Fox loves to take the best stuff and strangle it to death. Out of order episodes, random slot times, and only a dozen episodes before cancellation is extremely common. They're the ADD child of networks.
Fox doesn't deserve Futurama; if they aren't contractually obligated to bring it back to Fox, West should sell the rights to Adult Swim or Comedy Central. Adult Swim loved showing five hours of Futurama at a time, and Comedy Central just wants more animated filler. They'll both be better homes (though my confidence in [AS] is basically nil now, they've wasted all the class and personality that once made me interested in them).
My other concern is Family Guy syndrome. Maybe it was because the show was off the air for some time, but Family Guy just isn't as good as it once was. Partly it's because they've completely changed the dynamic of every character (usually for the worst--Stewie is now more about "hiding in the closet" now than "take over the world and kill Lois"). Partly it's that the seem to rely more and more on the "like that time when" skits. While Futurama has always had a much different way to go about humor than that, it could still fall flat.
Also, I'm worried that we'll lose all the great "under the table" jokes that require at least some college education to get.
Why just make it a museum? I'm not familiar with navy tech, but I'd bet you could fix it up and turn it into some sort of roving marine research center or an interesting themed-cruise liner for the fairly-rich.
For the research center, with a floating dry dock you could probably modify it to also hold an unmanned underwater vessel.
For the cruise liner, you have something along the murder-mystery parties, but now it's a spy-theme. Everyone pays $X,000, and if you figure out who the spy is and what they're after, you get a prize of some sort (perhaps an extra cruise above the Shadow?).
Or combine the last two: a roving museum. Over a few days on the open seas, not only do you learn about the whole project and get to see some stuff in action, but you are also taken to various spots of interest. Sure, there won't be much to see out on the ocean, but I'm sure an enterprising individual could figure out how to keep attention for those moments. Everything in between is like a normal cruise liner, though I don't think they'd be able to install a pool on the ship.
I actually have the opposite problem: my first and last name combination is so common that I doubt I actually appear anywhere in the first 50 pages of Google Results. Adding my middle name gets nothing. It's only when you add my university that you start getting hits that are me.
I used to think this was a cute benefit. However, with more and more employers doing searches, and my work being all about the web, I realized that having no results related to me could actually be negative. While I don't go out search for them, this insight has caused me to be much more lenient towards any site that is recommended to me, such as LinkedIn, or even an account on a career/job site. I still keep them fairly sparse, but it's better that I have something to point to ("No, that's some other FirstName RyoShin, I'm FirstName M. RyoShin, and THIS is my account on that site") to help ease any confusion.
I'm not gaining any privacy by doing this, but I don't think I'm losing any, either. Furthermore, I am gaining recognition and a firm reputation.
I could see this being easily pitched to leaders; they get the Big Brother power, some spiel about lowering taxes/tax burden through decreased police force, and positive national intention. They don't have to lead, because the citizens/police do all the work, and they get all the control. And if it fails, they can point to a lack of citizen involvement/police response and get off the hook. The main hurdle would be the extra cost for implementing a proper system for (inter?)national internet watching.
To be honest, I'm against the whole idea and would prefer 0 cameras, but if it's going to happen it might as well happen in the best possible way.
So the police set up a system, the people record the system, then give the police their own feed? Instead, set the system up so that it records the previous five minutes. If someone is watching and sees a crime, they can hit a button on the website (which would use either AJAX or Java) that would start extra recording for that particular camera. After it's all gone down, they hit the stop button (or it stops after X minutes automatically) and they are given a video ID and a little form to fill out to explain what they just saw.
When they submit the form, the information is sent to a rookie/veteran stuck in the office whose job it is to watch the feeds and read/respond to citizen alerts. (If it doesn't work out to have the same person behind the desk 24/7, just make it a rotating shift where each cop takes 6 hours a week at it.) If a lot of citizens suddenly flag a camera, an alert is sent to both the cop on duty, the police chief, and an SMS is sent to any cop in the immediate area of that camera. Cops hopefully have access in their vehicles to the cameras, so they have to check the feed before speeding off (to stop /b/-style raids or some gang using social engineering to move cops from another area).
But getting the citizens interested might be a bit hard... so, instead of Neighborhood Watch, make it Neighborhood Survivor, or Neighborhood Real World, or Neighborhood Big Brother. Glitz the page up, and let people create accounts that can be tied to their successful report rate. (Make sure it has the ability to automatically downgrade reports from an abusive account or IP.) Have a weekly show on local cable about various incidents and those who reported them, along with the ability for people to "vote" on which camera area should get a make-over (regular city stuff, like re-paving a road, fixing fences/house sides, etc.) which will help to boost morale in an area.
Also, some comment on Chicago trying to outdo China on more than just the Olympics.
If you have no cat, I would recommend creating a contraption involving Lego Mindstorms and a Camera. You press a button, and the contraption rolls a pair of dice five times. If it ever rolls an even number, it presses the "accept" button. (Statistical probability is in your favor.) Furthermore, program it to recognize a EULA window so it starts automatically when one comes up.
I'd love to see the case of "Sony Corp. vs FATE".
It seems like the aggression was still there in the "tag them" version, as you were still trying to get them before they got you. It's the same aggression and adrenaline rush as playing football or tag; real war just has a different set of consequences. Furthermore, it's unlikely that the aggression felt by most gamers is the same level as that felt by real soldiers.
And, honestly, you must have missed out on a whole generation of games. Have you never played Megaman? Legend of Zelda? Both had lots of violence, and I would certainly feel aggression while trying, but there was no blood, swearing, or even a hint of tits, even in the most modern of versions. (Well, Megaman Zero had some blood that was removed for some versions, and honestly it didn't diminish the game at all.)
I'm not saying that we should throw out M-Rated games and enjoy the next Grand Theft Balloon, but you can certainly have an aggressive and fun game without swearing and buckets of blood. Jet Force Gemini (does green blood count?), the aforementioned Zelda and Megaman, Street Fighter, and more. Even Half Life 2 didn't have much blood or swearing, from what I recall.
And, once he got out of jail, was promptly re-elected. Smoking crack is one thing, and can be attributed to a specific person or small group, but then you have a majority vote to put this person back in office; this is much more telling of the state of D.C.
I've not been to D.C., but I hear all the horror stories, and I hope that if I ever do have to go there it's as an elected official so I can avoid driving myself around. It mixes the country's elite with tons of urban poor, both fighting within the city for their own views. That, and it houses the majority of lobbyists in the country.
That said, I won't apply the nastiness of D.C. to one guy I know nothing about. He may well be a proper individual for the job, and highly accomplished in his previous one.
Even crap has peanuts in it sometimes.
Nuts to you, I was going to make the same reply. Too bad I don't have any mod points.
I think Microsoft is silly for having seven versions, though I don't think they should parry it down to one. More like three or four. As well, I think Linux might be more approachable by the common man if there weren't two thousand distros they had to choose from.
How about this: Instead of the Linux developers rallying behind a small handful of distros, the Linux community should. When someone goes to some major Linux download site (not a particular distro) they are presented with three distros, and each accompanied by a major use or uses for that distro that separates it from the other two (say "older computers", "gaming", "high end PCs" or something). At the bottom you have a link to "or choose from hundreds of other versions to meet your particular need" in normal-sized text. Those who are more technically-inclined and interested then are able to follow that, while everyone else just has to pick one of three.
But wait, there's more!
DefenseLink is a DoD site that lists all DoD sites. Forge.mil(.com) is not on that list. Of course, it could be bureaucracy acting slow.
Second, WHOIS contact connects to an individual at collab.net, another sourceforge-like site. Were this a government site, I would think they would have it registered to a position in a department, or at least a c/o address for a military/goverment institution, not an individual.
Just to be sure, popping the given address into Google Maps returns what looks like a residential area.
So this is either a horribly managed project (not surprising for the government), or some weird scam of sorts.
So how long until some mother sues a company because their adbox recognized her 14 year old son as a 20 year old and offered him a discount on condoms or cigarettes?
(Yes, I know that US law forbids cigarette ads in various medias.)
They might have gone down for a few days, but surely they have recent system back-ups to restore from, and daily backups to restore the data from. ...Right? Please?
Good, because Pandora has an ad-free, paid subscription service. Please put your money where your mouth is, then, and sign up for it.
Honestly, Slashdot is full of crybabies. Everyone would love to not deal with advertising, sure; but this is a free service, and it doesn't run on rainbows and unicorn farts. They can either be subscriber-only, or they can have a free version with a few hitches.
Plus, I don't see anyone talking about how this is actually an improvement to the free version (or at least none modded to +4). And it is! Previously, every dozen songs or so the player would just stop completely, and you'd have to click a little button saying "Yeah, I'm still here and listening". I didn't blame them for that, because they do have to pay for every song they play (not to mention related service fees), and so this helped to make sure someone didn't start it in the morning and then go to work.* However, it was still annoying because I would have to break my train of thought to realize the music had stopped completely (and it wasn't just a song that started soft) and switch over to turn it back on.
As I listened yesterday, I didn't have to do that a single time. I heard the ads, sure, but they merely interrupted the music briefly, not stopped it. Also, Pandora has music ads that would play whenever you switch stations (sometimes including a video that covered the player) which I found far more annoying.
Furthermore, these aren't invasive in any sense of the word. Unless you consider normal television or radio ads as "invasive". Which they're not.
For fucks sake, Slashdot, you're getting as bad as Fox News now.
* I should mention that it was every ten songs or so if you didn't do anything within the player, like rating a song. So if you rated every fifth song or so, you never had that. The caveat is that every first action you take after X minutes causes an ad change, though I don't mind that, either.
I don't see why they're overdoing this so much. I've been able to become invisible for a long time--all I have to do is cover my eyes!
Try it today!
I'd recommend a middle-ground:
Everyone with an account that is X days old can write a review. However, those who have not purchased the product through the site are initially minimized, and the overall rating is made up only of those who have bought the product. By the rating, there's a small label that "This rating does not include reviews of users who have not bought this product from Amazon", and when you go to view one of the non-owner reviews you get a nice, bright, bold message above it that says "Amazon cannot verify that this user has actually purchased and owned this product."
There are people who write REAL reviews on places they didn't buy the product (I write the occasional review for ePinions.com, for instance) and may have some good points. However, by adding those disclaimers as well as not including "foreign" reviews in the overall ranking (the first one people see), reliability will shoot way up.
No, that's not it. It just has Spike, Jet, and Faye, and the stripes are slanted. It had really huge names for all three, and is old as the internets. Thanks, though.
There was another one I found trying to find it through google, and that fit the descriptions except that Spike's stripe was larger than the other two, and it's not the one, either.
Damn, I wish I'd saved that.
On the one hand, considering Spike's normal nonchalant attitude, Keanu's lack of acting abilities could actually be a happy accident for the role.
On the other hand, I'm going to go cry somewhere for about an hour.
And a side note: Some time ago someone made a faux Live-action CB poster, rather well done, with their suggestions for casting. It had three stripes, going left to right, of equal size, one for Jet, Spike, and Faye. It circulated the internet quite a bit, but I can't seem to find it now. Anyone know where I can see the image of which I speak?
Sorry, but those bills will never pass. For one, they don't have cute acronyms, and so can't be summed up quickly. For two, they have nothing to do with children.
To guarantee they pass, they should be given cute acronyms and have riders about increasing government spending on child psychology related to gay couples.
I'd be okay with that as the last rider ever.
Ah, quite the unjust situation. Even so, that's still less likely to happen with physical bullying than with verbal.
I can see where you're coming from, but I wasn't talking about fights, I was talking about verbal bullying. Someone being called names in class, or getting nasty notes left in their locker, among other things. The majority of teachers turn a blind eye; I've seen only a small handful of teachers care enough to step in and try to stop it.
I applaud you for that. That is ideally how it's done: they put forth all the effort, but it proves futile. Yours is the way for physical; the equivalent verbal response is just to smile, maybe laugh a little, at every insult they throw.
However, both are incredibly hard to do, especially at the age where bullying is prevalent.
I would argue that fighting back physically does more to reduce public ridicule than verbally. Also, that fighting back physically has a far larger chance of success than verbally, regardless of the level.
Verbal responses require a very quick wit as well as not being afraid to speak in public. One or two good comebacks won't last very long, and no one but the bully will really take note.
A physical response has a much better chance of landing a lucky punch. Except in cases of a massive beatdown by the bully or a Perfect K.O. (the target lands no punches), the bully will still be wearing some bruises and scars for a week or two, which will make a much more lasting impression. Everyone will know who got some licks in on the bully, and the wounds will speak every time they are seen, rather than just when someone opens their mouth.
You're right, though, when you say that the classic victim sucks at both. I would think that they would learn faster from a physical attack than a verbal one. Since I can't compare, I may be wrong on this one.
True enough, but it's not always the case. And it's far more likely they'll get a deserving punishment afterwards, as well as expelled or perhaps spending some time in juvie.
Perhaps my childhood was different, but about an equal number of my bullies were solo as had a posse. The ones who seemed more likely to challenge me to a fight were the ones going solo.
When the torment is physical, you can easily fight back and have a fairly good chance of winning (especially if it's not your first time and/or it's not jock-on-dork). If you lose, yeah, it's not a great feeling psychologically, but you eventually wind up with the idea that you can take the guy if ever in another altercation. You're also less likely to be suspended/expelled if you fight back "in self defense"; whereas if you throw a punch because a bully said something that pushed your buttons, he gets a medal of commendation and you get a week's worth of detention.
With just word of mouth bullying, how do you fight it?
Your own retorts? The bullies will just laugh; they've spent lots of time thinking of good remarks to use on you, and find your response amusing, as it means they won.
Tell the teacher? Most teachers don't give half a shit. Same thing for the principal, and sometimes even the school counselor (if yours has one). If you succeed, the bully gets one or two detentions. It's nothing new for him (or her), and when it's over he comes back twice as hard because "you went crying to mommy".
Litigation/filing for assault just seems way out of proportion, and likely will have the same result as telling a teacher.
And then of course there are female bullies. From my experience and those related to me, male bullies are relatively fucking cheerful. Female bullies, especially towards other females, take the "passive aggressive" approach; rather than just making fun to a target's face, they'll take their time to, as a group, make up and spread rumors about the target. As these rumors get around, kids tend to take them more to heart. It also becomes much harder to find out who originally started the rumors (technically slander). And then everyone will start giving stares in the hallway or in class, and the target won't know exactly why, which just adds to it.
So you keep it pent up inside and it does stuff to you. As someone who was picked on often as a kid, I sure as hell wish my tormentors had turned physical so I would have had a good reason to fight back. Even if I lost, I would have given them a few shiners and would have lost a lot of my aggression/aggravation.
Physical bullying can have an emotional impact, but not nearly as hard or long-lasting as non-physical bullying.
On a somewhat-related note, should I ever have a kid (of either sex) I plan to tell them to do the following if they are bullied, each step if the previous doesn't stop it:
1) Tell the kid to stop.
2) Tell the closest teacher when an incident happens.
3) Tell the principal
4) Punch the kid in the nose
Every step they should tell me what's going on, and I'd probably be included in the discussion with the principal. If the school won't try to handle the situation (or does a bad job), I feel my kid is fully in the right to take matters into his own hand. One could try contacting the bully's parents, but, honestly, it's quite rare to find parents that will accept such accusations without hardcore proof (as a negative light on their child reflects back on them.)