Came across the coolest site today. Well, actually, I Stumbleupon'd Tastespotting, and followed a link from there to Bakerella's Shamrock Oreo Truffles. They look fantastic, and I think I'm going to try them soon. Her blog is really cool - all kinds of cool baking stuff, but some of it east enough for beginners like me. I've never tried fondant before, but I plan to soon. Maybe this weekend, depending on my current ridiculous homework load. Add lacrosse 2-3 hours a day, 6 days a week, and...
I'd like to tackle a somewhat-debated topic today.
Teens who get their own computers.
By teens, I mean around 14-17 year olds. 'course, once you're in college, it becomes a whole 'nother story.
My intent here is not to make a decision, but to outline the pros and cons. This is intended more towards parents thinking about letting their teen have a computer, but it may be helpful for teens trying to come up with a good argument, or something. I dunno.
The most worrisome parts to many parents of letting their teens have computers is safety. Especially when a computer is in a bedroom or other non-centralized spot, it is difficult to know who your teen is IM'ing, talking to on myspace, or chatting online with. It is a danger, yes, but many to most teens are very savvy and know better to chat with a random guy. There are many myspace horror stories, but even more teens who are smart about what they do and never make it into the media. You know your teen best. Do they seem to have good taste in real-life friends? Are they truthful when they tell you where they are going? They're probably responsible enough. It's a judgement call. But you should also take a look at your teen's myspace page, facebook page, and IM contacts (with the teen resent. It's not cool to just invade your teen's privacy and sort through thier stuff when they're gone) and take a cursory look at messages, contacts, and whoever. Ask the teen who a contact is , if it's someone you don't recognize. Also, set ground rules for social networking site use, such as the following:
Only 'friend' people that you know in real life.
Set your profile to private. (this allows only those approved as 'friends' to see the profile.
Absolutely no cyberbullying of others (surprisingly common, with such tools as the application honesty box' on facebook that lets you leave anonymous messages for people.)
Do not put certain personal info on pages (if your profile is private; it's probably okay to have a home phone number or email address, at least one thing for people to contact you. But no need to fill out everything they ask you for.)
You know your teen best. What else should be included? Illegal behavior (hacking, pirating, illegal downloads) online? Periodic check-ups on homepages on social networking sites?
There are also scores of parental monitoring softwares out there, as well as decent features included with operating systems such as Windows Vista. Look into having the 'administrator account' on your teen's computer and choosing a software that either reports their actions to you or dictates what they can and can't do. However, some monitoring software just steps over the line. If you feel that you need to use software that captures the passwords your teen enters so that you can access all their accounts, your teen is probably not responsible enough to have their own computer. They will get free reign on their computer when they hit college, so you need to let them have some privacy now. They will make major mistakes if never allowed to make their own decisions until then.
Besides safety, there are other things to worry about. Computers are expensive, and many teens spend money on clothes and things without worrying about the cost. My parents give me no allowance whatsoever and I must buy all my own clothes and other stuff myself, out of money I work for. Making your teen pay for, say, half - or all - of the computer would emphasize to them what a big deal this is and that they must work and make sacrifices for it. It is not a right.
The reason my parents won't let me have my own computer is not safety - they know I'm savvy - or cost - I'm willing to pay for 100%. It is time management. I can go for hours at a time 'doing homework' and not get a thing done. Almost every day, I surf the net under the facade of doing homework. I'm a horrible procrastinator, and I'm certain my grades could be better if computers weren't available. It's a tough thing, but I've become infinitely better since last year. And the parental controls of Vista would allow my parents to dictate when I'm allowed to do such things as browse the internet, probably a very good thing for me.
Got questions? Comment? Leave a comment. I'm curious to know your take on the issue. Please identify yourself as a parent, teen, or whatever, and leave the age of your kids if you're a parent.
Haven't heard from me in a while, have you. You know, with all 2 hits I get per post, I'm sure that somoene is monitoring me...right?
Aynways, I've decided to shift the focus of this blog. I now intend to have it consist of cool finds in products, websites, information, articles, whatever, as well as some stuff about my personal life. And all intended for same-age peers. I hope that you will see some changes (and posts?) soon.
Okay, so now some serious reviewing. My initial impression of the interface was that is was cool and clean, very nice.
Upon further examination of Hulu, I liked what I saw but found a few disappointments.
First off, it's hard to find all episodes of a show or find good stuff to watch. The Project Runway page has one episode, but by searching 'Project Runway', I find another episode - with Bravo.tv slapped all over it. Huh?
The content leaves things to be desired - having Disney Channel stuff would be great for keeping my brothers calm and under control over the holidays. In fact, there really are no kids shows. Right now, the only people using Hulu are people with enough foresight to sign up to the beta, which is mostly people who err toward the geek side of things. They don't want kids' shows. But the masses will.
Of course, there are other specific shows I want to see, but of course it's hard and not Hulu's fault. but getting along with Disney and adding Disney Channel and ABC would be appreciated, at least by me.
As I touched on before, the site is a little hard to navigate and it took me longer than it should for me to find what I wanted at first. It got better as time went on, but I'm still unsure how to find a few things easiley - namely, movies I want to see. Becuase someone told me that The Breakfast Club was offered, could find it easily with search. I still, however, do not know what else is up there that I want to see.
The actual watching experience is okay. I have had a few playback problems - jerkiness in many and yellow in the black sections of the screen in one episode. The jerkiness may be my fault, thought, my wireless network has had countless problems in the last few days. When you move your pointer, some options pop up: I apologize for the poor image quality, having to deal with paint is, to say the least, combersome. I wish I have Photoshop here, but alas...
Those options say things like share, embed, full screen, and pop out. One that I like is "Lower Lights". It essentially darkens the rest of the hulu page. No links on the rest of the page are clickable when the lights are lowered. Useless? Probably. But I still like it.
The options dissapear very quickly when you move your mouse away, leaving you with jsut the window and a very small progress bar on the bottom.
The advertising is fine, not gone but not constantly in your face. Please, advertisers, get this. When the ads are truly funny, we will want to watch them. Channel your inner human being. Some ads are jsut plain...boring. Which is why people pay for TiVo.
Anyways. Hulu? Okay bordering on good. I have faith that t will get better. More content, more features, and that sort of thing. What do I want to see? Downloads that I can buy, and more content. I just hope that there wil never be a 'premium hulu' where I have to pay to get the good shows. I'm okay with paying for downloads, but all the content should be free. Perhaps an ad-free premium hulu. That might be nice.
I don't use iTunes. I just don't. If I buy music, I should be able to do what I want with it, burn it to a CD, put it on any mp3 player, etc. Luckily, I have decent legal alternatives now. I can use Amazon mp3 or a subscription service. Or I can just get CDs from Amazon, my local library, or Barnes & Noble, and rip those.
Unfortunately, there are no easy ways to get video for one's computer or non-iPod mp3 player with video playback capability, especially if PlaysForSure is not supported. The iTunes store is the only 'store' around that offers such a wide selection of legal video downloads, for fine prices, too.
DVD ripping is somewhat difficult and slow, especially when ripping things like TV show DVDs. It is nothing like the ease of CD ripping. One can buy videos from Amazon Unbox but I've heard it is slow and laden with restriction. My (well, my brother's. But I use it every day, and he uses it maybe once a month) Sansa does not have PlaysForSure support, as far as I can tell, so unbox is out.
There are the alternatives like Limewire, but I want to stick with the legal stuff.
So please. Where's my a la carte video download service? Without providing a good, legal alternative to Bittorents, the industry only hurts sales. Why did people buy their music from iTunes when Napster(the old one) was already around? Because we're willing to pay for stuff, to keep it legal, to support artists. While people are always trying to save money (well, some people), we are willing to pay for things we enjoy, and to stay on the right side of the law.
Becomes difficult when there's no good service, though, eh?
I really enjoyed the tour, and was enthralled by all of the technology. I did sign a non-disclosure agreement, so I don't know what I can and can't say. But you can find some information here, here, here, and here. The ideas definitely have a 'wow' factor, and I was imprsessed by my tur gide's answer to my question of how much of the technology in the home was actually technology be implemented and how much was a simulation.
"About 50/50." He said. Wow. That's actually a heck of a lot.
but once you get past the flashy stuff, you see that there is a true lack of innovation or new ideas, just taking our current technology further. There was nothing that actually started the wheels turning. It's just a sci-fi thing, really. Yeah, with a little work we could do x and y and z. They are definitely within the reach of our technology. But they aren't really necessary. I'd rather invent n, a radical new way of doing things that would stretch the limits and change our everyday lives.
But that was all my reaction. I was incredibly surprised by reactions from my classmates, other high school girls. They were a bit creeped out by the way that you were always surrounded by technology, just a spoken word could do anything.
"I think there'd be a point that I'd just want to, like, turn it off." I remember a girl saying. "I don't want to be totally available and traceable. Teens need to be able to break the rules, sneak away, to teach them consequences." Another said. "We need to learn to think for ourselves, to get up and walk around and do stuff. If technology does everything for us, we'll be in trouble." Was another reaction.
I think I understand them. I can especially understand the third. We still have to remember our good old-fashioned values (I feel OLD writing this). We can't lose ethics and skills like work, responsibility, organization, and thinking. It'll destroy us as people. I could see a future where 90% of the world lounges around on a couch and watches the additional 10% do stuff as entertainment. I can see a world where it is the exception to the rule to think. And I don't like that world.
...and that's the world that's being portrayed in the home of the future. So please, take note. As we all saw in 2001, we're in trouble when technology gets too smart.
