On Sun, Oct 05, 2003 at 05:52:12PM -0400, Jaldhar H. Vyas wrote: > On Sun, 5 Oct 2003, klaus imgrund wrote: > > > > > I know that this is probably flamebait - but is there any specific reason a > > 1-2 year old child has to play with a computer? > > I know that all the geeks have proof that this actually improves social > > interaction but I am a little old fashioned. > > > > Yes playing outside with other children, reading a book with Pappa and > Mummy or visiting grandparents, etc. are all more worthwhile activities > for small children. In fact they do us a great service by getting us off > our computers. > > But I'd rather my daughter played with computers than watched TV. She is > not even 2 but already has memorised many advertising jingles. I know we > live in a consumer society but this is disgusting.
When I were a lad my parents would only let me watch Play School or the test card, then later let me watch the other children's programmes that came between Play School and the news. It was quite an achievement to get them to let me watch Doctor Who. These programmes were all on BBC1, so no adverts. I wasn't allowed to watch the commercial ITV channel, and only glimpsed the occasional advert at a friend's house. The only thing I regret about this is the amount of Doctor Who I missed. The television regulating authorities ought to legislate that the PDC code information should contain a flag to indicate whether the current material being transmitted is programme content, advertising or trailers. This could then be decoded by the receiving apparatus to mute the sound and blank the screen during adverts. Broadcasters would be fined $100,000 per frame with a wrong flag. The advertisers would hate it, but fsck 'em. The viewers hate the adverts, and we're in the majority, by a long long way. -- Pigeon Be kind to pigeons Get my GPG key here: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x21C61F7F
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