The music publishing industry has asked for a cut of all instrument sales to compensate them for all the people that hear a piece of music and then figure out how to play it without paying for the sheet music. An ASCAP press release states "Our members are losing billions of dollars per year on people freely pirating their intellectual property. If it weren't for our member's IP no one would ever purchase an instrument. The makers of those instruments have been getting a free ride on the back of our IP since time immemorial. We're demanding that congress enact legislation to ensure that we are fairly compensated. Please note, that while we are focusing musical instrument manufacturers with this proposal, it does not preclude us from going after other freeloaders, such as people humming or singing in the shower. The final, fair solution may involve some sort of tax on everyone."
Wait... what planet do you live on? I mean seriously, I've never met a single person ever who prefers a nipple to a trackpad. Especially when it's one of apple's excellent multi-touch trackpads.
You must not have known many thinkpad owners, then. I've known many people who owned thinkpads that had both trackpoints and touch pads, and they generally disable the touch pads.
Aside from the length of copyrights, there's a large problem with the amount of damages that can be assessed for non-commercial distribution. That a person is liable for thousands of dollars for each recording sitting in a publicly accessible directory, whether or not any distribution has occurred, or was intended, is pretty outrageous. Damages need to take into account that many people download content that they never would have paid money for, so that every download is not a lost sale. When I explain what's happening to most people they agree that it's unjust, but they don't see how it affects them. When I explain how their children's online activities could end up costing them thousands, plus legal costs, they start to become more concerned. That they should be liable for not only what their children do, but also for anything that their children's friends do on their home network is doubly concerning.
Where do you get you statistic that morbidity and mortality from breast cancer leveled out more than a decade ago? The American Cancer Society claims that death rate from breast cancer has been declining since 1990.
Between 1975 and 1990, the death rate for all races combined increased by 0.4% annually;
Between 1990 and 2002, the death rate decreased by 2.3% annually.
Unless there was a huge drop in mortality from '90 to '97, and then nothing between '97 and '07, it seems unlikely that mortality rates would have leveled off more than a decade ago. In any case, I think it's reasonable to spend $20 billion annually on research and treatment for a disease that kills, disfigures, and sickens 1 in 24 women by the time they reach age 60 and that kills over 40,000 of them annually.
How much of the 1 to 2 billion for the DoD is for the treatment of active duty service members and their spouses? This would constitute a lot of women who have the potential for breast cancer that the military is on the hook to pay for. Young men tend to not come down with prostate cancer, so the DOD would not be spending nearly as much to treat them. It would seem reasonable that the DoD should be spending significantly more on breast cancer. Do you have a reference for the 1 to 2 billion dollar figure that breaks down where the money is going? How much for research, treatment, counseling, cosmetic surgery, prosthetics, etc?
Dr. Zietman is radiation oncologist at Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital, which operates a proton center. A proton beam is another radiation therapy. Both traditional x-ray therapy and proton beam therapy are radiation oncology therapies available to him at the center where he works. Why do you assume he has a vested interest in one type of radiation therapy over another?
The article doesn't say that there is no benefit to these facilities, just that more are being built than may be warranted. They cite examples where they are the best possible therapy. They also quote knowledgeable experts who feel that they are being used in cases where significantly cheaper, and just as effective, alternatives are available.
You'd be wrong if you thought doctors are not susceptible to patient pressure when it come to the course of treatment. That's why major pharmaceutical companies run advertisements for prescription drugs directly to the consumer.
For an oncologist, if a proton beam and radiation therapy have identical track records, and a patient has a preference for the proton beam and the means to pay, they'll sign off on the proton beam. Sometimes the means to pay is merely a good enough credit rating that the patient can finance the treatment. There's always that second mortgage. Medical expenses are one of the primary causes of personal bankruptcy.
As you say, your father was treated years ago. What's the current leakage rate for modern x-ray therapy? I saw an article for one cancer center that claimed a long term incontinence rate of less than 1%. Another site described the incontinence rate from radiation as negligible. My wife, who's been an oncology nurse for over 30 years, and has seen cancer treatments advance over the years, thinks the incontinence and leakage rates you're quoting for x-ray therapy are much, much higher than what she sees now a days. I'd be interested in seeing a study based on recent data. As to treating a re-occurance, my wife said it's true, you can't use x-ray therapy again, but that may be the least of your worries. A re-occurance of prostate cancer is a good indication that it's metastasized, with the most likely site being the bones. At that point you're looking at a whole different treatment regimen than just radiating the prostate.
Where'd you get the 15x figure from? According to the National Prostate Cancer Coalition, "Breast cancer research will receive about $870 million next year. Compare that to $485 million for prostate cancer research."
It's arguably due to the relatively lower social and economic impact of prostate cancer versus breast cancer. Prostate cancer is uncommon in men less than 45, but becomes more common as men age. The average age at the time of diagnosis is 70. However, many men never know they have prostate cancer. Autopsy studies of men who died of other causes have found prostate cancer in thirty percent of men in their 50s, and in eighty percent of men in their 70s. There are about 30,000 deaths a year from prostate cancer, with the vast majority of those being in the elderly.
The biggest risk factor for prostate cancer is age. Which is to say that since we're living longer we're seeing a lot more of it. Many times prostate cancer is left untreated because the patient is so elderly and the cancer is growing so slowly that they are likely to die of something else first.
Contrast that with breast cancer. Breast cancer is much more aggressive and it is likely to occur at a much younger age than prostate cancer. Breast cancer's impact on women in the prime child rearing and wage earning years is much larger than prostate cancer is on men. The following statistics from the American Cancer Society illustrate this very well.
Breast cancer incidence by age.
Birth to age 39: 1 in 228
Age 40 to 59: 1 in 24
Age 60 to 79: 1 in 14
Prostate cancer incidence by age.
Birth to age 39: 1 in 19,299
Age 40 to 59: 1 in 45
Age 60 to 79: 1 in 7
About 40,000 people (men and women) die from breast cancer a year in the US. About 30,000 men a year die from prostate cancer. Considering the greater social and economic impact of breast cancer, a 1.8 to 1 difference in federal research funding doesn't seem entirely lopsided.
As to money spent on treatment, I think society is just willing to spend more money on helping younger people survive and be productive than it is to help an old geezer make it another five years. If the purpose of medical research and care is to extend lives, it seems reasonable to spend significantly more on breast cancer than prostate cancer.
For most of the world's population the impact of breast cancer versus prostate cancer is much greater due to lower life expectancies. Men rarely live long to be affected by prostate cancer, but women are dying in their prime from breast cancer.
I don't think it's an issue of the US federal government investing too much in breast cancer research and not enough in prostate cancer research, but that not enough is being invested in either one.
The critics are respected radiation oncologists who see plenty of suffering, but don't see proton beam therapy as the most effective therapy in all cases. Maybe they'd rather offer patients treatments that are just as effective as proton beams but will leave them less in debt. Why push people to a $50,000 treatment regimen when in your professional opinion a $25,000 one will be just as effective?
No, it's shorthand for prominent and respected radiation oncologists who don't see any difference in cure rates and side effects for advanced x-ray therapy and proton beam therapy for many cancers. They are concerned that medical centers and their financial backers, which are investing over 100,000,000 USD per facility, are pushing patients to the new therapy just to recoup their expenses, with no real benefit for the patient. The article offers this example.
Dr. Zietman said that while protons were vital in treating certain rare tumors, they were little better than the latest X-ray technology in dealing with prostate cancer, the common disease that many proton centers are counting on for business.
"You can scarcely tell the difference between them except in price," he said. Medicare pays about $50,000 to treat prostate cancer with protons, almost twice as much as with X-rays.
Insurance companies frequently follow Medicare's lead, so we may find in a few years that we're paying gobs of money for proton beam treatments that do not offer better outcomes than alternatives. Once it gains acceptance as a standard treatment for cancers on which it offers no better outcome, we'll be paying a huge collective sum in taxes and insurance rates with no discernable benefit.
While often cited, it doesn't seem that Watson made that prediction. Apparently, the earliest known citation is a 1986 Usenet post. There aren't any speeches or documents of Watson's that contain this prediction. See the wikipedia article on Watson for more information. I have a biography of Watson, 'The Maverick and His Machine: Thomas Watson, Sr. and the Making of IBM', that also says there's no evidence he ever made that prediction.
It might be great for applications that are more read than write intensive. I'm currently working with a mid-size company whose LDAP servers are read from frequently, but not updated that often. A flash disk might be a good candidate in that situation.
I'd happily pay 10p more for the paper if it came without any ads or pamphlets.
Seems like you'd be able to do something like that with this system. From the summary: "Consumers would be able to purchase these DVDs at a lower price than regular DVDs and pay extra to enjoy their purchase ad-free without having to buy a second DVD."
Based on your recommendation I just visited them. I really like their pay what you think it's worth approach. I'll likely be purchasing music from them in the future. Thanks for recommending them.
Stimulating that region in a depressed person would probably result in someone who's optimistic about the chances of their next suicide attempt succeeding.
The/. article linked to a Washington Post article that was easily accessed by clicking on a link. The/. article was followed by a ton of posts that had relevant information and links on the health risks of RFID. The tags being implanted in animals are passive tags that operate in the low frequency range. Whether or not the tag is implanted exposure still occurs, so again, I don't see how RFID tags increase exposure. It's not as if the chips some how concentrate radio waves, with the implant area receiving more exposure than any other area of the body. The links that you posted were so poor in quality that they didn't, and still don't, leave me with any questions about the health risks of a 60 gigahertz technology. Not to say that there aren't risks, just that the links you chose didn't offer anything to the discussion.
I have hard time combining low frequency RFID tags with microwave rayguns and coming up with questions about the health affects of 60 gigahertz technology.
Considering that having an RFID chip implanted in the body does not increase exposure, I'm not sure how the RFID article demonstrates anything about increased exposure. The issue of the medical dangers from implanted RFID was covered in a previous/.article.You don't need to be a physiscian to post relevant links. I was questioning the relevancy of you're links.
Neither one of those links could be considered source material for the harmful effects of this sort of tecnology.
The first one reports on increased cancers at the site where RFID chips are implanted. It's not about exposure to radio energy so much as it is about having a radio receiver implanted in the body.
The second one doesn't offer up any facts related to the harmfulness of wireless technology. It's purely a specultative 'what if fluff' piece.
Got anything better?
Assume a wildly optimistic 30% collection rate, and we have 1800 watts delivered to the ground.
I don't know if the report is correct, but it claims that almost all of the beamed energy could be absorbed by the ground based collectors. I don't know if absobed necessarily means converted to usable electricity, though. From page 29 of the report:
Unlike terrestrial solar facilities, microwave receiving rectennas allow greater than 90% of ambient light to pass through, but absorb almost all of the beamed energy, generating less waste heat than terrestrial solar systems because of greater coupling efficiency. This means that the area underneath the rectenna can continue to be used for agricultural or pastoral purposes. To deliver any reasonably significant amount of baseload power, ground solar would need to cover huge regions of land with solar cells, which are major sources of waste heat. As a result, these ground solar farms would produce significant environmental impacts to their regions. The simultaneous major increases to the regional temperature, plus the blockage of sunlight from the ground, will likely kill off local plants, animals and insects that might inhabit the ground below or around these ground solar farms. This means that that a SBSP rectenna has less impact on the albedo or reflectivity of the Earth than a terrestrial solar plant of equivalent generating capacity. Moreover, the energy provided could facilitate water purification and irrigation, prevent frosts, extend growing seasons (if a little of the energy were used locally) etc. In the plains of the U.S. (e.g., South Dakota, etc), in subSaharan Africa, etc. etc. there are vast areas of arable land that could be both productive farm land and sites for SBSP rectennas.
"The final global effect is not obvious, but also important. While it may seem intuitively obvious that SBSP introduces heat into the biosphere by beaming more energy in, the net effect is quite the opposite. All energy put into the electrical grid will eventually be spent as heat, but the methods of generating electricity are of significant impact for determining which approach produces the least total global warming effect. Fossil fuel burning emits large amounts of waste heat and greenhouse gases, while terrestrial solar and wind power also emit significant amounts of waste heat via inefficient conversion. Likewise, SBSP also has solar conversion inefficiencies that produce waste heat, but the key difference is that the most of this waste heat creation occurs outside the biosphere to be radiated into space. The losses in the atmosphere are very small, on the order of a couple percent for the wavelengths considered. Because SBSP is not a greenhouse gas emitter (with the exception of initial manufacturing and launch fuel emissions), it does not contribute to the trapping action and retention of heat in the biosphere."
Last I heard concert attendance and revenue were down or stagnating. Since you can't pirate concerts, it would seem to indicate that people just don't find the music being produced today compelling enough to spend an ever increasing amount of money on. I'm sure concert promoters would like to have something like file sharing to blame poor attendance on, but they're stuck with the sad fact that demand for their product, at the price they're asking, isn't what it once was. The RIAA needs to realize they're in the same position.
Over the last ten years, I've known literally hundreds of people that have used Thinkpads with trackpoints as their primary work machines, and this is the first time I've heard this complaint. This isn't to say that I like using the trackpoint, I don't, just that I've never known anyone to have this problem with them. I'm typing on a thinkpad now, and try as I might, it's not possible to casually cause errant clicks. I don't like the trackpoint because it causes the tip of my finger to become sore after prolonged usage. I'll use the trackpoint when it's not convenient or possible to use a mouse, in an airport or on a flight, for instance.
a 7 year old that says "fuck off" I'll bet you $80.00 that daddy says it on a regular basis.
You're neglecting to consider the power of peer influence. None of my adult relatives swore in my presence, but I sure knew how to cuss by the time I was in 5th grade. This was solely because a lot of my friends did. I never swore in front of my adult relatives, but I'd cuss outside of their ear shot.
One time, when my son was in kindergarten, he was sitting at home with me, my wife and my parents. A series of jokes were told, and everyone was laughing. All of a sudden my son blurts out 'you can kiss my fuckin' pussy!' Everyone gets quiet and looks over at my son. He knew at that point that perhaps he had said something inappropriate. I calmly asked my son why he had just said what had said. He said that all the older girls on the school bus shouted that at each other and then laughed, and he thought as long as we were all being so jovial he'd contribute. I had made it a point of never swearing in my son's presence, and I know none of his other adult relatives did. He was evidently picking up quite the vocabulary outside of the house, though.
Slashdot Mirror
The music publishing industry has asked for a cut of all instrument sales to compensate them for all the people that hear a piece of music and then figure out how to play it without paying for the sheet music. An ASCAP press release states "Our members are losing billions of dollars per year on people freely pirating their intellectual property. If it weren't for our member's IP no one would ever purchase an instrument. The makers of those instruments have been getting a free ride on the back of our IP since time immemorial. We're demanding that congress enact legislation to ensure that we are fairly compensated. Please note, that while we are focusing musical instrument manufacturers with this proposal, it does not preclude us from going after other freeloaders, such as people humming or singing in the shower. The final, fair solution may involve some sort of tax on everyone."
You must not have known many thinkpad owners, then. I've known many people who owned thinkpads that had both trackpoints and touch pads, and they generally disable the touch pads.
Aside from the length of copyrights, there's a large problem with the amount of damages that can be assessed for non-commercial distribution. That a person is liable for thousands of dollars for each recording sitting in a publicly accessible directory, whether or not any distribution has occurred, or was intended, is pretty outrageous. Damages need to take into account that many people download content that they never would have paid money for, so that every download is not a lost sale. When I explain what's happening to most people they agree that it's unjust, but they don't see how it affects them. When I explain how their children's online activities could end up costing them thousands, plus legal costs, they start to become more concerned. That they should be liable for not only what their children do, but also for anything that their children's friends do on their home network is doubly concerning.
- Between 1975 and 1990, the death rate for all races combined increased by 0.4% annually;
- Between 1990 and 2002, the death rate decreased by 2.3% annually.
Unless there was a huge drop in mortality from '90 to '97, and then nothing between '97 and '07, it seems unlikely that mortality rates would have leveled off more than a decade ago. In any case, I think it's reasonable to spend $20 billion annually on research and treatment for a disease that kills, disfigures, and sickens 1 in 24 women by the time they reach age 60 and that kills over 40,000 of them annually.How much of the 1 to 2 billion for the DoD is for the treatment of active duty service members and their spouses? This would constitute a lot of women who have the potential for breast cancer that the military is on the hook to pay for. Young men tend to not come down with prostate cancer, so the DOD would not be spending nearly as much to treat them. It would seem reasonable that the DoD should be spending significantly more on breast cancer. Do you have a reference for the 1 to 2 billion dollar figure that breaks down where the money is going? How much for research, treatment, counseling, cosmetic surgery, prosthetics, etc?
Dr. Zietman is radiation oncologist at Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital, which operates a proton center. A proton beam is another radiation therapy. Both traditional x-ray therapy and proton beam therapy are radiation oncology therapies available to him at the center where he works. Why do you assume he has a vested interest in one type of radiation therapy over another?
The article doesn't say that there is no benefit to these facilities, just that more are being built than may be warranted. They cite examples where they are the best possible therapy. They also quote knowledgeable experts who feel that they are being used in cases where significantly cheaper, and just as effective, alternatives are available.
You'd be wrong if you thought doctors are not susceptible to patient pressure when it come to the course of treatment. That's why major pharmaceutical companies run advertisements for prescription drugs directly to the consumer.
For an oncologist, if a proton beam and radiation therapy have identical track records, and a patient has a preference for the proton beam and the means to pay, they'll sign off on the proton beam. Sometimes the means to pay is merely a good enough credit rating that the patient can finance the treatment. There's always that second mortgage. Medical expenses are one of the primary causes of personal bankruptcy.
As you say, your father was treated years ago. What's the current leakage rate for modern x-ray therapy? I saw an article for one cancer center that claimed a long term incontinence rate of less than 1%. Another site described the incontinence rate from radiation as negligible. My wife, who's been an oncology nurse for over 30 years, and has seen cancer treatments advance over the years, thinks the incontinence and leakage rates you're quoting for x-ray therapy are much, much higher than what she sees now a days. I'd be interested in seeing a study based on recent data. As to treating a re-occurance, my wife said it's true, you can't use x-ray therapy again, but that may be the least of your worries. A re-occurance of prostate cancer is a good indication that it's metastasized, with the most likely site being the bones. At that point you're looking at a whole different treatment regimen than just radiating the prostate.
It's arguably due to the relatively lower social and economic impact of prostate cancer versus breast cancer. Prostate cancer is uncommon in men less than 45, but becomes more common as men age. The average age at the time of diagnosis is 70. However, many men never know they have prostate cancer. Autopsy studies of men who died of other causes have found prostate cancer in thirty percent of men in their 50s, and in eighty percent of men in their 70s. There are about 30,000 deaths a year from prostate cancer, with the vast majority of those being in the elderly.
The biggest risk factor for prostate cancer is age. Which is to say that since we're living longer we're seeing a lot more of it. Many times prostate cancer is left untreated because the patient is so elderly and the cancer is growing so slowly that they are likely to die of something else first.
Contrast that with breast cancer. Breast cancer is much more aggressive and it is likely to occur at a much younger age than prostate cancer. Breast cancer's impact on women in the prime child rearing and wage earning years is much larger than prostate cancer is on men. The following statistics from the American Cancer Society illustrate this very well.
Breast cancer incidence by age.
Prostate cancer incidence by age.
About 40,000 people (men and women) die from breast cancer a year in the US. About 30,000 men a year die from prostate cancer. Considering the greater social and economic impact of breast cancer, a 1.8 to 1 difference in federal research funding doesn't seem entirely lopsided.
As to money spent on treatment, I think society is just willing to spend more money on helping younger people survive and be productive than it is to help an old geezer make it another five years. If the purpose of medical research and care is to extend lives, it seems reasonable to spend significantly more on breast cancer than prostate cancer.
For most of the world's population the impact of breast cancer versus prostate cancer is much greater due to lower life expectancies. Men rarely live long to be affected by prostate cancer, but women are dying in their prime from breast cancer.
I don't think it's an issue of the US federal government investing too much in breast cancer research and not enough in prostate cancer research, but that not enough is being invested in either one.
The critics are respected radiation oncologists who see plenty of suffering, but don't see proton beam therapy as the most effective therapy in all cases. Maybe they'd rather offer patients treatments that are just as effective as proton beams but will leave them less in debt. Why push people to a $50,000 treatment regimen when in your professional opinion a $25,000 one will be just as effective?
Insurance companies frequently follow Medicare's lead, so we may find in a few years that we're paying gobs of money for proton beam treatments that do not offer better outcomes than alternatives. Once it gains acceptance as a standard treatment for cancers on which it offers no better outcome, we'll be paying a huge collective sum in taxes and insurance rates with no discernable benefit.
While often cited, it doesn't seem that Watson made that prediction. Apparently, the earliest known citation is a 1986 Usenet post. There aren't any speeches or documents of Watson's that contain this prediction. See the wikipedia article on Watson for more information. I have a biography of Watson, 'The Maverick and His Machine: Thomas Watson, Sr. and the Making of IBM', that also says there's no evidence he ever made that prediction.
It might be great for applications that are more read than write intensive. I'm currently working with a mid-size company whose LDAP servers are read from frequently, but not updated that often. A flash disk might be a good candidate in that situation.
I'd happily pay 10p more for the paper if it came without any ads or pamphlets.
Seems like you'd be able to do something like that with this system. From the summary: "Consumers would be able to purchase these DVDs at a lower price than regular DVDs and pay extra to enjoy their purchase ad-free without having to buy a second DVD."
Based on your recommendation I just visited them. I really like their pay what you think it's worth approach. I'll likely be purchasing music from them in the future. Thanks for recommending them.
The foxes in my area say that any hens they remove are compensation for the 'Hen Protection Program' they administer.
Stimulating that region in a depressed person would probably result in someone who's optimistic about the chances of their next suicide attempt succeeding.
The /. article linked to a Washington Post article that was easily accessed by clicking on a link. The /. article was followed by a ton of posts that had relevant information and links on the health risks of RFID. The tags being implanted in animals are passive tags that operate in the low frequency range. Whether or not the tag is implanted exposure still occurs, so again, I don't see how RFID tags increase exposure. It's not as if the chips some how concentrate radio waves, with the implant area receiving more exposure than any other area of the body. The links that you posted were so poor in quality that they didn't, and still don't, leave me with any questions about the health risks of a 60 gigahertz technology. Not to say that there aren't risks, just that the links you chose didn't offer anything to the discussion.
I have hard time combining low frequency RFID tags with microwave rayguns and coming up with questions about the health affects of 60 gigahertz technology.
Considering that having an RFID chip implanted in the body does not increase exposure, I'm not sure how the RFID article demonstrates anything about increased exposure. The issue of the medical dangers from implanted RFID was covered in a previous /.article.You don't need to be a physiscian to post relevant links. I was questioning the relevancy of you're links.
Neither one of those links could be considered source material for the harmful effects of this sort of tecnology. The first one reports on increased cancers at the site where RFID chips are implanted. It's not about exposure to radio energy so much as it is about having a radio receiver implanted in the body. The second one doesn't offer up any facts related to the harmfulness of wireless technology. It's purely a specultative 'what if fluff' piece. Got anything better?
I don't know if the report is correct, but it claims that almost all of the beamed energy could be absorbed by the ground based collectors. I don't know if absobed necessarily means converted to usable electricity, though. From page 29 of the report:
From page 33 of the report:
"The final global effect is not obvious, but also important. While it may seem intuitively obvious that SBSP introduces heat into the biosphere by beaming more energy in, the net effect is quite the opposite. All energy put into the electrical grid will eventually be spent as heat, but the methods of generating electricity are of significant impact for determining which approach produces the least total global warming effect. Fossil fuel burning emits large amounts of waste heat and greenhouse gases, while terrestrial solar and wind power also emit significant amounts of waste heat via inefficient conversion. Likewise, SBSP also has solar conversion inefficiencies that produce waste heat, but the key difference is that the most of this waste heat creation occurs outside the biosphere to be radiated into space. The losses in the atmosphere are very small, on the order of a couple percent for the wavelengths considered. Because SBSP is not a greenhouse gas emitter (with the exception of initial manufacturing and launch fuel emissions), it does not contribute to the trapping action and retention of heat in the biosphere."
Last I heard concert attendance and revenue were down or stagnating. Since you can't pirate concerts, it would seem to indicate that people just don't find the music being produced today compelling enough to spend an ever increasing amount of money on. I'm sure concert promoters would like to have something like file sharing to blame poor attendance on, but they're stuck with the sad fact that demand for their product, at the price they're asking, isn't what it once was. The RIAA needs to realize they're in the same position.
Over the last ten years, I've known literally hundreds of people that have used Thinkpads with trackpoints as their primary work machines, and this is the first time I've heard this complaint. This isn't to say that I like using the trackpoint, I don't, just that I've never known anyone to have this problem with them. I'm typing on a thinkpad now, and try as I might, it's not possible to casually cause errant clicks. I don't like the trackpoint because it causes the tip of my finger to become sore after prolonged usage. I'll use the trackpoint when it's not convenient or possible to use a mouse, in an airport or on a flight, for instance.
a 7 year old that says "fuck off" I'll bet you $80.00 that daddy says it on a regular basis.
You're neglecting to consider the power of peer influence. None of my adult relatives swore in my presence, but I sure knew how to cuss by the time I was in 5th grade. This was solely because a lot of my friends did. I never swore in front of my adult relatives, but I'd cuss outside of their ear shot.
One time, when my son was in kindergarten, he was sitting at home with me, my wife and my parents. A series of jokes were told, and everyone was laughing. All of a sudden my son blurts out 'you can kiss my fuckin' pussy!' Everyone gets quiet and looks over at my son. He knew at that point that perhaps he had said something inappropriate. I calmly asked my son why he had just said what had said. He said that all the older girls on the school bus shouted that at each other and then laughed, and he thought as long as we were all being so jovial he'd contribute. I had made it a point of never swearing in my son's presence, and I know none of his other adult relatives did. He was evidently picking up quite the vocabulary outside of the house, though.
If a white man beats up a black person, that's a hate crime, but if a black person beats up a white man, that's a rap video. Very hypocritical.
Not quite: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lbhate11ma y11,1,6059198.story?track=rss