I have to side with the parents on this one, although administrative lead is a bit much, I think.
My issue is not that students shouldn't be listening to music that isn't Grade A parent approved (TM), but rather that there is a time and a place for everything, and I have a lot of trouble seeing how listening to music about suicide (which many children in my experience think about constantly anyways) has anything to do with science. You're paid to teach science, so teach science and be done with it.
Also, what's this with children bringing CDs to their parents. Are kids not sneaking around and lying to their parents these days?

I too am also getting a laptop eventually (summer time roughly) I need a really nice laptop for under 600. I want it to have Vista Home Premium on it with 2 GB ram and at least a 100 GB HD. I doesn't have to have and insane Video card I just need it for school. I want to have dual core (that basically standard I know) I'd prefer it to have a 1.9 GHz processor or higher. Brand does not matter to me....... as long as its ascetically pleasing. I also want it to have a screen size minimum of 15.4 inch.

That's not going to happen for under $600 unless you get a used one.

It would be so hard to build a new infrastructure for a new fuel source (other than say electricity from a plug in your garage or something) and keep it sustained until it can be effectively incorporated in the economy and can stand on its own. amirite? probably not.

It will be difficult, but at the current consumption rate we'll absolutely have to build new or modify the existing infrastructure in something like 50 years, when it is projected that we will officially be out of oil.

We're not going to go into a Depression. I know, I know, never say never, but it's highly unlikely and considering we still haven't reached the recession stage I wouldn't jump that far in my thinking.
The market has reached a low point and the dollar's tanked, and while I am by no means saying "Everything's fine, la di da di da," I don't think things have sunk far enough that we can say we're in a recession, although the danger's certainly there. Remember, however, that it takes 9 months to realize that a recession has taken place. It's a bit premature to be talking about a recession at this point. Newspapers enjoy taking some facts and running with them, and things are not nearly as bad as the media says they are, although the market is taking something of a hit.
Also realize that a recession doesn't mean the end of the US as we know it or whatever. These things happen, and it's one of the costs of having a free market system. Sometimes the market is up, sometimes it's down. Right now it's down. One of the problems with the media is that when things are up they expect them to keep going up, and when they're down they expect them to keep going down. Consider that in the last six months we've had to deal with:
1) Subprime crisis
2) Falling dollar
3) Rising oil prices (and the corresponding rising gas prices)
4) Large write downs (mostly related to the subprime crisis in ways which I don't feel like explaining)
5) The federal funds rate, the federal discount rate and the discount window have all been dropped by the Federal Reserve.
Among other things.

Personally I think it may last long enough to start hitting some people's pocketbooks, but as far as crippling the economy or whatever, I doubt it. We have foreigners rushing in to buy large slices of failing American businesses, and that's a good sign that the market doesn't have that much further down to go. The main thing that happened which really screwed the market was that through a network of derivatives, indexes, collateralized debt obligations, ABXs, securitization of subprime mortgages and so on and so forth, almost every institutional portfolio had a larger than rational stake in securities tied one way or another to subprime loans. Hopefully the market will right itself in a few months and we can all laugh at the newspapers for doing what they do. Or not. In the end, the truth of the matter is that no one knows what's going to happen until it happens, and until then you have a bunch of economists interpreting the information in every way possible.

"If you laid all economists end to end, they would never reach a conclusion."
-George Bernard Shaw

I am welcoming in the New Year by getting good and soused. Some idiots across the street are blowing horns or something.

I get where you guys are coming from, but A CHURCH is not a place that really needs that sort of security.

Yeah some lunatic armed himself and went to town on two of them, but when something like that happens you CALL THE FUCKING COPS and have them guard the building. Not some Ex-cop zealot that swore jesus spoke to her the morning that she pumped lead into some crazy man with a gun.

Um, no.
1) They received a specific threat.
2) They got armed guards on their property to deal with the specific threat.
3) The threat was realized.
4) The situation was mitigated by the security they hired to deal with the threat.

You're just being stupid at this point. I think it was explained well enough that anyone who doesn't get why this particular church needed security is just plain retarded.
Not to mention most churches enjoy tax exempt status so if they're willing to hire armed guards rather than mooch off the policemen that taxpayers pay for there really shouldn't be a problem with that!

(and macs are probably seen as being business oriented and not videogame oriented because big business's use them over Windows, and there's like 5 professionally made games specifically out for Mac.)

Although there has been a large shift in recent years, the majority of businesses use some form of Windows over Macs. The biggest reason is that Apple is marketed primarily to individuals, not businesses.

I agree with this.  I've worked security in places that are much more likely to have violent outbreaks or random psychos with weapons than a fucking church, and I still didn't carry a loaded lethal weapon on me.

This is very simply because armed guards are more expensive than unarmed guards and whatever locations you worked had management who did not percieve a large enough threat to justify the extra expense.
I don't think the church acted too crazily in this regard. Really, what it boils down to is that it's their church and they get to decide what kind of security they have around. Given that their fears ended up being justified I don't really see the argument for demonizing the leaders or whoever for putting armed guards inside. There were shootings in the area, they believed they might be targeted next, they took measures to minimize the danger, the situation occured, and the perpetrator was dealt with. I simply have trouble seeing why it's irrational for a church which is willing to pay for armed guards to have them.

Well it isn't the security that seems so absurd to me, its the idea of that person being armed with a lethal weapon that is so goddamn retarded.

I mean they don't let ME carry mace or anything, let alone a damn GUN.

I think its ridiculous that this woman was allowed to carry a loaded weapon around IN A CHURCH no less, despite whether or not it saved a few people from ONE nutball with a gun I still think its stupid AND dangerous.

I think you're being a little naive.
Obviously there are two types of security: armed and unarmed.
Unarmed guards are mostly hired when there is no real expectation of anything happening, but you want to reduce the possibility (as in no one was probably going to do anything anyways, but they definitely won't when there's a person there), as well as making the people around feel secure and know the property (in this case a church) and so on.
Armed guards exist because, well, shit happens. If you're carrying or watching money or anything of great value, or if there is a large event where there is a percieved chance of some nutbag coming out and being violent, it makes all the sense in the world for there to be an armed guard. In this case there had been a shooting at a nearby mission area, and they decided the chances of them being a target was likely enough that they wanted one or a few guns on the property.
Besides, given her background in law enforcement, I doubt that she wasn't both licensed and experienced in the use of handguns.
But yeah, saving lives is stupid and dangerous.

What's there to be torn about? They're Christians, not serial killers.

WOW security guards at a fucking church, that has got to be one of the stupidest things I've ever heard of...

Then you don't go to enough churches.
It's not THAT uncommon for large churches to have security guards of some nature. It's not just about some loser coming in to shoot up the church; in a large congregation sometimes you get crazy people, not to mention when people come in late they know where the empty seats are (which isn't a big deal in a smaller church but can be quite disruptive in a big church when you have people wandering around looking for seats). Not to mention you've got people who will go around and ask people for money and such.
Churches need security just like any other venue. Large concerts have security. Large job fairs sometimes have security. Stores beef up security on days where they expect large numbers of people. Whenever you have a large amount of people in a space, it's not a bad idea to have a few people around to make sure things don't get crazy.
Nothing stupid about that.

It's CNN, what'd you expect?

What unique type of discussion will this topic even generate?
The only possible comments are "That poor dog," "that man was right" or "who cares."

I justify it as follows:
Don't care.

What a dumb article.

I think it's terrible that anyone has had to pay a cent to the RIAA because "BOOHOO BECAUSE PEOPLE DOWNLOAD OUR MUSIC WE'RE LOSING 3 BILLION DOLLARS" (Yeah I know that's not the actual number, but the fact is that the number is ridiculous no matter what it is).
CDs are a dying format. Almost no one carries CD players anymore. They probably won't die entirely for like 20 years or so, but surely the record companies couldn't expect to sell CDs forever. It's not "piracy" that's causing them lost sales; people have been "pirating" for years. Shit, I can't count how many VHS tapes and cassette tapes I borrowed from friends and family members and just copied over. They're losing sales because they're sticking to a business model which is failing. Downloading doesn't cost them a cent and they know it. Anyone who would pirate music would've found a way anyways and they wouldn't have bought the album, not to mention that most people don't pirate an entire album anyways, but rather one or two songs.
There are CD stores closing left and right, store hours being cut, employees not getting enough hours and so forth, and they think the problem is illegal downloading? It's not the high prices, oh no, where did you get that silly idea?
I'm glad that there are ISPs out there that refuse to give information to the RIAA without a court subpoena. Even though piracy is illegal, there's no reason to make it so easy on the RIAA. Let them spend millions of dollars to try and get a few hundred thousand out of my pocket.

Wouldn't this poll be better off in a place where Blizzard might see it, like, oh I don't know, a WoW forum?

you know i read this a few hours ago and I've been thinkin about that poor girl and just how she will probably never have a happy or care free life in the future regardless of getting a boyfriend, girlfriend husband/wife whatever. Even if she does someone traumatized like that will have a hard time having a relationship...It really just pisses me off that people do that, I mean men face the same troubles if they are weak and thrown in jail (i.e. a weak man thrown in for child rape will be raped as if he was said 15 year old girl. Not the same situation, but an adequate example to my point). So I guess you could figure that in America they would do the same thing with a 15 year old male and jail him with full grown if his crime is ridiculously bad, not stealing mind you though. But in holding cells he can still be raped, most criminals stuck in overnight holding cells don't care about life and will rape a young kid who's stuck there overnight anyway. I don't know I want to feel bad for the girl and I sincerely do but I can't help but figure she shouldn't have played around in committing crimes anyway. I mean she'll obviously never do it again but something, a very small part of me, wonders why human nature is so drastic towards one side. No one feels bad for killers or pedophiles, male or female, if they are raped in jail by their own sex. But when something like this happens we all flip out and feel so horrible for the girl. Why is that? Personally I only feel bad cause of her age and the fact she won't have a single normal relationship from here on out, but its more then that honestly. I'm human I feel bad cause shes a girl. But not a single person here can say they would feel the same about a male raped, they would feel bad but not equally. And many would say he deserved it for breaking the law, no one I personally know or even myself but some people have outrageous views towards criminals and what they deserve, not saying they are a bad person or not. Sorry I sorta rambled on the subject...

Well, I tend to have a lower view towards pedophiles and murderers than I do towards a little girl who steals. Shit, I know that a majority of people will never steal in their lives, but many people did and do; I stole as a child, got caught, slapped with a $50 fine and dealt with by my parents, and I haven't stolen a penny since. I just don't think a child stealing is the most severe of crimes. Do not mistake that statement. A child who steals should be punished, but I think jail might've even gone too far (but I don't know the circumstances or the laws in Brazil).
Of course those in the penal system have a responsibility to treat criminals like people and sentence them like people not monsters, but like I've said before (not in this thread), not being a judge, I don't feel myself bound by these parameters, so yes, when a rapist or a murderer gets raped in prison, I don't feel too bad for that person. A 15 year old girl who got jailed for stealing, however, with 20 criminal men (and I don't think there's a reasonable person who doesn't know what happens when you do that) is tragic.

Well, you clearly think that executing people isn't such a big problem anyway, because it's "not all that bad". That's not going to change, despite the fact you don't seem to want to apply that principle to this case.

Um, hi, all I said on the matter in this thread is that it is unlikely that death is the worst thing that can happen to a person. I'm still waiting for the specific post that you're referring to.

Explain that to the families of the people you'd gladly have executed.

As soon as you point me towards a post where I made that statement, or anything implying it.