I remember my brother and I finding an old home Pong machine at a neighbor's garage sale for $5. My parents were horrified to watch us hook it up, because they had just purchased us a brand-spanking-new Super NES. I think I was about 13, my brother about 11, so we were approximately the same age as the kids in the article. We knew that Pong was an early video game, we had even played the homage included in Commander Keen 6(?), and we were curious to play it. So it wouldn't surprise me if today's kids are curious about the "classic" games.
The polarization is making it difficult to talk about any remotely political topics in a balanced way to find solutions or even common ground. Take, for example, education (soul-sucking registration required).
I read Slashdot but I also kept using IE even though I knew about its vulnerabilities. I figured I had a firewall, virus protection, checked for MS updates frequently, and ran both Ad-Aware and Spybot regularly, so I thought I was safe.
But reading about the last fiasco on Slashdot last week finally convinced me to switch over to Firefox. So the "ads" for Firefox here actually do reach some of us who should know better but are lazy, like me.
If I'm giving a gift to a child (say, a niece or nephew), I often give gift certificates. For one thing, it's hard for me to keep up with the latest trends. I have one cousin who is very into manga and it would be impossible for me to keep up with what she's read and what she hasn't. This way, the kids can choose what they want from a particular store.
Why not just give them cash? Some teens and tweens aren't very wise with their choices, and I prefer to let their parents worry about their spending. For example: one Christmas my grandparents gave both my brother and myself decent checks. Mine went into a bank account where I slowly depleted it over the course of several months for textbooks and entertainment in college. My younger high-school age brother immediately spent the entire thing on fake Asian-looking swords from a hobby store. My parents had to ban all relatives from giving him cash for a few years because they were so horrified by how he blew a huge chunk of money. Gift certificates would have avoided that problem.
Adults are a different issue. My grandmother likes to write me checks but tell me what I'm supposed to spend it on (e.g., furniture). That's sort of like a gift certificate in the sense of indicating where the money should be spent, but I can choose which furniture store to visit. And I still often give my brother gift certificates because the sword incident sticks in my mind. *grin*
While I don't think Yankee Candle actually trademarked their store layout, I do know that they sued at least one smaller candle company for having a store layout that was too similar to their own.
This occurred fairly close to Yankee Candle's headquarters, at a mall in Enfield, Connecticut (about an hour away). If I recall correctly, the smaller store changed its layout rather than fight it out in court, and I think it eventually went out of business, but I don't live there anymore so am not certain.
My father has managed to (start to) flush two down the toilet, AND baked one in the same pan as a turkey. I think he saved the latter for about a year, it was still in one piece but weirdly melted, looked like a Dali work.
As a Penn Stater, I noted that our student newspaper opined today that the trustees are spending WAY too much time congratulating themselves over the deal with Napster. File sharing may be important (or may not be), but universities are starting to focus on it above other concerns. The RIAA targeting college students through their institutions only helps to give these universities something to focus on other than their real problems.
Plumbers, hairdressers, landscapers, etc., are all jobs that can't be outsourced the way IT jobs can (and increasingly are these days). An electrician in China can't fix the wiring problems in your kitchen. I suspect there may be some job satisfaction stemming from the fact that you know your job will always be there for you.
I tried to coax my parents into letting me put the Google toolbar on their computer for the purpose of blocking their popups. The problem is, my parents use some popups, like on news sites when they click on "E-mail this to a friend" and it pops up in another window. I told them this was fine, they could hold down CTRL and it would work fine. My dad told me this was "too complicated". As my dad is not helpless in front of a computer, this frustrated me to no end. They'd rather deal with hundreds of popups to avoid missing the few they select themselves.
I'm a grad student in a math department, so while I haven't participated in the process of choosing a textbook I have been witness to the outcome.
For the calculus classes here, there actually is a lot of thought put in to which textbook to use. The problem is, not as much thought is given to student expenses. For example, when a new edition of the calculus book we were using came out, TPTB decided they didn't like the new one. So they got permission to reprint the old one, with extra problems designed for our students (which I refused to assign so students could use the older edition instead of having to buy the reprinted one). However, they made the decision to only use this book for ONE YEAR, and then switch to an entirely different one. I told my students at the beginning of the semester that their book would be worthless on resale and thus they should beg or borrow (though not steal) the old edition from a friend to save the money. I imagine many other instructors didn't bother to explain this.
If I read the article correctly, they actually charged her MORE than what they paid the thief. The idea of charging someone for returning their stolen goods is just unbelievable to me. Why doesn't EB file a lawsuit against the thief to recoup THEIR losses?
These rolling retests require the driver to take the test as the car is moving.
Is highway safety really encouraged by making every driver fumble with the testing device while driving? I thought that taking your eyes off of the road even for a second was dangerous, and now they want to make drivers do it just to prove they're not drinking while zooming down the highway?
It's the answering, not the ringing
on
Cell-Phone Wars
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I don't get upset when someone's phone goes off someplace inappropriate; we all are guilty of forgetting to shut it off from time to time. I changed my ringtone so it makes one quiet "beep" that could be mistaken for an old calculator-watch.
What bothers me is when people proceed to have conversations in inappropriate places. In the middle of a college lecture, it's not unheard of for students to answer and begin chatting on their phone. I haven't had that happen to me in the classes I teach, but I did have a student try to do this in the middle of an exam. He quickly said goodbye and shut off the phone as I reached to confiscate it. For all I know the person on the other end was giving him answers. My rule of thumb is: if I'm somewhere where having a conversation with the person next to me is inappropriate, I shouldn't have a cell phone conversation there either.
In college I had (XXX) PAL-SEXY. I was so sad I had to leave it behind and get a new one the next year. People were still trying to call my old number to reach me two years later.
I'm a Penn State grad student, but only on-campus students get the service right now. Also, as a grad student, it's not clear that I'll ever be included -- I might just get the faculty/staff "discount" on a subscription.
Slashdot Mirror
I remember my brother and I finding an old home Pong machine at a neighbor's garage sale for $5. My parents were horrified to watch us hook it up, because they had just purchased us a brand-spanking-new Super NES. I think I was about 13, my brother about 11, so we were approximately the same age as the kids in the article. We knew that Pong was an early video game, we had even played the homage included in Commander Keen 6(?), and we were curious to play it. So it wouldn't surprise me if today's kids are curious about the "classic" games.
The polarization is making it difficult to talk about any remotely political topics in a balanced way to find solutions or even common ground. Take, for example, education (soul-sucking registration required).
But reading about the last fiasco on Slashdot last week finally convinced me to switch over to Firefox. So the "ads" for Firefox here actually do reach some of us who should know better but are lazy, like me.
Why not just give them cash? Some teens and tweens aren't very wise with their choices, and I prefer to let their parents worry about their spending. For example: one Christmas my grandparents gave both my brother and myself decent checks. Mine went into a bank account where I slowly depleted it over the course of several months for textbooks and entertainment in college. My younger high-school age brother immediately spent the entire thing on fake Asian-looking swords from a hobby store. My parents had to ban all relatives from giving him cash for a few years because they were so horrified by how he blew a huge chunk of money. Gift certificates would have avoided that problem.
Adults are a different issue. My grandmother likes to write me checks but tell me what I'm supposed to spend it on (e.g., furniture). That's sort of like a gift certificate in the sense of indicating where the money should be spent, but I can choose which furniture store to visit. And I still often give my brother gift certificates because the sword incident sticks in my mind. *grin*
This occurred fairly close to Yankee Candle's headquarters, at a mall in Enfield, Connecticut (about an hour away). If I recall correctly, the smaller store changed its layout rather than fight it out in court, and I think it eventually went out of business, but I don't live there anymore so am not certain.
While not exactly a la carte, I did come across this fact sheet that describes a little known provision about getting individual channels.
...when most people still keep their tax receipts in shoeboxes?
My father has managed to (start to) flush two down the toilet, AND baked one in the same pan as a turkey. I think he saved the latter for about a year, it was still in one piece but weirdly melted, looked like a Dali work.
As a Penn Stater, I noted that our student newspaper opined today that the trustees are spending WAY too much time congratulating themselves over the deal with Napster. File sharing may be important (or may not be), but universities are starting to focus on it above other concerns. The RIAA targeting college students through their institutions only helps to give these universities something to focus on other than their real problems.
Plumbers, hairdressers, landscapers, etc., are all jobs that can't be outsourced the way IT jobs can (and increasingly are these days). An electrician in China can't fix the wiring problems in your kitchen. I suspect there may be some job satisfaction stemming from the fact that you know your job will always be there for you.
I saw an ad for "diet water" in the Sunday circulars. I wonder how you reduce the calories of water.
I imagine we'll soon see warning labels posted on every bottle of spring water.
I tried to coax my parents into letting me put the Google toolbar on their computer for the purpose of blocking their popups. The problem is, my parents use some popups, like on news sites when they click on "E-mail this to a friend" and it pops up in another window. I told them this was fine, they could hold down CTRL and it would work fine. My dad told me this was "too complicated". As my dad is not helpless in front of a computer, this frustrated me to no end. They'd rather deal with hundreds of popups to avoid missing the few they select themselves.
For the calculus classes here, there actually is a lot of thought put in to which textbook to use. The problem is, not as much thought is given to student expenses. For example, when a new edition of the calculus book we were using came out, TPTB decided they didn't like the new one. So they got permission to reprint the old one, with extra problems designed for our students (which I refused to assign so students could use the older edition instead of having to buy the reprinted one). However, they made the decision to only use this book for ONE YEAR, and then switch to an entirely different one. I told my students at the beginning of the semester that their book would be worthless on resale and thus they should beg or borrow (though not steal) the old edition from a friend to save the money. I imagine many other instructors didn't bother to explain this.
If I read the article correctly, they actually charged her MORE than what they paid the thief. The idea of charging someone for returning their stolen goods is just unbelievable to me. Why doesn't EB file a lawsuit against the thief to recoup THEIR losses?
Is highway safety really encouraged by making every driver fumble with the testing device while driving? I thought that taking your eyes off of the road even for a second was dangerous, and now they want to make drivers do it just to prove they're not drinking while zooming down the highway?
What bothers me is when people proceed to have conversations in inappropriate places. In the middle of a college lecture, it's not unheard of for students to answer and begin chatting on their phone. I haven't had that happen to me in the classes I teach, but I did have a student try to do this in the middle of an exam. He quickly said goodbye and shut off the phone as I reached to confiscate it. For all I know the person on the other end was giving him answers. My rule of thumb is: if I'm somewhere where having a conversation with the person next to me is inappropriate, I shouldn't have a cell phone conversation there either.
In college I had (XXX) PAL-SEXY. I was so sad I had to leave it behind and get a new one the next year. People were still trying to call my old number to reach me two years later.
I'm a Penn State grad student, but only on-campus students get the service right now. Also, as a grad student, it's not clear that I'll ever be included -- I might just get the faculty/staff "discount" on a subscription.