Once upon a time it was perfectly acceptable for apartments/condos to specify that they were "adults only". Had not so many developers become greedy and abused this privilege, these kinds of places would still exist and people like me -- and the parents who get tired of the complaints -- would be a lot happier. - Cecily Walker

I was a be seen and not heard if unappropriate or get my ears boxed or backside slapped child. Louder children today, you say? hmm - Michael W. May via twhirl

Michael, that's how I was raised as well. Sometimes I'm surprised by what parents let their kids get away with. I was spanked, but rarely - all my mom had to do was give me "the look" and I knew to behave. - Cecily Walker

*nod* Rarely needed that spank myself. The Voice and The Look worked well, but without knowing what came after, I doubt they would have. - Michael W. May via twhirl

This is more an issue of parenting than anything. I think parents are afraid to actually raise their children anymore. They're far too interested in being their child's friend than teaching them expected social behavior. </rant> - Kyle Hebert

I agree with Kyle, so many of today's parents simply don't take parenting seriously and it impacts ALL of us, not just noise, but behavior, education, manners, responsibility, etc. And there are far better ways (in fact wildly more effective) than corporal punishment. If you're not willing to really be a parent, then don't have kids. - AJ Kohn

@ajkohn care to elaborate on "better ways than ..." ? ;) - silpol

@silpol: Set expectations. Treat them as a human being, not some substandard adult knockoff (aka - they're smarter than they think), use time outs and naughty rug, follow-through on your warnings/threats (aka - do that again and we leave the park, they do it again, you MUST leave), make sure they have enough sleep and good food, take every opportunity to teach. - AJ Kohn

I could go on, but in the end, is it acceptable for an adult to scream like a banshee? No. Then it isn't for a child. When an adult does do this, do you go up and hit them? No. Then you don't for a child. - AJ Kohn

The only time screaming kids really annoy me is when I'm having a late dinner at a nice restaurant (say, 9 - 11pm) and there is a screaming toddler. Either that restaurant needs to adopt a curfew for kids, or the parents should know better. - J. Phil

Have to agree with most here. This is a parenting issue. On the weekends my wife and I prefer an early dinner out. At 5PM a mostly empty restaurant and they seat us next to the table with three kids standing on their chairs making a racket. The staff should also know better. We asked to be seated somewhere else and I think they were upset with us. My kids are 19 and 20 I can assure you they never acted like that in a public place. - Kevin Shannon

And I must add, we never hit our kids, we just took the time needed to teach them the right way to behave. - Kevin Shannon

I don't understand parents who push their screaming kids on others. Both Patrick and Milan only screamed when they needed something. Usually their problems are easy to solve. Bottle. Diapers. Etc. But if they were having a temper tantrum for some reason I sure wouldn't keep them in a restaurant where they could destroy someone else's experience. They would get a quick walk outside, to demonstrate that they need to care about other people's feelings too. - Robert Scoble

We brought our kids to FL this week and they were pretty good. I usually buy a round of drinks for the people around us on the plane, in anticipation of our noisy kids though. :-) - Steven M. Cohen

Hmm. Kids being loud = bad parenting? I think that is a stretch. Now I can understand this line of thinking if parents don't even try to keep kids in line, but occasionally kids are just loud. I agree with Robert that overly fussy kids should be removed from public situations to calm down. I have spent more nights in a hotel not sleeping due to drunk adults than noisy children... - Sean Brady

@Sean: Perhaps drunk adults were raised by parents who accepted noisy children and didn't teach them to be respectful of other people? - AJ Kohn

@Sean Not a stretch. The amount of unruly children in public and parents who let them be that way now compared to 20 years ago is sadly greater. That speaks to parenting and social norms. - Michael W. May

Well, the architects I know say that it is very easy to skimp on the acoustic separation between units. Building codes and unit design will become a bigger deal as the world population becomes increasingly urbanized. That having been said, I think that lower birth rates have made people less tolerant of children. - Steve Lynch

@ajkohn you went no further (so far) than local Finnish leaflet on parenting, yet it is not enough - _my_ kids do every sure thing to test limits till infinite and it takes me often effort to avoid going "short path" (read - body punishment)... and yes, I do time to time those old tricks from my military past just to avoid being too harsh - some of them true evil, but no physical touch or mental push, just "disziplin über alles" - silpol

@Sean Let me qualify. Kids being loud is natural. Kids allowed to be loud in public places where parents make no attempt to quiet them or teach them it's wrong - That's bad parenting. I sat at dinner 2 weeks ago for 20 minutes with a kid singing a song, walking around the table, while the parents and friends had an after coffee conversation. They encouraged the child telling them how cute the song was. Never once telling the child to sit and be quite... or just getting up to leave.since they were done! - Kevin Shannon

So I have a related question .. is there a rise of no-kids restaurants springing up? As for the apartment issue -- agreed with Cecily, new apartments could be made a lot more sound and vibration dampened to be attractive to young families. - J. Phil

@Phil I have not seen any NO KID places here on LI. When my kids were young we would take them to Friendlies, McDonald's, Nathan's, Chucky Cheese. I didn't really want to eat there but hey, we had kids and that's what we had to do. I don't frequent fancy places, Outback, Charlie Brown's medium priced steak houses. They seem to be the place people with 3 and 4 year olds go now. If I take my kids (19 and 20) to Outback were looking at $120. I'd like to enjoy that without kids running around my table. - Kevin Shannon

Ok we were all kids once...fricking awesome kids of course, and well I think the fairy tale that children are to be seen and not heard is very yesterday. WOW what an elitist thing to say..I mean they are PEOPLE not dogs. Crazy statement. - tanya

Tanya, I can only speak for myself, but I did say the only time I was annoyed was at a nice restaurant, and after 8pm. I do not begrudge kids being kids. I don't like screaming kids in R-rated movies either, but even that I will forgive faster than issue #1. As for the original discussion about families in apartments.. meh, what are you going to do? - J. Phil

@Tanya Can't tell what comments are setting you off. Well behaved children is not a fairy tale. I have two of them. I think parents today find it easier to argue that it's impossible instead of admitting that they may be causing the problem. Take a look at "Nanny 911". A crazy show but it drives home the point week after week that it's not the kids it's the parents. I love children and have spent many years working with them, Magic, Cub Scouts, Baseball. I have no problem with kids. - Kevin Shannon

@Tanya Not sure about the statement, kids are people not dogs. If you buy a dog and take no time training it and teaching it what's right and wrong it will be out of control. Kids are kinda the same. Take no time to parent and see what you wind up with. - Kevin Shannon

Don't assume just because a child is behaving in a way that annoys you, that it's because the parent isn't doing his or her job. The parent may not agree with you about the best way to parent a child. That's just one of the risks we take in living in communities with other people -- we might sometimes have to deal with others whose values or priorities are different from our own. - nathan

Had to be my statement, which alluded to the the way I was brought up, which included my grandparents preaching that old saying, "be seen and not heard" when noisy children were inappropriate. Those words implied or else and we understood that. Same as my mother's look or tone implied it. And btw, I was far from a fairytale child and yet, even with all this, I still grew up with constant love and respect for those elders. - Michael W. May

@nathan I would NEVER assume a child behaving badly was automatically a parenting issue. And after re-reading my comments I don't think I said that. That's why I gave very specific examples. When a parent lets a child mis-behave for an extended period of time doesn't say a word and doesn't have any care about other people around them, that's bad parenting and also shows they do not respect living in a community. I have never said anything to a parent with a mis-behaving child. I play well in community. - Kevin Shannon

the way I play with my children is one that is not quiet. I would try to ensure it would be at a level that would not bug me if I were them, but I sound more forgiving. - RAPatton

@Kevin Shannon I guess my point is that your idea of misbehaving and another person's might not be the same. I put a very high premium on my kids' acting civil and respectful towards adults, and i don't typically take them to places where "childish" behavior would be disruptive, but at the same time I know how hard it is to quiet an ebullient toddler, say, in a grocery store or something. Now that I've got kids of my own I tend to withhold judgment of other parents. - nathan

@nathan Totally agree. I was where you are 20 years ago. A toddler having a tantrum in the grocery store is no reflection of a parents skills. God knows if it did then I would have to admit to being a bad parent. And for every example I offered to the extreme, we've had situations where we sat next to very well behaved kids... I give them credit too. You sound like me and my wife, we gave up fancier dinners during the years our kids were young. I kind of miss Chucky Cheese. - Kevin Shannon

I'm nervous about this very issue because I'm taking my wife and two kids to NYC for three weeks this month. We are not exactly a quiet family, used to living in our own house for the past decade or so. I read the article, and the behavior that they are complaining about is normal kid behavior -- getting up in the middle of the night, walking down the hall, playing with toys. I'll admit it would suck to buy a place for $1M+ that comes with the sound of a baby crying. - Todd Nemet

I wouldn't say it's automatically a reflection on the parent but, if you take a toddler to a restaurant and don't bring stickers and crayons or something to do and instead let them jump around and scream ... I will judge you. I just don't buy the 'kids are just noisy' stuff. It's the worst kind of stereotype. Kids should be kids. Be loud at the park playing, or when having a tickle fight. But there's a time for an 'inside voice'. If you expect it, you will get it. - AJ Kohn

Wow, this article hit a nerve, eh? :) I think many of us are in agreement here, and I also suspect that the vast majority (if not all) the parents on this thread are the sort of parents I appreciate and respect. I totally get that kids will be kids. But when they ARE acting up, I believe it's the parents' responsibility to take appropriate action... not only with their kids directly (setting an example, enforcing time-outs, etc.) but -- of more selfish importance -- minimizing the negative impact on others - Adam Lasnik

This means, for instance, taking the kid outside (of the restaurant, theatre, etc.). I've also been tempted to ask parents "could you kindly take your kid outside?" on airplanes, too, but that's a bit more problematic, admittedly. - Adam Lasnik

Don't get me started on the subject of child discipline. I've read it all from The Old Testament to Alfie Kohn. As American adolescence extends into the 30s, I see people who are intolerant of children until parenthood and then become incredibly indulgent of their children once they become parents. The article indicated that about half of the complains were unfounded, and half were valid. The real story is the lack of conflict resolution skills in these so-called adults. - Todd Nemet

Nice article. Thanks for sharing it. I've actually thought that this problem should be quite unique to Russia with it's small flats, large cities, thick walls and rude people. - Andrey Ivanov

I do prohibit my child from running around the house after 9pm and do not let him scream too much in public but even here in Russia where people are more antisocial, strict and rude than in nearby Europe everyone is sane enough not to complain about the babies crying at night so no sympathy for some of the "baby noise victims" the article mentiones. - Andrey Ivanov

I was 14. I had a Johnny Horizon sticker on my bedroom door - "Let's clean up America for our 200th birthday." My friend (the one I visited in Knoxville in June) provided some illustrations for our junior high yearbook. - Ontario Emperor via fftogo

Also, that may have been the year that I played flute in a "fife" & drum unit in a neighborhood parade. - Ontario Emperor via fftogo

Oh: I was 15. - Chris Baskind

Firecrackers in the backyard of my cousins' house in South Boston, VA. - Hutch Carpenter

I was 2. I don't remember and I wasn't in this country yet. - Morton Fox

I was -2 and don't remember a single thing about it. :P - Tsega D

I remember it. Abstain on the second question - Charlie Anzman

Apparently Charlie was there for the centenial too! :D - Tad Donaghe

I was 9, living in Montana. - Dawn M. Armfield

The signing was right here in PA. For that matter, so was the first capitol. Tad, your right, I was there - Charlie Anzman

i was 4 1/2 and i was given a t-shirt with a cake and candles on it that said "Happy Birthday, America" and it was my favorite shirt for as long as i could fit into it. - edythe

I was 5 1/2. Remember the Bicentennial quarters? - Joanmarie via NoiseRiver

yes, the bicentennial quarters...! - edythe

I was 3. :) - l0ckergn0me

7 and waiting for my sister to be born, see missed being a BiCentenial baby by 10 days, no cash and prizes... - Steven Van Tilburg via twhirl

I remember it was the spirit of '76 year, I was 12 and it was just like "That 70's show". But with lots of fireworks. - Larry Kless

I was 8 and remember all the Spirit of '76 stickers I had gotten to put on things and everything was red, white and blue that year. - Adam Turetzky

i remember it. in fact, i visited a bi-centenial train in charleston, sc that had a lot of memorabilia to look at. :-) - Andy Green

Ah, yes. I was negative 14 at the time. I don't remember much on account of my brain and sensory organs being unavailable to me. - Vezquex

I was 6, and remember going to see fireworks at midnight in Valley Forge Park, and seeing President Ford speak later on that day. - Dave Roth

that was right around my birthday, so I don't remember it - Jeremiah Owyang

I was 12. It was great. - Thomas Hawk

I remember. I was 6. We had this big program at school and had to wear blue shirts with a red bandana and sing America the Beautiful. A boy peed on the floor in the front row and our teacher had a meltdown because we all started laughing in the middle of the song. - Trish Robinson

I was 6.. I remember hanging out with my best friend Keith and throwing pine cones at girls during recess. - J. Phil

I was 22, in the Army, in D.C. I remember going to see the Queen during her visit. - Jack Carlson

I was 6. If memory serves (although I do experience memory leaks these days) I seem to recall tall-mast ships on the water in NYC. We lived near there back then. - Kevin C. Tofel

I was 6 and I remember my dad taking the family to the railroad station in town to see the Bicentenial Train. That reminds me, we have pictures somewhere... - Bryan Hunter via twhirl

26. We watched the NYC fireworks on TV in Modesto, CA - - Russellreno

I was 23. I was living in Ithaca. We watched the tall ships on tv and then saw the lights around Lake Cayuga. Afterwards we went home and watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail on television - K Welch

Lot's of cell phones but no one reading a book or news on them, always email. They predicted radio would kill film, TV would kill radio... they're still there, they just adapted. Then look at your local newspapers. We have 3 papers that cover the local area here and none of them have any online presence. There are ongoing discussions of school budgets and politics that take place in the letters to the editor every week. It actually frustrates me that there is no online resource to discuss these issues. - Kevin Shannon

I read somewhere today that the Wall Street Journal is doing pretty good these days - even their print edition. They have the snob factor still going for them. - Tad Donaghe

I see where it's all going, but I really still want my Sunday paper. Ink on my hands and all. But I'm very, very old school like that. Sigh. Makes me sad. - Erin Kotecki Vest

I can't remember the last time I read an actual newspaper. It's so... so... ANALOG. - Tad Donaghe

I live in the Tampa area and can see why the Tribune is losing money - in mho, compared to the St. Pete Times - it sucks. And as unbelievable as it is for those of us who do almost everything online, there are still people who don't have a computer, laptop, iPhone or news reader - because of this I can't see print papers disappearing completely. Like Erin, I enjoy my paper, in hand. It makes it much easier to clip the grocery coupons. - Sharon Bray-McPherson

It's not that the newspaper is dying, it's that the people running some of the newspapers aren't. - Andrew Feinberg

i'm not patient enough for print media anymore. i live for breaking news. something about wanting to know as it happens, not the next morning or edition. - Matt Musgrave

I don't just want to know as it happens, I want to be able to view it live on video from multiple vantages and chat about it with my friends. - Tad Donaghe

Tad: I agree. Also be able to tag, share, bookmark, and comment. Something you just can't do with print. In real-time. - Matt Musgrave

Yup - in real time and have access to see what everyone else is tagging said events with as they do it. And the ability to pause the stream, rewind, fastforward (up to the present!) and watch multiple video streams simultaneously. And orchestrate the entire thing on the fly as I wish - this goes here, that goes there, etc. Basically be my own full-on web/news/chat director. - Tad Donaghe

Not trying to be trite. I still read three newspapers everyday... nytimes.com, wsj.com and washingtonpost.com - Aaron Brazell

Looking at the circulation stats, I'd say it's not newspapers who are dying. It's their readers. - Chris Baskind

Aaron, me too. Newsgathering and reporting as a profession will still thrive as long as there are talented people to do it and a demand for it. Consider this: "new media" thrives because it often lacks the editorial "wall" in "old media" that enforces a code of "objectivity." Contrast with British newspapers, which have healthy competition. The papers that survive will give the people what they want. - Andrew Feinberg

Slide 78: Marta didn't add a Friendfeed. You get on the f**king train. - Hao Chen

Great presentation too. Nice facts especially the porn one. - Corvida

Whew. I was worried for a minute there that I wasn't on the Internet! (see the presentation) - Dean Terry

yeah, but the difference between social media and pr0n is that pr0n makes money. - Cyndy

Marta Kagan is @mzkagan on twitter - Brad Collins via twhirl

Cyndy, you like typing pr0n way too much. ;] - Hao Chen

as I said earlier, they tend to fail too much. - dan

FriendFeed flood ahoy. - Vince DeGeorge

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all tweets are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Tweetiness. - John Worthington

They meant the Christmas holiday. - Louis Gray

They've had a notice up for over 24 hours to alert users to this outage. - Dawn M. Armfield

Was watching one of them gross food programs on the local TLC. Host visited Alaska and was snacking on pickled whale treats. You don't suppose? :P - Mark Forman

couldn't they prepare last night at say...midnight? - Pokai

@Pokai They did... it took them that long to get the 404 page working! - John Worthington

gotta get ready for that mad rush of tweets coming in from people watching fireworks I suppose. - Thomas Hawk

I have to ask -- does anybody think the people running that organization are competent in any way? - Brian Sullivan

Definitely beta but very addicting. Go Phoenix Chili Besos - Josh Kenzer

Toronto Grey Jays - Shey

Watsonville and Phoenix, accept my challenge! - Shey

Silverlight has the Olympics on NBC, so they'll get adoption. - Robert Scoble

my question is here: http://friendfeed.com/e/b3c224... - Julian Baldwin

I left my comment on your blog - want to make sure the non-FF audience sees it, too. - Dossy Shiobara

hey hey hey! who said silverlight was the better technology!? - Greg North

I woud have thought Silverlight needed the breaks. - john conroy

Isint silverlight straight XAML? That means its text and can be indexed. The real question here is what will microsoft do in response? - Roberto Bonini

Silverlight will be a threat but it will take some time. That's great if everyone has the plugin thanks to the Olympics but if developers aren't using it then that plugin is useless. I think it has a ton of advantages over Flash from a developer standpoint as well so really there isn't any reason it shouldn't catch on with some time. - Devlin Dunsmore via twhirl

We need to remember that this is not a perfect search engine solution for flash. There is a lot more that has to be done to really index flash to be able to rank highly in the Search engines. It is a great step forward though. Also, how easy would it be for Microsoft to come, just like adobe and say, here is a technology to crawl our software, why don't you use this. - Tim Flint

Older Flash movies win here. Most modern Flash sites store the content externally in xml and even then it's hard to tell what content is meant to be displayed. - Andrew Smith

Silverlight stores XAML in a ZIP file that's sent to the client. It is the better technology (C# on the client as opposed to ActionScript). But the tooling and community is seriously lacking still. - xero

funny how the title of the story says adobe gets a "break" then in the story he declares ms silverlight "game over". counting out microsoft is just stupid. - adolfo foronda

Here's ESRIA.com analysis: Let's also not forget that a lot of pagerank has to do with external deeplinks directed to your site. Web users have years of discouraging experiences bookmarking Flash sites, to the point that most don't think to copy-paste the address bar and drop a link on their blog, even if it's being updated by the Flash element via JavaScript. In this regard, Flash sites without an HTML frame will always be at an SEO disadvantage no matter what Adobe wants to say. - Bob Stewart via twhirl

"Silverlight might be better technology, but if it doesn’t get indexed by the two biggest search engines it’s game over." So, the inability to index Flash to this point doomed it? Who wins the Flash vs. Silverlight war will have nothing to do with Google's index. - Sprague D

I hope both Flash and Silverlight will vanish as Javascript gets better and better. - Ole Begemann

Yeah lots of good tools and libraries coming out for javascript that are making it easier to do interactive features that don't need flash or silverlight anymore. - Ralph Whitbeck

This sorta feels like much ado about very little. What really matters is if the Flash content gets indexed in any MEANINGFUL way. PDFs get indexed but you have very little control over the display of the search engine results, so the listing itself is often meaningless. There are no navigation links in PDFs, so when you view the file, there's no way to navigate to the site to which it belongs, short of stripping down the URL, which most people won't do. Let's see indexed Flash in action. - David Erickson

@David, that's the main thing about this announcement. Google has indexed Flash application for a long time in generally the same way they index PDF (doa filetype:swf search). But now with this player, Google will have a lot more information about both what is inside the SWF and how it got there. Combine that with some of what SWFAddress has been doing with deep linking and hopefully this will make the Flash search experience much better for the end user. - Ryan Stewart

I did a research project back in 2000 that set out to prove we never needed Flash to begin with. And we didn't. Everything someone did in Flash I managed to do in DHTML (JavaScript and Ajax for you new guys). It's just a matter of how widespread the DHTML talent is. Though I'll have to say that the readily available JS packages have made life easier. Used to have to code all of that ourselves. - xero

DHTML / Javascript is now, and always will be, a lousy and fragile environment for anything serious. Flash and Silverlight really are the next steps. Javascript is badly implemented and inconsistent (and its not just MS with the problem, the spec is ambiguous). The reason Flash is gaining ground is that it is unified and consistent across browsers and platforms. Silverlight is all that WITH a real language and dev environment. - Soulhuntre