AC, to paraphrase... you just don't get it, do you?
Just out of curiousity, when was the last time you came across a good test of maturity? As soon as you find one I'd love to hear about it.
You stated that, "It doesn't matter how many thousands of emails you got from CHILDREN. They are still children."
Because they are under 18 is not an excuse for giving a large section of our society no voice in this society what so ever. A few hundred years ago (and much more recent than that in fact) similar excuses to that which you site, ie., "It doesn't matter what they think, they are only black. They are still black. They are the responsiblity of their owners." was used to oppress and subjugate people, living, breathing, thinking, feeling, human beings.
More recently things such as "It doesn't matter what they think, they are only women. They are still women. They are the responsibility of their husbands." was used as an excuse to prevent women from taking an active role in this society. The new target is anyone under the age of 18 (or is it 21, its so hard to tell these days).
Many supposedly adult people act far less mature than most teenagers I know (Bill Clinton anyone?), and yet we deny this nation's children most of the legal rights the rest of us take for granted.
A lot of people will say that the above examples were completely different circumstances and don't apply. In response I say they do and must apply if we are to ever stop repeating the same mistakes that this society has continued to make throughout its history.
We're applying extremely general rules on members of our own society. You mention male teenaged drivers. Let me give you a counter example: I'm 26 years old and male. I've never been involved in an automotive accident, and I've never had a traffic violation. I've maintained a perfectly clean driving record for 10 years and yet I still pay outrageous sums of money each month for car insurance because I am male and single.
I don't fit and have never fit the generalizations that you are making in your post.
Another point that you made refering to children being the responsibility of their parents is very accurate. The problem is that a lot of parents aren't taking responsibility (not all certainly, but I think it's a safe bet to say a lot, if not most). Those parents are looking to society to make up for their lack of maturity in dealing with their own children (a generalization, I know, but still more accurate than I think most of us want to admit).
You're statement: "Of course they are going to support your position that they have more freedom. Big deal. They can support you all they want but they don't have any authority."
Again, much the same things were said before slavery was abolished in this country, and before women were given the same rights as everyone else. The really sad thing is we're still not where we should be on either of those issues, and we as a society still haven't learned from our own history.
Currently what you say about children not having any authority is very true. I hope I'm not the only person that sees a problem with this. In time hopefully those of us concerned with this issue will be able to bring about some much needed change.
Do I endorse letting everyone into these movies? No, but I certainly don't endose the current methods of defining and measuring maturity, or the abuses caused in the name of protecting children.
If we're all so worried about the influence that violent and sexually explicit movies have on people, how about keeping repeat sex offenders out of these movies, or people with a demonstrated history of violent activity?
I'll leave you all with one last thought. Who's going to be the next target? Perhaps the same people posting today that will inevitably get old?
I can just hear people in 60 years talking about us... "It doesn't matter what they think, they are only old people. They are still old. They are the responsibility of their kids."
I've got a PPro 200 with 128 megs ram and 128 megs swap and I've had no problems. The machine is basically my workstation, but there are a few internet/multiuser services running on it (web server with a small rarely used site, FTP server, POP e-mail for 1/2 a dozen people, a couple MUDs). I'm also usually running X with the GNOME desktop, GIMP, Netscape, a 1/2 dozen xterms, and a couple other applications at any given time.
I rarely hit swap unless someone does something drastic on one of the muds (causes a new zone to be loaded is the most common reason).
This machine has been reloaded a lot (ahh the joys of experimenting), and I've tried putting swap partitions on different parts of the drives, varying the size of the partitions, using swap size of 2x ram, and I discovered that for what my box does a second swap partition was useless because it never got used. Also, I was never able to actually notice any difference in performance based on location of the swap partition on the drive.
If I were running a production web server, or an Oracle server than I would worry about it a lot more, but if you're just putting together a machine for your own use and don't plan on doing anything incredibly memory intensive, 128 megs of ram and a 128 meg swap partition should suit your needs just fine.
Although... now that I'm running Seti@Home my memory useage has gone up, but even so I still rarely hit swap.
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AC, to paraphrase... you just don't get it, do you?
Just out of curiousity, when was the last time you came across a good test of maturity? As soon as you find one I'd love to hear about it.
You stated that, "It doesn't matter how many thousands of emails you got from CHILDREN. They are still children."
Because they are under 18 is not an excuse for giving a large section of our society no voice in this society what so ever. A few hundred years ago (and much more recent than that in fact) similar excuses to that which you site, ie., "It doesn't matter what they think, they are only black. They are still black. They are the responsiblity of their owners." was used to oppress and subjugate people, living, breathing, thinking, feeling, human beings.
More recently things such as "It doesn't matter what they think, they are only women. They are still women. They are the responsibility of their husbands." was used as an excuse to prevent women from taking an active role in this society. The new target is anyone under the age of 18 (or is it 21, its so hard to tell these days).
Many supposedly adult people act far less mature than most teenagers I know (Bill Clinton anyone?), and yet we deny this nation's children most of the legal rights the rest of us take for granted.
A lot of people will say that the above examples were completely different circumstances and don't apply. In response I say they do and must apply if we are to ever stop repeating the same mistakes that this society has continued to make throughout its history.
We're applying extremely general rules on members of our own society. You mention male teenaged drivers. Let me give you a counter example: I'm 26 years old and male. I've never been involved in an automotive accident, and I've never had a traffic violation. I've maintained a perfectly clean driving record for 10 years and yet I still pay outrageous sums of money each month for car insurance because I am male and single.
I don't fit and have never fit the generalizations that you are making in your post.
Another point that you made refering to children being the responsibility of their parents is very accurate. The problem is that a lot of parents aren't taking responsibility (not all certainly, but I think it's a safe bet to say a lot, if not most). Those parents are looking to society to make up for their lack of maturity in dealing with their own children (a generalization, I know, but still more accurate than I think most of us want to admit).
You're statement: "Of course they are going to support your position that they have more freedom. Big deal. They can support you all they want but they don't have any authority."
Again, much the same things were said before slavery was abolished in this country, and before women were given the same rights as everyone else. The really sad thing is we're still not where we should be on either of those issues, and we as a society still haven't learned from our own history.
Currently what you say about children not having any authority is very true. I hope I'm not the only person that sees a problem with this. In time hopefully those of us concerned with this issue will be able to bring about some much needed change.
Do I endorse letting everyone into these movies? No, but I certainly don't endose the current methods of defining and measuring maturity, or the abuses caused in the name of protecting children.
If we're all so worried about the influence that violent and sexually explicit movies have on people, how about keeping repeat sex offenders out of these movies, or people with a demonstrated history of violent activity?
I'll leave you all with one last thought. Who's going to be the next target? Perhaps the same people posting today that will inevitably get old?
I can just hear people in 60 years talking about us... "It doesn't matter what they think, they are only old people. They are still old. They are the responsibility of their kids."
I've got a PPro 200 with 128 megs ram and 128 megs swap and I've had no problems. The machine is basically my workstation, but there are a few internet/multiuser services running on it (web server with a small rarely used site, FTP server, POP e-mail for 1/2 a dozen people, a couple MUDs). I'm also usually running X with the GNOME desktop, GIMP, Netscape, a 1/2 dozen xterms, and a couple other applications at any given time.
I rarely hit swap unless someone does something drastic on one of the muds (causes a new zone to be loaded is the most common reason).
This machine has been reloaded a lot (ahh the joys of experimenting), and I've tried putting swap partitions on different parts of the drives, varying the size of the partitions, using swap size of 2x ram, and I discovered that for what my box does a second swap partition was useless because it never got used. Also, I was never able to actually notice any difference in performance based on location of the swap partition on the drive.
If I were running a production web server, or an Oracle server than I would worry about it a lot more, but if you're just putting together a machine for your own use and don't plan on doing anything incredibly memory intensive, 128 megs of ram and a 128 meg swap partition should suit your needs just fine.
Although... now that I'm running Seti@Home my memory useage has gone up, but even so I still rarely hit swap.