I'm 30 & next year I will theoretically make 38k (before taxes & retirement plan I can't opt out of take there parts) & I've been bouncing around entry level tech jobs since I was 18... Only @ 25 did I radically alter what I was doing, failed, & then gotten 'lucky' to get a job as a network admin @ 28k... yes, Network Admins being paid 28k/year & I'm supposed to be happy about it... Next year I managed to talk them into a 'promotion' on paper at least that nets me 38k/year & I'll get a shiny 'director of technology' title... Strangely my duties won't change in any real way & I'll still be doing all the work, but... Well 38k might start paying back my much delayed college loans...
I take care of the morning wood aiming issues the easy way... I piss in the shower... Not like the water doesn't go to the same place... And in the shower it really doesn't matter if you shoot straight ahead @ a perfect 90 degrees or more...
You have fairly accurately depicted exactly what I've said for years... I'd love to use more Linux systems, but setting them up and then managing them later tends to require a completely different toolset than managing windows machines... and in a day stretched thin by being the Director of Technology, the Network Admin, the Network Engineer, the helpdesk, and the tech support person for a school... I don't have the time to keep up on both sides...
Add in users that cannot adjust to Linux, quite possibly also for time reasons, and Linux looks horrible for our use... Even though it's expensive and causes strange issues (not that Linux doesn't have it's share of strange issues).
Actually there are only a handful of cities this is true in... & NY isn't even a great example as it does have a massive amount of vehicle traffic during the day. Same with LA. Thinking about it I'm hard pressed to think of a major US city where at least 50% of the population lacks cars, due to adequate mass transit. 98% of the US lacks ant real means of mass transit worth talking about.
Most Europeans don't get it, but mass transit in the US failed leaving behind about a dozen subway systems & buses that stop by locations once per hour.
I have this same thing on Roadrunner with IRC traffic... I can do IRC for awhile, until I've transfered 2 or 3 MB of data, then my line goes dead... Of course I get dumped from IRC after a timeout period and after 5-10 minutes I'm up and running again... but if I go back on IRC the same thing happens again...
Kids want to learn my fucking ass! Kids want to play and socialize & not much else... Now some play is educational, but most of what they want to do in their play won't teach them anything.
I see kids as young as 6 walk out of classes (where the teachers can't stop them from leaving the room by law!) & tell anyone who is listening the don't need to learn! They don't want to read... They don't want to write... They don't want to be able to count (or do math of any sort)... & They believe 100% They will never need these skills!
Frankly from the examples I see, parents have already failed before they ever get to school. School can try and fix the problems, but it's an uphill struggle once the kids have given up on learning...
Energy: Why stop at Matter/Anti-Matter reactions? Let's jump right to TEC (Total Energy Conversion)where the total energy stored in a bit of matter is released in pure energy form. More power than Matter/Anti-Matter and safer than even nuclear fusion.
Flight: I forget the term off the top of my head, but their is a mode of flight making use of the Earth's magnetic field (though it requires a fairly large amount of power I've heard of testbed devices using the tech). It's also one of the theoretical flight methods of 'UFO's. The jets in the boots (& elbows...?) are just maneuvering jets. Along with the articulated surfaces to help control flight when he moves.
The real problem with your analogy is that rather than looking at a person's existing trends (driving record) and you compare that to looking at predisposition. If my Medical Insurance was charged on my use, I'd be charged very little. I maybe go to see a doctor twice a year and most of those are short visits and cheap medicine required. I could without knowing it though, be predisposed to a condition not currently effecting me.
The way you present it, I should be charged more just for this predisposition than my actual use. That is the part that makes these different.
Note: I do know that for instance auto insurance does consider age a predisposition to accidents and so raises rates, but they don't do anything close to what the insurance companies could do with genetic testing in place.
Tip for you... Buy Samsung LCD's that can swivel and include (if you need to use windows) software to switch the orientation of the desktop with the screen...
While I'm not the original poster... I can say I've had my own headaches with Ubuntu installs & I've installed windows from scratch since the Windows 3.X days...
I also build my own PC's from components. While I had no issues with my PC last November getting windows XP to install, Ubuntu x64 (It's an Athlon 64 x2 CPU with 6 GB of ram) failed to detect network hardware, leaving me a fairly unusable Linux box... I knew the brand new at the time Radeon HD 3870 would have issues, but my uses of Ubuntu are mostly 2D not 3D and actually that didn't give issues. I've had more problems getting the PC's at work to run Ubuntu & things are nuts with identical systems failing to install it. While the original worked.
As an example of this one need look no further than the Linux version of the adobe flashplayer. It comes in redhat flavor, another package format I don't remember, and tar.gz. The tar.gz is the only universal version that will work on all distros and even in that it's command prompt based and dumb requiring the user to know the path to their browser for it to install. In widnows at least the standard GUI interface for installing apps for years offers a 'browse' button that lets you look around to find the location it needs, if not being able to search and find the possible candidates to be installed to on it's own.
As far as I'm aware it isn't offered in any repositories and for each Ubuntu linux machine I have running here at the office I have to use that tool to install flashplayer. It's a pain each time and it makes em wish for windows and windows installers each time.
Your view is simplistic... AMD wouldn't have made as much of a gain as it did if they had kept prices higher. As it was for some time Intel was under pricing AMD, forcing them to cut more and more... As only a company 40 times AMD's size can do. AMD chips cost less (on average) when they first launched the Athlon way back when, but Intel responded by reducing prices... Which they can cut much lower than AMD can while still turning a profit.
This is a perfect example of a market that had a monopoly player for to long for 'startups' to really get in. Intel doesn't crush them completely in the market by reducing the cpu prices to the floor only because they have some interest in keeping the governments of the world from declaring them the monopoly vendor because there isn't anyone else (they'd own the server, workstation, and most of the PC market outside specialty markets like ultra portables and handhelds without AMD there). For a short while Intel even found out how far they could force AMD to reduce pricing before they stopped playing the game, leaving Intel cpus less expensive than AMD cpus for awhile.
AMD does what they can from an already bad position. People don't pay for innovation alone, hence AMD's price/performance marketing. We should be amazed they have succeeded as well as they have given the factors against them.
AMD was (I haven't checked the statistics lately) making large gains in the server market... In fact they tend to take a large chunk of both low end PC & server markets, with weak laptop sales (not for lack of good mobile cpus though) & average mid-high end PC sales.
They don't have much need to show off server muscle, Intel still has to work to compete with AMD on performance in that market where Core 2 didn't make as strong a comeback for them.
Except Nvidia wouldn't sell out, so AMD couldn't buy them... If they merged the Nvidia CEO insisted on running the show... So, no I still think AMD made the right choice on which way to go graphics company-wise
I so want to see you tell your grandmother to go use wine, or more accurately install wine from the repository and then run wine. If she gets anywhere I'd be surprised, if she doesn't give up real quick I'd be more surprised. What you take for granted to a lay person, or even someone with only passing knowledge of linux, is a pain in the ass. I tried for almost a month to get some games for kids to work on my ex's PC last year playing and tweaking wine, because it doesn't 'just work' like it does in windows.
On top of that I made some PC's switch to linux at work and not one person has liked it, or really even found it usable... It this is Ubuntu 7.4 & 7.10 we are talking about! What are generally considered the most user friendly of linux variants currently released! Most linux zealots just don't get what users want. I'll stick myself in there even though I'm not a zealot for any OS, I thought the users might appreciate some of the features of linux. Instead they just complain and bitch that though won't use that steaming pile of crap I installed.
Actually last year that movie was shown to the whole staff... But unlike fiction, real life is different and for ever kid we convince they are something, 6 more fail at life... The numbers just aren't good. We try, and try, and try... and most kids just tell us to leave them the fuck alone... That they don't 'need no education' and how they want to 'be in jail like my daddy is!'. You stare at this stuff long enough and you can't help but feel it's almost helpless...
It's not that the schools specifically treat them different, it's that often the money for 'inner city' or 'ghetto' schools is sparse, meaning the options for the school to provide programs and facilities to their students is more limited than it is in the suburb or other more affluent areas. Fix the desirability of these schools to while your at it, often the teachers want more money to work at those schools. Why? Because the PTA is often a joke with 5 or 6 concerned parents for 500 students and even more often the parents and community are against you rather than for you... If little Jaquan walks out of class every day and little Jaquan's mom doesn't care, how does that make you feel as their teacher...? And how do you keep discipline, when your only tools are talking to the kids or giving them detentions they won't serve? Often these kids can't be kicked out of school either (especially if they have a IEP or are considered to be needing of more help than normal for any number of reasons). Often these kids no the school can't do crap and so behave anyway they feel like it, with the school the ones who suffer... One class I know of stole the glasses of a substitute and made fun of her while she looked for them. What did the school do? Nothing. Why? Because we can't. We aren't allowed to do more than call the police and most likely the police won't be able to find out anything about what happened and nothing will ever come of it. But would you want to work in a place like that...?
I work at a school in what the city refers to as the 'inner city', the ghetto in effect... And try as we might popular culture and their relatives imply they will be nothings and we try to prove that wrong... Mostly we fail because a school isn't the place to really learn that your someone and can do anything you put your mind to if you just try... Why? Because they already don't want to try before we ever get them. I've seen first graders talk about how "school is whack, I'm just goin' to go to jail like my dad and live off ya fucking white ass the rest 'o my life!"
It's not even racial... white, hispanic, black, even the few asian kids here... all feel they will amount to nothing and so there s no sense to try...
No you are wrong, the cpu stays the same, the ram changes. The $500 2133 Mini-Note has 512 MB of ram and a 4 GB flash drive for a HDD. The full blown model at $750 has 2 GB of ram and a 160 GB HDD. I should know I've been in talks with HP about purchasing these.
Very very large purchases (example 15,000 laptops) have a chance of getting XO's in the hands of kids in the US, but I can tell you as the head of technology for a school district not nearly that size (my school district has 400 kids total), we don't even rate a response from OLPC. Intel was almost worse with their claim, to us, that their classmate PC's are needed in the US. The Asus EeePC and the HP 2133 are our only real choices in this market. Comparing the two the HP doesn't look bad at all, in fact it looks very good, it also explains the plans Asus has for a 9 inch screen model. The education market is a market that's convoluted, but it's one HP knows well and has dealt with for years. I have trouble even getting my CAO to even consider the EeePC because I can't buy them with a purchase order! Ebay isn't even vaguely possible as a point of purchase for us.
Yeah good luck finding a XO in the US... One school district in a large city, is the only one that OLPC has dealt with in the US. Also I still don't think reinventing the wheel is a good idea, even if you love it.
I can also tell you the majority of teachers at least somewhat know Windows, a few have vague understandings of Linux, and most couldn't figure out the XO OS with an instruction manual....
I should know, I'm the one man IT department for a charter school district. I've looked at the actual available options for small laptops & the HP 2133 here & the Asus EeePC are the only real choices. The HP though holds an edge & from what HP has told me, a Windows XP version will be available next month, giving it 3 different OS's to pick from. Add to that a keyboard that's easily usable by both kids and adults... Well the HP doesn't look bad at all.
Actually forget XO's & classmate PC's, working for a school district that wants to use notebooks like these in the US I can tell you neither cared to deal with us (as a single school, school district). Asus's EeePC was our leading choice, but we'd want the $350-400 model EeePC's. That's not that big a hurdle to jump to reach the $500 HP 2133 Mini-Note. & $50 gets double the ram and a 120 GB HDD on the HP. Personally I don't thinks it's a bad deal. Heck HP is also the only one that will provide a demo unit to try before we buy.
I'd also like to mention that full size laptops don't really work before middle school at the very least and even then full sized laptops aren't as useful as something smaller. We've used old laptops for our mobile lab in the past and the kids abuse them because they aren't easy to carry or use, for them. Optical drives aren't an issue for schools with networks anyways, who installs from CD/DVD when it could be streamed over the network? & for surfing 2Ghz+ CPU's aren't needed so that's overkill for what we need. The old systems being replaced are Pentium 3's and if they weren't clumsy to carry and falling apart, they could more than handle the tasks asked of them...
Funny thing is, that very thing is the way we've been for all of recorded history... The Victors claim anything they want about how righteous their actions were and how vile the actions of their enemies have been. You'd think we might correct that, but it doesn't look like that will ever happen.
I used to work for a few years at a retail store, and I once told a customer his daughter was a cute kid. He got all sorts of out of whack about it and up and left the shop saying I was a horrible person...
When did it become creepy to tell someone their kid is cute...? I mean ok I'd be worried if someone said she was a sexy little thing or something, but 'cute'? When did cute become the new evil word...? To me cute is completely nonsexual by itself... But I dunno what people think these days...
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I'm 30 & next year I will theoretically make 38k (before taxes & retirement plan I can't opt out of take there parts) & I've been bouncing around entry level tech jobs since I was 18... Only @ 25 did I radically alter what I was doing, failed, & then gotten 'lucky' to get a job as a network admin @ 28k... yes, Network Admins being paid 28k/year & I'm supposed to be happy about it... Next year I managed to talk them into a 'promotion' on paper at least that nets me 38k/year & I'll get a shiny 'director of technology' title... Strangely my duties won't change in any real way & I'll still be doing all the work, but... Well 38k might start paying back my much delayed college loans...
I take care of the morning wood aiming issues the easy way... I piss in the shower... Not like the water doesn't go to the same place... And in the shower it really doesn't matter if you shoot straight ahead @ a perfect 90 degrees or more...
You have fairly accurately depicted exactly what I've said for years... I'd love to use more Linux systems, but setting them up and then managing them later tends to require a completely different toolset than managing windows machines... and in a day stretched thin by being the Director of Technology, the Network Admin, the Network Engineer, the helpdesk, and the tech support person for a school... I don't have the time to keep up on both sides...
Add in users that cannot adjust to Linux, quite possibly also for time reasons, and Linux looks horrible for our use... Even though it's expensive and causes strange issues (not that Linux doesn't have it's share of strange issues).
Actually there are only a handful of cities this is true in... & NY isn't even a great example as it does have a massive amount of vehicle traffic during the day. Same with LA. Thinking about it I'm hard pressed to think of a major US city where at least 50% of the population lacks cars, due to adequate mass transit. 98% of the US lacks ant real means of mass transit worth talking about.
Most Europeans don't get it, but mass transit in the US failed leaving behind about a dozen subway systems & buses that stop by locations once per hour.
I have this same thing on Roadrunner with IRC traffic... I can do IRC for awhile, until I've transfered 2 or 3 MB of data, then my line goes dead... Of course I get dumped from IRC after a timeout period and after 5-10 minutes I'm up and running again... but if I go back on IRC the same thing happens again...
Having worked in education...
Kids want to learn my fucking ass! Kids want to play and socialize & not much else... Now some play is educational, but most of what they want to do in their play won't teach them anything.
I see kids as young as 6 walk out of classes (where the teachers can't stop them from leaving the room by law!) & tell anyone who is listening the don't need to learn! They don't want to read... They don't want to write... They don't want to be able to count (or do math of any sort)... & They believe 100% They will never need these skills!
Frankly from the examples I see, parents have already failed before they ever get to school. School can try and fix the problems, but it's an uphill struggle once the kids have given up on learning...
Well just my two cents... but...
Energy:
Why stop at Matter/Anti-Matter reactions? Let's jump right to TEC (Total Energy Conversion)where the total energy stored in a bit of matter is released in pure energy form. More power than Matter/Anti-Matter and safer than even nuclear fusion.
Flight:
I forget the term off the top of my head, but their is a mode of flight making use of the Earth's magnetic field (though it requires a fairly large amount of power I've heard of testbed devices using the tech). It's also one of the theoretical flight methods of 'UFO's. The jets in the boots (& elbows...?) are just maneuvering jets. Along with the articulated surfaces to help control flight when he moves.
But then we are both thinking to hard...
The real problem with your analogy is that rather than looking at a person's existing trends (driving record) and you compare that to looking at predisposition. If my Medical Insurance was charged on my use, I'd be charged very little. I maybe go to see a doctor twice a year and most of those are short visits and cheap medicine required. I could without knowing it though, be predisposed to a condition not currently effecting me.
The way you present it, I should be charged more just for this predisposition than my actual use. That is the part that makes these different.
Note: I do know that for instance auto insurance does consider age a predisposition to accidents and so raises rates, but they don't do anything close to what the insurance companies could do with genetic testing in place.
Tip for you... Buy Samsung LCD's that can swivel and include (if you need to use windows) software to switch the orientation of the desktop with the screen...
While I'm not the original poster... I can say I've had my own headaches with Ubuntu installs & I've installed windows from scratch since the Windows 3.X days...
I also build my own PC's from components. While I had no issues with my PC last November getting windows XP to install, Ubuntu x64 (It's an Athlon 64 x2 CPU with 6 GB of ram) failed to detect network hardware, leaving me a fairly unusable Linux box... I knew the brand new at the time Radeon HD 3870 would have issues, but my uses of Ubuntu are mostly 2D not 3D and actually that didn't give issues. I've had more problems getting the PC's at work to run Ubuntu & things are nuts with identical systems failing to install it. While the original worked.
As an example of this one need look no further than the Linux version of the adobe flashplayer. It comes in redhat flavor, another package format I don't remember, and tar.gz. The tar.gz is the only universal version that will work on all distros and even in that it's command prompt based and dumb requiring the user to know the path to their browser for it to install. In widnows at least the standard GUI interface for installing apps for years offers a 'browse' button that lets you look around to find the location it needs, if not being able to search and find the possible candidates to be installed to on it's own.
As far as I'm aware it isn't offered in any repositories and for each Ubuntu linux machine I have running here at the office I have to use that tool to install flashplayer. It's a pain each time and it makes em wish for windows and windows installers each time.
Your view is simplistic... AMD wouldn't have made as much of a gain as it did if they had kept prices higher. As it was for some time Intel was under pricing AMD, forcing them to cut more and more... As only a company 40 times AMD's size can do. AMD chips cost less (on average) when they first launched the Athlon way back when, but Intel responded by reducing prices... Which they can cut much lower than AMD can while still turning a profit.
This is a perfect example of a market that had a monopoly player for to long for 'startups' to really get in. Intel doesn't crush them completely in the market by reducing the cpu prices to the floor only because they have some interest in keeping the governments of the world from declaring them the monopoly vendor because there isn't anyone else (they'd own the server, workstation, and most of the PC market outside specialty markets like ultra portables and handhelds without AMD there). For a short while Intel even found out how far they could force AMD to reduce pricing before they stopped playing the game, leaving Intel cpus less expensive than AMD cpus for awhile.
AMD does what they can from an already bad position. People don't pay for innovation alone, hence AMD's price/performance marketing. We should be amazed they have succeeded as well as they have given the factors against them.
AMD was (I haven't checked the statistics lately) making large gains in the server market... In fact they tend to take a large chunk of both low end PC & server markets, with weak laptop sales (not for lack of good mobile cpus though) & average mid-high end PC sales.
They don't have much need to show off server muscle, Intel still has to work to compete with AMD on performance in that market where Core 2 didn't make as strong a comeback for them.
Except Nvidia wouldn't sell out, so AMD couldn't buy them... If they merged the Nvidia CEO insisted on running the show... So, no I still think AMD made the right choice on which way to go graphics company-wise
I so want to see you tell your grandmother to go use wine, or more accurately install wine from the repository and then run wine. If she gets anywhere I'd be surprised, if she doesn't give up real quick I'd be more surprised. What you take for granted to a lay person, or even someone with only passing knowledge of linux, is a pain in the ass. I tried for almost a month to get some games for kids to work on my ex's PC last year playing and tweaking wine, because it doesn't 'just work' like it does in windows.
On top of that I made some PC's switch to linux at work and not one person has liked it, or really even found it usable... It this is Ubuntu 7.4 & 7.10 we are talking about! What are generally considered the most user friendly of linux variants currently released! Most linux zealots just don't get what users want. I'll stick myself in there even though I'm not a zealot for any OS, I thought the users might appreciate some of the features of linux. Instead they just complain and bitch that though won't use that steaming pile of crap I installed.
Actually last year that movie was shown to the whole staff... But unlike fiction, real life is different and for ever kid we convince they are something, 6 more fail at life... The numbers just aren't good. We try, and try, and try... and most kids just tell us to leave them the fuck alone... That they don't 'need no education' and how they want to 'be in jail like my daddy is!'. You stare at this stuff long enough and you can't help but feel it's almost helpless...
It's not that the schools specifically treat them different, it's that often the money for 'inner city' or 'ghetto' schools is sparse, meaning the options for the school to provide programs and facilities to their students is more limited than it is in the suburb or other more affluent areas. Fix the desirability of these schools to while your at it, often the teachers want more money to work at those schools. Why? Because the PTA is often a joke with 5 or 6 concerned parents for 500 students and even more often the parents and community are against you rather than for you... If little Jaquan walks out of class every day and little Jaquan's mom doesn't care, how does that make you feel as their teacher...? And how do you keep discipline, when your only tools are talking to the kids or giving them detentions they won't serve? Often these kids can't be kicked out of school either (especially if they have a IEP or are considered to be needing of more help than normal for any number of reasons). Often these kids no the school can't do crap and so behave anyway they feel like it, with the school the ones who suffer... One class I know of stole the glasses of a substitute and made fun of her while she looked for them. What did the school do? Nothing. Why? Because we can't. We aren't allowed to do more than call the police and most likely the police won't be able to find out anything about what happened and nothing will ever come of it. But would you want to work in a place like that...?
I work at a school in what the city refers to as the 'inner city', the ghetto in effect... And try as we might popular culture and their relatives imply they will be nothings and we try to prove that wrong... Mostly we fail because a school isn't the place to really learn that your someone and can do anything you put your mind to if you just try... Why? Because they already don't want to try before we ever get them. I've seen first graders talk about how "school is whack, I'm just goin' to go to jail like my dad and live off ya fucking white ass the rest 'o my life!"
It's not even racial... white, hispanic, black, even the few asian kids here... all feel they will amount to nothing and so there s no sense to try...
No you are wrong, the cpu stays the same, the ram changes. The $500 2133 Mini-Note has 512 MB of ram and a 4 GB flash drive for a HDD. The full blown model at $750 has 2 GB of ram and a 160 GB HDD. I should know I've been in talks with HP about purchasing these.
The difference is ~$50 USD from their price sheets. That's for a 1GB ram model with a 120 GB HDD, which comes with SUSE Linux or Vista.
Very very large purchases (example 15,000 laptops) have a chance of getting XO's in the hands of kids in the US, but I can tell you as the head of technology for a school district not nearly that size (my school district has 400 kids total), we don't even rate a response from OLPC. Intel was almost worse with their claim, to us, that their classmate PC's are needed in the US. The Asus EeePC and the HP 2133 are our only real choices in this market. Comparing the two the HP doesn't look bad at all, in fact it looks very good, it also explains the plans Asus has for a 9 inch screen model. The education market is a market that's convoluted, but it's one HP knows well and has dealt with for years. I have trouble even getting my CAO to even consider the EeePC because I can't buy them with a purchase order! Ebay isn't even vaguely possible as a point of purchase for us.
Yeah good luck finding a XO in the US... One school district in a large city, is the only one that OLPC has dealt with in the US. Also I still don't think reinventing the wheel is a good idea, even if you love it.
I can also tell you the majority of teachers at least somewhat know Windows, a few have vague understandings of Linux, and most couldn't figure out the XO OS with an instruction manual....
I should know, I'm the one man IT department for a charter school district. I've looked at the actual available options for small laptops & the HP 2133 here & the Asus EeePC are the only real choices. The HP though holds an edge & from what HP has told me, a Windows XP version will be available next month, giving it 3 different OS's to pick from. Add to that a keyboard that's easily usable by both kids and adults... Well the HP doesn't look bad at all.
Actually forget XO's & classmate PC's, working for a school district that wants to use notebooks like these in the US I can tell you neither cared to deal with us (as a single school, school district). Asus's EeePC was our leading choice, but we'd want the $350-400 model EeePC's. That's not that big a hurdle to jump to reach the $500 HP 2133 Mini-Note. & $50 gets double the ram and a 120 GB HDD on the HP. Personally I don't thinks it's a bad deal. Heck HP is also the only one that will provide a demo unit to try before we buy.
I'd also like to mention that full size laptops don't really work before middle school at the very least and even then full sized laptops aren't as useful as something smaller. We've used old laptops for our mobile lab in the past and the kids abuse them because they aren't easy to carry or use, for them. Optical drives aren't an issue for schools with networks anyways, who installs from CD/DVD when it could be streamed over the network? & for surfing 2Ghz+ CPU's aren't needed so that's overkill for what we need. The old systems being replaced are Pentium 3's and if they weren't clumsy to carry and falling apart, they could more than handle the tasks asked of them...
Funny thing is, that very thing is the way we've been for all of recorded history... The Victors claim anything they want about how righteous their actions were and how vile the actions of their enemies have been. You'd think we might correct that, but it doesn't look like that will ever happen.
I used to work for a few years at a retail store, and I once told a customer his daughter was a cute kid. He got all sorts of out of whack about it and up and left the shop saying I was a horrible person...
When did it become creepy to tell someone their kid is cute...? I mean ok I'd be worried if someone said she was a sexy little thing or something, but 'cute'? When did cute become the new evil word...? To me cute is completely nonsexual by itself... But I dunno what people think these days...