When Occam's razor is used on Web 2.0 all you are left with is a shred of pink cotton shirt and Web 1.0. That's when the dimensions come back together and reality is normalized to what it was before all this idiotic social "technology" nonsense.
Why does every tech article, without fail, have more political jibes in it than tech comments? I just started reading the comments under this story, and this is only the first one I saw. I'm sure it won't be the last.
Unfortunately, the Internet has become a political battleground now, and the whole Net Neutrality issue has polarized opinions among techies and non-techies alike. Most people with a technical bent see Net Neutrality as necessary, to keep everyone on an even footing. The non-technical can't understand the fuss, because they lack the knowledge of how the technical side of the Internet works and how it's paid for. Let's face, how many people look closely at their phone bill and wonder just what it all means? All they know is, the phone keeps working if I pay the bill.
Now, you won't find a more opinionated person than your average Slashdot user. We squabble over Linux vs. Microsoft, Oracle vs. MySQL, Google vs. Yahoo!, etc. Even those fights are now becoming more political, because they involve legal challenges, laws, foreign governments, and the like. I think it's safe to say that now that the political wind is blowing so strong through IT, Slashdotters wound be hard pressed to saty out of the fight. So don't expect the political diatribes to die down in the foreseeable future. It's the price we're paying for our new technological culture.
It brings up a good point though, since cameras are moving away from film to memory cards and pixels: just what constitutes an image? If you go the route of thinking that it's something that has to be taken by a camera, that severely limits what we could call an image. If you believe an image is made up of a collection of pixels in some organized fashion, then the range of things we can call images is staggering (PDF files, fonts, screenshots, etc.).
Flickr's probably just trying to keep from being overwhelmed by non-photographic images, since if they allowed those as well, there servers might very well become choked with all manner of things.
"Motorola" an ancient Apache word meaning "Dropped Call".
Actually, the modern phrase "T-Mobile" has become synonymous with 'dropped call." At least in my experience. I'm very happy with my Motorola phone but T-Mobile's service has always been lousy, even when I was using a Samsung.
Look, it's not too late yet... Google hasn't achieved full power and it's still limited by the physical world constraints. But once this is built, it's all over for us. We must stop it now, before
And odd as it may seem, the barren desert land surrounding the Columbia along the Oregon-Washington border -- at the intersection of cheap electricity and readily accessible data networking -- is the backdrop for a multibillion-dollar face-off among Google, Microsoft and Yahoo that will determine dominance in the online world in the years ahead.
Microsoft and Yahoo have announced that they are building big data centers upstream in Wenatchee and Quincy, Wash., 130 miles to the north. But it is a race in which they are playing catch-up. Google remains far ahead in the global data-center race, and the scale of its complex here is evidence of its extraordinary ambition.
When I read stuff like this, I am reminded of Isaac Asmiov's Multivac stories, where the massive computer was always out in some deserted wasteland, far away from the bulk of humanity. It seems strange that the battle for Internet supremacy is taking place in the Northwestern United States. Now the question is: will the Yahoo and Microsoft data centers show up on Google Earth?
Why carry more than one of each of those around when you don't have to?
On the one hand it makes sense, but on the other, isn't there some critical mass of things you can cram into a small package at this time? Battery technology being what it is, it seems the more you ask a device to do, the less it will actually be able to do. What's the point of having everything together if you're constantly tied to a power socket to run it all?
And I've noted, that despite such things, I still see plenty of people carrying a mobile phone, Blackberry, iPod, etc. simultaneously, juggling devices and headphones. I don't think people think these things are that useful, mainly because something may be a great phone but a lousy MP3 player. I think when a tool tries to do too much, it is in danger of not doing anything particularly well, especially where there are design tradeoffs that have to made to integrate things.
The winner of the competition is the Nokia 111 by Daniel Meyer, and this is where the New Age speak goes into overdrive. The phone looks - to our eye - like a candy bar with a hinge in the middle, but it is, apparently: "Inspired both by the advent of video calling and the traditional practice of carrying pictures of friends or family members with you. The handset is designed to sit as a picture frame wherever the user is, serving the dual purpose of communications device and a comforting familiar focal point; at home, at work or in a hotel while away on business."
It's also a great way to carry your porn more portably or annoy everyone in your office with a photo montage of baby pictures.
Forgive my neo-Ludditism, but why does a cell phone have to be more than a phone? I say this as the owner of a Motorola V360, an excellent phone that also happens to have an MP3 player built in, which is one of the more useful accessories a phone could conceivably have, and saved me the trouble of buying another thing to tote around. I have a camera for pictures, but I wouldn't feel the need to set the phone down and display those pictures. Let's not forget, battery life is not all that great and using your phone as a slideshow probably wouldn't help.
Look, either build the über device that does everything or stop trying to load mobile phones down with too much gadgetry.
Asked what the reaction from the community had been to Microsoft's outreach on this front, Muglia said it was "skeptical but intrigued. What people are starting to discover is that people who write GPL code are not evil and people who write commercial software are also not evil, we just have different approaches."
The goal, from both sides, is to meet customer needs, he said, adding, "This is just the more mature view of the way the world is evolving, and we want to make sure that if customers are choosing Linux or other open-source-based products that we have ways of interoperating and working effectively with that."
Linux and open-source companies remain Microsoft competitors, and the goal is to do a better job than they do at solving customer needs, and ultimately to have customers choose Microsoft solutions. However, if customers choose not to, Microsoft needs to be interoperating and working well with those companies.
Microsoft "seems" to be coming around to the idea that perhaps the best way to beat OSS is to join it. Making their stuff interoperable gives people flexibility and perhaps that would keep them from completely switching over to OSS from Windows, if they get the idea that they can do it at any time and always switch back if it doesn't work for them. It's a canny bit of work by Redmond, but the question now is: can they actually make things interoperable?
Of course, there is a difference between potential threats and ones VoIP consumers are actually facing today. So far, much of this is theoretical--much like fears of mass viruses on mobile phones and disastrous phishing attacks over instant-message systems (see BusinessWeek.com, 1/5/06, "IM Security Is One Tough Sell"). VoIP attacks remain rare, although Gartner says Skype has made four big patches to vulnerabilities in the last 18 months.
And while it is all just theoretical, you know someone will eventually get their jollies figuring out how to hack VoIP and create a lane for spammers in the process. Going to VoIP removes a lot of the natural barriers that protect us from telemarketting calls now, and creates new vulnerabilities. There will be a lot more Caller ID spoofing; I can even conceive of someone creating malware that would be planted on your system and track the numbers you frequently call, to build spam call trees and more importantly to get ids and numbers you might trust so you would actually answer the calls. The possibilities are staggering.
My question is: who thought it was a good idea to enable JavaScript in emails? Someone at Yahoo! wasn't paying attention to basic security.
Re:WTF does "Linux" have to do with this?
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OpenSolaris One Year On
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· Score: 2, Informative
Why is this bit of "news" listed under Linix-category?
From the article: As an example, Eagleton cited recent cooperation between Sun and the wider programmer community that occurred at the LinuxWorld Australia conference.
That's as Linuxy as it gets. I think perhaps Sun has the idea that by going open source, they can tap into the Linux developer base. There may be more than one Linux developer that is thinking they could make vast improvements in how Solaris performs, while perhaps gleaning some new ideas for Linux . AN exchange of information couldn't hurt -- Sun needs to breathe new life into Solaris.
I can understand wanting to be protective of your kids. They are your responsibility and you probably love them to death. But eventually they have to learn to make their own decisions and their own mistakes. Better to let them do that while they still live at home and have your support, no?
The sad part of this whole debate, is that it is driven not by any desire to give modern parents more tools to be better parents, but by an overwhelming sense of Big Brother-ism, as if this technology is somehow going to stunt the growth of children. I have news for you: plenty of children are already having their growth as a person stunted by living in poverty, being exposed to violence in the home and on the street, and poor education. No amount of education of a child can adequately prepare them for an emergency; you have no idea how they will react, no matter how much you drill it into their heads. Right now, we have a lackadaisical generation (and no, not every kid is that way), with poor manners, poor morals in many cases, and not a lot of fundamental common sense. This is a tool, and how you use it determines its impact -- it is neither evil nor good. If its use might keep your kid out of trouble, perhaps trouble they are not prepared for or trouble even you could not forsee, isn't that worth it? Apparently not.
Oh, BTW, how is this technology any different than when we were kids, and every mother and father on the block new you and watched over you, and reported your transgressions to your parents before you even got home? Communities used to be tight-knit affairs, but that has changed, and you cannot always rely on the people around you. And you cannot always be sure who is living on your block -- just because there's a Megan's law doesn't mean a sex offender can't move into your neighborhood without you knowing it. And how about the ones that haven't been caught.
I'm tired of these knee-jerk reactions to technology and especially where it involves kids. What is so bad about wanting to protect them? If I didn't want them to fall down and go boom, I'd put them in a fscking bubble and feed them through a tube! I'm not talking A Clockwork Orange here! I want to have all the tools I can to ensure the safety of my children, especially when I work an hour's train ride away (and let's not start the whole find-a-job-closer-to-home-and-be-a-better-family argument: as usual, it's not as simple as everyone makes it out to be).
Some of us consider "a good quality of life for [one's] family" to include being able to spend time together as a family. If you or Billosaur maintain a schedule/lifestyle which requires both parents to be working, at least one of them to be working/commuting for 12+ hours a day, hardly seeing each other, and being too tired from an excess of work and a shortage of sleep, then I question whether it is possible to have a truly good family life under those conditions.
A good life, no... a life, yes. I'll be the first to admit it's not the life I want and yes, i am a slave to the choices I have made. But there are more interests than just mine, and I have to balance those and try to provide for my family. It's very hard. What I object to is the time-honored "make different choices" paradigm; of course I can make different choices, and it's just as likely that tjose choices would make me no better off. We are all at the mercy of forces that we cannot control -- simply because they operate on a global scale, on the macro level. I can and do make choices where I have them available, and I do try to make the best ones I can. But I've found than even when you think a choice is a good one, not all the ramifications are obvious and when they are, it's usually too late to go back the way you came. Such is life.
Hey parents of kids who have had bad things happen, Newsflash for you: Bad things happen. Sometimes for no reason. You can teach your kids to deal, or you can end your life as it is...and become their 24/7 caretaker for the rest of their lives. But DO NOT EXPECT US TO DO IT FOR YOU, or put up with your poor parenting skills because you made their world "dangerproof".
Who said anything about "danger-proof?" We could all be wiped out tomorrow by an asteroid, so the idea od "danger-proof" is idiotic. I'm talking about another tool to allow a concerned parent to check up on a kid. Yeah, it's got Big Brother written all over, but what doesn't in this day-and-age?
You may find it easy to throw a kid to the wolves, but I don't. Yes, I agree kids get molly-coddled nowadays -- they aren't made to face the music for their transgressions, mainly because everyone is suddenly afarid the cops are going to come and take their kids away if they even look at them funny. I'm all for the suitable application of whatever punishment is necessary to get it through their heads that this is not a game for their amusement. Mind you, I don't advocate spanking a kid until they can't walk.
It's pretty easy to say bad things happen, but it's that kind of laissez faire attitude that gets kids in trouble in the first place. Yeah, bad things happen, but a lot of bad things are preventable. And it's not just educating your kid; it's making sure they have the tools they need to stay safe. And if that means planting a bug in their cell phone, so be it. If that gives me peace of mind and makes it possible for my kid to be found or get out of a jam they might not ordinarily be able to get out of, then it's worth it. My kids are too valueable to me to take chances.
Kids never see their parents...you said it yourself, there is hardly any time TO BE A FAMILY. Hope your kids turn out OK.
That's why I try to make every chance I do have count. ALl I'm saying is we don't live in the world of Ward and June Cleaver anymore, and to think it's so simple to just revert to that lifestyle is ludicrous. My kids will turn out OK because I'll make sure they do; I'll work as hard as I have to to make sure they never want for anything and I will be there for them no matter how badly they may screw up. And I'll make the most of whatever time is given me -- it's the best anyone can hope for in a world where someone wants to kill me simply because I live in the US.
I mean, seriously... how much does it really cost to "keep a roof over 2 people and keep them fed" in a normal "middle class" neighborhood? One could live quite comfortably for under $2000 a month, which is just over $11 an hour. I wouldn't say someone making over $11/hr is part of the "privileged few".
Now if you decide to start squeezing out kids you can't afford, that's another story. Again, nobody's putting a gun to your head.
Apparently you a) don't live in NJ and b) don't intend to procreate. I don't live in an extravagant house -- far from it, it only cost $425K when the average price around us is closer to $600K. However, my house is assessed at $240K but I pay $10,000 a year in taxes.
And yes, I have three kids, including a new daughter, barely 15 months old, and the best thing I ever did, even if she means that I have to work that much harder to support her and my family.
BTW, I drive a Saturn VUE, so my SUV is getting 25 MPG. And that doesn't change the fact that gas has doubled in price in the span of three years.
Nobody is putting a gun to my head, but they certainly are sticking a hand in my back pocket and cleaning out my wallet, a fact I resent ever day. I didn't ask for the housing market to soar and make houses too expensive to buy, or to have my local government raise my taxes so they could build a $55 million USD high school that is still filled with crappy teachers. I certainly didn't ask anyone to suicide planes into the Twin Towers or to elect Hugo Chavez so he could mess around with oil prices with his socialist rhetoric.
It's always easy for the people with zero ambition in life to point a finger at the people busting their asses to have a good life and say "really, it's all your own damned fault." Unfortunately, the situation is never that cut-and-dried.
That's why a "child-locator" device would be so wonderful to have. Think about all the kids that walk home from school and such. I think this is a great idea. Pop the phone in their backpack or put it in their pocket and make sure it's recharged every night and never turned off. I would punish my kids for turning it off for sure.
Add to that some form of "panic button", so they could send the folks an instant SOS with their location, and this turns into quite a useful service.
Seriously when I was growing up my parents never had any of this technology and yet they managed to keep me out of trouble. While I agree the world is a different place, and there are lots of new and different problems, it all boils down to the parents taking an active role in the child's life. Things like asking the kids how their day went, what sorts of issues they had, things that let the kid know that home is a safe place. Or how about making time to have dinner together, or helping with the homework or the millions of other things families should do together.
But in this age of two parents working, those kinds of things don't happen anymore. I spend 12 hours out of my day commuting and working. I get maybe 4-5 hours of sleep a night; the rest of the time is spent trying to pay bills, fix the house, make dinner (occasionally), take children to events/activities, etc. There's precious little time enough to have a true family dinner let alone quality time where a family can be together and share ideas and exchange thoughts. Heck, it's hard enough just getting my kids to sit down for a meal, and they aren't even teenagers yet.
Maybe some would see this as a panacea or a substitute for poor parenting, but it might prove a boon to parents who can't be available as often as they'd like and still want to be able to watch their kids no matter where they are.
Seriously, the kids will know this kind of watching is being done and will either turn off their phone or leave it behind (or ata friends house inside the "permitted area".
Except the service will be linked to an RFID chip planted inside the pain center of the child's brain. Then, if they get further than 5 feet from their cellphone or roam outside the allowed area, a jolt of pain sensation can be sent directly through their body. Think of it as a giant invisible fence!
On Friday 9th of June 2006 at 3.30pm, Richard Stallman led a delegation composed by Frédéric Couchet (Free Software Foundation France) and Christophe Espern (EUCD.INFO initiative) to meet the French Prime minister in order to talk about the French DRM law proposal. Richard Stallman and his friends were pushed back by the chief of security team.
Micorsoft just wants to stay ahead of everyone else, so Web 2.0 means.Net 3.0, Web 3.0 will mean.Net 4.0 and so on. This is their cheeky way of making it seem like they are ahead of the game. Branding doesn't make up for crappy products.
You can work for a good company that respects your talent and ability.
You can work for a bad company that sees you as a hired monkey and nothing more.
You can get the dream job building useful applications and then when you least expect it, have your job yanked out from under you.
You can soend your life doing scut work, fixing other people's abyssmal code or having to deal with demanding clients who change their minds three times a day.
If you enjoy challenges, there's nothing better than web development, front end or back end, assuming you're in the right place with the right company. If you're unencumbered, consulting is a good way to make money and not ahve to stick around any place long enough to get sick of it, though make sure you sock money away for a rainy day (you'll have them). If you have family or other obligations, try to stick with a permanent job with the most cutting edge company you can find. Make sure they'll help keep your training up-to-date and expose you to the newest and best technologies.
Slashdot Mirror
The best quote therefrom:
When Occam's razor is used on Web 2.0 all you are left with is a shred of pink cotton shirt and Web 1.0. That's when the dimensions come back together and reality is normalized to what it was before all this idiotic social "technology" nonsense.
Gives you the warm fuzzies, doesn't it?
Why does every tech article, without fail, have more political jibes in it than tech comments? I just started reading the comments under this story, and this is only the first one I saw. I'm sure it won't be the last.
Unfortunately, the Internet has become a political battleground now, and the whole Net Neutrality issue has polarized opinions among techies and non-techies alike. Most people with a technical bent see Net Neutrality as necessary, to keep everyone on an even footing. The non-technical can't understand the fuss, because they lack the knowledge of how the technical side of the Internet works and how it's paid for. Let's face, how many people look closely at their phone bill and wonder just what it all means? All they know is, the phone keeps working if I pay the bill.
Now, you won't find a more opinionated person than your average Slashdot user. We squabble over Linux vs. Microsoft, Oracle vs. MySQL, Google vs. Yahoo!, etc. Even those fights are now becoming more political, because they involve legal challenges, laws, foreign governments, and the like. I think it's safe to say that now that the political wind is blowing so strong through IT, Slashdotters wound be hard pressed to saty out of the fight. So don't expect the political diatribes to die down in the foreseeable future. It's the price we're paying for our new technological culture.
It brings up a good point though, since cameras are moving away from film to memory cards and pixels: just what constitutes an image? If you go the route of thinking that it's something that has to be taken by a camera, that severely limits what we could call an image. If you believe an image is made up of a collection of pixels in some organized fashion, then the range of things we can call images is staggering (PDF files, fonts, screenshots, etc.).
Flickr's probably just trying to keep from being overwhelmed by non-photographic images, since if they allowed those as well, there servers might very well become choked with all manner of things.
`"Motorola" an ancient Apache word meaning "Dropped Call".
Actually, the modern phrase "T-Mobile" has become synonymous with 'dropped call." At least in my experience. I'm very happy with my Motorola phone but T-Mobile's service has always been lousy, even when I was using a Samsung.
Look, it's not too late yet... Google hasn't achieved full power and it's still limited by the physical world constraints. But once this is built, it's all over for us. We must stop it now, before
Sounds like an offshoot of Colossus: The Forbin Project.
And odd as it may seem, the barren desert land surrounding the Columbia along the Oregon-Washington border -- at the intersection of cheap electricity and readily accessible data networking -- is the backdrop for a multibillion-dollar face-off among Google, Microsoft and Yahoo that will determine dominance in the online world in the years ahead.
Microsoft and Yahoo have announced that they are building big data centers upstream in Wenatchee and Quincy, Wash., 130 miles to the north. But it is a race in which they are playing catch-up. Google remains far ahead in the global data-center race, and the scale of its complex here is evidence of its extraordinary ambition.
When I read stuff like this, I am reminded of Isaac Asmiov's Multivac stories, where the massive computer was always out in some deserted wasteland, far away from the bulk of humanity. It seems strange that the battle for Internet supremacy is taking place in the Northwestern United States. Now the question is: will the Yahoo and Microsoft data centers show up on Google Earth?
Why carry more than one of each of those around when you don't have to?
On the one hand it makes sense, but on the other, isn't there some critical mass of things you can cram into a small package at this time? Battery technology being what it is, it seems the more you ask a device to do, the less it will actually be able to do. What's the point of having everything together if you're constantly tied to a power socket to run it all?
And I've noted, that despite such things, I still see plenty of people carrying a mobile phone, Blackberry, iPod, etc. simultaneously, juggling devices and headphones. I don't think people think these things are that useful, mainly because something may be a great phone but a lousy MP3 player. I think when a tool tries to do too much, it is in danger of not doing anything particularly well, especially where there are design tradeoffs that have to made to integrate things.
The winner of the competition is the Nokia 111 by Daniel Meyer, and this is where the New Age speak goes into overdrive. The phone looks - to our eye - like a candy bar with a hinge in the middle, but it is, apparently: "Inspired both by the advent of video calling and the traditional practice of carrying pictures of friends or family members with you. The handset is designed to sit as a picture frame wherever the user is, serving the dual purpose of communications device and a comforting familiar focal point; at home, at work or in a hotel while away on business."
It's also a great way to carry your porn more portably or annoy everyone in your office with a photo montage of baby pictures.
Forgive my neo-Ludditism, but why does a cell phone have to be more than a phone? I say this as the owner of a Motorola V360, an excellent phone that also happens to have an MP3 player built in, which is one of the more useful accessories a phone could conceivably have, and saved me the trouble of buying another thing to tote around. I have a camera for pictures, but I wouldn't feel the need to set the phone down and display those pictures. Let's not forget, battery life is not all that great and using your phone as a slideshow probably wouldn't help.
Look, either build the über device that does everything or stop trying to load mobile phones down with too much gadgetry.
...Jack Daniels and Seagrams stock rices plummeted on the news.
Asked what the reaction from the community had been to Microsoft's outreach on this front, Muglia said it was "skeptical but intrigued. What people are starting to discover is that people who write GPL code are not evil and people who write commercial software are also not evil, we just have different approaches."
The goal, from both sides, is to meet customer needs, he said, adding, "This is just the more mature view of the way the world is evolving, and we want to make sure that if customers are choosing Linux or other open-source-based products that we have ways of interoperating and working effectively with that."
Linux and open-source companies remain Microsoft competitors, and the goal is to do a better job than they do at solving customer needs, and ultimately to have customers choose Microsoft solutions. However, if customers choose not to, Microsoft needs to be interoperating and working well with those companies.
Microsoft "seems" to be coming around to the idea that perhaps the best way to beat OSS is to join it. Making their stuff interoperable gives people flexibility and perhaps that would keep them from completely switching over to OSS from Windows, if they get the idea that they can do it at any time and always switch back if it doesn't work for them. It's a canny bit of work by Redmond, but the question now is: can they actually make things interoperable?
Of course, there is a difference between potential threats and ones VoIP consumers are actually facing today. So far, much of this is theoretical--much like fears of mass viruses on mobile phones and disastrous phishing attacks over instant-message systems (see BusinessWeek.com, 1/5/06, "IM Security Is One Tough Sell"). VoIP attacks remain rare, although Gartner says Skype has made four big patches to vulnerabilities in the last 18 months.
And while it is all just theoretical, you know someone will eventually get their jollies figuring out how to hack VoIP and create a lane for spammers in the process. Going to VoIP removes a lot of the natural barriers that protect us from telemarketting calls now, and creates new vulnerabilities. There will be a lot more Caller ID spoofing; I can even conceive of someone creating malware that would be planted on your system and track the numbers you frequently call, to build spam call trees and more importantly to get ids and numbers you might trust so you would actually answer the calls. The possibilities are staggering.
Yesterday by The Register
My question is: who thought it was a good idea to enable JavaScript in emails? Someone at Yahoo! wasn't paying attention to basic security.
Why is this bit of "news" listed under Linix-category?
From the article: As an example, Eagleton cited recent cooperation between Sun and the wider programmer community that occurred at the LinuxWorld Australia conference.
That's as Linuxy as it gets. I think perhaps Sun has the idea that by going open source, they can tap into the Linux developer base. There may be more than one Linux developer that is thinking they could make vast improvements in how Solaris performs, while perhaps gleaning some new ideas for Linux . AN exchange of information couldn't hurt -- Sun needs to breathe new life into Solaris.
I can understand wanting to be protective of your kids. They are your responsibility and you probably love them to death. But eventually they have to learn to make their own decisions and their own mistakes. Better to let them do that while they still live at home and have your support, no?
The sad part of this whole debate, is that it is driven not by any desire to give modern parents more tools to be better parents, but by an overwhelming sense of Big Brother-ism, as if this technology is somehow going to stunt the growth of children. I have news for you: plenty of children are already having their growth as a person stunted by living in poverty, being exposed to violence in the home and on the street, and poor education. No amount of education of a child can adequately prepare them for an emergency; you have no idea how they will react, no matter how much you drill it into their heads. Right now, we have a lackadaisical generation (and no, not every kid is that way), with poor manners, poor morals in many cases, and not a lot of fundamental common sense. This is a tool, and how you use it determines its impact -- it is neither evil nor good. If its use might keep your kid out of trouble, perhaps trouble they are not prepared for or trouble even you could not forsee, isn't that worth it? Apparently not.
Oh, BTW, how is this technology any different than when we were kids, and every mother and father on the block new you and watched over you, and reported your transgressions to your parents before you even got home? Communities used to be tight-knit affairs, but that has changed, and you cannot always rely on the people around you. And you cannot always be sure who is living on your block -- just because there's a Megan's law doesn't mean a sex offender can't move into your neighborhood without you knowing it. And how about the ones that haven't been caught.
I'm tired of these knee-jerk reactions to technology and especially where it involves kids. What is so bad about wanting to protect them? If I didn't want them to fall down and go boom, I'd put them in a fscking bubble and feed them through a tube! I'm not talking A Clockwork Orange here! I want to have all the tools I can to ensure the safety of my children, especially when I work an hour's train ride away (and let's not start the whole find-a-job-closer-to-home-and-be-a-better-family argument: as usual, it's not as simple as everyone makes it out to be).
Some of us consider "a good quality of life for [one's] family" to include being able to spend time together as a family. If you or Billosaur maintain a schedule/lifestyle which requires both parents to be working, at least one of them to be working/commuting for 12+ hours a day, hardly seeing each other, and being too tired from an excess of work and a shortage of sleep, then I question whether it is possible to have a truly good family life under those conditions.
A good life, no... a life, yes. I'll be the first to admit it's not the life I want and yes, i am a slave to the choices I have made. But there are more interests than just mine, and I have to balance those and try to provide for my family. It's very hard. What I object to is the time-honored "make different choices" paradigm; of course I can make different choices, and it's just as likely that tjose choices would make me no better off. We are all at the mercy of forces that we cannot control -- simply because they operate on a global scale, on the macro level. I can and do make choices where I have them available, and I do try to make the best ones I can. But I've found than even when you think a choice is a good one, not all the ramifications are obvious and when they are, it's usually too late to go back the way you came. Such is life.
Hey parents of kids who have had bad things happen, Newsflash for you: Bad things happen. Sometimes for no reason. You can teach your kids to deal, or you can end your life as it is...and become their 24/7 caretaker for the rest of their lives. But DO NOT EXPECT US TO DO IT FOR YOU, or put up with your poor parenting skills because you made their world "dangerproof".
Who said anything about "danger-proof?" We could all be wiped out tomorrow by an asteroid, so the idea od "danger-proof" is idiotic. I'm talking about another tool to allow a concerned parent to check up on a kid. Yeah, it's got Big Brother written all over, but what doesn't in this day-and-age?
You may find it easy to throw a kid to the wolves, but I don't. Yes, I agree kids get molly-coddled nowadays -- they aren't made to face the music for their transgressions, mainly because everyone is suddenly afarid the cops are going to come and take their kids away if they even look at them funny. I'm all for the suitable application of whatever punishment is necessary to get it through their heads that this is not a game for their amusement. Mind you, I don't advocate spanking a kid until they can't walk.
It's pretty easy to say bad things happen, but it's that kind of laissez faire attitude that gets kids in trouble in the first place. Yeah, bad things happen, but a lot of bad things are preventable. And it's not just educating your kid; it's making sure they have the tools they need to stay safe. And if that means planting a bug in their cell phone, so be it. If that gives me peace of mind and makes it possible for my kid to be found or get out of a jam they might not ordinarily be able to get out of, then it's worth it. My kids are too valueable to me to take chances.
A vindictive and psychotic ex-husband; it would require a court order to allow us to move.
Kids never see their parents...you said it yourself, there is hardly any time TO BE A FAMILY. Hope your kids turn out OK.
That's why I try to make every chance I do have count. ALl I'm saying is we don't live in the world of Ward and June Cleaver anymore, and to think it's so simple to just revert to that lifestyle is ludicrous. My kids will turn out OK because I'll make sure they do; I'll work as hard as I have to to make sure they never want for anything and I will be there for them no matter how badly they may screw up. And I'll make the most of whatever time is given me -- it's the best anyone can hope for in a world where someone wants to kill me simply because I live in the US.
I mean, seriously... how much does it really cost to "keep a roof over 2 people and keep them fed" in a normal "middle class" neighborhood? One could live quite comfortably for under $2000 a month, which is just over $11 an hour. I wouldn't say someone making over $11/hr is part of the "privileged few".
Now if you decide to start squeezing out kids you can't afford, that's another story. Again, nobody's putting a gun to your head.
Apparently you a) don't live in NJ and b) don't intend to procreate. I don't live in an extravagant house -- far from it, it only cost $425K when the average price around us is closer to $600K. However, my house is assessed at $240K but I pay $10,000 a year in taxes.
And yes, I have three kids, including a new daughter, barely 15 months old, and the best thing I ever did, even if she means that I have to work that much harder to support her and my family.
BTW, I drive a Saturn VUE, so my SUV is getting 25 MPG. And that doesn't change the fact that gas has doubled in price in the span of three years.
Nobody is putting a gun to my head, but they certainly are sticking a hand in my back pocket and cleaning out my wallet, a fact I resent ever day. I didn't ask for the housing market to soar and make houses too expensive to buy, or to have my local government raise my taxes so they could build a $55 million USD high school that is still filled with crappy teachers. I certainly didn't ask anyone to suicide planes into the Twin Towers or to elect Hugo Chavez so he could mess around with oil prices with his socialist rhetoric.
It's always easy for the people with zero ambition in life to point a finger at the people busting their asses to have a good life and say "really, it's all your own damned fault." Unfortunately, the situation is never that cut-and-dried.
That's why a "child-locator" device would be so wonderful to have. Think about all the kids that walk home from school and such. I think this is a great idea. Pop the phone in their backpack or put it in their pocket and make sure it's recharged every night and never turned off. I would punish my kids for turning it off for sure.
Add to that some form of "panic button", so they could send the folks an instant SOS with their location, and this turns into quite a useful service.
Seriously when I was growing up my parents never had any of this technology and yet they managed to keep me out of trouble. While I agree the world is a different place, and there are lots of new and different problems, it all boils down to the parents taking an active role in the child's life. Things like asking the kids how their day went, what sorts of issues they had, things that let the kid know that home is a safe place. Or how about making time to have dinner together, or helping with the homework or the millions of other things families should do together.
But in this age of two parents working, those kinds of things don't happen anymore. I spend 12 hours out of my day commuting and working. I get maybe 4-5 hours of sleep a night; the rest of the time is spent trying to pay bills, fix the house, make dinner (occasionally), take children to events/activities, etc. There's precious little time enough to have a true family dinner let alone quality time where a family can be together and share ideas and exchange thoughts. Heck, it's hard enough just getting my kids to sit down for a meal, and they aren't even teenagers yet.
Maybe some would see this as a panacea or a substitute for poor parenting, but it might prove a boon to parents who can't be available as often as they'd like and still want to be able to watch their kids no matter where they are.
Seriously, the kids will know this kind of watching is being done and will either turn off their phone or leave it behind (or ata friends house inside the "permitted area".
Except the service will be linked to an RFID chip planted inside the pain center of the child's brain. Then, if they get further than 5 feet from their cellphone or roam outside the allowed area, a jolt of pain sensation can be sent directly through their body. Think of it as a giant invisible fence!
On Friday 9th of June 2006 at 3.30pm, Richard Stallman led a delegation composed by Frédéric Couchet (Free Software Foundation France) and Christophe Espern (EUCD.INFO initiative) to meet the French Prime minister in order to talk about the French DRM law proposal. Richard Stallman and his friends were pushed back by the chief of security team.
...or we will taunt you a second time!
Micorsoft just wants to stay ahead of everyone else, so Web 2.0 means .Net 3.0, Web 3.0 will mean .Net 4.0 and so on. This is their cheeky way of making it seem like they are ahead of the game. Branding doesn't make up for crappy products.
You can work for a good company that respects your talent and ability.
You can work for a bad company that sees you as a hired monkey and nothing more.
You can get the dream job building useful applications and then when you least expect it, have your job yanked out from under you.
You can soend your life doing scut work, fixing other people's abyssmal code or having to deal with demanding clients who change their minds three times a day.
If you enjoy challenges, there's nothing better than web development, front end or back end, assuming you're in the right place with the right company. If you're unencumbered, consulting is a good way to make money and not ahve to stick around any place long enough to get sick of it, though make sure you sock money away for a rainy day (you'll have them). If you have family or other obligations, try to stick with a permanent job with the most cutting edge company you can find. Make sure they'll help keep your training up-to-date and expose you to the newest and best technologies.
My 2 coppers.