I'm looking at things from a point of accountability. Our choices dictate where we go in life - be it physically, mentally, financially, etc.... Some of these choices are simple: "Go into the 7-11, or wait till I get home to buy milk?" - you're accountable for this choice. It's your decision. You made it. It *WILL* meet up with other people's choices - such as the person who chose to rob the store, who chose to use a gun, and chose to shoot you with it, the clerk who chose to apply to that place for employment and/or not proceed to work elsewhere / better, and the thousands of other decisions that led up to that moment / place in time.... These are choices, simple or not.

If he "needed to do that to survive" - then how did he get into that situation? Did someone decide to hold his family hostage and kill him if he didn't rob the store? Or was there a series of events leading up to that choice of his, and that's what he decided to do?

I'm not saying that bad things don't happen to good people. Bad things DO happen to "good people". Trust me, sh** happens to the best of us, and the worst of us. How we cope with that is our decision. To say that the choice is removed is to do nothing, and even that is a conscious choice.

A friend of mine works as a social worker in one of the worst areas of Toronto. He deals with people with severe mental disorders, drug addictions, alcohol issues, abuse problems, people who are in and out of jail on a regular basis. Blame alcohol, drugs, upbringing all you want - some of these people fall into the victim mentality. Many do. Some make the conscious effort, the decision to get out of that situation, to do something different. And they do it! Yes, they go through hell, how they got there can not be isolated to a single choice, however, SOME people make the decision to get out of it, to escape the situation.

In this instance, the mother, not knowing the details or the history, would not expect the son to sue, attack, or threaten her. He could have gone after her with a knife, gun, assaulted her, ignored her, blocked her, destroyed her computer, or dozens of other things... There are things he COULD have done, and very well might have done some of them. And yes, he CHOSE to sue. That's his choice.

I'm not saying they're worthless. But they are responsible, and need to see that.

Society isn't to blame for a person's mistakes, or a person's actions. Some successful people have risen from being poor and destitute, others have had life handed to them on a silver platter and threw it all away. We make choices, our own choices, and no one is to blame but us for the choices we make. Society isn't responsible for why this teen feels the urge to sue his mother - society has simply shown that it's possible... the individual is making it his own choice to sue. Others have felt the urge to communicate with their parents and work out a resolution to stop them from doing these things - was he not given the ability to talk with her? To Unfriend her? To mark his profile as private? These are HIS choices - not ours.

Very few people are held in a position where they HAVE to smoke, drink, do drugs, steal - maybe peer pressure pushes them to doing things once, but it's up to them to either stop or continue doing so. The choice is ultimately theirs. The choice this individual made, in this instance for this issue, was to sue.

Don't blame "Society" for his mistakes... "We" didn't let him down. He did it all by himself.

It'll be the most interesting use of the iPhone to ever get rejected by iTunes.

I need to do my banking via 3.5" floppy, as my 5.25" drive isn't working very well anymore, and I don't want to buy one of them newfangled compact-drive thingies...

What can the bank do for me?

This is going to open a can of worms, might be marked as a troll, and somewhat humourous that I have a nickname of SmackTheIgnorant while saying this, but...

Isn't the Internet more of an American invention? I'm not going to say "perfected", but more of a "refined to some extent into the abomination which it is" here in North America?
Twitter? Facebook? MySpace? YouTube?
Bing? Yahoo? Google?

The world can't bend over backwards to serve the needs of a power-hungry vengeful dictatorship , and it shouldn't have to. Corporations don't have to.

People shouldn't have to. The people of China, however, don't have a choice.

You don't get that big off of Ramon (noodles), that's for sure.

I remember watching TV a couple weeks back, some news program coming out of detroit, telling people that snow is NOT an emergency. They were then playing back 9-1-1 emergency-services calls (yes, plural), from people asking:

• Should I go to work if it snows?
• It's snowing outside - is it safe to drive?
• I can't get to work, the street is closed off - can you tell me another route?
• My car won't start, can you send someone?
• The snow is heavy and I'm afraid I'll get hurt shovelling it. Can you send someone to do it for me?

Wish it were a joke, or that I'm being sarcastic. Drunk isn't the start of stupid; it's just an invitation to the party, a lot of people are there already, not a shoelace is tied.

No stupid, they're not falling up, they're falling down!

I second that one - I've had issues with them. As far as companies go, personally, I don't trust them - Systemax, which owns TigerDirect, owns Ultra - so if you hit TD, you'll likely get promotional information / high ratings for Ultra brand products - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_Products One thing Ultra DOES do right is the modular X-Connect line of power supplies - these are extremely handy - You want only SATA rails? Just use them. No floppy, or IDE? Don't use them. Saves some cables inside your system, it's a handy thing to have. Worth it? No. But it's nice.

Well, that was interesting - I wrote something else, previewed it, and the result was the word "This". And now I deny the world the joy which was truly witty.

This

There is no such thing as an enterprise-level fart app. There, I've said it, there's no unsaying it. You were thinking it, mouthing the words, hov

I'm waiting for my local library to get a copy....

If you go back in time and prevent Microsoft... then we'll all be using Apples, Amigas, or worse: OS/2 will have caught on... Jebus save us!