We don't want kids getting drunk and turning into alcoholics. Most banks and currency exchanges sell credit cards. All a kid needs to do is buy a credit card, they will sell them to anyone.
Are you smoking crack? What the hell kind of bank do you know of that gives credit cards to minors? You can't even get a checking account until you're an adult. Not to mention, when something is delivered that is of any value, a signature is usually required by the courier. Do you think DHL, UPS or FedEx are going to turn over a case of alcohol to a fourteen year old kid at the door?!
I guess we should require adults to show up at the post office to pick up condoms and their porno mags, too. Wouldn't want children ordering those.
Personally, I don't even care. Kids who are stupid enough to drink already drink and they do it without the internet. There are PLENTY of adults who readily buy alcohol for kids. Their kids, someone else's kids - even just a strange kid in front of a convenience store asking adults to bring them out a six pack.
I'm sure I'm going to be taken for flamebait here - and that's alright - but what I want to know is why would people buy wine over the internet?
Maybe I misunderstand, but I though the entire point of being a wine drinker was showing off? I mean, isn't being a wine drinker sort of like spending $6 on starbucks when a 75 cent black coffee would do? Or more - pretending to like reggae or jazz so you look more interesting and sophisticated?
If that's the case, then buying wine over the internet would be like those people buying $6 coffee from a vending machine or listening to reggae and jazz in the privacy of their own home. It wouldn't serve any purpose because nobody would be there to be impressed by their sophistication.
I don't get why it even matters. I mean, why should wine be any different than computer equipment, condoms, flowers or pepperidge farms gift baskets? Why should any of them be restricted (or for that matter, why shouldn't ALL of them be restricted).
I still don't use calendar programs. We use them at work, as we develop one of the better known enterprise grade calendar servers, but I still don't make use of it. I don't make use of any kind of calendaring system whatsoever. I just remember things like a normal person.
However, I would gladly begin using one if there was a broader standard that was accepted and implemented that didn't lock me into one solution forever, could easily be synched or access from anywhere (no central server - maybe even let me just FTP it somewhere like the Firefox extension I use that automatically synchronizes my bookmarks anywhere I want using my FTP server).
This is a good step in that direction and as soon as something robust comes along (Sunbird) to fit in with the Firefox and Thunderbird family, I'll be all over it.
I used Sunbird awhile back. It's decent. Not solid enough for me to adopt it and start calendaring - but not bad, either.
Crackers are impossible to eat without corrupting your keyboard, eventually. And eating pussy is hell on it as well. It takes one hell of a can of compressed air to get those curlies out.
What I want to know is - why does the school district have their social security numbers AT ALL?
Social security numbers can only be required by employers, your bank and the social security administration. It's intended solely to track your income and benefits directly related to social security. What does your schooling have to do with your social security number whatsoever?!
Consoles may or may not appeal to hardcore gamers, but Nintendo certainly doesn't. The majority of their videogames are single player (or at least not networked) children's games. Flashy disney/fisher-price style games with playability but no real content. Their handhelds are where it's at. Simple fun handheld games. But if a gamer adult wants to invest money in a console, they're going to spend it on a console where they can play games like Doom3, CounterStrike, Halo2, Neverwinter Nights and so forth. They're not going to spend that kind of cash on a console that basically just plays a bunch of mario spinoffs and tetris.
Nintendo has to work on appealing to gamers. Their sales are pushed not by quality games and interesting products, but by the fact that people who buy a gamecube are usually buying them for a child and the adult doing it thinks "videogame" and "nintendo" are synonymous and don't know better.
But mark me as flamebait, fanboys. It's easier than facing the facts that it's a fluff-console. Making a new piece of hardware isn't going to fix that. Making better games and having more than just Killer7 as a non-children's game might.
Yeah, like it isn't obvious that this guy works for the government's TIA program and is looking for ways to maintain all of the data culled from the thousands of audio and video sensors they have planted around.
As I mentioned elsewhere, you wouldn't have that problem if you taught children to think critically to begin with.
After all, why is it some people look at a free-speech zone and see it as "a good thing, to keep all the troublemakers safely away from everyone else" while others see it as an abhorent rape of first amendment rights? We've all watched the same television, listened to the same music and lived in the same country.
Or perhaps slickly-packaged, sound-bite-laden propaganda is far more persuasive than well- thought-out, clearly expressed tuition that requires you to think could ever be?
Only if your family and teachers failed to teach you critical thinking to begin with.
But only two broadcast entities. ClearChannel and Entercom, typically.
And even that doesn't matter. When you think you have "variety", it isn't truly. For example, the very liberal Air America station (at least in a couple cities - if not universally) is owned by the same entity that owns the Rush Limbaugh station.
Do radio stations pay to play music? I'm thinking not.
Yes, they do.
Also, any time you hear music being played in a restaurant, taxi cab, elevator, clothing store or anywhere else that is "public", someone is (or is supposed to be) paying the RIAA.
The only time I ever hear FM radio is when I'm in a cab or someone has it on in an office as I'm walking by. Strangely, the last six times in a row that I've heard an FM radio on, the song blaring out of it was some stupid thing about "sugar" which, from what I gather, is basically a half-assed rap song about pussy juice (edited for broadcast, of course).
If that's what's being played the most these days, ther eisn't any cause for wonder at why the industry is crapping out. So awful.
Gee, do you think maybe the reason nobody listens to radio anymore is that they fill everything with "CharlieFM" or "BobFM" or "AliceFM" or "JackFM" with pseudo-random crap and call it "variety"? Or that they replace great AM radio stations with hosts like Rick Emerson and Clyde Lewis and replace them with failing "oldies" format programming?
It's so much cheaper to lose most of your audience and deliver pre-programmed drivel without a host (or just an automated "host") from another part of the country than it is to provide customized, interested, live, provocative, intelligent local content.
I was never a fan of FM, but I did listen to AM talk radio since I was eight years old. After 20 years, I've stopped listening. The last great talk show I found was Rick Emerson's geek-oriented program and Clyde Lewis's bizarre (but better than Coast to Coast AM) program on the weekends. Now that they removed that from the Portland air-waves and I've moved to Colorado where the only talk radio states are sports, jesus and Air America, I don't even own a radio.
Radio is eating itself and will hopefully implode soon.
We all know that teachers like to pass-the-buck, but that's ridiculous. If four hours of television destroys all that your eight hours of class time imparts on a child, then you're a crappy teacher, district or administration.
It's a lot like parents who whine that their children are corrupted by this or that external thing when they, as parents, have their children for more hours of the day and week than anyone else.
Um... Do a google search. Name a newspaper or a news site - from drudge and slashdot to msnbc and indymedia and usatoday, they've all reported it this year. Not sure how you could have possibly missed that?
One in three U.S. high school students say the press ought to be more restricted, and even more say the government should approve newspaper stories before readers see them, according to a survey being released today.
The survey of 112,003 students finds that 36% believe newspapers should get "government approval" of stories before publishing; 51% say they should be able to publish freely; 13% have no opinion.
Asked whether the press enjoys "too much freedom," not enough or about the right amount, 32% say "too much," and 37% say it has the right amount. Ten percent say it has too little.
The survey of First Amendment rights was commissioned by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and conducted last spring by the University of Connecticut. It also questioned 327 principals and 7,889 teachers.
I don't know... in America, a shocking percentage of highschool students think free speech goes too far and that the government should have to "okay" everything that is reported in the press and that people have too much free speech.
I would say the school system has already done half of the job for Microsoft.
Waking up to stories like this just kind of make you want to roll over and accept the corporate/government ass-fuck and submit yourself to becoming a mind-numbed consumer. Shiny things and pop-culture aren't all that bad, right? I mean, most of society takes what they're given without questioning it and seem quite happy in their blissful ignorance. Why not join them?
Thought Theives? So if I have an idea, never share it with anyone and never act on it or put it into any real tangible form and someone else has the same idea and acts on it, they're a thief and I'm a victim?
Talk about poorly labeled.
Oh well. Nothing surprises me anymore. I just hope kids remain indifferent enough that they don't buy into this. What's unfortunate is that I think - if they get to these kids early enough - they'll change their attitudes for life. Kind of like those school programs that convince second graders that their parents are evil if they smoke and that they're alcoholics if they have a glass of wine.
Yeah, people are extremely superficial, but ugly people know they're ugly just like fat people know they're fat. It's not like some hiring manager is going to say "Great, you're ugly/fat enough!" and you're going to be shocked for the first time in your life.
Personally, I couldn't care less about booth babes. If I want to see hot chicks, I can go to a strip club (well, I wouldn't - but I could). Or I could just surf the internet. Trust me, an uninteractive photo of a hot chick is just as interesting, engaging and cares to be there just as much (little) as some brainless booth babe who needs the $50.
Anyway, the people who make videogames are rarely good looking. There are hot people here and there, but usually they're quite fugly. So why not advertise it with fugly (or at least average) people?
I can see the draw of booth-babes if you're twelve years old, perhaps. Otherwise, just completely uninteresting.
Oh - and for the farkers:/I would not hit it. She has pointy knees.
That's missing the point that you CAN'T watch previous seasons even if you pay for them, to catch up to the current seasons. Most TV shows lag in DVD release by a couple or more years from the current season. There are some exceptions, but - for example - you didn't see X-Files Season One for sale as soon as Season Two started airing on television.
It's in their best interest to offer some sort of on-demand system for _all_ previous episodes of their own programming, if they want people to be interested and tune into their _current_ programming.
To be honest, I completely gave up on any presumption of privacy a few years ago. Back in 2000, I had to provide them with fingerprints and a social security number and a signature (which invalidated my REAL signature, because the digital system didn't allow the personalized style of the way I sign my name - this has caused problems at banks where they couldn't match my real life signature with the one on my photo identification).
Once they have your fingerprints, social security number, full name, address, photograph, signature, age, sex and physical description - what else is there to protect? I gave all of that up six years ago in return for a state identification card so I could get hired at work, get a bank account and cash my paycheck.
I'm a bit frightened at how far we've come in the last sixty years and don't even want to think about how far we will go with this in the next sixty, by about the time I die.
Slashdot Mirror
We don't want kids getting drunk and turning into alcoholics. Most banks and currency exchanges sell credit cards. All a kid needs to do is buy a credit card, they will sell them to anyone.
Are you smoking crack? What the hell kind of bank do you know of that gives credit cards to minors? You can't even get a checking account until you're an adult. Not to mention, when something is delivered that is of any value, a signature is usually required by the courier. Do you think DHL, UPS or FedEx are going to turn over a case of alcohol to a fourteen year old kid at the door?!
I guess we should require adults to show up at the post office to pick up condoms and their porno mags, too. Wouldn't want children ordering those.
Personally, I don't even care. Kids who are stupid enough to drink already drink and they do it without the internet. There are PLENTY of adults who readily buy alcohol for kids. Their kids, someone else's kids - even just a strange kid in front of a convenience store asking adults to bring them out a six pack.
I'm sure I'm going to be taken for flamebait here - and that's alright - but what I want to know is why would people buy wine over the internet?
Maybe I misunderstand, but I though the entire point of being a wine drinker was showing off? I mean, isn't being a wine drinker sort of like spending $6 on starbucks when a 75 cent black coffee would do? Or more - pretending to like reggae or jazz so you look more interesting and sophisticated?
If that's the case, then buying wine over the internet would be like those people buying $6 coffee from a vending machine or listening to reggae and jazz in the privacy of their own home. It wouldn't serve any purpose because nobody would be there to be impressed by their sophistication.
I don't get why it even matters. I mean, why should wine be any different than computer equipment, condoms, flowers or pepperidge farms gift baskets? Why should any of them be restricted (or for that matter, why shouldn't ALL of them be restricted).
I still don't use calendar programs. We use them at work, as we develop one of the better known enterprise grade calendar servers, but I still don't make use of it. I don't make use of any kind of calendaring system whatsoever. I just remember things like a normal person.
However, I would gladly begin using one if there was a broader standard that was accepted and implemented that didn't lock me into one solution forever, could easily be synched or access from anywhere (no central server - maybe even let me just FTP it somewhere like the Firefox extension I use that automatically synchronizes my bookmarks anywhere I want using my FTP server).
This is a good step in that direction and as soon as something robust comes along (Sunbird) to fit in with the Firefox and Thunderbird family, I'll be all over it.
I used Sunbird awhile back. It's decent. Not solid enough for me to adopt it and start calendaring - but not bad, either.
Crackers are impossible to eat without corrupting your keyboard, eventually. And eating pussy is hell on it as well. It takes one hell of a can of compressed air to get those curlies out.
What I want to know is - why does the school district have their social security numbers AT ALL?
Social security numbers can only be required by employers, your bank and the social security administration. It's intended solely to track your income and benefits directly related to social security. What does your schooling have to do with your social security number whatsoever?!
I thought this was the whole point of the Liberty Alliance? Have they given that up already?
Consoles may or may not appeal to hardcore gamers, but Nintendo certainly doesn't. The majority of their videogames are single player (or at least not networked) children's games. Flashy disney/fisher-price style games with playability but no real content. Their handhelds are where it's at. Simple fun handheld games. But if a gamer adult wants to invest money in a console, they're going to spend it on a console where they can play games like Doom3, CounterStrike, Halo2, Neverwinter Nights and so forth. They're not going to spend that kind of cash on a console that basically just plays a bunch of mario spinoffs and tetris.
Nintendo has to work on appealing to gamers. Their sales are pushed not by quality games and interesting products, but by the fact that people who buy a gamecube are usually buying them for a child and the adult doing it thinks "videogame" and "nintendo" are synonymous and don't know better.
But mark me as flamebait, fanboys. It's easier than facing the facts that it's a fluff-console. Making a new piece of hardware isn't going to fix that. Making better games and having more than just Killer7 as a non-children's game might.
As I said in another thread today:
Finally, a good use for all those nasty used tampons.
Finally, a good use for all those nasty used tampons.
Yeah, like it isn't obvious that this guy works for the government's TIA program and is looking for ways to maintain all of the data culled from the thousands of audio and video sensors they have planted around.
Suuuure.
What are you talking about?
As I mentioned elsewhere, you wouldn't have that problem if you taught children to think critically to begin with.
After all, why is it some people look at a free-speech zone and see it as "a good thing, to keep all the troublemakers safely away from everyone else" while others see it as an abhorent rape of first amendment rights? We've all watched the same television, listened to the same music and lived in the same country.
Or perhaps slickly-packaged, sound-bite-laden propaganda is far more persuasive than well- thought-out, clearly expressed tuition that requires you to think could ever be?
Only if your family and teachers failed to teach you critical thinking to begin with.
Broadcast Radio - a few dozen stations per city.
But only two broadcast entities. ClearChannel and Entercom, typically.
And even that doesn't matter. When you think you have "variety", it isn't truly. For example, the very liberal Air America station (at least in a couple cities - if not universally) is owned by the same entity that owns the Rush Limbaugh station.
Not as "opposing views" as you thought, huh?
Do radio stations pay to play music? I'm thinking not.
Yes, they do.
Also, any time you hear music being played in a restaurant, taxi cab, elevator, clothing store or anywhere else that is "public", someone is (or is supposed to be) paying the RIAA.
The only time I ever hear FM radio is when I'm in a cab or someone has it on in an office as I'm walking by. Strangely, the last six times in a row that I've heard an FM radio on, the song blaring out of it was some stupid thing about "sugar" which, from what I gather, is basically a half-assed rap song about pussy juice (edited for broadcast, of course).
If that's what's being played the most these days, ther eisn't any cause for wonder at why the industry is crapping out. So awful.
Gee, do you think maybe the reason nobody listens to radio anymore is that they fill everything with "CharlieFM" or "BobFM" or "AliceFM" or "JackFM" with pseudo-random crap and call it "variety"? Or that they replace great AM radio stations with hosts like Rick Emerson and Clyde Lewis and replace them with failing "oldies" format programming?
It's so much cheaper to lose most of your audience and deliver pre-programmed drivel without a host (or just an automated "host") from another part of the country than it is to provide customized, interested, live, provocative, intelligent local content.
I was never a fan of FM, but I did listen to AM talk radio since I was eight years old. After 20 years, I've stopped listening. The last great talk show I found was Rick Emerson's geek-oriented program and Clyde Lewis's bizarre (but better than Coast to Coast AM) program on the weekends. Now that they removed that from the Portland air-waves and I've moved to Colorado where the only talk radio states are sports, jesus and Air America, I don't even own a radio.
Radio is eating itself and will hopefully implode soon.
We all know that teachers like to pass-the-buck, but that's ridiculous. If four hours of television destroys all that your eight hours of class time imparts on a child, then you're a crappy teacher, district or administration.
It's a lot like parents who whine that their children are corrupted by this or that external thing when they, as parents, have their children for more hours of the day and week than anyone else.
Um... Do a google search. Name a newspaper or a news site - from drudge and slashdot to msnbc and indymedia and usatoday, they've all reported it this year. Not sure how you could have possibly missed that?
- students-press_x.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2005-01-30
One in three U.S. high school students say the press ought to be more restricted, and even more say the government should approve newspaper stories before readers see them, according to a survey being released today.
The survey of 112,003 students finds that 36% believe newspapers should get "government approval" of stories before publishing; 51% say they should be able to publish freely; 13% have no opinion.
Asked whether the press enjoys "too much freedom," not enough or about the right amount, 32% say "too much," and 37% say it has the right amount. Ten percent say it has too little.
The survey of First Amendment rights was commissioned by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and conducted last spring by the University of Connecticut. It also questioned 327 principals and 7,889 teachers.
I don't know... in America, a shocking percentage of highschool students think free speech goes too far and that the government should have to "okay" everything that is reported in the press and that people have too much free speech.
I would say the school system has already done half of the job for Microsoft.
Agreed.
Waking up to stories like this just kind of make you want to roll over and accept the corporate/government ass-fuck and submit yourself to becoming a mind-numbed consumer. Shiny things and pop-culture aren't all that bad, right? I mean, most of society takes what they're given without questioning it and seem quite happy in their blissful ignorance. Why not join them?
Thought Theives? So if I have an idea, never share it with anyone and never act on it or put it into any real tangible form and someone else has the same idea and acts on it, they're a thief and I'm a victim?
Talk about poorly labeled.
Oh well. Nothing surprises me anymore. I just hope kids remain indifferent enough that they don't buy into this. What's unfortunate is that I think - if they get to these kids early enough - they'll change their attitudes for life. Kind of like those school programs that convince second graders that their parents are evil if they smoke and that they're alcoholics if they have a glass of wine.
Yeah, people are extremely superficial, but ugly people know they're ugly just like fat people know they're fat. It's not like some hiring manager is going to say "Great, you're ugly/fat enough!" and you're going to be shocked for the first time in your life.
/I would not hit it. She has pointy knees.
Personally, I couldn't care less about booth babes. If I want to see hot chicks, I can go to a strip club (well, I wouldn't - but I could). Or I could just surf the internet. Trust me, an uninteractive photo of a hot chick is just as interesting, engaging and cares to be there just as much (little) as some brainless booth babe who needs the $50.
Anyway, the people who make videogames are rarely good looking. There are hot people here and there, but usually they're quite fugly. So why not advertise it with fugly (or at least average) people?
I can see the draw of booth-babes if you're twelve years old, perhaps. Otherwise, just completely uninteresting.
Oh - and for the farkers:
That's missing the point that you CAN'T watch previous seasons even if you pay for them, to catch up to the current seasons. Most TV shows lag in DVD release by a couple or more years from the current season. There are some exceptions, but - for example - you didn't see X-Files Season One for sale as soon as Season Two started airing on television.
It's in their best interest to offer some sort of on-demand system for _all_ previous episodes of their own programming, if they want people to be interested and tune into their _current_ programming.
To be honest, I completely gave up on any presumption of privacy a few years ago. Back in 2000, I had to provide them with fingerprints and a social security number and a signature (which invalidated my REAL signature, because the digital system didn't allow the personalized style of the way I sign my name - this has caused problems at banks where they couldn't match my real life signature with the one on my photo identification).
Once they have your fingerprints, social security number, full name, address, photograph, signature, age, sex and physical description - what else is there to protect? I gave all of that up six years ago in return for a state identification card so I could get hired at work, get a bank account and cash my paycheck.
I'm a bit frightened at how far we've come in the last sixty years and don't even want to think about how far we will go with this in the next sixty, by about the time I die.