IANAL, but I'm thinking it probably has something to do with the legality of MediaSentry collecting evidence. I can't break into your house, take photos of you torrenting the new Linkin Park CD, and use that as evidence in court.
It doesn't even necessarily have to be a sexual attraction. For example, in WoW, I refuse to roll a Male Human Mage/Priest because a Mage/Priest has no right being that beefy. I'll roll a Female Dwarf because they're kinda ugly, and no one else ever does. Unless you identify your avatar as yourself ("I'm a level 60 rogue." vs "I have a level 60 rogue."), the gender of your character shouldn't be a huge deal. We don't ever see any books that contain only male characters because "writing about a female character would be gay," do we?
"People associated with Anonymous"? Pull your head out from the sand - there is no lurking shadowy "Anonymous" figure that these people associate themselves with. Anonymousness isn't an identity, it's a lack of one. If anything, the proper phrasing ought to be "Certain people associated with the -chans," although I shudder to think of what would happen to your average Fox-News-goer if (s)he stumbled upon one of those sites.
The bomb threat has been blown exceptionally out of proportion - this wasn't a public threat, and was never sent to the NFL. It was someone's idea of a joke, copied and pasted over and over again, to the point where it became background spam - "CopyPasta." This was not shouting "FIRE!!!" in a crowded theater; this was scrawling the word "FiR e" on your basement wall in red crayon, where your nosy neighbor happened to see it and overreact.
Yes, certain people who visit the -chans are bullies. Anyone who's going to call up your mother and threaten her ought to be charged with harassment. However, the vast majority of people "associated with Anonymous" are perfectly harmless, if not a little antisocial.
I, as well, was introduced to this phrase by a college buddy who grew up in Walla Walla. Then again, if Aussies are using it, and with the state penitentiary in close proximity, it could just be prison slang.
Your daughters are very fortunate to have a supporting family, along with this Kumon program you speak of, but even according to your own posts, it is fairly obvious that your daughters did not get ahead merely by doing the homework assigned to them. If anything, it seems like you'd agree with the parent thread. You ascribe your daughters' success to this Kumon program, as well as your own involvement, not their completion of school-assigned homework. Take away those influences, and it seems that the only recourse your daughter would have left would be dealing with her boredom at school. And, keep your quarter, here's a clue for free: spending 45 minutes on a worksheet drilling the order of operations would not do much for your daughter at this point. She's got that part down.
Neither of those sights claimed to be made by fans of the games, or customers of Microsoft. They did basically boil down to being advertisements for Microsoft products, without Microsoft ever attaching it's name, but they also failed to make any real claims - they just contained snippets of video or screenshots. I don't see why ARGs such as these shouldn't be able to slip by.
On the other hand, Guild Wars isn't really an MMO. Everything is instanced, to the point where I'd more readily compare it to Diablo II than World of Warcraft. You've got an instanced copy of the world that your party can quest in, and you've got instanced copies of cities that act as lobbies. Sharing the server load between four or five people in a small party, without having to worry about adding more later, is a very different concept than trying to figure out a way to make an entire world P2P, with people joining and logging off all the time.
I think that perhaps these schools need to do a little studying of their own. I remember a man once saying, "I disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it."
Freedom of speech isn't meant to protect the things that everyone can agree with. It's there to protect the mean, cruel, offensive stuff that we'd quite frankly rather not hear.
We do live in a world where the majority of the population glady shells out their hard earned cash in exchange for advertisement-riddled media, but that doesn't mean that you have to. I gave up watching TV about a year and a half ago, because I finally grew tired of wasting my time getting 10 minute chunks of enjoyments interrupted by 5 minutes of advertisements. (Which is one of the reasons I now have time to waste on MMOs...)
Maybe companies should fill their games with obtrusive ads. I really don't spend enough time reading good books, and a library card is a whole lot cheaper than a subscription to WoW.
* Desktop PC with a Celeron, Duron, Geode, Sempron or similar processor; 233 MHz processor clock speed required and 300 MHz or higher recommended
* 64 MB of RAM; 128 MB of RAM maximum
* 1.5 GB of available hard disk space, 40 GB maximum hard disk space
* CD-ROM or DVD drive
* Super VGA 800x600 resolution video adaptor and monitor
* Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device
Microsoft also doesn't want you running this if you don't have a ****-box PC. 128 RAM max?
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IANAL, but I'm thinking it probably has something to do with the legality of MediaSentry collecting evidence. I can't break into your house, take photos of you torrenting the new Linkin Park CD, and use that as evidence in court.
It doesn't even necessarily have to be a sexual attraction. For example, in WoW, I refuse to roll a Male Human Mage/Priest because a Mage/Priest has no right being that beefy. I'll roll a Female Dwarf because they're kinda ugly, and no one else ever does. Unless you identify your avatar as yourself ("I'm a level 60 rogue." vs "I have a level 60 rogue."), the gender of your character shouldn't be a huge deal. We don't ever see any books that contain only male characters because "writing about a female character would be gay," do we?
"People associated with Anonymous"? Pull your head out from the sand - there is no lurking shadowy "Anonymous" figure that these people associate themselves with. Anonymousness isn't an identity, it's a lack of one. If anything, the proper phrasing ought to be "Certain people associated with the -chans," although I shudder to think of what would happen to your average Fox-News-goer if (s)he stumbled upon one of those sites.
The bomb threat has been blown exceptionally out of proportion - this wasn't a public threat, and was never sent to the NFL. It was someone's idea of a joke, copied and pasted over and over again, to the point where it became background spam - "CopyPasta." This was not shouting "FIRE!!!" in a crowded theater; this was scrawling the word "FiR e" on your basement wall in red crayon, where your nosy neighbor happened to see it and overreact.
Yes, certain people who visit the -chans are bullies. Anyone who's going to call up your mother and threaten her ought to be charged with harassment. However, the vast majority of people "associated with Anonymous" are perfectly harmless, if not a little antisocial.
I, as well, was introduced to this phrase by a college buddy who grew up in Walla Walla. Then again, if Aussies are using it, and with the state penitentiary in close proximity, it could just be prison slang.
Your daughters are very fortunate to have a supporting family, along with this Kumon program you speak of, but even according to your own posts, it is fairly obvious that your daughters did not get ahead merely by doing the homework assigned to them. If anything, it seems like you'd agree with the parent thread. You ascribe your daughters' success to this Kumon program, as well as your own involvement, not their completion of school-assigned homework. Take away those influences, and it seems that the only recourse your daughter would have left would be dealing with her boredom at school. And, keep your quarter, here's a clue for free: spending 45 minutes on a worksheet drilling the order of operations would not do much for your daughter at this point. She's got that part down.
Neither of those sights claimed to be made by fans of the games, or customers of Microsoft. They did basically boil down to being advertisements for Microsoft products, without Microsoft ever attaching it's name, but they also failed to make any real claims - they just contained snippets of video or screenshots. I don't see why ARGs such as these shouldn't be able to slip by.
On the other hand, Guild Wars isn't really an MMO. Everything is instanced, to the point where I'd more readily compare it to Diablo II than World of Warcraft. You've got an instanced copy of the world that your party can quest in, and you've got instanced copies of cities that act as lobbies. Sharing the server load between four or five people in a small party, without having to worry about adding more later, is a very different concept than trying to figure out a way to make an entire world P2P, with people joining and logging off all the time.
Freedom of speech isn't meant to protect the things that everyone can agree with. It's there to protect the mean, cruel, offensive stuff that we'd quite frankly rather not hear.
We do live in a world where the majority of the population glady shells out their hard earned cash in exchange for advertisement-riddled media, but that doesn't mean that you have to. I gave up watching TV about a year and a half ago, because I finally grew tired of wasting my time getting 10 minute chunks of enjoyments interrupted by 5 minutes of advertisements. (Which is one of the reasons I now have time to waste on MMOs...)
Maybe companies should fill their games with obtrusive ads. I really don't spend enough time reading good books, and a library card is a whole lot cheaper than a subscription to WoW.
Microsoft also doesn't want you running this if you don't have a ****-box PC. 128 RAM max?