to the detriment of the rest of us.
Yes.
Yes, everyone loves to believe that they are (and always will be) smart and tough enough that THEY don't need any of those pesky nanny-state consumer protection laws. Mr. Galt, is that you?
You kept the "N hours" but conveniently forgot the "just keeping them entertained" part. Hooray for honest discourse!
Look here: I spend N hours already keeping him fed, sheltered, healthy, and educated. I also have my own responsibilities related to and financially supporting those. If I have a few hours left over, do I want to spend them watching over his shoulder while he plays PokeSmurfVillage or whatever game he's into this week? Fuck no. But I guess that makes me an incompetent parent. Right?
Parenting is a whole lot more than supervising your children while they play. There, you learned something today. You're welcome.
To begin with, the justice system should be based entirely on rehabilitation, not punishment, so it's our "Tough On Crime" mentality that causes these problems in the first place. So we should be tailoring it to the individuals, anyway. I care more about real justice than anything else.
Well, this is where I bow out. I agree entirely that rehabilitation is more worthwhile, but less emphasized (at least in the US, where I live) than retribution. But if we're beginning the discussion with a complete overhaul of the entire criminal justice system, then I think I'll sit out. I came here to talk about Google's payment authorization scheme.
Have a good day.
Kids got along just fine before tablets, and in many cases were more social and had more exercise.
This "good old days" thinking is lazy and often wrong. My kid has basically all the screen time he wants (I don't set limits), but he plays outside with our neighbors for hours a day, running up and down the street or playing basketball. And you may not have noticed it, but games are quite social these days. He's always trading pokemon or game secrets with his friends who play the same games, or even playing some of them online with the neighbors.
It's not about having "N hours to keeping them entertained", it's about choosing the mode of entertainment. Kids got along just fine before tablets, and in many cases were more social and had more exercise.
I'm not against kids playing games etc - I certainly played enough in my youth - but there are better things than surrounding them with screens 24/7
Nobody is saying that surrounding them with screens 24/7 is the answer. And it's not like other modes of entertainment are without risk. I have to supervise my kid to some extent no matter what he's doing--playing with neighbor kids, making something with glue, paint, scissors, etc., or playing games on the tablet. This isn't about parents abdicating their duties to the tablet. This is about an unreasonable system.
If the intersection by my house had no stop signs, I'd go to the city council and say, "Hey! There's an uncontrolled intersection right next to my house, and I can't let my kid out the door without direct supervision, or he could get hurt. There need to be some stop signs there!" That's the answer, not "pay closer attention to your kid you lazy parent!"
Likewise, if I can't let my kid play on the tablet without hovering over his shoulder the whole time to make sure he doesn't accidentally buy $99 worth of fooberries, the best answer isn't to just suck it up and watch him play his game for an hour. The answer is to put in some damn stop signs, and that's all people are asking for here.
This is exactly the problem.
Current situation: Thank you for entering your password to authorize the purchase on screen. I will not bother to mention that you've also authorized unlimited additional purchases over the next half hour.
Bare minimum acceptable solution: Thank you for entering your password to authorize this purchase, as well as unlimited additional purchases for half an hour.
Slightly better: Please enter your password to authorize this purchase, as well as unlimited additional purchases for half an hour.
Good, and easy solution: Thank you for your purchase. Authorize additional purchases for the next (30 minutes | 24 hours | Forever | No thanks, ask for my password next time ).
No, we treat children in a certain way because they are children.
So you arbitrarily decide to treat them in a certain way based on nothing but their age. Thanks for making that clear.
Yes. You know what, you sound like you are either a child yourself, or someone who hasn't lived as an adult long enough to learn that rules are never perfect, but "everyone should just do the obviously right thing all the time" is not a feasible substitute.
Well, I don't care about the law, so that's an irrelevant point to me. Laws are often illogical and/or unjust.
You're definitely going places with that attitude! (Places where the toilet is right next to the bed, most likely.)
Also, you do realize you're commenting on an article about a LAWsuit, right?
it would be totally impractical to make this judgement on a case-by-case basis
No, it wouldn't.
That's a compelling rebuttal, but consider this: when a minor (16 or 17 usually) is to be tried as an adult, or an adult is to be declared incompetent to stand trial (insanity defense), a lot of the court's time is taken up deciding one way or the other, independent of the question of guilt. If that process had to be followed for every criminal prosecution, every day, then yes, it would be utterly impractical.
Was not disappointed.
Kids are not supposed to know the full range of consequences of their actions
Not supposed to? As in, it would be a bad thing if they did?
Also, if we treat people who don't know the full range of consequences of their actions in a certain way, why aren't most adults--who are merely overgrown children--treated that way?
Wow, what a disingenuous comment. Of course the GP didn't mean it would be bad if they did, or that no adults act like children. Obviously he/she meant that there's a certain threshold beyond which a person is (legally) presumed to understand the consequences of their actions, and we call it adulthood. To answer your second, equally ignorant question, it would be totally impractical to make this judgement on a case-by-case basis, as well as introducing some seriously perverse incentives.
I think the real problem is that parents want to use a phone or tablet as a pacifier, so they don't have to parent the tykes.
Ah yes, the rallying call of the childless. I'm sure that if you ever have kids, you'll have the means and inclination to devote N hours of your own time every day simply to keeping them entertained.
Then vegans need to get over themselves
Stereotypes aside, can I just point out that the overwhelming majority of I-know-what's-good-for-you self-righteousness in these comments isn't coming from the vegans?
4. What are the chances of us being at the bottom of an infinite chain of simulators?
If the number of simulators is infinite, then the chances of us being at any on particular position in the chain would be as close to 0% as mathematics allows.
Hmm...I don't think this necessarily follows. Suppose each universe contains on average 2 simulated universes. Then each level has twice as many total universes as the level above, and the probability of a randomly chosen universe existing on the bottom level is 1/2. The bottom-level probability increases rapidly with the average number of simulations per universe.
Unsolicited notifications are never acceptable and I have uninstalled every app that has ever bugged me with one. As the other reply asked, why not include this information as a "tip of the day" when the app is invoked, rather than shove it in the notification bar where important stuff goes? Why do I need to know something about your calculator at some random time when I'm not even using it?
You know, the difference between this company and the Titanic is that the Titanic had paying customers.
