I don't know if this would work for the kid specifically, but I found that taking dance classes and being on the dancesport team at my college has really helped my social skills.
I mean, first of all, dancing is a coed contact sport... who else can claim that? Secondly, especially in highschool and college, the girl:guy ratio is at least 2:1, which is very good odds. Third, dance people tend to be very close and very social, so you're learning from the best. Finally, being a dancer skyrockets your attractiveness to whole new levels. When girls see a guy dance, they just fall over themselves. Not to mention it gives incentive to look good and dress nicely.
Dancing is also very fun and will keep you in shape. It's a nice break from the rigors of normal life and learning, but it also keeps your brain active, since you have to be constantly thinking about technique and staying 5 steps ahead of the game.
There are many forms of dancing. Personally, I do ballroom dancing. Now, when you hear that, I know the first thing that comes to mind is your grandparents dancing to old music, but there are a lot of fun social dances that are done in clubs as well as competition dances, which take a lot of training, but are also very fun to perform. Popular club dances are Salsa, Hustle (not the 70s dance, it's a modern dance based on it and danced to techno!), West-Coast Swing, East-Coast Swing, and other variations of Swing. In my area, Salsa is extremely popular, and there are at least 3 clubs that have salsa nights a couple times a week. There are a ton of competition dances, but I won't list them here, you can easily google it.
Anyway, back on topic - dance for a few months and hang out with the dancers outside of pratice... it will improve your social skills extremely quickly and give you much more confidence in social situations.
I remember trying to fool with a bootable cd in order to upgrade the firmware on some of the parts in my laptop (my DVD-rom drive, if I remember right). Unfortunately, my laptop didn't have a floppy drive, and the software distributed by the DVD-rom drive company insisted on writing to a floppy disk for creating the boot disk (and there was no other way to extract the data).
What I ended up doing is creating the floppy on another PC, then using Nero to make a boot CD out of the floppy. Then I booted from the CD on my laptop, started the program and - wow, problem, it wanted to WRITE to the floppy, but it couldn't because it was a CD. Don't ask me why it wanted to write to the floppy, but it complained about it and quit nonetheless. I gave up after that.
So, the moral of the story? Even if it's possible to do everything a boot floppy can do with a boot CD doesn't mean that everyone has switched over to it.
I'd still like a way to play VCD and SVCD without booting Linux
Simple enough - just get Xbox Media Center:) It uses the mplayer core and works right from any dashboard (except the MS one, of course). This means it can play pretty much any audio/video file, including real media, wmv, and quicktime. It also has a filezilla ftp server and some other goodies, which work while you're playing the videos.
Yes, the actors/actresses will probably be 18+, but that doesn't mean the characters they play will be 18+. Ever see pretty much ANY WB show? They have characters who are highschool students from 14-18 years old played by actors and acresses as old as 26. And if you've never seen a WB show, pretty much ALL they are is sexual tension.
I wouldn't be surprised if they used "of age" actors and actresses, but the characters were still 14 or 15.
Who are you to decide whether something is an "acceptable level of risk" when it comes to driving? Personally, I could care less how you endanger yourself, but when you get on the road, you are endangering everyone else out there who's driving, so you better bet I care when you ram into a minivan full of children.
So, yeah, I think it's perfectly acceptable for the government to regulate what is an "acceptable level of risk," since it tends to represent the general consensus of the people and of experts in the subject. But I certainly don't think that you have a right to decide such things for yourself when such decisions could turn your vehicle an indiscriminant killing machine.
This kind of movie ad campaign had already been done by Gattaca in 1997. It advertized in the NY Times, among other places, to have a method of genetically engineering children.
They even had a toll-free number to call, which was pounded heavily. I'm surprised anyone had the gall to copy this strategy... it had some considerably bad backlash, as far as I can remember.
I think the difference between Japanese and American goals for technology is amazing. While most American technological advancement is justified by possible military applications, the Japanese just want synchronized dancing robots.
It appears your satire has been mistaken as your actual opinion, mainly because it's just not well-written satire. I'm not flaming you... in fact, it seemed like well-written commentary to me, just not satire. You weren't extreme enough (except possibley the "beat your children" line) to really show the reader that you were being sarcastic for the whole post. This is evidenced by the +3 informative, rather than the +3 funny.
And if the satire really is painfully obvious, then I suppose I should appologize for my ignorance.
Aside from that, I belive my post still has merit and I stick by my comments.
Let's be honest, if violent games didn't made me violent, I wouldn't play them.
Excuse me? Please speak for yourself. Personally, I play violent video games as an outlet for my frusterations with life. Some people play sports, other people put their hand through a wall - I play violent video games. Either way, it's better than bottling up the rage until I explode.
Buy offline multiplayer games.
I don't believe this is the solution to the problem of "mindless, unimaginative, illiterate, loud-mouthed assholes with no fucking life" I completely agree that such people exist - but I also know for a fact that people who are thoughtful, imaginative, literate, and kind act the same way online or offline. I believe the problem you're describing is much larger than video games, and I don't think it's caused by video games. I think the problem is caused because either the parents are the same way and the children follow suit, or the parents have neglected to teach the children manners and how to interact with others - instead they've left that to TV and peers.
Don't allow more than 3 hours of gaming per day. Force them to take breaks. Make 'em exercise.
I think having rigid rules, such as "no more than X hours per day" is just asking the kid to either:
1) Play 3 hours every day, even if he doesn't really want to play that day, since it'd be a "waste" if he didn't.
2) Cheat as much as possible, and believe me... if a kid wants to break a rule, he will find a way.
I believe the best solution is to simply teach your child responsibility. As much as you'd want to, a parent simply cannot monitor a child 24/7 - you have to teach the child to monitor himself. This means that the child has to learn from their own mistakes - let them play the game for 12 hours every day, and let them see where that gets them. You can help prod them into realizing that they're wasting their lives away, but don't force them into a different lifestyle.
Now, of course I'm not talking about a 9-year-old here, I'm talking a 16-year-old. For young children, simply not buying everything they want you to buy is enough to keep from spoiling them... which brings me to:
Beat the shit out of them, if needed, even if that makes them bitter and spiteful against you.
Yes, that's the perfect way to keep children from being violent. Almost all children raised by parents who beat them grow up to be responsible, model citizens.(/sarcasm)
Seriously, beating a child is not a good way to punish them. There are much more humane and effective methods of punishment - but remember, punishment should be used rarely - only if the child has severly broken the rules. And the best punishment should be tailored towards the specific child. Do something that will make the child really think about what he did.
Anyway, that's just my two cents, as a 19-year-old gamer currently going to college.
So far, there is no true "floppy killer" when it comes to making boot disks. My laptop does not have a floppy drive, and it has caused me much annoyance - I can't update the firmware for any of my hardware. I also can't use those auto-boot disk tools for a virus scan or other recovery disks.
I have tried various methods with making a boot CD, however they tend to fail because these firmware updating programs like to read/write to the floppy... and it obviously fails to write to a CD. These methods also tend to require the use of another computer that does have a floppy in order to create the boot CD.
As for a USB memory card... it probably has the same or even more problems than making a boot CD. Good luck getting your BIOS to boot from that and have the ability to read/write to it.
On the subject of floppy drives... my laptop doesn't have one, and it's caused me no end of pain. There's still no good alternative to a floppy boot disk, and many utilities that update firmware, etc require you to use a floppy disk. I've tried fiddling with boot CDs, but many times they just don't work for what you need (such as programs that want to write to the floppy...)
I'm sure it will be the same with keyboards. Some computers will start coming without them (tiny laptops anyone?), but then some applications will require a keyboard so you'll have to buy an expensive module / adapter and a keyboard just to use that program... or suffer without it. Of course... there are "tiny laptops" without keyboards - the palm pilot and the Tablet PC... so what am I saying? The future is now!
I live in a suburb of Philadelphia, and currently Comcast provides excellent cable-modem service. I have yet to really test the maximum download speed, but I'm guessing it's in the vacinity of 3200-4000kbps, while the upload rate was recently upgraded from 128kbps to 240kbps. Most ping times are also excellent. Of course, I did have to put up with many, many years of dealing with a 56k internet connection, but once the cable modem was availible, all was great. I suppose the moral of the story is: good things come to those who wait.
Of course, the service is not without faults... sometimes it goes down around 3-4am and comes back around 6-7am, when I guess they figure no one is using it, which isn't true, especially during the summer;) I can only guess they do some kind of routine maintinance which sometimes disrupts the connection.
From the article: "It appears to have formed 12.7 billion years ago, within a billion years of the origin of the universe in the theorized Big Bang."
It's not 13.7 billion years old, it's 12.7 billion year old. Yeah, yeah, I know, what's 1 billion years between friends?
As a current major in Computer Science, I feel I have a unique view into the use of technology in a college lecture. I just completed my first year at a university, and I would just like to make a few points.
First of all, allowing computers in a classroom seems like a good idea, but it really is not. Though many students will proclaim that they can take notes much more easily on their computer than on paper, which may be true, it is hardly more effective. Personally, I have tried taking computer notes and it doesn't work for me. I need tangible paper and a pen to write with. I need freedom to draw arrows and underline easily, etc, that isn't accesible from a word processor which makes you conform to rigid formats. For me, at least, it didn't work. I also know that my notes were much better than those of my peers who took them with their laptops.
Secondly, I know at my university there are wireless internet connections availible from all the classrooms. I also have an insider view on what people are doing with such internet connections. Almost all of them are chatting on some instant messaging program or a chatroom. Some are playing FPS games and some are showing the latest Strongbad email to their friends. Hardly any of them are taking effective notes online... half the typing they do is to friends, and the other half are not very good notes. While I'm contantly writing on my paper with my pen, they are chatting away and definately not listening to the lecture.
As for professors using computers to teach a lecture... well, I hate it. Every student hates it, but they're unwilling to confront professors about it. The ones who do not hate it are the ones who don't really care about learning anyway. My physics professor this year used powerpoint presentations instead of writing on the board. He went very, very quickly through the notes because he also posted the powerpoint (in PDF format) online, so we could, I quote, "Take notes on it at home." This was a horrible idea. I need to take notes as the professor is speaking, and powerpoint presentations with pretty boxes and multicolored animations just do not facilitate notetaking. I need to see the professor write on an actual chalkboard. I need to write things down right away so that I can remember all the essential information. Basically, I would prefer a professor who'd never heard of a computer over one who wants to do "cool new things" with them in the classroom. Well, ok, I would not want a computer science professor who hadn't heard of a computer, but you get my point.
As for your weblogs, I notice that other comments have mentioned AOL speak, etc. I completely afree with them. I would be very careful about having students compose work online and then allowing commenting by any other student in the class. It sounds cool in theory, but you'll just end up with a mess. Even if the composed work is done very well, the comments will have bad English, bad grammar, smilies, etc. I can guarantee it. And you do not want to have to moderate this board. If you moderate it so that all messages have to go through you first, people will complain about the long wait for their 2am message to show up. If you allow all messages and delete bad ones later, you'll end up with complaints about the quality of certain comments and how they aren't delete quickly enough. I understand you wanting to introduce technology into the classroom, but don't underestimate the value of hard copy essays, in-class discussion, and pen and paper reviews.
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I don't know if this would work for the kid specifically, but I found that taking dance classes and being on the dancesport team at my college has really helped my social skills.
I mean, first of all, dancing is a coed contact sport... who else can claim that? Secondly, especially in highschool and college, the girl:guy ratio is at least 2:1, which is very good odds. Third, dance people tend to be very close and very social, so you're learning from the best. Finally, being a dancer skyrockets your attractiveness to whole new levels. When girls see a guy dance, they just fall over themselves. Not to mention it gives incentive to look good and dress nicely.
Dancing is also very fun and will keep you in shape. It's a nice break from the rigors of normal life and learning, but it also keeps your brain active, since you have to be constantly thinking about technique and staying 5 steps ahead of the game.
There are many forms of dancing. Personally, I do ballroom dancing. Now, when you hear that, I know the first thing that comes to mind is your grandparents dancing to old music, but there are a lot of fun social dances that are done in clubs as well as competition dances, which take a lot of training, but are also very fun to perform. Popular club dances are Salsa, Hustle (not the 70s dance, it's a modern dance based on it and danced to techno!), West-Coast Swing, East-Coast Swing, and other variations of Swing. In my area, Salsa is extremely popular, and there are at least 3 clubs that have salsa nights a couple times a week. There are a ton of competition dances, but I won't list them here, you can easily google it.
Anyway, back on topic - dance for a few months and hang out with the dancers outside of pratice... it will improve your social skills extremely quickly and give you much more confidence in social situations.
Why lie to yahoo when Mailinator doesn't care?
I remember trying to fool with a bootable cd in order to upgrade the firmware on some of the parts in my laptop (my DVD-rom drive, if I remember right). Unfortunately, my laptop didn't have a floppy drive, and the software distributed by the DVD-rom drive company insisted on writing to a floppy disk for creating the boot disk (and there was no other way to extract the data).
What I ended up doing is creating the floppy on another PC, then using Nero to make a boot CD out of the floppy. Then I booted from the CD on my laptop, started the program and - wow, problem, it wanted to WRITE to the floppy, but it couldn't because it was a CD. Don't ask me why it wanted to write to the floppy, but it complained about it and quit nonetheless. I gave up after that.
So, the moral of the story? Even if it's possible to do everything a boot floppy can do with a boot CD doesn't mean that everyone has switched over to it.
I'd still like a way to play VCD and SVCD without booting Linux
:) It uses the mplayer core and works right from any dashboard (except the MS one, of course). This means it can play pretty much any audio/video file, including real media, wmv, and quicktime. It also has a filezilla ftp server and some other goodies, which work while you're playing the videos.
Simple enough - just get Xbox Media Center
Yes, the actors/actresses will probably be 18+, but that doesn't mean the characters they play will be 18+. Ever see pretty much ANY WB show? They have characters who are highschool students from 14-18 years old played by actors and acresses as old as 26. And if you've never seen a WB show, pretty much ALL they are is sexual tension.
I wouldn't be surprised if they used "of age" actors and actresses, but the characters were still 14 or 15.
Who are you to decide whether something is an "acceptable level of risk" when it comes to driving? Personally, I could care less how you endanger yourself, but when you get on the road, you are endangering everyone else out there who's driving, so you better bet I care when you ram into a minivan full of children.
So, yeah, I think it's perfectly acceptable for the government to regulate what is an "acceptable level of risk," since it tends to represent the general consensus of the people and of experts in the subject. But I certainly don't think that you have a right to decide such things for yourself when such decisions could turn your vehicle an indiscriminant killing machine.
This kind of movie ad campaign had already been done by Gattaca in 1997. It advertized in the NY Times, among other places, to have a method of genetically engineering children.
They even had a toll-free number to call, which was pounded heavily. I'm surprised anyone had the gall to copy this strategy... it had some considerably bad backlash, as far as I can remember.
I think the difference between Japanese and American goals for technology is amazing. While most American technological advancement is justified by possible military applications, the Japanese just want synchronized dancing robots.
It appears your satire has been mistaken as your actual opinion, mainly because it's just not well-written satire. I'm not flaming you... in fact, it seemed like well-written commentary to me, just not satire. You weren't extreme enough (except possibley the "beat your children" line) to really show the reader that you were being sarcastic for the whole post. This is evidenced by the +3 informative, rather than the +3 funny.
And if the satire really is painfully obvious, then I suppose I should appologize for my ignorance.
Aside from that, I belive my post still has merit and I stick by my comments.
Let's be honest, if violent games didn't made me violent, I wouldn't play them.
Excuse me? Please speak for yourself. Personally, I play violent video games as an outlet for my frusterations with life. Some people play sports, other people put their hand through a wall - I play violent video games. Either way, it's better than bottling up the rage until I explode.
Buy offline multiplayer games.
I don't believe this is the solution to the problem of "mindless, unimaginative, illiterate, loud-mouthed assholes with no fucking life" I completely agree that such people exist - but I also know for a fact that people who are thoughtful, imaginative, literate, and kind act the same way online or offline. I believe the problem you're describing is much larger than video games, and I don't think it's caused by video games. I think the problem is caused because either the parents are the same way and the children follow suit, or the parents have neglected to teach the children manners and how to interact with others - instead they've left that to TV and peers.
Don't allow more than 3 hours of gaming per day. Force them to take breaks. Make 'em exercise.
I think having rigid rules, such as "no more than X hours per day" is just asking the kid to either:
1) Play 3 hours every day, even if he doesn't really want to play that day, since it'd be a "waste" if he didn't.
2) Cheat as much as possible, and believe me... if a kid wants to break a rule, he will find a way.
I believe the best solution is to simply teach your child responsibility. As much as you'd want to, a parent simply cannot monitor a child 24/7 - you have to teach the child to monitor himself. This means that the child has to learn from their own mistakes - let them play the game for 12 hours every day, and let them see where that gets them. You can help prod them into realizing that they're wasting their lives away, but don't force them into a different lifestyle.
Now, of course I'm not talking about a 9-year-old here, I'm talking a 16-year-old. For young children, simply not buying everything they want you to buy is enough to keep from spoiling them... which brings me to:
Beat the shit out of them, if needed, even if that makes them bitter and spiteful against you.
Yes, that's the perfect way to keep children from being violent. Almost all children raised by parents who beat them grow up to be responsible, model citizens.(/sarcasm)
Seriously, beating a child is not a good way to punish them. There are much more humane and effective methods of punishment - but remember, punishment should be used rarely - only if the child has severly broken the rules. And the best punishment should be tailored towards the specific child. Do something that will make the child really think about what he did.
Anyway, that's just my two cents, as a 19-year-old gamer currently going to college.
So far, there is no true "floppy killer" when it comes to making boot disks. My laptop does not have a floppy drive, and it has caused me much annoyance - I can't update the firmware for any of my hardware. I also can't use those auto-boot disk tools for a virus scan or other recovery disks.
I have tried various methods with making a boot CD, however they tend to fail because these firmware updating programs like to read/write to the floppy... and it obviously fails to write to a CD. These methods also tend to require the use of another computer that does have a floppy in order to create the boot CD.
As for a USB memory card... it probably has the same or even more problems than making a boot CD. Good luck getting your BIOS to boot from that and have the ability to read/write to it.
On the subject of floppy drives... my laptop doesn't have one, and it's caused me no end of pain. There's still no good alternative to a floppy boot disk, and many utilities that update firmware, etc require you to use a floppy disk. I've tried fiddling with boot CDs, but many times they just don't work for what you need (such as programs that want to write to the floppy...) I'm sure it will be the same with keyboards. Some computers will start coming without them (tiny laptops anyone?), but then some applications will require a keyboard so you'll have to buy an expensive module / adapter and a keyboard just to use that program... or suffer without it. Of course... there are "tiny laptops" without keyboards - the palm pilot and the Tablet PC... so what am I saying? The future is now!
5 years from now is 2008, closing on 2009. I don't know where you got that 2005 number from.
I live in a suburb of Philadelphia, and currently Comcast provides excellent cable-modem service. I have yet to really test the maximum download speed, but I'm guessing it's in the vacinity of 3200-4000kbps, while the upload rate was recently upgraded from 128kbps to 240kbps. Most ping times are also excellent. Of course, I did have to put up with many, many years of dealing with a 56k internet connection, but once the cable modem was availible, all was great. I suppose the moral of the story is: good things come to those who wait.
;) I can only guess they do some kind of routine maintinance which sometimes disrupts the connection.
Of course, the service is not without faults... sometimes it goes down around 3-4am and comes back around 6-7am, when I guess they figure no one is using it, which isn't true, especially during the summer
Unfortunately, according to the article, it's already been named the "Methuselah planet."
From the article:
"It appears to have formed 12.7 billion years ago, within a billion years of the origin of the universe in the theorized Big Bang."
It's not 13.7 billion years old, it's 12.7 billion year old. Yeah, yeah, I know, what's 1 billion years between friends?
As a current major in Computer Science, I feel I have a unique view into the use of technology in a college lecture. I just completed my first year at a university, and I would just like to make a few points. First of all, allowing computers in a classroom seems like a good idea, but it really is not. Though many students will proclaim that they can take notes much more easily on their computer than on paper, which may be true, it is hardly more effective. Personally, I have tried taking computer notes and it doesn't work for me. I need tangible paper and a pen to write with. I need freedom to draw arrows and underline easily, etc, that isn't accesible from a word processor which makes you conform to rigid formats. For me, at least, it didn't work. I also know that my notes were much better than those of my peers who took them with their laptops. Secondly, I know at my university there are wireless internet connections availible from all the classrooms. I also have an insider view on what people are doing with such internet connections. Almost all of them are chatting on some instant messaging program or a chatroom. Some are playing FPS games and some are showing the latest Strongbad email to their friends. Hardly any of them are taking effective notes online... half the typing they do is to friends, and the other half are not very good notes. While I'm contantly writing on my paper with my pen, they are chatting away and definately not listening to the lecture. As for professors using computers to teach a lecture... well, I hate it. Every student hates it, but they're unwilling to confront professors about it. The ones who do not hate it are the ones who don't really care about learning anyway. My physics professor this year used powerpoint presentations instead of writing on the board. He went very, very quickly through the notes because he also posted the powerpoint (in PDF format) online, so we could, I quote, "Take notes on it at home." This was a horrible idea. I need to take notes as the professor is speaking, and powerpoint presentations with pretty boxes and multicolored animations just do not facilitate notetaking. I need to see the professor write on an actual chalkboard. I need to write things down right away so that I can remember all the essential information. Basically, I would prefer a professor who'd never heard of a computer over one who wants to do "cool new things" with them in the classroom. Well, ok, I would not want a computer science professor who hadn't heard of a computer, but you get my point. As for your weblogs, I notice that other comments have mentioned AOL speak, etc. I completely afree with them. I would be very careful about having students compose work online and then allowing commenting by any other student in the class. It sounds cool in theory, but you'll just end up with a mess. Even if the composed work is done very well, the comments will have bad English, bad grammar, smilies, etc. I can guarantee it. And you do not want to have to moderate this board. If you moderate it so that all messages have to go through you first, people will complain about the long wait for their 2am message to show up. If you allow all messages and delete bad ones later, you'll end up with complaints about the quality of certain comments and how they aren't delete quickly enough. I understand you wanting to introduce technology into the classroom, but don't underestimate the value of hard copy essays, in-class discussion, and pen and paper reviews.