Only because they don't have the legal teeth. Certain groups of people and various politicians are trying like mad to change this. I never requested their dialogue. And whether my kid buys the game, pirates it, borrows it from a friend or plays it at their house.... it doesn't really matter. He'll see it whether I like it or not.

Generally my kids aren't walking around with $50-$100 in their pocket anyway. Kids that do either have jobs (kudos!) or they are spoiled brats. The ones with jobs should be free to purchase whatever game they want and as far as the spoiled brats go, seeing them remove each other from the gene pool would not offend me in the slightest.

I don't need some numbnuts minimum wage game store clerk questioning my purchases for my children as if I didn't see the stupid ESRB rating. I find it condescending and offensive.

I let my 3 kids play the GTA series. I even taught them how to fire REAL guns.

Yet they have never committed a violent act against another human being. Because they know video games are entertainment and fantasy. And they know the devastating power of real firearms and their intended purpose. They also know the value of human life and that violence is a desperate last resort.

They also know that if it ever comes to violence.... you need to be able to dish it out effectively and win.

Ya see.... I don't need the ESRB or the government telling me how I should raise my own kids. I'll raise them how I see fit and society can f**k off. I really don't care about the opinion of the masses of panicky, scared, arrogant, pompous mothers with extra cash to throw at lobbyists and "ratings boards". As far as I'm concerned they'd be better off spending all that cash on booze and choking on their own vomit.

They can shelter their kids to the point of being useless, "entitled", drooling retards but the second they try to force their views upon me, we have a problem. Oh... and for the record.... my kids are straight A students with a great interest in the Sciences and History. They also happen to like mowing down prostitutes in GTA for amusement after their homework is finished.

I'm glad they are giving tablets another go. I just recently got a Nook HD+ and it's actually a fairly impressive tablet, especially at that price point. The 1920x1280 LCD is really nice to look at and it's got a reasonable CPU.

I reflashed mine with CyanogenMod 10.1 but I know a few others who are quite happy with the stock firmware. Once they finally added the play store and such the stock firmware sucks a lot less. I'd buy another one.... I'm actually thinking of buying a few Nook HD's for the kids.

As long as they stay on the current track of trying to make real tablets out of them instead of eReaders on steroids, I'm happy.

Or they do what they did down the street and turn it into a mercenary training camp instead:

http://threatmanagementgroup.com/TMG/facilities-2/utc-urban-training-center-2/

That used to be the Bowman High School in Bowman, SC. Still has the Bowman High School lettering on the building.

GOVT: MARIJUANA IS STILL ILLEGAL FEDERALLY DESPITE WHAT CO AND WA THINK ......time passes......
CITIZENS: Hey, stop f**king spying on us!!!!! WTF are you doing breaking the law?! Why are you persecuting Americans?!

GOVT: Hey, come down..... totalitarianism isn't so bad.... have a bong hit.

"Lord Blair" can kiss my American ass. Maybe if the US and UK governments weren't engaged in illegal activity that is disgustingly immoral, the people wouldn't have to take action and humiliate them at every corner.

These governments do not have the divine right to exist. When they become criminal organizations and treat their own people and criminals and enemies, it's time for them to go. Especially here in the US where they are supposed to represent the will of the people, not their sponsors' agendas. They are supposed to represent us, not "rule" us. We are not subjects. PERIOD.

Instead, what we have now are whackjobs like this who masturbate about Big Brother while reading 1984 like it's some kind of manual on how to run a country. These vermin need to be put in their place. Preferably prison or stuffed in their own black sites and tortured.

Unless you consider revolution "terrorism", there is nothing that would aid terrorists all that much that's been leaked. It just gives the terrorists a chance to laugh at your hypocrisy.

That is absolutely correct. And because I haven't been a slave to banks and credit agencies since reaching adulthood and preferring to pay for things outright (including cars), no bank will touch me. The only bad debts I have are medical because reasonable insurance is unavailable for the lower middle class nowadays.

Yep. Most people are so desperate for the cash they don't even bother to read the documents however. They just bend over and take the abuse. Unfortunately, since so many people do this, banks can get away with f**king me over. If 50% of the populace is willing to be abused, it's perfectly ok right?

Corporate America has no business knowing the company I keep. And a friend with bad credit doesn't mean I should have trouble getting credit.

LOL Really? I was right here bitching about it. And are you seriously trying to say Republicans are racists? Are you retarded, or were you just raised on hatred?

Which is why I voted Libertarian. I actually vote for who I'd like to see in office. The only difference between Repub and Dem nowadays is their corporate sponsors.

So basically corporate America wants to take IT and turn it into a field full of migrant workers with no benefits supporting families on unsteady contract work? Along with treating them as untrustworthy as well as being an expense/necessary evil rather than critical team assets.

And they wonder why so many are leaking secrets, stealing or leaving them in a bind when they've finally had it or the contract nears its end?

Ummmm.... No.... they really haven't. You obviously weren't a Linux user around 1995. Just getting X11 running was a serious PITA affair much less getting it to do anything. FVWM and FVWM95 were pretty popular. xfm was a common file manager. OpenLook was around for Linux too. Commercial versions of Motif and CDE were around I think.

DOZENS of Window Managers for X11 have existed over the years. Full desktop environments you can probably count on 2 or 3 hands.

Even if that were the case, which I'm sure it's not. They would simply use CALEA equipment at ISP or Telco to monitor and dump your traffic into a DB in real-time if anything REMOTELY looking like an interesting pattern showed up in your e-mail subjects or sender/recipient info. And now they can decrypt the vast majority of SSL traffic at least from those who use US-based providers or CA's.

The problem is that it's been shown that they often don't bother with the courts before spying on Americans. It's illegal, immoral, thuggish, expensive and f**king stupid.

Um.... in a word.... NO....

People that can't afford decent goods will have to settle for equipment that can be built for a lower cost. And if I have the cash to get a premium product, I can get a premium product.

That's like saying Macbook Pro's should cost $300 because walmart sells $300 Toshibas.

I would really *LOVE* for them to carry this out. Fire 90% of your staff trained in network security.

Awesome.

That would mean the NSA spy machine would suddenly become the property of the blackhat community. I'd find that HIGHLY entertaining.

Nah, they'll simply redefine the "legal definition" of various clear english terms and use creative interpretation based on the new definitions until the Constitution no longer matters. It's already effectively useless if the Feds are keen on ruining you.

Textbooks will likely try to spin it in a positive light about governments getting "stronger" to fight "criminals and terrorists" because more democratic and decentralized systems of government proved too weak in the modern age to handle the modern threats. Unfortunately we're all criminals under current law and we're all, as Americans, descendents of criminals, terrorists and thieves. They are trying to stamp out the sort of people that made this nation possible in the first place. They know what they are doing is evil. They know it's illegal. They specifically set the system up so abusing it would be easy and efficient. They don't care. And they never will.

Words and waving signs won't fix it this time folks. This isn't just a slippery slope. We've been sent off a cliff. It's Fascism without the openly racist elements and the illusion of freedom/democracy. Corporations and lapdog politicians have worked REAL HARD to make it that way for a long time. Since at least the 1930's, probably before that.