"free range" does not mean what you think it means in this case. It means giving your child the tools and discipline to act appropriately and independently without having to worry that they'll behave as you describe. "free range" does mean wild. It means capable and allowed to grow given the right tools and parameters. It means meeting your neighbors and exchanging phone numbers and other information. Free Range kids means guidance and empowerment, and lots of good consistent parenting, while not being over-protective. It does not mean abandoning a child in the way you describe.

Depends on what you consider city. My mailing address includes the name of my city. It's 15 minutes away. There are condos down the road. My city is large enough to have the NFL, MBA, NHL, etc. The suburbs surrounding the city are larger and more populated than "downtown". "The country" is a about 45 minutes further out.

But none of that matters to the argument. You didn't check out FRK did you? http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/

Not sure I'm reading you right but fyi my 5 year old goes outside to play with the neighborhood kids throughout the 4 seasons. In winter they make snow forts, etc. They run and play through our typical suburban neighborhood all afternoon. I whistle when it's time for dinner. He also toasts his own waffles, and makes his own simple lunches (half day kindergarten) picks out his own clothes to wear, helps watch his little sister when I'm working at home, and generally has a lot of independence. He turns 6 this week. You say your kid is 7 and can't play outside by himself??
You really really need to check out FreeRangeKids.com. Do him a favor that will help him his whole life and go there now.

Rather..

  "Anyone worthy enough to work at here at high levels has a father who can buy the school some stadium lighting or library donation to hush it all up. No need for police here.

Only a clod would make it all the way to /."

"Every single time I interact with an officer where I'm suspected of committing a crime, I record the audio"
 
Something about that sentence...

Inspired by Intel's purchase, Microsoft buys HBGary for 7 squintillion dollars.

If somebody is copying it for a "friendly" reason, why not use a link? If they can't embed a link, then they can have a watermark. Still not good enough? Well how about asking? That's not being a dick. That's preventing others from being dicks.

Tell that to thousands upon thousands of bar owners who have no public transportation to and from their establishment. Tell that to the guy who just wants to MEET a friend for a couple beers. Having one or two beers and driving is totally acceptable to me. Most of the morons out there on their cell phones are far less capable than your average "I had 2 beers with dinner" driver.
 
If you really want to solve the problem your way (one drink = no driving) and do it realistically then you need to address the actual problem... It's a transportation problem, not a drinking problem. Just about everybody on earth drinking a beer tonight would like to be able to walk out of the bar and flag a ride home (or wherever). Are YOU going to pick them up?
 
Seriously good public transportation. Available everywhere, even to the karaoke bar in the sticks. That's the real solution. To a lot of things.

If so then it seems people know how they are characterized.

Really? This is terrible. Can you tell me how I can see how my friends categorize me? I looked but can't figure it out.
I have a business presence on FB and need to fix this if it's true.
I guess I could use code names for the groups "buddies" "pals" "Friends Group 1" etc. to mean different things. But that's a pain. Can you verify your assertion? Much appreciated!

Facebook is an American company. Americans are notoriously not so enthralled with Wall Street OR Goldman at the moment.
Americans (don't give me that USian crap, "America" is the name of the country), are most likely to read about privacy issues and most likely to distrust Wall Street and "Corporate America" right now. Why wouldn't they exclude us in the initial rounds of this? Well they think we're the most skeptical of course. We're bad for price inflation. Now Italy, Egypt, New Zealand, Japan, China, to them Facebook is an American juggernaut. If Americans are excluded, heck that's like doing everybody else a favor. They're buying stock in the business model that's making most of it's money harvesting American data. Woohoo!!
If they exclude us, then we can't temper the exuberance.
Goldman Sachs is like the Corleone family of finance. Only infinitely more entrenched in Washington and Wall Street. They know exactly what they're doing.

"[BP is] a good buy but only if you don't feel bad investing in an evil industry whose 1 oil rig out of 10,000 has leaked thereby covering hundreds of innocent pelicans with oil! Hope you can sleep at night.

I'm not so sure?

Which company do you think will have the safest oil drilling practices and possibly a larger interest in alternative energies over the next 5 or 10 years?

Nice. I'm going to have to borrow that.

Thank you. I find it irritating that offering a carefully thought out opinion with a good background behind it is 20% flamebait and 40% troll. Proof that you gotta be SC when you post. SC being the slashdot equivalent of PC, Politically Correct. What's most frustrating is the "Apple vs. Android" in the Title of the Article. It's not like I dropped that opinion on some tangential thread.

"to generalize yourself to the entire population of smartphone users is a bit silly"
 
Well maybe a bit. But we're all talking about opinion here right?
I do think, having spent the last 20 years of my life dealing with end users and end user technology that I have a bit of an edge when it comes to judging these things. I might be wrong, but I'm betting that of the people who have used both enough to come to a good personal conclusion, it's the geekier of us that prefer Android. The iPhone is a little insulting to the technophile sensibility. And the extra twiddling and patience that -seems to me- to be required by Android, is something that the geek crowd is used to, actually revels in. I get it. I fiddle with my wife's android all the time. I just use my iphone. From the "Joe Sixpack" viewpoint, I'm pretty sure the iPhone is the winner. From elegant UI standpoint, I'm pretty sure the iPhone is the winner. For the fiercely independent geeky Slashdot crowd, I'm not at all surprised that Android is the winner. But we're talking Market Winner for 2011, not Slashdot winner.
 
Again, this is an Apple vs. Android story. It's all opinion.

-1 flamebait.
 
It's an Apple vs. Android story you twit. It's here for us to argue the merits of each as we see it. Discuss which we think, based on our own experience and judgment (can't base it on somebody elses) which is the market "winner" for 2011. This is obvious by the TITLE of the story. I'm guessing you're an Apple hater, and wouldn't have attacked the same exact post if it had been touting Android instead. Either that, or clicked into the story with your post ready, just looking for somebody to lay it on.
 
By the way, I think Android feels very rickety and low end compared to iPhone. I've used both. I've used Android briefly in half a dozen different up-to-date incarnations. The iPhone is a joy to use, Android is like Windows 98, first edition, with a 3 dollar mouse. Does that make me a troll? I think the troll is the person who shits all over somebody just for having a different opinion.
 
What the hell is with all the damn adolescent war-mongering on this site? It wasn't always so bad. At least it didn't used to be moderated up to +4 on a regular basis. Sigh.