What?

AC seemed to think that ads aimed at children don't make sense as children do not have money. I point out that children's desires influence the purchasing habits of their parents. You bring in parents not buying MDMA for their children because ...?

Isn't that effectively the current case?

Besides, the point I made was not that the law was good or bad or whatever, but just that people are not interpreting what it says correctly.

I play Magic: the Gathering a bit and read some of the daily articles from time to time. One of the authors is Mark Rosewater, a head designer. One of the things he talks about is design in the abstract, which has a lot of application beyond games. One of the things he talks about is how to learn to be creative. Here is a sample article about how to be creative:
http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr273

Another example is the book "How to solve it". This is a rather interesting book, because it gives steps on how to solve problems -- steps that, once they become ingrained, act exactly like creativity.

And for teaching a creative people to be formal, a famous counterexample is Ramanujan, and Indian mathematician of great creativity that could never be made to learn "the correct ways to apply [his] ideas". Hardy tried, and failed to do that.

This is ironic: only after writing the about paragraph did I read down to where you said "lack of creativity is why Indian ...".

Which, of course, is why there are no television ads aimed at young children on TV. Oh, wait....

If you have never been around children, I can understand that you do not know the power of a five-year-old saying, "I want X!"

Duh. And the other two are the same way (explicitly listing them, as you seem to have missed the point):
an-album-cover => anal-bum-cover
therapists => the-rapists

Agreed. Note, you did not say "I think that the government needs to provide evidence that a person used in pornography is truly a particular age."

HM is a good example. Slashdot had a story on him a while back.

In five years, due to the smaller amount of energy he is now using, he saves up the amount of money he spent upgrading, and can now buy his new oven and hire more employees. In another five years, he now has a bonus pile of cash which he can play with, which he wouldn't have had without lower energy costs.

Why do you replace your single pane windows with double pane? Why do you add insulation to your home? Why do you replace your 80's refrigerator with a new one? Why switch from incandescent to florescent light bulbs? Why buy a lower polluting, more gas efficient car? Why purchase reusable grocery sacks? Why purchase a bicycle?

In the 70's, we had an energy crisis. As a result, there was a massive shift in the American economy to be energy efficient. Miles per gallon in cars doubled. Refrigerators quadrupled efficiency. New houses and repairs/upgrades started requiring energy-saving features, like insulation. Energy Star ratings are mandatory for many appliances. While this is an up-front cost that requires retooling factories and increasing prices, the long term benefits and money-saving effects outweigh the initial cost.

The reason people fight this is because people do not look at the life-cycle cost of a product. They see an item at a low cost and but it in preference to one that is twice the cost but will last five times longer, or buy one that has a low cost, but a high maintenance cost (printer ink, anyone?). This is not the broken-window fallacy, as you are not replacing the window, you are upgrading it to something that has benefits beyond the original.

Seriously, you think that the only people who are affected by the classics are classics majors?

Imagine losing all of Shakespeare, Twain, Wells, Homer, Verne, Dickens, Shaw, Poe, etc., not to mention works from unknown authors that produced Grimm's tales, Aesop's fables, Robin Hood, Beowulf, the Bible, etc.? Do you really have no idea how much of our culture is steeped in the literature of the past?

And with mistakes too. I tried to correct it, but couldn't get Wikipedia to respond fast enough to make it possible for me. I checked a couple hours later though, and it had been fixed up by then.

While "the state is not required to prove the [...] age of the minor", it does not say "the state is not required to prove that the person is a minor". The difference is that if the picture is of a six-year-old, it is pretty clear the person is a minor. An apparent 15-year-old, however, will need something more to prove that the person is a minor. If the law said that minority did not need to be proved, then the law would be saying that any pornography is child pornography, on the word of the state.

I can't (legally). Not unless I get a written waver from NHTSA. Looking at the application [pdf], you can see that you can't turn it off on a whim. Maybe you live in a country that doesn't try to over protect, but the example is untrue in a large part of the world.

All the more reason for consumers to want electronics vendors to settle on a VERY LIMITED set of power sources and connection types.

Look around this page. There are a lot of people here throwing in their 2c (please adjust for national currency).

Actually, it's that the highway toll operators should not be able to forbid Toyota from making a car that works on UP's tracks. Right now, the Bay Area Toll Authority says, "Toyota, you are not allowed to sell Corollas that can run on anything but our toll roads, not even ones that run on other people's toll roads, never mind railroad tracks." Notice how the RAZR had several versions, one that worked on each type of network, and can be used on any carrier? Right now, it is okay for carriers to forbid that, and the small carriers are objecting.