the only benefit you seem to apply to this service is that if a child is lost, the parent can help them. (to more or less quote myself from another post) this service will not let parents know if their children are abusing drugs or having unsafe sex, this service will not tell parents if their child is driving while drunk and if said child encounters a rapist or murderer odds are the parents knowing the child's location would not save the child from said person's actions. correct me if i am wrong but these seem to be the real concerns of modern parents.
now wouldnt a cell phone from which a parent could call to or children could call from elevate the 'lost' problem without the invasion of the child's privacy? the parent who feels the need to literally track the movements of their child needs to either learn to let go a little bit and let their child grow or take a serious look at how they raised their child to behave in such a deviant manner as to make such monitoring necessary.
i think i went out of my way here in pointing out that it is in fact not a very useful tool. the parent that uses said tool invades the privacy of their child to little positive gain other than to discourage the most mundane of discretions. all a device such as this does is grant parents greater control over children who would likely benefit more from a bit of privacy.
honestly i dont have a problem with companies that dont give a bonus for christmas. you're hired for a certain salary and really arent entitled to anything else.
what i do have a problem with is companies that give out insulting gifts. a buddy of mine working for a mortgage company that was experiencing record profits got him for his employee of the month bonus (i know, not the same as a christmas bonus) a paper bag full of stuff out of the vending machine.
as a counter point, i think older kids need privacy and time out from under the parental thumb to help grow and mature. the very fact that you can track them at the push of a button ruins this for them.
also, i might add that allot of parents would not be so benevolent as you with this service and would use it to catch their kids playing hooky occasionally or going out when they're supposed to be sleeping over at a friends house. a little deviancy isnt a bad thing for kids to engage in and if you raised them right they wont get into too much trouble. likewise, i dont think this device can really stop most of the real problems your kids might get into. should they encounter a rapist, you knowing where they are probably wont stop the act from happening. should they be drinking and driving the gps unit will not tell you if they are drunk. should they be doing drugs or having unsafe sex the gps unit will likely not help you determin this.
Just such a device may allow my wife and I to manage her intake of diseasèd cock; nevertheless: $0.50/ping is a good way to rack up frivolous, surveillant dollars.
jesus christ. maybe if you'd just raise your daughter right she'd make the guys use a condom, sleep with guys selectivly and wouldnt just let them stick their "diseased cocks" in her.
seriously, it sounds as if you're expecting your upcoming daughter to become a slut.
this kind of thing is horrible. how is a kid supposed to be a kid if they are continually being monitored by their parents? all i can think of is how bland and boring my own childhood would have been had i been burdened by such technology.
part of growing up is spending time away from ones parents, not being continually monitored by them.
not only do i disagree with the author on the same point as the parent but i think this whole article is just a waste of time. all it is, is the same idle speculation that everyone else is doing on the internet with nothing of real substance to back up any of the claims. who cares if it's "from a developers point of view" if said developer is as uninsightful as everybody else out there. plus he seems to be sloppy on the details like this little bit:
"In the optical media era, Sony brought out the Playstation, Sega gave us the Saturn, and Nintendo hung onto cartridges for one more generation with the N64. From being a major contender, Nintendo dropped into third place and has since failed to recover."
The saturn was number 2 for that generation? what? not only did the N64 have much better sales (over 3 times the sales: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_ video_game_consoles), but it also enjoyed a much greater lifespan. of course it got absolutely destroyed by the ps1 but it most definitely was not number 3 to sega's 2 for that generation.
he also glosses over important facts in pushing forward his 2 and a half consoles theory (which i think is rediculous)such as the fact that the market is expanding, creating more and more room for other consoles (you can see this by viewing the sales numbers in the above link). shoot, if you want to call the sega saturn a viable contender for its generation then you would have to except the fact that there were 4 major systems in this last generation with the dreamcast showing sales numbers just a bit greater than the saturn did in its generation.
if you really trace things out we've gone from one dominant company with nintendo's nes and a weak second in the sega master system, to two major companies with the genesis and the snes, to 3 with the saturn, n64 and ps1 (although the saturn did terribly here), to a more stable 3 with the gamecube, ps2 and xbox (with even a weak 4th in the dreamcast). Following this trend i think it stands to reason that there now might be room for three successful systems competing on the same level that the genesis and snes were competing at.
I am sure that it will focus to much on action sequences (for the most part the first had very few) and Technobabble/Technobuzz, that will confuse the uninitiated and make the rest of us groan.
one of the things that i enjoyed about the original was that most of the things the main character did with phones or computers were realistic. one could really do them given the proper knowledge and tools (at least back when the film was made). I agree with the above post that given the people in charge of the movie it is likely we will not see this kind of realism in the movie.
"Yeah it's ridiculous, we have to endure coffee that's too cold to drink because the restaurant has to serve it at a temperature that's appropriate for pouring down your pants rather than drinking."
i've said this in a couple posts now. where are you getting your coffee from? i have always been given hot coffee, too hot to drink right away in fact, at every place i've gotten coffee at. the only exception being when some one left the coffee off the heating pad for too long.
maybe you should stop asking for ice cubes in your coffee? or maybe you should stop making bold exadurations?
i have never been served luke warm coffee under any conditions other than the rare coffee pot left off the heating pad for too long scenario. maybe this is a regional problem? where are you from?
or maybe you're just blatantly exaggerating and no one gets served luke warm coffee on a reguluar basis because no one would buy it at that temperature because it's gross?
that's funny. every time I get coffee from a restuarant it's hot. granted it's not "give me third degree burns" hot but i think i can live without that.
"I keep hearing how the coffee was unexpectedly hot - this is such crap - coffee is made by passing BOILING water through the grounds. Boiling water is hot. so you cant get a hot cup of coffee anymore but yet restuarnts still make it using this process that some how necessitates customers being served boiling, third degree inducing, hot coffee? huh...
all that happened as a result of this lawsuit is that restuarants take greater care in not having their heating pads for their coffee turned up to rediculously high levels.
"everyone knows that coffee is hot and can fucking burn you" but not to the level of third degree burns. almost everyone who's an avid coffee drinker (such as myself) has spilled hot coffee on themselves at some point in their lives. it hurts, makes the skin a little tender for a little bit and leaves you with a big, embarrassing, cold, wet, brown spot on your pants. it sucks alot but that's about it.
she was not suing over something like this. the coffee served her was served at an incredibly unsafe temperature. no restaurant serves coffee at this temperature because it is a blatant safety hazard. she literally had to go to the hospital because of something as common place as spilled coffee. all she wanted was her medical expenses recouped for being served something so unsafe.
how anybody who knows the facts of the case can make the claim that this is frivolous at any level is beyond me.
i've said it before and i'll probably say it again, not another MMORPG. I don't want to play a game that basicaly has no story, i dont want to play a game with a bunch of idiots i dont know, i dont want to be forced into guilds to get things occomplished and i don't want to pay a monthly fee for the game i just spent 60 dollars on. it's really sad to see the state of the single player rpg scene on the pc. sure we just had two recent big releases but prior to that there hadnt been anything big in quite some time (compared to one or two MMOs coming out ever year). i'm just really upset seeing this solid staple of the single player rpg genre being made into a MMO. I want fallout 3.
don't get me wrong though, i know alot of people like the MMO thing as it is currently done and i dont want to knock that. i just hate seeing all this developing time and money being spent on titles that had previously been solid parts of other genres but are now being made into MMOs.
i took the rout of home invasion mostly because of this line on your part: "While a taser makes an effective street weapon (providing you can hit your target and then run away), in your own home it is fairly useless as you still have to contend with the attacker being in your home when he recovers in 10 seconds." in retrospect you obviously werent bringing the discussion around to home invasion by saying that (so my bad on that) but this isnt really a big deal either way.
while i will readily agree that a gun does enjoy many advantages, with a non-lethal approach one can be proactive with a would be assailant rather than sitting back and waiting. furthermore if i am misinterpreting the situation (the individual does not, in fact, mean me any harm) and the person does something stupid i wont be in a situation where i ended some ones life over a tragic misunderstanding.
another thing that comes to mind is the responsible use of the gun. it is not uncommon to hear about instances of home burglaries in which the burglar turns to flee when confronted by a gun and is then shot in the back. in the heat of the moment, just woken up, pissed off there's a burglar in your home, even some one like yourself who seems to have a good understanding on responsible gun use can make a mistake. this even happens to cops and american soldiers, people trained to a much greater degree in the use of their weapons than the average civilian.
pretty much what it comes down to with guns and i is their finality. dead is dead. an irresponsible gun owner (and there are many) or a simple misunderstanding or mistake and some one has just tragically lost their life. other tools such as mace just dont have as great of a potential to kill some one even when irresponsibly used.
Mace requires you to hit the face, be well within striking distance of your attacker and has a high probability of hitting you as well as your attacker.
given that we're discussing a home invasion here we're talking about pretty close quarters. it's pretty easy to hit some one in the face with mace under such conditions. as for your statement about a "high" probability of hitting ones self all i can say is that based on how i have seen mace work i can only disagree and ask for some sort of evidence (some sort of study giving a probability would be nice). baseball bats also work very well inside houses.
Civilian tasers have a maximum fire distance of 15 feet, and are only effective while the taser is on.
fifteen feet is more than enough room to work with in most houses.
Once the taser is no longer discharging your attacker will regain consciousness quick, and have the added benefit of all the adrenaline his body just dumped into his system. While a taser makes an effective street weapon (providing you can hit your target and then run away), in your own home it is fairly useless as you still have to contend with the attacker being in your home when he recovers in 10 seconds.
i am completely confident in my own abilities to disarm and pin and intruder after stunning them. i will say, however, that mace or a bat would be the preferred solution here.
By the way, both mace and a taser could kill a child just as dead as a gun.
at the age you're talking about simply putting either mace or a taser in my top dresser drawer should easily keep it out of any child so young as to be able to be killed by mace or taser. a gun will kill a child of any age, however.
i might also add that you're dodging my point that most home intruders are simply after your property. dishing out death for something as petty as theft doesnt seem terribly ethical (and lets face it, hand guns are for killing people and that's all).
a taser would have done the same thing. mace could have done the job too.
here's an agrument for you. i can protect my house just as well with mace and a taser as with a gun without subjecting some one to the death penalty for probably just wanting to steal my tv.
"People can try and twist what was in the constitution all they want but even a moron knows the idea behind the gun law was not to protect people from Russia, or to protect people from theft, or to protect people from gang members.. it was to protect us from our own government."...and the indians, the british and any other major european power (except for maybe russia). america was hardly the secure nation it is today when it gained independence. yes many of the founding fathers wanted the freedom to own guns to placate their own fear of government. many others, however, advocated gun ownership as a means of protecting ourselves from foreign threats.
"To them I say: consider marijuanna. Marijuanna has been illegal throughout my entire lifetime (born 1980) and yet, I have known casual marijuanna smokers in Colorado and in Long Island. They are criminals, each and every one of them, but they are not persuaded by the law. Some cite cultural or spiritual reasons, others simply like it, but they all agree: bugger off with your rules, this is what FREEDOM is all about."
while the rest of your post is pretty insitefull the last bit there i dont think applies well to the gun debate as marijuanna is not a weapon.
for starters it's hard to compare violent crime rates between countries because different countries have different deffinitions on what constitutes a violent crime. almost every country, however, agrees on what a homocide is which makes this a much better source for comparison.
i had a hard time finding more current data but as of 2000 the UK's homicide rate was quite a bit lower than the united states (http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap- crime-murders-per-capita). even if there are more muggings in the UK, which i havent checked on yet, i'd much rather have my wallet stolen than be killed.
anti-gun culture? this country is more pro-gun than any other industrialized nation i can think of. where else in the first world does a lobying group organized around gun ownership hold so much power. what other country in the industrialized world has gun ownership rates as high as ours?
plus it's always a fun fact that our country is always near or at the top of the list for violent crime in industrialized nations every year.
Slashdot Mirror
plus back in the 50's people didnt get kickass dead milkmen refrences.
the only benefit you seem to apply to this service is that if a child is lost, the parent can help them. (to more or less quote myself from another post) this service will not let parents know if their children are abusing drugs or having unsafe sex, this service will not tell parents if their child is driving while drunk and if said child encounters a rapist or murderer odds are the parents knowing the child's location would not save the child from said person's actions. correct me if i am wrong but these seem to be the real concerns of modern parents.
now wouldnt a cell phone from which a parent could call to or children could call from elevate the 'lost' problem without the invasion of the child's privacy? the parent who feels the need to literally track the movements of their child needs to either learn to let go a little bit and let their child grow or take a serious look at how they raised their child to behave in such a deviant manner as to make such monitoring necessary.
i think i went out of my way here in pointing out that it is in fact not a very useful tool. the parent that uses said tool invades the privacy of their child to little positive gain other than to discourage the most mundane of discretions. all a device such as this does is grant parents greater control over children who would likely benefit more from a bit of privacy.
honestly i dont have a problem with companies that dont give a bonus for christmas. you're hired for a certain salary and really arent entitled to anything else.
what i do have a problem with is companies that give out insulting gifts. a buddy of mine working for a mortgage company that was experiencing record profits got him for his employee of the month bonus (i know, not the same as a christmas bonus) a paper bag full of stuff out of the vending machine.
as a counter point, i think older kids need privacy and time out from under the parental thumb to help grow and mature. the very fact that you can track them at the push of a button ruins this for them.
also, i might add that allot of parents would not be so benevolent as you with this service and would use it to catch their kids playing hooky occasionally or going out when they're supposed to be sleeping over at a friends house. a little deviancy isnt a bad thing for kids to engage in and if you raised them right they wont get into too much trouble. likewise, i dont think this device can really stop most of the real problems your kids might get into. should they encounter a rapist, you knowing where they are probably wont stop the act from happening. should they be drinking and driving the gps unit will not tell you if they are drunk. should they be doing drugs or having unsafe sex the gps unit will likely not help you determin this.
i'm pretty sure any parent who tracked their kid would also be angry with the child for turning their cell phone off. this is hardly a solution.
"Our daughters are becoming sexualized at an increasingly younger age;"
well for starters "our daughters" used to get married and have children at 13 years old if you read your history.
what used to be sex qua liberation is quickly becoming an enslaving self-prostitution.
all i can say is, no, i completely disagree. please provide some substance behind your claim.
"You may notice an inconsistency: agitation about sex-crimes is coupled with sexualizing pre-teen-propaganda."
i'm pretty sure peole have always been extremely concerned about sex crimes. plus i think you're spinning conspiracy theories here.
Just such a device may allow my wife and I to manage her intake of diseasèd cock; nevertheless: $0.50/ping is a good way to rack up frivolous, surveillant dollars.
jesus christ . maybe if you'd just raise your daughter right she'd make the guys use a condom, sleep with guys selectivly and wouldnt just let them stick their "diseased cocks" in her.
seriously, it sounds as if you're expecting your upcoming daughter to become a slut.
this kind of thing is horrible. how is a kid supposed to be a kid if they are continually being monitored by their parents? all i can think of is how bland and boring my own childhood would have been had i been burdened by such technology.
part of growing up is spending time away from ones parents, not being continually monitored by them.
not only do i disagree with the author on the same point as the parent but i think this whole article is just a waste of time. all it is, is the same idle speculation that everyone else is doing on the internet with nothing of real substance to back up any of the claims. who cares if it's "from a developers point of view" if said developer is as uninsightful as everybody else out there. plus he seems to be sloppy on the details like this little bit:
_ video_game_consoles), but it also enjoyed a much greater lifespan. of course it got absolutely destroyed by the ps1 but it most definitely was not number 3 to sega's 2 for that generation.
"In the optical media era, Sony brought out the Playstation, Sega gave us the Saturn, and Nintendo hung onto cartridges for one more generation with the N64. From being a major contender, Nintendo dropped into third place and has since failed to recover."
The saturn was number 2 for that generation? what? not only did the N64 have much better sales (over 3 times the sales: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling
he also glosses over important facts in pushing forward his 2 and a half consoles theory (which i think is rediculous)such as the fact that the market is expanding, creating more and more room for other consoles (you can see this by viewing the sales numbers in the above link). shoot, if you want to call the sega saturn a viable contender for its generation then you would have to except the fact that there were 4 major systems in this last generation with the dreamcast showing sales numbers just a bit greater than the saturn did in its generation.
if you really trace things out we've gone from one dominant company with nintendo's nes and a weak second in the sega master system, to two major companies with the genesis and the snes, to 3 with the saturn, n64 and ps1 (although the saturn did terribly here), to a more stable 3 with the gamecube, ps2 and xbox (with even a weak 4th in the dreamcast). Following this trend i think it stands to reason that there now might be room for three successful systems competing on the same level that the genesis and snes were competing at.
I am sure that it will focus to much on action sequences (for the most part the first had very few) and Technobabble/Technobuzz, that will confuse the uninitiated and make the rest of us groan.
one of the things that i enjoyed about the original was that most of the things the main character did with phones or computers were realistic. one could really do them given the proper knowledge and tools (at least back when the film was made). I agree with the above post that given the people in charge of the movie it is likely we will not see this kind of realism in the movie.
"Yeah it's ridiculous, we have to endure coffee that's too cold to drink because the restaurant has to serve it at a temperature that's appropriate for pouring down your pants rather than drinking."
i've said this in a couple posts now. where are you getting your coffee from? i have always been given hot coffee, too hot to drink right away in fact, at every place i've gotten coffee at. the only exception being when some one left the coffee off the heating pad for too long.
maybe you should stop asking for ice cubes in your coffee? or maybe you should stop making bold exadurations?
i have never been served luke warm coffee under any conditions other than the rare coffee pot left off the heating pad for too long scenario. maybe this is a regional problem? where are you from?
or maybe you're just blatantly exaggerating and no one gets served luke warm coffee on a reguluar basis because no one would buy it at that temperature because it's gross?
that's funny. every time I get coffee from a restuarant it's hot. granted it's not "give me third degree burns" hot but i think i can live without that.
"I keep hearing how the coffee was unexpectedly hot - this is such crap - coffee is made by passing BOILING water through the grounds. Boiling water is hot. so you cant get a hot cup of coffee anymore but yet restuarnts still make it using this process that some how necessitates customers being served boiling, third degree inducing, hot coffee? huh...
all that happened as a result of this lawsuit is that restuarants take greater care in not having their heating pads for their coffee turned up to rediculously high levels.
"everyone knows that coffee is hot and can fucking burn you" but not to the level of third degree burns. almost everyone who's an avid coffee drinker (such as myself) has spilled hot coffee on themselves at some point in their lives. it hurts, makes the skin a little tender for a little bit and leaves you with a big, embarrassing, cold, wet, brown spot on your pants. it sucks alot but that's about it.
she was not suing over something like this. the coffee served her was served at an incredibly unsafe temperature. no restaurant serves coffee at this temperature because it is a blatant safety hazard. she literally had to go to the hospital because of something as common place as spilled coffee. all she wanted was her medical expenses recouped for being served something so unsafe.
how anybody who knows the facts of the case can make the claim that this is frivolous at any level is beyond me.
i've said it before and i'll probably say it again, not another MMORPG. I don't want to play a game that basicaly has no story, i dont want to play a game with a bunch of idiots i dont know, i dont want to be forced into guilds to get things occomplished and i don't want to pay a monthly fee for the game i just spent 60 dollars on. it's really sad to see the state of the single player rpg scene on the pc. sure we just had two recent big releases but prior to that there hadnt been anything big in quite some time (compared to one or two MMOs coming out ever year). i'm just really upset seeing this solid staple of the single player rpg genre being made into a MMO. I want fallout 3.
don't get me wrong though, i know alot of people like the MMO thing as it is currently done and i dont want to knock that. i just hate seeing all this developing time and money being spent on titles that had previously been solid parts of other genres but are now being made into MMOs.
i took the rout of home invasion mostly because of this line on your part: "While a taser makes an effective street weapon (providing you can hit your target and then run away), in your own home it is fairly useless as you still have to contend with the attacker being in your home when he recovers in 10 seconds." in retrospect you obviously werent bringing the discussion around to home invasion by saying that (so my bad on that) but this isnt really a big deal either way.
while i will readily agree that a gun does enjoy many advantages, with a non-lethal approach one can be proactive with a would be assailant rather than sitting back and waiting. furthermore if i am misinterpreting the situation (the individual does not, in fact, mean me any harm) and the person does something stupid i wont be in a situation where i ended some ones life over a tragic misunderstanding.
another thing that comes to mind is the responsible use of the gun. it is not uncommon to hear about instances of home burglaries in which the burglar turns to flee when confronted by a gun and is then shot in the back. in the heat of the moment, just woken up, pissed off there's a burglar in your home, even some one like yourself who seems to have a good understanding on responsible gun use can make a mistake. this even happens to cops and american soldiers, people trained to a much greater degree in the use of their weapons than the average civilian.
pretty much what it comes down to with guns and i is their finality. dead is dead. an irresponsible gun owner (and there are many) or a simple misunderstanding or mistake and some one has just tragically lost their life. other tools such as mace just dont have as great of a potential to kill some one even when irresponsibly used.
Mace requires you to hit the face, be well within striking distance of your attacker and has a high probability of hitting you as well as your attacker.
given that we're discussing a home invasion here we're talking about pretty close quarters. it's pretty easy to hit some one in the face with mace under such conditions. as for your statement about a "high" probability of hitting ones self all i can say is that based on how i have seen mace work i can only disagree and ask for some sort of evidence (some sort of study giving a probability would be nice). baseball bats also work very well inside houses.
Civilian tasers have a maximum fire distance of 15 feet, and are only effective while the taser is on.
fifteen feet is more than enough room to work with in most houses.
Once the taser is no longer discharging your attacker will regain consciousness quick, and have the added benefit of all the adrenaline his body just dumped into his system. While a taser makes an effective street weapon (providing you can hit your target and then run away), in your own home it is fairly useless as you still have to contend with the attacker being in your home when he recovers in 10 seconds.
i am completely confident in my own abilities to disarm and pin and intruder after stunning them. i will say, however, that mace or a bat would be the preferred solution here.
By the way, both mace and a taser could kill a child just as dead as a gun.
at the age you're talking about simply putting either mace or a taser in my top dresser drawer should easily keep it out of any child so young as to be able to be killed by mace or taser. a gun will kill a child of any age, however.
i might also add that you're dodging my point that most home intruders are simply after your property. dishing out death for something as petty as theft doesnt seem terribly ethical (and lets face it, hand guns are for killing people and that's all).
a taser would have done the same thing. mace could have done the job too.
here's an agrument for you. i can protect my house just as well with mace and a taser as with a gun without subjecting some one to the death penalty for probably just wanting to steal my tv.
first off, none of that makes marijuanna a weapon. second, we're talking about personal marijuanna usage here, not the many diverse usages for hemp.
"People can try and twist what was in the constitution all they want but even a moron knows the idea behind the gun law was not to protect people from Russia, or to protect people from theft, or to protect people from gang members.. it was to protect us from our own government." ...and the indians, the british and any other major european power (except for maybe russia). america was hardly the secure nation it is today when it gained independence. yes many of the founding fathers wanted the freedom to own guns to placate their own fear of government. many others, however, advocated gun ownership as a means of protecting ourselves from foreign threats.
i agree completely. just the other day my handgun made it "easier and more convenient" for my kid to shoot himself.
"To them I say: consider marijuanna. Marijuanna has been illegal throughout my entire lifetime (born 1980) and yet, I have known casual marijuanna smokers in Colorado and in Long Island. They are criminals, each and every one of them, but they are not persuaded by the law. Some cite cultural or spiritual reasons, others simply like it, but they all agree: bugger off with your rules, this is what FREEDOM is all about."
while the rest of your post is pretty insitefull the last bit there i dont think applies well to the gun debate as marijuanna is not a weapon.
for starters it's hard to compare violent crime rates between countries because different countries have different deffinitions on what constitutes a violent crime. almost every country, however, agrees on what a homocide is which makes this a much better source for comparison.
- crime-murders-per-capita). even if there are more muggings in the UK, which i havent checked on yet, i'd much rather have my wallet stolen than be killed.
i had a hard time finding more current data but as of 2000 the UK's homicide rate was quite a bit lower than the united states (http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur_percap
anti-gun culture? this country is more pro-gun than any other industrialized nation i can think of. where else in the first world does a lobying group organized around gun ownership hold so much power. what other country in the industrialized world has gun ownership rates as high as ours?
plus it's always a fun fact that our country is always near or at the top of the list for violent crime in industrialized nations every year.