Oh I get that. What I don't understand is why anyone should care. If movie studios (or whoever else) want to make themselves insta-obsolete by refusing to embrace modern technology, so what? The market will provide other less short-sighted sources of entertainment.

I'm not sure I understand what the fuss is all about. Our nice little series of tubes is not going to be diminished if "the movie studios remove movies from the web" in any significant way. It's the movie studios that will be diminished and, likely, quickly outcompeted in the marketplace. I think it's time to start full-stop calling all the bluffs.

It's working ok. Not perfect, but not terrible either. A hell of a lot better than it would work if we handed our taxpayer money to religious fanatics with the hope that market forces will correct for quality of education as generations and generations of people are "taught" that earth is 7000 years old and that god buried dinosaur bones in the ground to test the resolve of the faithful.

Just because our current state of affairs is imperfect is no reason to go from bad to worse.

That's not true. Or, rather, that's true in some sectors (especially when it comes to the for-profit higher education sector that's mostly funded by the government) but it does not apply to traditional higher education (you know, the Harvards and the Stanfords and such) where tuition is mostly paid out-of-pocket or through commercial loans.

This will make things worse, not better. One of the reasons we need public schools in the first place is to protect children from their parents, so to speak. Our country has a very real interest in making sure that all children have access to quality education, including children born to parents who don't believe in science, don't believe in government, or don't believe in education in the first place. The fist thing that will happen if the government gets out of the public schools game will be that a whole chunk of our taxes is going to flow towards supporting backwards "schools" where children will be indoctrinated into any one of the existing religions, and not get to do any actual learning. Over time, these children will lose out to those, who get a real education, but this won't actually be good for anyone. Ignorance begets ignorance, and these people, having lost access to a whole slew of opportunities as adults, will happily send their children to the same backwards "schools", in a never-ending cycle of ignorance and poverty. In the end, our nation is going to be even more polarized and worse off than where we are today.

No, you're not too old. We have just hired a software engineer in his 70s. He hit the ground running, and is continually kicking ass and taking names. It took him right around two weeks to become productive in Scala (which is not an easy language to learn). Granted, he's an outlier, but it certainly can be done.

I still don't see your point. I'm not trying to be an as*hole here, I really don't. Myspace is providing a medium for communication. They don't have any processes in place to edit, censure, or verify anything anyone posts about themselves. They're not an online magazine, like slashdot with editor approving stories that get posted. There's no way they can ensure that all their content is safe. In fact, it's almost certain that not all of it is. They're not responsible for it, just like Slashdot's not responsible for comments that people post (as opposed to stories.)

I see absolutely no reason for them to help parents keep track of their children any more than any other entity that provides a medium for intrapersonal communication like email, web forums, cell phone companies, etc. etc. It would ne nice of them to provide educational material for concerned parents, but there's no excuse to force them to do so. Also, you have to remember that Myspace is not in the business of verifying identities, age, or anything else for that matter. A 13-year-old girl can claim to be 35 and there's nothing Myspace can do to keep her from doing so.