Personally, I'd rather the doctor concentrate more on KEEPING ME ALIVE than being delayed because he didn't say 'pretty please, with sugar on top' in order to get some results needed to make me not die.

I mean, there's attempting to make them more coerteous, and then there's "oh, let the patient die... the doctor didn't say please".

Yeah, but we're adults, so the natural inclination of corporations is to use us like the expendable batteries that we are. Force every hint of productivity out of us, then discard us when we're broken and no longer of use.

That's because north america puts such a brutally large importance on competitive sports that many kids are sadly taught that if they don't become a professional athlete, they've failed their parents. After all, every parent wants to retire once their kid scores that 4-million-a-year contract. The system is horribly broken.

Personally, I say athletes should have their salaries capped (after bonuses or any other possible way to get the money) at 150k a year. And that's for the highest-end athletes.

Imagine how much better the country would be to have those millions upon millions of dollars spent ELSEWHERE, instead of some baseball or football player? Higher pay could be going to everyone (although the higher-ups at companies wouldn't allow that), it could be funneled into infrastructure, or god forbid put towards research and development!

Hey, I'm 30... perhaps if some adults started taking the initiative, it wouldn't be uncommon. See you next camp opening! :P

This is, of course, despite the fact that if it was a "reading" camp or "robotics" camp where you sit at a desk and work on circuits/what have you all day, this camp would have been declared the greatest thing since sliced bread? Yeah, thought so.

Some games actually DO require a lot of thinking and problem solving. Of course, the people complaining about the camp won't see that... they'll see "video games = bad! It's for kids and not for growing children who should be active!!!!"

So true. North America puts WAY too much emphasis on "being good at sports". News flash: It's not every kid's dream to become a professional sports athlete! Some of us... AC above me and myself... dislike sports. Hell, I DESPISE playing sports. Should I be seen as a pariah, shut out from the rest of society? Or maybe, just maybe, I see sports as a waste of time, and would rather spend time with my friends doing something OTHER than throwing a ball back and forth in my spare time.

My kingdom for some mod points! That was unbelievably insightful. They're there, quite likely because they wouldn't WANT to go to any other camp.

To hell with THAT theory, I know for a FACT that this ban will be useful.

I work as a Customs broker, and thus receive calls from many trucking companies... their dispatchers and drivers.

There are multiple trucking companies that spoof their caller ID for... I can't even begin to guess what reason. One of them shows up as "123456" on our caller ID... I can't fathom what use THAT is. There's another one that uses something random, can't recall what offhand.

And another one... the actual trucking company of which I'll avoid mentioning... actually has "911" show up as its caller ID. I've thought that there's no WAY that can be legal, pretending to be 911 by way of caller ID. I've come to guess that the reason they do this is that there's... I dunno... a better chance of whoever they're calling not letting it go to voicemail, or perhaps just being picked up faster? No clue.

So yes, there ARE legitimate companies that spoof their caller ID to either random digits, or outright entirely different things. And that 911 company? This isn't some small, mom-and-pop type operation either... we're talking hundreds of offices all over Canada AND the USA. If they were forced to NOT masquarade as an emergency service, it'd be REALLY nice.
I've debated somehow reporting their caller-ID spoofing, but never came up with a good place to report to. They, as I said, have many offices, only one of which is in my city... and that's not the one that calls us to check their shipments anyway.

User friendly formats... pfft, they probably have a loophole to that and will put them in .pdf format :P.

What was the point of climbing Mount Everest? What's the point of any "biggest" or "fastest" or "strongest" anything in the Guiness book of world records?

Multiple reasons, pick one or any:
For the thrill of doing something noone has ever done before
To bring worldwide attention to your company/firm/etc.
To obtain a better knowledge of the physics behind things, how to better design things to overcome problems, etc. In general, further understanding.
To prove that you're better than "the other guys" who have attempted this but failed.
Etc.

Just because something doesn't have immediate profitability and instantaneous everyday use *RIGHT NOW* doesn't mean that it won't be of value to others, or in the future. More knowledge is always better.

Even Slashdot blew their chance with me. The god-forsaken, shaky, animated ad of the woman bitching to the husband about the mail server being down or some shit? Sorry, too irritating for me. I COULD keep reloading the page until a different ad comes up... but that a) wastes my time, b) wastes my bandwitdth (and thus my money), c) wastes slashdot's bandwidth (every little bit from every person adds up), and d) promotes continuing to have annoying ads since from their perspective, they are getting more ad-views. AND, the ad-server takes longer to load than the entirity of the rest of the page. Not cool, man. I will wait for the site, I won't wait for the ads. If they load faster than the rest of the site as a whole, fine. But they don't.

Thus... blocked. Don't like it, fix online advertising. As others have said, if this site goes down, several more will take its place. No skin off my back, and barely the slightest annoyance to me.

Remember sites: you're trying to either draw me here, or KEEP me here. Drive me away, that's too damn bad. I owe you nothing since I'm already here. It's your job to find a way to make money with that fact without driving me away or causing me to block your attempts.

As if you have to ask. It can be summed up in one word:
Samzenpus.

Oh Samzenpus, why do you keep thinking you can fanangle your submissions into a 'real' category. Keep it in idle where you belong. Of course, asking that is like asking a retarded child not to crap it's pants.

And THERE it is... you had a good argument going, and then you completely destroyed it and made everything you said worthless in a few short words:

unless they guy has some kind of monopoly (which is in fact illegal).

Ticket botnet buys up all available tickets. Tickets cannot be purchased elsewhere. Monopoly.

It would be like saying I can't buy a beer because some children weren't taught discipline, or because genetically they can't have beer, and haven't been trained to stay away from it.
I'm sorry to say, but society is already teaching children that that's exactly the way it is.

One kid in a school is allergic to peanuts? Noone in the entire grade is allowed to bring peanut butter and jam sandwitches, or anything involving peanuts to school any more. I can't say for certain, but I've been told that parents are also encouraged to avoid any kind of peanut products at home as well, in case some of the oil rubs off on someone's hands, is taken to school that way, ends up on a doorknob or whatever, and the allergic child touches it.

Welcome to a world where the absolute lowest, smallest denominator creates the rules for the remainder.

Yeah, but after say... 10 or 20 or however many samples of template number 2, it too will be recognized and blocked. The spammers will have to keep changing the template.

Now, if many people use this, the template database will very, very quickly have enough emails to recognize a template. Going off of the 'pulled straight out of my rectum' numbers of 10 or 20 emails, that means that of those who subscribe to blocking emails recognized in this database, a ridiculously large percentage of them won't even see a single spam email, since it'll be recognized and blocked by the first handful of people to ever receive it.

Hell, even if the database needs a few hundred or even a few thousand emails to recognize the template, the vast majority of people will STILL not receive a single spam message.

Sign me up!