The few CDs I've purchased in the last few years have been used, because those prices are a lot more reasonable and in line with the actual value of the content on the discs.
*wry grin* Anyone remember when the CD and video game manufacturers were pushing to make non-retail sales of CDs and games illegal? After all, it's unregulated and you probably don't report that income to the IRS. Oh, and of course they don't get the extra sale from the person buying the used CD, but that's beside the point, right? *sigh* Personally, I too check out used CD racks and definitely used games. *shrug* Heck, I'm one of those people who tends to find a good book, buy a good sturdy copy of it, then leave it in public places with a note written on the inside encouraging people to read it and leave it for another person to read. Goodness knows half of them probably eventually wind up on someone's bookshelves or in the trash, but it makes me feel like I'm passing something on to the world. And aren't my feelings what matters most?:-)
*wry grin* Aye, and there lies the rub. I know women in their 30s who look like they could be barely in middle school. And that's when they're dressed to look older. Admittedly, the law should not be applied unless the intent is to make the person look under 16 (dressing them up in schoolgirl costumes, showing them in "after-school tutoring", etc) but I'd suspect that even getting fingered for such an offense without a conviction is bound to hurt your record.
Key combinations may be faster once you have learned them. However, until that point is reached, they are much slower.
While I understand what you're driving at, this isn't a very useful statement. Shorthand is slower than writing longhand at first. Riding a bicycle is slower than walking at first (All those crashes).
When a computer is used by multiple people, there can be scenerio where you want the user to be sure they want to do an 'undoable' action. Like putting someting in the trash.
What do you mean here?
Objects placed in a recycle bin are not guarenteed to remain there. *wry grin* You may laugh now, but I've known users who use recycle bins or designated temp directories to store files. Scarier were the ones who in DOS used DEL and UNDELETE for file storage...
Modal dialogs should be used sparingly, and only when the user can have no other reason to look for something in the app. Nothing worse then having a damn modal dialog asking you a question, and the answer is in the app.
Exactly: "The user should never have to tell the computer something it already knows. "
*wry grin* I think it goes past this. How many times have you opened up a search dialog on a program and partway through writing your query screen, realized you needed to copy and paste an entry on the screen and found the search dialog is modal? Luckily not many of them... I think VS.NET went the right direction by making the currently selected word the default search term (not to mention they make the dialog non-modal) but this is not always the behavior of applications, sadly.
You have made some very good points in your list of rules. One just has to remember that all rules need to occasionally be broken, including this one.
On the other hand, for keyboard shortcuts to work, they should be consistent, very consistent. For example, take Windows 98. In almost all applications you can use Control-S to save your document. There is one exception to this, and it is called Notepad. If you press Ctrl-S in it, nothing happens. And this is very bad, because I have often been editing webpages with Notepad and asked myself why Internet Explorer wouldn't show me the things I changed.
*wry grin* At that, there's that mess of cut-and-paste (some applications use CTRL-C to copy, some CTRL-INSERT, although most of them will acept both these days) or which buttons close windows. (CTRL-F4 vs ALT-F4. Again, this is a situation getting better with most programs that are MDI using CTRL-F4 to close the current pane whereas ALT-F4 closes the application, but you still run into outliers...) *wry grin* And then there's the fun quirk that Windows textboxes by default map CTRL-I to TAB...
^_^ Someone's way ahead of you. She Male is a hero (heroine?) affiliated with the Offenders in Supermegatopia. Admittedly, it's an anthro superhero strip, but it's an amusing one.
And under more mainstream (if only slightly so), there's Rebis of the Doom Patrol comics, quite possible the first hermaphroditic comic book hero.
*snort* Reminds me of the old joke about how the biggest problem with nude beaches is quality control. While I think that hyperlinking in a text could be quite useful, (Don't know what a term means? Right-click and select Definition for the technical definition in that context, maybe a reference to an earlier chapter if it was explicitly the subject there) learning by threaded discussion doesn't work too well IMNSHO. It's hard to get a good signal to noise ratio, particularly when you have to keep clicking in and out of discussions and the relevant counter-argument may actually be attached to a thread a few pages down. No, I think that a single-perspective explanation works well for textbooks.
As for perils of the current system... *shrug* It's because it's easier to test people for facts rather than understanding. Safer too. It's easier to defend yourself against a student who claims you're discriminating against them on basis of gender, race, sexual orientation, or male endowment when you've got the test to show that they missed 37 of the 50 multiple choice questions than in a situation where you're having to explain that their class project demonstrated little original thought and didn't express itself clearly. That said, I'd prefer the project. Make people work together in arbitrary groups and have them grade each other in the end as to how much effort they each put in.
Sadly, not all USB is hot-swappable. We use NI-GPIB-USB cards here. If you try to unplug the card while it's running, you get the lovely smell of something burning as well as the knowledge that you've lost another $500 card... We learned pretty quickly, but we're still working on our clients.
As for the person commenting on their computer being bulletproof, some of ours are. ^_^ Well, actually it's more the hardened cases on the laptops that are required to survive being driven over by a tank, but I suspect bullets may not do much more damage.
While I do agree that the Patriot Act is a bad idea and should be taken off the books, I'm not so sure I agree with your assertation that laws should only be used in their original contexts. Sometimes the laws are used in different manners to cover holes in the system. For instance, they couldn't arrest Al Capone over his organized crime activities, so they brought him up on income tax charges after introducing a a line in the form requiring reporting of illegal gains.
There are cases where this is definitely abused. Prosecuting pro-lifers under RICO laws (http://www.religioustolerance.org/abo_rico.htm) is one case. I think this is another one. However, I disagree with a bland assertion that laws are only valid if applied in their original context.
Actually, it was at decently high levels during the dot-com age. Red Bull still does it, in particular for college campuses. And there are still companies such as Vehicles4Free that offer it. *shrug* There's a fair listing on the right of Google if you search for 'car ads' although I wouldn't be surprised if some of them are like http://www.poetry.com/ or those "lyrics publishers" that offer to publish your works for a small fee and offer practically nothing.
I'd beg to differ. Here at work, executable attachments are screened out going in or out of the company. *wry grin* Problem is, we're in the business of software, and this policy has a nasty tendency to strip off patches we send to customers. We're slowly getting them used to connecting to an FTP site, but sending the programs in an email makes it more likely that they'llget to it immediately. Sending FTP addresses, they'll often just bookmark it. *wry grin* And how long will it take before the virus writers figure to switch back to clickable links, making them look like ZIP files as attachments? Honestly, I think that as long as there are people who'll open their door to strangers showing up at 3 AM, there will be people who click on virus attachments in email.
I wish I hadn't already replied or else I'd mod you up Informative. Meh, so I'll try to just make an intelligent post back.
While I'm a big fan of contact lenses, they do still have definite drawbacks in the convenience area. While they're harder to knock off one's head than glasses, you still have a decent chance of accidentally rubbing or blinking them out in cases of sweat or water in the eyes. And there's that additional hassle of wrestling them in and out of your eyes each morning. I've gotten past that last one by getting the 30-day lenses, but they're slightly more uncomfortable, more likely to spawn eye infections, and don't correct for my (fortunately mild) astigmatism. *wry grin* And while you won't be hurting nearly so bad in the morning as wearing regular contact lenses, the quantity and quality of eye gunk is absolutely amazing... and it usually takes a good 5 minutes of blinking and splashing water in my eyes before my vision isn't blurred by the slightly dried/gunked lenses.
Lastly, on your comment about glasses having fixed optical centers, I believe glasses have been designed with multiple-IOR for years. Basically, rather than having the lenses move with your eyes, the lenses are set up so wherever you look, you're looking through the right focus. There are always some holes and glasses not quite fitting right, but it's well within the human ability to correct it in one's mind.
Honestly, having pinched the surface of my eye once or twice trying to remove a contact lens, I'll have to beg to differ there. *shudder* It hurts! Since then, I've been careful to check in the mirror that the contact lens is where I'm pinching. Heh, that and I started wearing the 30-day ones so I wouldn't have to swap them out each morning.
As for laser surgery, I've considered it once or twice, but honestly, my vision is enough to get around for the most part and my family's vision has a history of pretty predictably declining as we increase in age, so I don't know how long the surgery would last me.
The contacts are nice for not being able to get knocked from my face and they've been a boon for doing acting, but I will admit that I miss the eye protection provided by glasses. On the other hand, being able to wear store-bought sunglasses without having to check that they properly fit over my regular glasses is nice too...
^_^ Reminds of Ozy and Millie where they visit the attic and find the collection of
life-sized bronze statues of Ozymandias done by his father each year rather than marking his growth on the wall. And yes, one of them was done mid-sneeze.
I personally tend to do the same thing, mainly because I like to write fiction and I never know when ideas will come to me, but there are additional hassles of keeping your pens and pencils sharpened, filled with lead, or filled with ink. You generally have to have a steady surface to write on (problem reduced with a good hard-backed notebook, but those are more bulky and there's still some instability of the writing surface. And because of the cheapness/ubiquitousness of paper and pencil, there's a greater chance of you losing it or bringing a different one, resulting in lost/unavailable data. *shrug* Plusses and minusses.
Honestly, I think the main reason for not publishing a list of sites is that the immediate impulse for many users will be to click the links. Sure, you can make it more difficult by listing them as plain text and by name, rather than listing a clickable URL, but I'd guarentee that you'd still have a large contingent of users who'd click that first link, some simply from typical web browsing habits and probably not a few curious spectators as well.
Admittedly, I think that the number of people who find that sites they visit are infected and stay away would be greater than the number who get infected by visiting the first link listed, but the people publishing the information aren't liable for people not knowing what sites are infected. I wouldn't be surprised if they could get a court to rule they're liable for listing the sites and having people click into them. *shrug* Or maybe I'm just being pessimistic about human nature...
Gah! I wish I could remember the name of the story... There was a science fiction story I read in college involving a worker somewhere in the distant future rediscovering arithmetic. (The skills had been lost in the years of computers doing all that tedious math for us) The leaders were overjoyed because it meant that if they trained these workers, they could be stuffed in these missiles to guard them to their targets. After all, with all that overpopulation, human beings were cheaper than the computers...
Obviously written during that time period when people assumed computers would stay room-sized and expensive, but still quite interesting in its implications.
Some congenitally blind subjects can develop a "face sense" that allows them to hear and process the sound of their own movements echoing off nearby objects, and thus detect their presence and general location. Music practice certainly won't change that either.
^_^ And as I understand it, seeing people can also manage this mystic "face sense" if they put a little time into it. Try it some time. Stand in a relatively quiet room and clap your hands. Take a step forward and clap again. Notice the difference? After that, it's practice. Yes, it's probably easier if learned from an early age where the brain is more plastic, but basically anyone with decent hearing can learn it.
As for your comment about music practice, that's one of those things I find interesting. I'm missing a cite here, but I remember reading a study that experimented with teaching children in their first few years, everything from flashcards to music. They found that the knowledge did not seem to stick enough to influence future learning except for music. Supposedly, children who started music at an early age consistently tested higher in that area later in life. Also missing a cite for the one study I read talking about how raising a child around music at a very early age tends to lead to a child with extremely good to perfect pitch, with a corollary that cultures with a pitch-sensitive language such as Vietnamese tended to produce children with perfect pitch, even if the child was originally of another nationality.
As with many evolving algorithms, one of the problems is the possibility of hitting a genetic dead-end. And unlike actual nature, the program menageries are typically all of the same type of beast, so it's not too unlikely for a particular design to become rabidly successful for a time and basically wipe out other variants before dying itself. But as long as you force there being some randomness and preservation of diversity, there are some interesting results.
*shrug* I only know of two cases here where people were disciplined for inappropriate emails here. In the firt case (admittedly before I got here), someone was sending out a mildly pornographic dominatrix video of a guy repeatedly getting kicked in the crotch by a lady in high-heeled boots with a subject title of "At least it's less painful than working here." It probably would have passed under the radar if the guy hadn't used the ML-ALL mailing list that included the general.
The other incident, the higher-ups found out due to word of mouth. With everyone talking, it was inevitable that eventually someone would notice. And so his email logs were requested and he was sent off for sensitivity training. *grumble* And then they went on a hyper-politically-correct workplace bent, making everyone remove pictures of wives and girlfriends from cubicle walls for fear that someone might find them offensive. Oh, the joys of federal government work...
I haven't seen many new signups in the people I know, but a lot of the people who started with 7 digit numbers are still there. *wry grin* Then there were the people my sister's age and around there who would sign up for a number, forget the password a few months later, then sign up for a new account. Most of those people seem to have moved to AIM where it's easier to quickly generate a new name and ID (I'm up to 4+ IDs for some of these people which vary according to mood and which stalker they're avoiding). Also, I suspect they're aiming for more support of emoticons and formatting.
Personally, what I miss from ICQ was their real-time chat method where you saw the other person's message as they typed and you were told if they switched windows on you. There was a much beter sense of immediacy there. *shrug* Eh, but I used Gaim nowadays anyhow to aggregate the 4 different IM services my friends use, so I probably wouldn't even notice if they added that instanct chat back as default functionality.
Children shouldn't be given the *rights* of adults, but they *do* deserve the same respect and consideration of their sense of dignity and self-worth. Any parent who uses the phrase "because *I* say so, *that's* why", has failed their duty and their child.
Eh, I understand where you're coming from, that if that's always their explanation, that's a problem, but honestly, there are times when a parent can't get the reasoning through to a child, or does not have the opportunity to do so. I would say that if the child never does what they're told without demanding to have explanations every time, the parent has failed. Yes, parents should respect their children, but children should also respect their parents. The children should understand that talking back and sass are not a good thing. If they have objections, they can bring them up in a rational manner so that the parent can correspondingly discuss it in a rational manner. And the child should know that some situations require following orders and bringing up and arguing later. To bring up an admittedly extreme example, when a parent yells at you to get off the road, they may be seeing an oncoming car.
In short, I think the whole thing comes down to that "If all your friends were jumping off a bridge, would you?" line. Blind obedience is bad, but sometimes there's a good reason to jump (oncoming runaway truck anyone?). *shrug* I grew up that way. I respected my parents, but they let us know that we were allowed to disagree with them. ^_^ Sometimes it was a democratic process where the parents held 51% of the vote, but we knew that they were always willing to listen to our arguments and sometimes they'd be swayed by them.
Maybe they wouldn't be... I'm having trouble finding the reference, but I remember reading a study a few years ago where they tested people's reactions to unfamiliar people. There was greater fear and anxiety (as gauged by blood pressure and pulse rate) when a black person walked into a room as opposed to a caucasian. Now the odd part of the result is that everyone had this increased reaction, including the black people being tested. *sigh* I really wish I could find a cite of the study... my google skills seem inadequate.
Working for the DoD, we're required to shut down all non-essential computers at the end of the week under the theory that there's a security risk in leaving machines exposed over the weekend when we're less likely to have the security monitored.
I used to try to use email for communication at work, but frankly, it's just too hard to know whether the other person ever received my message. If you don't get a reply within a week, you're left wondering if he's read it and not gotten around to responding (or decided the email didn't need a reply), it got lost in transit, or if it's languishing in his email folder unread due to overwhelming email or bad filtering. And heaven forfend that you should email on something that you want a response by day's end! In contrast, I can generally dial a phone number and within seconds either be speaking to the person in question or know that they're not there/available. Personally, I hate talking on the phone (if there's background noise, I often have a horrible time trying to follow what they're saying), but for business, it's necessary.
Is it just me, or does this tendency to shorter sentences perhaps also speak to a growing laziness in reading? Once, the person reading would keep in mind, at the least, the sentence they were reading so that they might apply modifying clauses and the like to it, eventually extracting the meaning. Ah but no, the generation brought up on "sound bites" and 30-second commercials need the sentences shortened so that they don't have time to forget what it's about. Bleh.
That said, I'm from the generation raised on sound bites, 30 second commercials, and presentations reduced to bullet points. I agree that excessively run-on sentences and bizarre word choices can detract from writing. However, I also can't stand some of the over-simplified sentences I see people write. If I want to have sentences that avoid complexity, I'll read Dick and Jane. Some simplicity is good, but if you have two sentences that are talking about the same thing, combining them often improves the readability of the work.
Obligatory disclaimer: I'm an engineer, not an English major, so I'm sure I'm violating many style rules even in this entry.
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The few CDs I've purchased in the last few years have been used, because those prices are a lot more reasonable and in line with the actual value of the content on the discs. :-)
*wry grin* Anyone remember when the CD and video game manufacturers were pushing to make non-retail sales of CDs and games illegal? After all, it's unregulated and you probably don't report that income to the IRS. Oh, and of course they don't get the extra sale from the person buying the used CD, but that's beside the point, right? *sigh* Personally, I too check out used CD racks and definitely used games. *shrug* Heck, I'm one of those people who tends to find a good book, buy a good sturdy copy of it, then leave it in public places with a note written on the inside encouraging people to read it and leave it for another person to read. Goodness knows half of them probably eventually wind up on someone's bookshelves or in the trash, but it makes me feel like I'm passing something on to the world. And aren't my feelings what matters most?
*wry grin* Aye, and there lies the rub. I know women in their 30s who look like they could be barely in middle school. And that's when they're dressed to look older. Admittedly, the law should not be applied unless the intent is to make the person look under 16 (dressing them up in schoolgirl costumes, showing them in "after-school tutoring", etc) but I'd suspect that even getting fingered for such an offense without a conviction is bound to hurt your record.
While I understand what you're driving at, this isn't a very useful statement. Shorthand is slower than writing longhand at first. Riding a bicycle is slower than walking at first (All those crashes). What do you mean here?
Objects placed in a recycle bin are not guarenteed to remain there. *wry grin* You may laugh now, but I've known users who use recycle bins or designated temp directories to store files. Scarier were the ones who in DOS used DEL and UNDELETE for file storage... Exactly: "The user should never have to tell the computer something it already knows. "
*wry grin* I think it goes past this. How many times have you opened up a search dialog on a program and partway through writing your query screen, realized you needed to copy and paste an entry on the screen and found the search dialog is modal? Luckily not many of them... I think VS.NET went the right direction by making the currently selected word the default search term (not to mention they make the dialog non-modal) but this is not always the behavior of applications, sadly.
You have made some very good points in your list of rules. One just has to remember that all rules need to occasionally be broken, including this one.
On the other hand, for keyboard shortcuts to work, they should be consistent, very consistent. For example, take Windows 98. In almost all applications you can use Control-S to save your document. There is one exception to this, and it is called Notepad. If you press Ctrl-S in it, nothing happens. And this is very bad, because I have often been editing webpages with Notepad and asked myself why Internet Explorer wouldn't show me the things I changed.
*wry grin* At that, there's that mess of cut-and-paste (some applications use CTRL-C to copy, some CTRL-INSERT, although most of them will acept both these days) or which buttons close windows. (CTRL-F4 vs ALT-F4. Again, this is a situation getting better with most programs that are MDI using CTRL-F4 to close the current pane whereas ALT-F4 closes the application, but you still run into outliers...) *wry grin* And then there's the fun quirk that Windows textboxes by default map CTRL-I to TAB...
And under more mainstream (if only slightly so), there's Rebis of the Doom Patrol comics, quite possible the first hermaphroditic comic book hero.
As for perils of the current system... *shrug* It's because it's easier to test people for facts rather than understanding. Safer too. It's easier to defend yourself against a student who claims you're discriminating against them on basis of gender, race, sexual orientation, or male endowment when you've got the test to show that they missed 37 of the 50 multiple choice questions than in a situation where you're having to explain that their class project demonstrated little original thought and didn't express itself clearly. That said, I'd prefer the project. Make people work together in arbitrary groups and have them grade each other in the end as to how much effort they each put in.
Sadly, not all USB is hot-swappable. We use NI-GPIB-USB cards here. If you try to unplug the card while it's running, you get the lovely smell of something burning as well as the knowledge that you've lost another $500 card... We learned pretty quickly, but we're still working on our clients. As for the person commenting on their computer being bulletproof, some of ours are. ^_^ Well, actually it's more the hardened cases on the laptops that are required to survive being driven over by a tank, but I suspect bullets may not do much more damage.
There are cases where this is definitely abused. Prosecuting pro-lifers under RICO laws (http://www.religioustolerance.org/abo_rico.htm) is one case. I think this is another one. However, I disagree with a bland assertion that laws are only valid if applied in their original context.
Actually, it was at decently high levels during the dot-com age. Red Bull still does it, in particular for college campuses. And there are still companies such as Vehicles4Free that offer it. *shrug* There's a fair listing on the right of Google if you search for 'car ads' although I wouldn't be surprised if some of them are like http://www.poetry.com/ or those "lyrics publishers" that offer to publish your works for a small fee and offer practically nothing.
I'd beg to differ. Here at work, executable attachments are screened out going in or out of the company. *wry grin* Problem is, we're in the business of software, and this policy has a nasty tendency to strip off patches we send to customers. We're slowly getting them used to connecting to an FTP site, but sending the programs in an email makes it more likely that they'llget to it immediately. Sending FTP addresses, they'll often just bookmark it. *wry grin* And how long will it take before the virus writers figure to switch back to clickable links, making them look like ZIP files as attachments? Honestly, I think that as long as there are people who'll open their door to strangers showing up at 3 AM, there will be people who click on virus attachments in email.
While I'm a big fan of contact lenses, they do still have definite drawbacks in the convenience area. While they're harder to knock off one's head than glasses, you still have a decent chance of accidentally rubbing or blinking them out in cases of sweat or water in the eyes. And there's that additional hassle of wrestling them in and out of your eyes each morning. I've gotten past that last one by getting the 30-day lenses, but they're slightly more uncomfortable, more likely to spawn eye infections, and don't correct for my (fortunately mild) astigmatism. *wry grin* And while you won't be hurting nearly so bad in the morning as wearing regular contact lenses, the quantity and quality of eye gunk is absolutely amazing... and it usually takes a good 5 minutes of blinking and splashing water in my eyes before my vision isn't blurred by the slightly dried/gunked lenses.
Lastly, on your comment about glasses having fixed optical centers, I believe glasses have been designed with multiple-IOR for years. Basically, rather than having the lenses move with your eyes, the lenses are set up so wherever you look, you're looking through the right focus. There are always some holes and glasses not quite fitting right, but it's well within the human ability to correct it in one's mind.
As for laser surgery, I've considered it once or twice, but honestly, my vision is enough to get around for the most part and my family's vision has a history of pretty predictably declining as we increase in age, so I don't know how long the surgery would last me.
The contacts are nice for not being able to get knocked from my face and they've been a boon for doing acting, but I will admit that I miss the eye protection provided by glasses. On the other hand, being able to wear store-bought sunglasses without having to check that they properly fit over my regular glasses is nice too...
^_^ Reminds of Ozy and Millie where they visit the attic and find the collection of life-sized bronze statues of Ozymandias done by his father each year rather than marking his growth on the wall. And yes, one of them was done mid-sneeze.
I personally tend to do the same thing, mainly because I like to write fiction and I never know when ideas will come to me, but there are additional hassles of keeping your pens and pencils sharpened, filled with lead, or filled with ink. You generally have to have a steady surface to write on (problem reduced with a good hard-backed notebook, but those are more bulky and there's still some instability of the writing surface. And because of the cheapness/ubiquitousness of paper and pencil, there's a greater chance of you losing it or bringing a different one, resulting in lost/unavailable data. *shrug* Plusses and minusses.
Admittedly, I think that the number of people who find that sites they visit are infected and stay away would be greater than the number who get infected by visiting the first link listed, but the people publishing the information aren't liable for people not knowing what sites are infected. I wouldn't be surprised if they could get a court to rule they're liable for listing the sites and having people click into them. *shrug* Or maybe I'm just being pessimistic about human nature...
Gah! I wish I could remember the name of the story... There was a science fiction story I read in college involving a worker somewhere in the distant future rediscovering arithmetic. (The skills had been lost in the years of computers doing all that tedious math for us) The leaders were overjoyed because it meant that if they trained these workers, they could be stuffed in these missiles to guard them to their targets. After all, with all that overpopulation, human beings were cheaper than the computers...
Obviously written during that time period when people assumed computers would stay room-sized and expensive, but still quite interesting in its implications.
Some congenitally blind subjects can develop a "face sense" that allows them to hear and process the sound of their own movements echoing off nearby objects, and thus detect their presence and general location. Music practice certainly won't change that either.
^_^ And as I understand it, seeing people can also manage this mystic "face sense" if they put a little time into it. Try it some time. Stand in a relatively quiet room and clap your hands. Take a step forward and clap again. Notice the difference? After that, it's practice. Yes, it's probably easier if learned from an early age where the brain is more plastic, but basically anyone with decent hearing can learn it.
As for your comment about music practice, that's one of those things I find interesting. I'm missing a cite here, but I remember reading a study that experimented with teaching children in their first few years, everything from flashcards to music. They found that the knowledge did not seem to stick enough to influence future learning except for music. Supposedly, children who started music at an early age consistently tested higher in that area later in life. Also missing a cite for the one study I read talking about how raising a child around music at a very early age tends to lead to a child with extremely good to perfect pitch, with a corollary that cultures with a pitch-sensitive language such as Vietnamese tended to produce children with perfect pitch, even if the child was originally of another nationality.
As with many evolving algorithms, one of the problems is the possibility of hitting a genetic dead-end. And unlike actual nature, the program menageries are typically all of the same type of beast, so it's not too unlikely for a particular design to become rabidly successful for a time and basically wipe out other variants before dying itself. But as long as you force there being some randomness and preservation of diversity, there are some interesting results.
*shrug* I only know of two cases here where people were disciplined for inappropriate emails here. In the firt case (admittedly before I got here), someone was sending out a mildly pornographic dominatrix video of a guy repeatedly getting kicked in the crotch by a lady in high-heeled boots with a subject title of "At least it's less painful than working here." It probably would have passed under the radar if the guy hadn't used the ML-ALL mailing list that included the general.
The other incident, the higher-ups found out due to word of mouth. With everyone talking, it was inevitable that eventually someone would notice. And so his email logs were requested and he was sent off for sensitivity training. *grumble* And then they went on a hyper-politically-correct workplace bent, making everyone remove pictures of wives and girlfriends from cubicle walls for fear that someone might find them offensive. Oh, the joys of federal government work...
I haven't seen many new signups in the people I know, but a lot of the people who started with 7 digit numbers are still there. *wry grin* Then there were the people my sister's age and around there who would sign up for a number, forget the password a few months later, then sign up for a new account. Most of those people seem to have moved to AIM where it's easier to quickly generate a new name and ID (I'm up to 4+ IDs for some of these people which vary according to mood and which stalker they're avoiding). Also, I suspect they're aiming for more support of emoticons and formatting.
Personally, what I miss from ICQ was their real-time chat method where you saw the other person's message as they typed and you were told if they switched windows on you. There was a much beter sense of immediacy there. *shrug* Eh, but I used Gaim nowadays anyhow to aggregate the 4 different IM services my friends use, so I probably wouldn't even notice if they added that instanct chat back as default functionality.
Children shouldn't be given the *rights* of adults, but they *do* deserve the same respect and consideration of their sense of dignity and self-worth. Any parent who uses the phrase "because *I* say so, *that's* why", has failed their duty and their child.
Eh, I understand where you're coming from, that if that's always their explanation, that's a problem, but honestly, there are times when a parent can't get the reasoning through to a child, or does not have the opportunity to do so. I would say that if the child never does what they're told without demanding to have explanations every time, the parent has failed. Yes, parents should respect their children, but children should also respect their parents. The children should understand that talking back and sass are not a good thing. If they have objections, they can bring them up in a rational manner so that the parent can correspondingly discuss it in a rational manner. And the child should know that some situations require following orders and bringing up and arguing later. To bring up an admittedly extreme example, when a parent yells at you to get off the road, they may be seeing an oncoming car.
In short, I think the whole thing comes down to that "If all your friends were jumping off a bridge, would you?" line. Blind obedience is bad, but sometimes there's a good reason to jump (oncoming runaway truck anyone?). *shrug* I grew up that way. I respected my parents, but they let us know that we were allowed to disagree with them. ^_^ Sometimes it was a democratic process where the parents held 51% of the vote, but we knew that they were always willing to listen to our arguments and sometimes they'd be swayed by them.
Maybe they wouldn't be... I'm having trouble finding the reference, but I remember reading a study a few years ago where they tested people's reactions to unfamiliar people. There was greater fear and anxiety (as gauged by blood pressure and pulse rate) when a black person walked into a room as opposed to a caucasian. Now the odd part of the result is that everyone had this increased reaction, including the black people being tested. *sigh* I really wish I could find a cite of the study... my google skills seem inadequate.
Working for the DoD, we're required to shut down all non-essential computers at the end of the week under the theory that there's a security risk in leaving machines exposed over the weekend when we're less likely to have the security monitored.
I used to try to use email for communication at work, but frankly, it's just too hard to know whether the other person ever received my message. If you don't get a reply within a week, you're left wondering if he's read it and not gotten around to responding (or decided the email didn't need a reply), it got lost in transit, or if it's languishing in his email folder unread due to overwhelming email or bad filtering. And heaven forfend that you should email on something that you want a response by day's end! In contrast, I can generally dial a phone number and within seconds either be speaking to the person in question or know that they're not there/available. Personally, I hate talking on the phone (if there's background noise, I often have a horrible time trying to follow what they're saying), but for business, it's necessary.
Is it just me, or does this tendency to shorter sentences perhaps also speak to a growing laziness in reading? Once, the person reading would keep in mind, at the least, the sentence they were reading so that they might apply modifying clauses and the like to it, eventually extracting the meaning. Ah but no, the generation brought up on "sound bites" and 30-second commercials need the sentences shortened so that they don't have time to forget what it's about. Bleh.
That said, I'm from the generation raised on sound bites, 30 second commercials, and presentations reduced to bullet points. I agree that excessively run-on sentences and bizarre word choices can detract from writing. However, I also can't stand some of the over-simplified sentences I see people write. If I want to have sentences that avoid complexity, I'll read Dick and Jane. Some simplicity is good, but if you have two sentences that are talking about the same thing, combining them often improves the readability of the work.
Obligatory disclaimer: I'm an engineer, not an English major, so I'm sure I'm violating many style rules even in this entry.