Skeptics believe (like the majority here on slashdot) that the dangers posed by terrorism do not exceed the dangers posed by a corrupt government.
Indeed many (most) of us think the damage a corrupt government can do to the country vastly exceed anything a "terrorist" could ever do.
Never forget that fighting terrorists is easy while fighting a corrupt government is hard. If you speak out against a corrupt enough government, they merely need to -decide- to label you a terrorist or terrorist sympathizer to shut you down.
A corrupt government with things like the Patriot Act at its disposal has all the tools it needs to make it happen. Evidence gathering without warrants, arrest and detention without access to lawyers or other due process. And its is allowed to conduct that in complete secrecy; shrouding it all under national security.
How long before it gets abused? How would we ever find out about it if it did?
Not at all. Google is better at identifying spam better than many antispam products.
They would have little trouble at all determining the liklihood that you are looking for "p3nis el@rging pil|s".
(Although they might be able to derive interesting correlations about the habits of people who receive an abnormally high amount of "p3nis" spam, and their other email.
What's the point of matching ads to messages you've already deleted; meaning you will never display them again?
Matching ads to *them* nothing. But they don't match ads based on the content of a single message; its based on the aggregate information you have, fine tuned by whats in a particular message.
If I receive 200 messages about vampire bats and then you send me a "Hey! Whats up?" they can show me some ads about bats, because nothing else is more relevant, and they know i like bats.
If you send me a "Hey! You need a bat?" They can show me some ads for the winged bats instead of the wooden ones... because from the profiling they know what kind of bats I like.
etc.
I agree deleted messages might have less value than messages I want to keep, but perhaps not... some people delete practically everything. Suppose I'm a big stereo buff, and am always corresponding with various online stores about bits; and after buying a component I delete the bulk of the pre-sales correspondance. Suppose also that I keep all the birthday pictures my family sends me... my profile if they only looked at what I kept would, after a few years be a whole lot of birthday pics, and few recent inquiries about stereo components -- suggesting I'm much more interested in birthdays (and might be in the market for party hats, flowers, cakes, etc), and not stereos, which make up the bulk of my correspondance. Deleting messages clearly skews the accuracy of the profile.
If they wanted to process them for their "profile" they would already have done that.
When they improve their profiling algorithms they'll want to run it against the original data.
It seems more likely to me that Google does intend to delete trashed messages, but just doesn't want to promise exactly when they'll get around to it.
Definately a possiblity. Likely for most ISPs. I'm not convinced its nearly as likely for google.
But as you said, perhaps we'll learn from this case.
Why more so than Hotmail, Yahoo, or any other webmail? I'm sure all their "privacy" promises are at least as loose as Google's.
While any ISP, including your local pop3 box provider would likely comply with this request...
Only google claims to want to "organize all the worlds information", including the information *you* no longer value, like old emails you've deleted. They have value to them for their profiling/advertising efforts.
While any ISP *might* have an incidental backup of your email going back 3 years. Google is the only one that is likely to be systematically going to the trouble of keeping your email, all of it, going back forever.
It only remains a question of how much data Google has actually retained. Though they don't guarantee to delete mail when trashed, in practice they probably do eventually, and the case concerns events two or three years ago.
Exactly. No other ISP is likely to be able to produce much more than an incidental or partial backup that far back; but nobody here will be surprised if Google can bring back everything. (Complete with relevant ads down one side.)
Ok. Given Windows Vista is probably around 10% bare-metal OS, and 90% user inferace, why is the.net to native code ratio of Vista 100% native? I mean sure, we don't expect it to be 10:90 out of the gate... but *why* wasn't the new version of Paint or Notepad written in.net? Why isn't the Add Printer Wizard.net? Or any of the other 200 bazillion wizards? What about some MMC panels? Policy Editor? Windows Update? The regional settings control panel? There is nothing "bare metal" about any of that crap.
We didn't even get a.net Solitaire or Minesweeper.
Nobody wants, or expects the kernel to be.net; but its striking that there is NOTHING whatsoever in.net expecially in an OS that is so loaded with utilties and wizards and tools.
Imagine Sun Solaris shipping without anything built in Java.
A little shoving is nothing compared to the utter beating you can receive in school as a teenager.
Agreed. But I think *most* bullying in school stays within the "ceaseless harrassment that you can't seem to do anything about" category.
Sure, a coworker who calls you names or gives you a little shove probably will get away with it (big deal)
Actually I think it is a big deal. A hostile work environment like that is utterly demoralizing. (But at least you can quit.)
You're simply not likely to come across physically violent people at work, because it takes a certain amount of responsibility and ability to get along with other people in order to hold a job
Bullies don't usually grow up to become educated cubicle dwellers, or well manicured managers of retail mall outlets, but most of them do end up employed. Mining, construction, dockworkers, and so forth... and on those jobs bullying can be a problem. And people rarely end up in prison over altercations.
But your right about school: its a double sided problem -- the kids being bullied can't quit (and shouldn't have to)... and the bullies don't get permanently expelled. You can't get fired from school unless you do something nuts enough to get you committed.
Well, for starters. Your entire argument makes no sense. How does a waitress stealing your card number equal "Big Brother gaining access to personal information" ??
"Big Brother" is the government, and occasionally overly powerful large corporations.
He is likely worried about the government reading his email, monitoring his internet searches, the sites he visists, the instant messages he sends.
He is likely aware that they can still tap his phone, monitor his library usage, and follow him around to see who he talks to but he is secure in the knowledge that government can't afford to give everyone that kind of personalized attention, while online, potentially they can.
Which part is bullshit? I pretty much said the same thing you did; that as an adult you have ability to remove yourself from an unpleasant environment.
However, for children, there are no real penalties for what are serious crimes for adults. Doesn't it make sense that if there are no penalties for crimes, that some people are going to take advantage of the situation and commit crimes?
Yes. But there's a lot of bullying tactics that have no real penalties at any age. Sure a little shoving and name calling might be assault or harrassment, and sure stealing your pen might be theft, but good luck having a coworker arrested for it no matter how often he did it. Your only hope is that the boss will side with you and fire him; if the boss isn't interested in dealing with it then all that's left is to quit.
In life when one is confronted with a confrontational situation like bullying there are two choices: fight or flight. For bullying - fighting rarely works because bullies select the least able to fight; even if they do fight they are likely not to be much of a threat. And flight doesn't work because the structure of school forces these people into constant proximity.
My sister was bullied brutally for several years. There was NOTHING the school could do for her, and nothing the police could do for her until the bullying escalated to assault. And even then they said that charging her bullies would likely only aggravate her problems further.
The solution came when we my family was transferred accross the country. New school, no problems. Oh, there were still outcasts and bully's but my sister was no longer the outcast; she made friends quickly and easily; as she didn't carry the 'stigma'.
I think that's why bullying is much less of a problem as an adult; if you have an intolerable environment where you are the outcast with no friends, and your getting harrassed. You'd change jobs, or move, you wouldn't have to put up with it.
But the parent came up with a _working_ solution to the "bigger problem".
No. The they came up with a solution that worked. That's not the same as a working solution.
Chasing a grizzly bear out of your campsite garbage by grabbing a stick and rushing at it yelling might very well scare it off. Would you call that a working solution too? I call it a crapshoot. With the other outcome being a "Bear Mauls Camper" headline in the next day's paper.
What's yours?
I don't really have one. But I've seen the "fight back" solution fail miserably often enough to know that its a crapshoot.
Oh, and Reena Virk did not fight back, and died at the first onset of a gang beating that ended up with "Witnesses later testified that one of the accused bragged that she had one foot on Virk's head and smoked a cigarette as Virk lay in the water. "
Reena was swarmed, and beaten to an inch of her life. What possible difference would it have made if she'd been swinging punches back with 8 mostly older larger people ganging up on her?
The scene afterwards with the foot on her head in the water took place after a 2nd beating that transpired when two of the 8 attackers followed her after she staggered away from the first one. By that point she was barely alive; nevermind able to put up a fight.
And its widely beleived that motivation for the swarming in the first place was that Reena had been retaliating against the bullying by spreading rumours about one of the girls, as part of trying to build 'street cred' and a reputation for being 'tough'. In a way... what got her killed was that she *was* trying to be tough; in her own misguided way she *had* been fighting back.
The "what if" thing is stupid.
Not considering the possible and likely outcomes is stupid.
"What if a meteorite came down and smashed both your kid and the bully into a pile of debris?"
Irrelevant as this would happen or not happen regardless of whether the kid fights back.
Confrontation is required in animal to animal conflict. Every animal does it. Hell, even small kids first learn confrontation...And we are talking about 2 year old kids that have _nothing_ to back it up with.
That violent confrontation is the basest, least sophisticated, response to a problem, understood even by 2 year olds whose vocabulary is limited to "Mom", "Up", "Milk", "Purple" and "No!" hardly serves as an argument for using it to solve them.
Still it would make a good T-shirt: "Everything I Needed to know about social interaction I learned when I was 2." and on the back "NO!"
As I don't know your particular situation, please agree that you also don't know mine.
I can imagine your situation pretty clearly.
Fighting back was the appropriate action in our case
Fighting back -worked- in your case. That doesn't really make it "appropriate" and there was no gaurantee it would work. When you escalate a situation you can't know where its going to go. I'll concede that some situations are much less volatile than others, and that younger kids are less likely to escalate to tragic levels than older kids. But 'less likely' isn't the same as 'won't'.
What would those teachers who said 'Good.' have done if after your son popped the bully in the nose the bully responded by kicking your sons teeth in? or pushing him down a flight of stairs in revenge later on?
What if the bully reacts to the swing by simply pushing your son backwards with a lot of force simply to get him away, and this **unintentially** results in your boy tripping backwards and hitting a concrete wall head first, or perhaps the corner of a desk, or put his head through a window?
That was two months ago, and after two good smacks in the snout (and one miss - my son missed and nailed him in the eye), the bully is no more. My son wasn't the only one to benefit, either: the other kids realized that this worked pretty well.
It could also have backfired miserably.
The bully is usually larger than the other kids, and usually has his friends along when they corner your kid. (Think Jimbo/Kearny/Dolph of the Simpsons); and not all bullying is 'some outcast that most of the kids dislike' -- the bully could just as easily be the most popular kid in the class, and your kid could be the outcast.
So... your kid takes his swing, hits... and then what... sure maybe you'll get lucky and it ends there. Or maybe not.
Maybe the bully's pull a knife. Maybe they just gang up on him and your kid walks home with two black eyes and some missing/broken teeth, and needs a half dozen stiches. (happened to my brother in-law as a teen) Or maybe your kid doesn't walk home at all and you eventually find him swarmed, beaten, and drowned in a river... google the 14-year old Reena Virk.
Bullying is a bigger problem than your simplistic solution of hitting back can solve.
Re:Posession of a controlled substance
on
Cocaine Biosensor
·
· Score: 1
Your post would be true about 100 years ago, however.
Yep. 100 (or so) years ago you could get Cocaine in a bottle mixed with Liquor and Caffeine advertised with such catchy slogans as:
"an intellectual brain tonic" "a most wonderful invigorator of the sexual organs" "sustains and refreshes both the body and brain"
The most famous products were Vin Mariani and French Wine Coca (a copy of Vin Mariani by John Pemberton, the pharmacist who brought us Coca-Cola, which came about about when Pemberton had to take the alcohol out of his liquor product in response to the American prohibition.)
I think it would be a lot more sensible to have a physical switch or jumper that would have to be set to enable bios flashing. 100% gaurantee that it can't be circumvented with software, and equally sure to be immune from socially engineering the less literate... "When you see the WARNING DANGER DANGER YOU ARE ABOUT TO PERMANTLY CHANGE YOUR HARDWARE WINDOW... just click 'continue anyways'." Don't worry about why, trust us...
Failing that a setting in the bios itself that determines whether or not its flashable. I've seen a lot of bioses with that, and I like the feature; the default is no, you have to boot into bios to change the setting, and the flashing process resets the setting back to no.
I'm not sure how strictly secure it is, but assuming that setting can't simply be ignored by a custom flashing utility it seems pretty good.
The best positioned company to beat the iPod at the moment is Sony. They have a music store, a hardware business...
A blu-ray technology that's loaded with nasty drm, a recent rootkit fiasco, a history of making things proprietary to the point of absurdity...
For sony to suceed they'd have to overcome their own inclination to force users to convert everything to ATRAC, impose a limit on the number of times you can listen to a song before re-licensing it, invent a new shape for the usb connector, and force you purchase a Sony receiver, a Sony car stereo, etc etc to use it...
Apple may a Baron of things "proprietary" --- but Sony is the undisputed King.
That's like racing games where the cars are locked until you race to get them. I hate that. I wouldn't pay someone to do it for me, but it'd be nice if they were there in the first place.
Then play a racing game that isn't progression based. That's my whole POINT.
Some racing games are much more progression based than others... some just have a few ultra exotics and a bonus track locked up while others start you off in a Toyota Tercel and you have to earn each and every upgrade along the way.
WoW starts you off in the Tercel; and the whole point of the game is to earn your way up to the ultra exotics; enjoyment of that journey is why people play -- if you don't enjoy that journey -- play something else.
Most multiplayer combat games aren't progression based, be it RTS, Racing, or Combat (FPS/etc) -- Take unreal tournament, all characters start off at full power and a short jog from the best weapons available.
If you don't enjoy starting tiny, naked, and broke and working your way up, there are no shortage of alternatives.
I presume people who *watch* NASCAR are actually entertained by it.
Why? i dunno, to me 500 laps on an oval track doesn't seem much of a spectator sport...
But buying gold in an mmorpg is like getting a NASCAR event on Pay-Per-View, and then paying someone else to watch it for you because you can't stand the tedium of 500 laps on an oval track...
There is no problem understanding 'supply and demand' here. Obviously there is a demand for it.
So what?
If you want to buy a game and pay someone else to play it for you so that you can sort of claim indirect responsibility for your (their?) accomplishments, someone is bound to popup to fill that demand... but how does that make it any less stupid to WANT to do that?
1) You pay a monthly subscription fee to play the game. 2) You find aspects of the game so awful you'll pay other people real money to releive you of the burden of actually playing the game.
Meanwhile, this encourages true no-lifers and/or impoverished asians to try to make a real world income by satisfying your desire not to have to play the game you subscribe to. Which floods the game with piles of greedy morons who make the game less enjoyable for those who do actually enjoy playing it.
Here's a suggestion: Cancel your subscription and play something you actually look forward to playing. There are surely more satisfying uses of your time.
Why are you playing a game that's 80% treadmill if you hate the treadmill? The Mmog is a complete package - and you hate most of it. To get to the bits you like, your character has to slog through the bits you don't - paying someone else to do it is ridiculous.
You wouldn't sign up to a book club (where you read a book and meet to talk about it) if you hated the books they chose most of the time. And what you're doing is even dumber, you're paying someone else to read the books for you, just so you can stay in the book club.
Given most computers run on Windows, that translates to more coverage. You want to slingshot KOffice into the limelight with OO.org port it to Windows.
You don't even have to work it out by hand, or trust utilitiies. The final digit is a 1, that means its an odd number.
A mildly interesting aside, ALL normal binary palindromes are odd. (Because all binary numbers start with "one", and therefore must end with one.)
(Sure you could be annoying and make arguments about zero padded fixed width binary fields, or argue that its not against the law to write an arbitrary number of leading zeroes... but those aren't really "normal"... by the definition of normal I choose to use... so there.:)
Not everybody can become president of the US by law: immigrants can't.
Yeah, I know, generalizations are always too broad, but the idea is still that anyone can become president; there are restrictions and exceptions but that's not the point.
And yeah in canada 30-35% of the popular vote can actually theoretically give you 100% of government power because you just need to win narrow three or four way races in every riding to take each seat. But the point still stands, the balance of power swings immensely when you cross the 50% of seats threshold.
As for proportional representation in BC, yeah, I voted for it. 57% of British Columbians who voted, voted for it -- and it failed. Its easy to be frustrated with democracy when a minority of people, many who simply were completely uninformed, or didn't have a clue what it was and who voted for the status quo -- are able to outvote a *majority* who want change?/sigh
Not always. Sometimes the opposition can and does block the actions of those in power.
Not if those in power are united and hold more than 50%.:/
Would it be better if the system allowed even very small parts of it to block the initiatives of the people in power? Do you think anything would ever get done? It would be an eternal stalemate and re-elections every 6 months.
That's more an artifact of the laws than a necessity.
Suppose they could gaurantee a perpetual series of minority governments. Suppose Canada removed the ability to topple a government on a vote of non-confidence on mundane budget legislation; suppose they were instead sequestered and forced to slog at it until they reached a resolution, and where they knew if they ultimately failed to resolve after spending a few weeks sequestered in a cruddy hotel together, a new group of people would be elected and stuck back in the room.
Like a jury.
The political grandstanding would give way, and there'd be an environment, where parliament would actually WANT to cooperate and compromise, because as much as you might beleive in perpetual stalemate -- when you lock people in a room together until they come up with a solution they're motiviated to do just that.
Right now, the opposition is not motivated to find resolutions. They're main aim is to try and undermine the government to further their lot in the next election.
Political struggles take time, money, and powerful friends.
Not necessarily. That's true in democracies structured like ours, where you have to sell yourself to the people, and the only ones able to accomplish that have trendmendous resources to get your face out there, and associate your face with other faces and ideas that have already been sold. (Which is why running for a party adds so much clout to a campaign vs being an independant... an independant has to communicate his message and stands on his own... a party affiliate can rely on the fact that his message is already out there, and he can ride the goodwill already established for others in the party.
However, that's not the only way things could be run...
For example the whole thing could be handled by lottery, and canditates drafted from the eligible general public. I'm not saying its the best idea but it *would* decentralize power, and if the candidates were drawn from different demographics you could have a much better representation of the country in parliament/congress -- where minorities, gays, young, old, married, single, and fundamentalists could all be proportionately represented.
I know some wingnuts would get in under that system, but they'd be individually quite powerless - and it would be far more representative of the country than 400 rich middle-aged white laywers who belong to one of two or three cliques of friends.
Or perhaps, leave parliament alone, but replace the senate with a bunch of randomly drafted citizens. Parliament writes the laws, but senate has to approve them.
Do I want a random group of 400 walmart clerks, stoners, farmers, slashdot nerds, scientists, tradesmen, and professionals deciding what laws get passed? Why not? Collectively they represent the country pretty good -- better than an elected parliament ever will.
Slashdot Mirror
Skeptics believe (like the majority here on slashdot) that the dangers posed by terrorism do not exceed the dangers posed by a corrupt government.
Indeed many (most) of us think the damage a corrupt government can do to the country vastly exceed anything a "terrorist" could ever do.
Never forget that fighting terrorists is easy while fighting a corrupt government is hard. If you speak out against a corrupt enough government, they merely need to -decide- to label you a terrorist or terrorist sympathizer to shut you down.
A corrupt government with things like the Patriot Act at its disposal has all the tools it needs to make it happen. Evidence gathering without warrants, arrest and detention without access to lawyers or other due process. And its is allowed to conduct that in complete secrecy; shrouding it all under national security.
How long before it gets abused?
How would we ever find out about it if it did?
Not at all. Google is better at identifying spam better than many antispam products.
They would have little trouble at all determining the liklihood that you are looking for "p3nis el@rging pil|s".
(Although they might be able to derive interesting correlations about the habits of people who receive an abnormally high amount of "p3nis" spam, and their other email.
A supposition.
But not one made completely off the cuff.
What's the point of matching ads to messages you've already deleted; meaning you will never display them again?
Matching ads to *them* nothing. But they don't match ads based on the content of a single message; its based on the aggregate information you have, fine tuned by whats in a particular message.
If I receive 200 messages about vampire bats and then you send me a "Hey! Whats up?" they can show me some ads about bats, because nothing else is more relevant, and they know i like bats.
If you send me a "Hey! You need a bat?" They can show me some ads for the winged bats instead of the wooden ones... because from the profiling they know what kind of bats I like.
etc.
I agree deleted messages might have less value than messages I want to keep, but perhaps not... some people delete practically everything. Suppose I'm a big stereo buff, and am always corresponding with various online stores about bits; and after buying a component I delete the bulk of the pre-sales correspondance. Suppose also that I keep all the birthday pictures my family sends me... my profile if they only looked at what I kept would, after a few years be a whole lot of birthday pics, and few recent inquiries about stereo components -- suggesting I'm much more interested in birthdays (and might be in the market for party hats, flowers, cakes, etc), and not stereos, which make up the bulk of my correspondance. Deleting messages clearly skews the accuracy of the profile.
If they wanted to process them for their "profile" they would already have done that.
When they improve their profiling algorithms they'll want to run it against the original data.
It seems more likely to me that Google does intend to delete trashed messages, but just doesn't want to promise exactly when they'll get around to it.
Definately a possiblity. Likely for most ISPs. I'm not convinced its nearly as likely for google.
But as you said, perhaps we'll learn from this case.
Why more so than Hotmail, Yahoo, or any other webmail? I'm sure all their "privacy" promises are at least as loose as Google's.
While any ISP, including your local pop3 box provider would likely comply with this request...
Only google claims to want to "organize all the worlds information", including the information *you* no longer value, like old emails you've deleted. They have value to them for their profiling/advertising efforts.
While any ISP *might* have an incidental backup of your email going back 3 years. Google is the only one that is likely to be systematically going to the trouble of keeping your email, all of it, going back forever.
It only remains a question of how much data Google has actually retained. Though they don't guarantee to delete mail when trashed, in practice they probably do eventually, and the case concerns events two or three years ago.
Exactly. No other ISP is likely to be able to produce much more than an incidental or partial backup that far back; but nobody here will be surprised if Google can bring back everything. (Complete with relevant ads down one side.)
Also, how well does .NET work with DirectX/Direct3D?
Not too badly at all... DirectX 9 includes "Managed DirectX"
Ok. Given Windows Vista is probably around 10% bare-metal OS, and 90% user inferace, why is the .net to native code ratio of Vista 100% native? I mean sure, we don't expect it to be 10:90 out of the gate... but *why* wasn't the new version of Paint or Notepad written in .net? Why isn't the Add Printer Wizard .net? Or any of the other 200 bazillion wizards? What about some MMC panels? Policy Editor? Windows Update? The regional settings control panel? There is nothing "bare metal" about any of that crap.
.net Solitaire or Minesweeper.
.net; but its striking that there is NOTHING whatsoever in .net expecially in an OS that is so loaded with utilties and wizards and tools.
We didn't even get a
Nobody wants, or expects the kernel to be
Imagine Sun Solaris shipping without anything built in Java.
A little shoving is nothing compared to the utter beating you can receive in school as a teenager.
Agreed. But I think *most* bullying in school stays within the "ceaseless harrassment that you can't seem to do anything about" category.
Sure, a coworker who calls you names or gives you a little shove probably will get away with it (big deal)
Actually I think it is a big deal. A hostile work environment like that is utterly demoralizing. (But at least you can quit.)
You're simply not likely to come across physically violent people at work, because it takes a certain amount of responsibility and ability to get along with other people in order to hold a job
Bullies don't usually grow up to become educated cubicle dwellers, or well manicured managers of retail mall outlets, but most of them do end up employed. Mining, construction, dockworkers, and so forth... and on those jobs bullying can be a problem. And people rarely end up in prison over altercations.
But your right about school: its a double sided problem -- the kids being bullied can't quit (and shouldn't have to)... and the bullies don't get permanently expelled. You can't get fired from school unless you do something nuts enough to get you committed.
Well, for starters. Your entire argument makes no sense. How does a waitress stealing your card number equal "Big Brother gaining access to personal information" ??
"Big Brother" is the government, and occasionally overly powerful large corporations.
He is likely worried about the government reading his email, monitoring his internet searches, the sites he visists, the instant messages he sends.
He is likely aware that they can still tap his phone, monitor his library usage, and follow him around to see who he talks to but he is secure in the knowledge that government can't afford to give everyone that kind of personalized attention, while online, potentially they can.
Which part is bullshit? I pretty much said the same thing you did; that as an adult you have ability to remove yourself from an unpleasant environment.
However, for children, there are no real penalties for what are serious crimes for adults. Doesn't it make sense that if there are no penalties for crimes, that some people are going to take advantage of the situation and commit crimes?
Yes. But there's a lot of bullying tactics that have no real penalties at any age. Sure a little shoving and name calling might be assault or harrassment, and sure stealing your pen might be theft, but good luck having a coworker arrested for it no matter how often he did it. Your only hope is that the boss will side with you and fire him; if the boss isn't interested in dealing with it then all that's left is to quit.
In life when one is confronted with a confrontational situation like bullying there are two choices: fight or flight. For bullying - fighting rarely works because bullies select the least able to fight; even if they do fight they are likely not to be much of a threat. And flight doesn't work because the structure of school forces these people into constant proximity.
My sister was bullied brutally for several years. There was NOTHING the school could do for her, and nothing the police could do for her until the bullying escalated to assault. And even then they said that charging her bullies would likely only aggravate her problems further.
The solution came when we my family was transferred accross the country. New school, no problems. Oh, there were still outcasts and bully's but my sister was no longer the outcast; she made friends quickly and easily; as she didn't carry the 'stigma'.
I think that's why bullying is much less of a problem as an adult; if you have an intolerable environment where you are the outcast with no friends, and your getting harrassed. You'd change jobs, or move, you wouldn't have to put up with it.
But the parent came up with a _working_ solution to the "bigger problem".
No. The they came up with a solution that worked. That's not the same as a working solution.
Chasing a grizzly bear out of your campsite garbage by grabbing a stick and rushing at it yelling might very well scare it off. Would you call that a working solution too? I call it a crapshoot. With the other outcome being a "Bear Mauls Camper" headline in the next day's paper.
What's yours?
I don't really have one. But I've seen the "fight back" solution fail miserably often enough to know that its a crapshoot.
Oh, and Reena Virk did not fight back, and died at the first onset of a gang beating that ended up with "Witnesses later testified that one of the accused bragged that she had one foot on Virk's head and smoked a cigarette as Virk lay in the water. "
Reena was swarmed, and beaten to an inch of her life. What possible difference would it have made if she'd been swinging punches back with 8 mostly older larger people ganging up on her?
The scene afterwards with the foot on her head in the water took place after a 2nd beating that transpired when two of the 8 attackers followed her after she staggered away from the first one. By that point she was barely alive; nevermind able to put up a fight.
And its widely beleived that motivation for the swarming in the first place was that Reena had been retaliating against the bullying by spreading rumours about one of the girls, as part of trying to build 'street cred' and a reputation for being 'tough'. In a way... what got her killed was that she *was* trying to be tough; in her own misguided way she *had* been fighting back.
The "what if" thing is stupid.
Not considering the possible and likely outcomes is stupid.
"What if a meteorite came down and smashed both your kid and the bully into a pile of debris?"
Irrelevant as this would happen or not happen regardless of whether the kid fights back.
Confrontation is required in animal to animal conflict. Every animal does it. Hell, even small kids first learn confrontation...And we are talking about 2 year old kids that have _nothing_ to back it up with.
That violent confrontation is the basest, least sophisticated, response to a problem, understood even by 2 year olds whose vocabulary is limited to "Mom", "Up", "Milk", "Purple" and "No!" hardly serves as an argument for using it to solve them.
Still it would make a good T-shirt: "Everything I Needed to know about social interaction I learned when I was 2." and on the back "NO!"
As I don't know your particular situation, please agree that you also don't know mine.
I can imagine your situation pretty clearly.
Fighting back was the appropriate action in our case
Fighting back -worked- in your case. That doesn't really make it "appropriate" and there was no gaurantee it would work. When you escalate a situation you can't know where its going to go. I'll concede that some situations are much less volatile than others, and that younger kids are less likely to escalate to tragic levels than older kids. But 'less likely' isn't the same as 'won't'.
What would those teachers who said 'Good.' have done if after your son popped the bully in the nose the bully responded by kicking your sons teeth in? or pushing him down a flight of stairs in revenge later on?
What if the bully reacts to the swing by simply pushing your son backwards with a lot of force simply to get him away, and this **unintentially** results in your boy tripping backwards and hitting a concrete wall head first, or perhaps the corner of a desk, or put his head through a window?
That was two months ago, and after two good smacks in the snout (and one miss - my son missed and nailed him in the eye), the bully is no more. My son wasn't the only one to benefit, either: the other kids realized that this worked pretty well.
It could also have backfired miserably.
The bully is usually larger than the other kids, and usually has his friends along when they corner your kid. (Think Jimbo/Kearny/Dolph of the Simpsons); and not all bullying is 'some outcast that most of the kids dislike' -- the bully could just as easily be the most popular kid in the class, and your kid could be the outcast.
So... your kid takes his swing, hits... and then what... sure maybe you'll get lucky and it ends there. Or maybe not.
Maybe the bully's pull a knife. Maybe they just gang up on him and your kid walks home with two black eyes and some missing/broken teeth, and needs a half dozen stiches. (happened to my brother in-law as a teen) Or maybe your kid doesn't walk home at all and you eventually find him swarmed, beaten, and drowned in a river... google the 14-year old Reena Virk.
Bullying is a bigger problem than your simplistic solution of hitting back can solve.
Your post would be true about 100 years ago, however.
Yep. 100 (or so) years ago you could get Cocaine in a bottle mixed with Liquor and Caffeine advertised with such catchy slogans as:
"an intellectual brain tonic"
"a most wonderful invigorator of the sexual organs"
"sustains and refreshes both the body and brain"
The most famous products were Vin Mariani and French Wine Coca (a copy of Vin Mariani by John Pemberton, the pharmacist who brought us Coca-Cola, which came about about when Pemberton had to take the alcohol out of his liquor product in response to the American prohibition.)
I think it would be a lot more sensible to have a physical switch or jumper that would have to be set to enable bios flashing. 100% gaurantee that it can't be circumvented with software, and equally sure to be immune from socially engineering the less literate... "When you see the WARNING DANGER DANGER YOU ARE ABOUT TO PERMANTLY CHANGE YOUR HARDWARE WINDOW... just click 'continue anyways'." Don't worry about why, trust us...
Failing that a setting in the bios itself that determines whether or not its flashable. I've seen a lot of bioses with that, and I like the feature; the default is no, you have to boot into bios to change the setting, and the flashing process resets the setting back to no.
I'm not sure how strictly secure it is, but assuming that setting can't simply be ignored by a custom flashing utility it seems pretty good.
The best positioned company to beat the iPod at the moment is Sony. They have a music store, a hardware business...
A blu-ray technology that's loaded with nasty drm, a recent rootkit fiasco, a history of making things proprietary to the point of absurdity...
For sony to suceed they'd have to overcome their own inclination to force users to convert everything to ATRAC, impose a limit on the number of times you can listen to a song before re-licensing it, invent a new shape for the usb connector, and force you purchase a Sony receiver, a Sony car stereo, etc etc to use it...
Apple may a Baron of things "proprietary" --- but Sony is the undisputed King.
That's like racing games where the cars are locked until you race to get them. I hate that. I wouldn't pay someone to do it for me, but it'd be nice if they were there in the first place.
Then play a racing game that isn't progression based. That's my whole POINT.
Some racing games are much more progression based than others... some just have a few ultra exotics and a bonus track locked up while others start you off in a Toyota Tercel and you have to earn each and every upgrade along the way.
WoW starts you off in the Tercel; and the whole point of the game is to earn your way up to the ultra exotics; enjoyment of that journey is why people play -- if you don't enjoy that journey -- play something else.
Most multiplayer combat games aren't progression based, be it RTS, Racing, or Combat (FPS/etc) -- Take unreal tournament, all characters start off at full power and a short jog from the best weapons available.
If you don't enjoy starting tiny, naked, and broke and working your way up, there are no shortage of alternatives.
I presume people who *watch* NASCAR are actually entertained by it.
Why? i dunno, to me 500 laps on an oval track doesn't seem much of a spectator sport...
But buying gold in an mmorpg is like getting a NASCAR event on Pay-Per-View, and then paying someone else to watch it for you because you can't stand the tedium of 500 laps on an oval track...
There is no problem understanding 'supply and demand' here. Obviously there is a demand for it.
So what?
If you want to buy a game and pay someone else to play it for you so that you can sort of claim indirect responsibility for your (their?) accomplishments, someone is bound to popup to fill that demand... but how does that make it any less stupid to WANT to do that?
You've got to be braindead to do that...
Think about it this way:
1) You pay a monthly subscription fee to play the game.
2) You find aspects of the game so awful you'll pay other people real money to releive you of the burden of actually playing the game.
Meanwhile, this encourages true no-lifers and/or impoverished asians to try to make a real world income by satisfying your desire not to have to play the game you subscribe to. Which floods the game with piles of greedy morons who make the game less enjoyable for those who do actually enjoy playing it.
Here's a suggestion: Cancel your subscription and play something you actually look forward to playing. There are surely more satisfying uses of your time.
Why are you playing a game that's 80% treadmill if you hate the treadmill? The Mmog is a complete package - and you hate most of it. To get to the bits you like, your character has to slog through the bits you don't - paying someone else to do it is ridiculous.
You wouldn't sign up to a book club (where you read a book and meet to talk about it) if you hated the books they chose most of the time. And what you're doing is even dumber, you're paying someone else to read the books for you, just so you can stay in the book club.
Its a pity KOffice only runs on *nixes (afaik).
OpenOffice runs on Windows and OS X.
Given most computers run on Windows, that translates to more coverage. You want to slingshot KOffice into the limelight with OO.org port it to Windows.
It would also help Mass., with its ODF migration.
So it is.
:)
The exception that proves the rule.
10011011001
... by the definition of normal I choose to use... so there. :)
You don't even have to work it out by hand, or trust utilitiies. The final digit is a 1, that means its an odd number.
A mildly interesting aside, ALL normal binary palindromes are odd. (Because all binary numbers start with "one", and therefore must end with one.)
(Sure you could be annoying and make arguments about zero padded fixed width binary fields, or argue that its not against the law to write an arbitrary number of leading zeroes... but those aren't really "normal"
-cheers
Not everybody can become president of the US by law: immigrants can't.
/sigh
Yeah, I know, generalizations are always too broad, but the idea is still that anyone can become president; there are restrictions and exceptions but that's not the point.
And yeah in canada 30-35% of the popular vote can actually theoretically give you 100% of government power because you just need to win narrow three or four way races in every riding to take each seat. But the point still stands, the balance of power swings immensely when you cross the 50% of seats threshold.
As for proportional representation in BC, yeah, I voted for it. 57% of British Columbians who voted, voted for it -- and it failed. Its easy to be frustrated with democracy when a minority of people, many who simply were completely uninformed, or didn't have a clue what it was and who voted for the status quo -- are able to outvote a *majority* who want change?
Not always. Sometimes the opposition can and does block the actions of those in power.
:/
... an independant has to communicate his message and stands on his own... a party affiliate can rely on the fact that his message is already out there, and he can ride the goodwill already established for others in the party.
Not if those in power are united and hold more than 50%.
Would it be better if the system allowed even very small parts of it to block the initiatives of the people in power? Do you think anything would ever get done? It would be an eternal stalemate and re-elections every 6 months.
That's more an artifact of the laws than a necessity.
Suppose they could gaurantee a perpetual series of minority governments. Suppose Canada removed the ability to topple a government on a vote of non-confidence on mundane budget legislation; suppose they were instead sequestered and forced to slog at it until they reached a resolution, and where they knew if they ultimately failed to resolve after spending a few weeks sequestered in a cruddy hotel together, a new group of people would be elected and stuck back in the room.
Like a jury.
The political grandstanding would give way, and there'd be an environment, where parliament would actually WANT to cooperate and compromise, because as much as you might beleive in perpetual stalemate -- when you lock people in a room together until they come up with a solution they're motiviated to do just that.
Right now, the opposition is not motivated to find resolutions. They're main aim is to try and undermine the government to further their lot in the next election.
Political struggles take time, money, and powerful friends.
Not necessarily. That's true in democracies structured like ours, where you have to sell yourself to the people, and the only ones able to accomplish that have trendmendous resources to get your face out there, and associate your face with other faces and ideas that have already been sold. (Which is why running for a party adds so much clout to a campaign vs being an independant
However, that's not the only way things could be run...
For example the whole thing could be handled by lottery, and canditates drafted from the eligible general public. I'm not saying its the best idea but it *would* decentralize power, and if the candidates were drawn from different demographics you could have a much better representation of the country in parliament/congress -- where minorities, gays, young, old, married, single, and fundamentalists could all be proportionately represented.
I know some wingnuts would get in under that system, but they'd be individually quite powerless - and it would be far more representative of the country than 400 rich middle-aged white laywers who belong to one of two or three cliques of friends.
Or perhaps, leave parliament alone, but replace the senate with a bunch of randomly drafted citizens. Parliament writes the laws, but senate has to approve them.
Do I want a random group of 400 walmart clerks, stoners, farmers, slashdot nerds, scientists, tradesmen, and professionals deciding what laws get passed? Why not? Collectively they represent the country pretty good -- better than an elected parliament ever will.