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When I was a lad a local root exploit meant you'd carved a turnip into a caricature of the mayor.

Camera is being dishonest and you're blowing up the caricature. I found the full interview here. CAMERA is trying to turn Pappe's argument around to make it the opposite of what it means. Pappe points out that there is always a subjective element and a dose of case making in his approach. And there are those who don't want to admit that.
I call that honest. CAMERA turns signs of honesty into signs of dishonesty. I would call Pappe a very good source.

No, it's not really. This is a nice caricature of both science and religion, but it is not borne out by reality.

Scientists suffer from plenty of prejudice. One time in my department I saw some visiting professor give a seminar in which he challenged a theory in polymer physics that has held sway for two or three decades. He was openly mocked and dismissed for no good reason that I could see. It was hardly world-view shattering stuff, just professional elitism and chest thumping. And over a theory that perhaps a few hundred or a few thousand people would ever see or care about.

On the other side, you along with most /.ers have probably never read a single page of academic theology, so you are in no position to know what role scientific, grammatical, archaeological, and other types of evidences plays in shaping scholarship in that area.

In short, you have a simplistic and stereotyped understanding of both science and religion.

While I know what the word means by context and other definitions, I think the word history is pretty interesting:

Word History: "An official statement of the returns of voters for senators give[s] twenty nine friends of peace, and eleven gerrymanders." So reported the May 12, 1813, edition of the Massachusetts Spy. A gerrymander sounds like a strange political beast, which it is, considered from a historical perspective. This beast was named by combining the word salamander, "a small lizardlike amphibian," with the last name of Elbridge Gerry, a former governor of Massachusettsâ"a state noted for its varied, often colorful political fauna. Gerry (whose name, incidentally, was pronounced with a hard g, though gerrymander is now commonly pronounced with a soft g) was immortalized in this word because an election district created by members of his party in 1812 looked like a salamander. According to one version of gerrymander's coining, the shape of the district attracted the eye of the painter Gilbert Stuart, who noticed it on a map in a newspaper editor's office. Stuart decorated the outline of the district with a head, wings, and claws and then said to the editor, "That will do for a salamander!" "Gerrymander!" came the reply. The word is first recorded in April 1812 in reference to the creature or its caricature, but it soon came to mean not only "the action of shaping a district to gain political advantage" but also "any representative elected from such a district by that method." Within the same year gerrymander was also recorded as a verb.

The point is that I think a football/soccer ball/baseball is a better "toy" to give a child than LEGO. Yes, with LEGO you can make things. You can also make things with a jack knife and a branch you find on the ground, with the latter option being more creative. Similarly, a football will lead to more (1) social interaction, (2) longer term use, (3) real world knowledge (of sportsmanship, friendship, team play, physics, etc.) than connecting some plastic blocks together will.

Similarly, a pencil and paper is better than LEGO. My father frequently used the back of an envelope to sketch out a piece of furniture he was going to make, or how an elevator worked, or some simple caricatured faces. I never had a single piece of LEGO when I grew up (but had a small number of plain red bricks that were similar, as well as tinkertoys and mechano -- the latter I would rank quite a bit higher than LEGO) yet I went on to become an engineer. I was raised by someone who made things, and grew up to do the same thing. My spouse's kids were raised by a bi-polar Philip K. Dick loving video gameaholic who bought them LEGO (and a boggling array of other toys), and today the oldest is just like his dad (and the LEGO have sat idle since he was 13).

LEGO is not the be all and end all of toys. Not even close. But it does have longevity (just as pencils have had and for the same reason -- simplicity and versatility). There is no point in getting all geeky and gushy about LEGO. Buy some for your kids, encourage them to use it and praise them when they do, while making sure the many other important aspects of their life are worked on and mastered as well.

By the way, I proposed to my wife using LEGO duplos...

Absolutely.

Nicholson's Joker was a cartoon, a caricature. And the whole time, it was very obvious that you were watching Jack Nicholson playing a cartoon Joker. His attitude was "I was made this way by an accident and you'll all pay."

Ledger's Joker was psychotic & sadistic. He completely disappeared into the role. His voice inflections, the way he moved (down to movements of his fingers), how he carried himself the utter disregard for anyone and everyone, including himself. It was just scary. His attitude was "this is who I am, I'm a monster, but I don't see myself that way."

As I understand it, Ledger's Joker is the Frank Miller The Dark Knight series Joker; Miller's work is considered by most purists to be the definitive Batman storyline, as I understand it.

When the seemingly invulnerable to low-yield nuclear weapons monster kept coming back back back coming back coming back.

A villain with a past provides depth to the character. Otherwise, you end up with a two-dimensional caricature.

And that was what this movie skirted dangerously close to. The omniscient villain who exists only to give the hero someone to defeat.

Which was fine for the Halloween series. The Friday the 13th series. The Nightmare on Elm Street series. Etc.

And writing them takes no skill.

Well, to be honest, Toy Story has humans in it, though not as much as the toys. I agree with the gp, though, for the most part. While the animation was pretty good for mid 90s era, I never liked how 'Andy' looked. The Incredibles, for one, had almost a caricature look to them.

spun hates libertarians. It verges on an obsession/phobia. He's really quite an interesting guy and I like him, but please don't get him started on it... it's every dreadfully boring anti-Objectionist/Ayn Rand caricature I've ever heard... the only thing more boring is Ayn Rand and Objectivism itself.

They've seemed to have capture the dark edge of Max Payne. Now let's see how they handle the strong, humorous archetypes from the games without making them silly stereotypes. The Italian mobsters were caricatures in the games, but lovable caricatures that were as fun to shoot at as to listen to. Also, there's a hint of bullet time in the trailer, but I wonder how much of it is needed for the film to feel like a true Max Payne. If used right it could be just right, but it's another thing that easily becomes stereotypical.

Firstly, the VC couldn't do those things unless he got department heads, registrars, and a load of other university officers to collude with him, and I doubt they would be willing to join a new VC in acting in such a manner, he would soon find his staff conspiring to make his life hard for him and undermine him at every turn. Not to mention what the students would do if they thought he was trying to force out their favourite professor, his reputation would not look good when his campus is covered in posters with caricature of him and graffiti insulting him in various ways. I recall the time when a couple of students got a megaphone off the lecturers union and want and stuck it against the VC's office window and shouted various things down it when the VC was trying to sack a well liked professor.

A VC is not ultimately in charge, the university council can shit all over him and kick him out if he behaved in such a manner, and probably would, if they saw him treating one of their colleges like that.

Can people interact as themselves rather than cartoon characters?

It would take a lot of expensive data capture to produce an accurate model of a user's body. It's simpler just to give an interface like Nintendo's Mii Channel, allowing the user to create a caricature of himself for use in a chat world.

>In a truly free market, most submarkets would quickly devolve into monopolies

And you know this how? You thought really really really hard about it? Given how wrong you are in everything else you wrote, I'm just going to safely dismiss this point as well.

>..knocking off their competition (assassinations), burning down their competitor's corporate headquarters/manufacturing facilities, stealing their competitor's physical assets

I think you're channeling the conflict resolution strategies of past (and current) governments. This has not been the route that business have took, and there's no reason to think that this would be different in any another scenario.

You're also forgetting that businesses, large and small, have no qualms about cooperating with each other, even if they are competitors. Microsoft and HP might fight for the same enterprise market (Windows Server vs. HP-UX), but at the same time can partner in consumer space and relase jointly developed products. Hell, my father works for a medium size frozen food operation, that sells their own branded TV dinners, but also takes contracts from Nestle and various Grocery chains to make their branded dinners. You see similar co-operation in every segment of economy, from automative, to manufacturing, to sofware. None of it is government mandated. None of it is coercive. In the financial sector there are billions of dollars transferred amongst parties based on nothing more than a handshake agreement(and of course, dacades of built-up trust). Has this kind of uncoercive trust been seen at this scale during any other time in human history?

You are absolutely wrong in your characterization of capitalism and the free market. Looking at it anther way. The US GDP is approximately $13 trillion dollars. There are not enough regulators and auditors in the entire world to monitor even a small fraction of transactions that make up such a staggering GDP. If even a small minority of businesses behaved in the way you caricatured them, the economy would not function and would collapse. It clearly hasn't.

I was reacting to several other comments in the thread as well rather than just your post in particular. I still think, though, that your original comment still reflects some of the attitude I was commenting on. I don't think you've fully understood the controversy or why people reacted to it, or else you did but saw it as an opportunity to get in a cheap potshot or easy laugh. There are many here who know (or should know) better but prefer to keep holding up the parodied version so that they can keep disparaging a certain group of people that they may disagree with on other related or unrelated issues.

Regarding your follow-up comment, the issue never was what you, or GTA fans, find offensive (it's unlikely anyone from the GTA playing demographic would be offended) but it was about 1) Rockstar's perceived attempt to circumvent parents and ratings boards (which later turned out to be an oversight) and 2) the effects of the game on the young.

I don't think encountering the notion of loving sex ever will warp a child's mind but that can't be said of every expression of sexual behaviour, some of which children would find difficult to understand or contextualize. I'm not saying, either, that certain expressions of sexual behaviour will warp them any worse than simulated violence but differently - I don't think the two should really be compared as they are too different.

How does a person decide if one is mature enough to "handle" something? It's not a given that a person who enjoys something is best placed to know if he can handle it, but in a free society I agree that as long as the person is over 18 and their behaviour is not negatively impacting others we have to trust their judgement -- that's the privilege/peril/responsibility of living in a free society.

In the case of children, however, that responsibility does fall to the parents. So if parents aren't given all the facts - how can they adequately make judgements? If game developers sneak adult content into a game (as it was perceived at the time) then parents are effectively denied the right and ability to choose what's best for their children. Seeing it from that perspective should make people understand why some people objected to what they saw as interference with their parental rights.

Incidentally, I think a lot of the objections came from people who did not, and would never have, bought the game but who objected, on principle, to what they perceived was Rockstar's unethical behaviour. I am sure that explains why hardly anyone claimed the $5. either they feel they made their point, they didn't buy the game, or they recognized it was just a mistake and they hope Rockstar will do better in future. I doubt anyone of these people actually thought "the violence is OK but not the sex". People expect some measure of violence in games generally (most games depend on it in some way and not all violence is "bad" per se) but they may also just not have been aware of the nature of the violence compared to the kind of alien bashing, car wrecking games they played as kids.

I don't think these kinds of issues are best addressed by repeating or believing caricatured versions of events originating from gamers and the games press. They are best addressed by balanced and truthful investigation and commenting.

Go RTFA. The media has reported this, including The Economist.

I'm just amazed that the media wouldn't be more onto this story because it would indeed be the story of the decade or century. People also stand to profit from something like this and if it was a serious problem, MSFT would be paying the price. It's been 8.5 years since this article was published and, despite how urgent it is, the dotcom bust, and now the new credit bust, nothing has come of it. I'll stand corrected if this is actually valid, but there seems to be nothing right now to indicate that Microsoft is taking down huge losses.

Why? I didn't claim they did anything illegal. I merely said that you are wrong to conclude that Microsoft is doing well because they report great results. Companies can, and do, paper over bad results for a while. Microsoft has enough cash that they can probably look pretty good for the next decade no matter what.

Apparently this Parish told the SEC back in 1999 and they did nothing about it. This would indeed cause so many people to lose faith in the financial system that it would have to be stopped, yet they aren't. Short sellers would take this stock down, but they haven't. Maybe this just isn't as credible as you have thought.

Well, that's all you ever seem to do: look on the surface.

No, that's wrong. I took the time to use FOSS software, evaluate it, and the based upon my decision calculus I made the switch to as much FOSS software as I could. What I am arguing here is that RMS and you are wasting your time by taking shots at Gates and his charity. There are better uses of public time in order to advocate the adoption of FOSS.

Whose "truth" is this? Yours? My mother couldn't even tell Bill Gates from Richard Stallman.

Is the purpose of free software to not achieve widespread adoption and near universal acceptance? RMS making statements that caricaturize and hurt the community are simply not positive. This article was published on the BBC. Many people are going to read it. RMS is just going to look like an angry hippie to so many of them. This is not a way to positively advance the community.

Says who? Are you a PR expert? No? Then stop giving unsolicited advice.

Besides, even if your strategy were right, you are essentially suggestion that Stallman should keep quiet about the Gates Foundation's sleazy policies in order to help free software adoption. He's not going to do that, and he shouldn't. The fact that you suggest it says something about your lack of ethics.

It doesn't take an expert to realize that these are not the strategies that need to be taken now. To me, Linux has hit a wall. It really doesn't seem to be growing where it needs to be growing. Complaining about Microsoft, Gates, and his charity really are not the steps that need to be taken to increase FOSS adoption. People have already heard the types of arguments that RMS has been making for many years now. Maybe it's time to change how things work in order to take FOSS to the next level.

Is RMS' inclusion of shots at Gates' net beneficial? Maybe to an idealist that sort of question would lack ethics, but to a realist, one would realize that one must pick and choose their fights. Throwing in pot shots at Gates' charity in an article about free software is simply not one of them.

Then you should check again. It actually stands for "free AND open source software". The acronym was created exactly because "free software" and "open source software" are different things. For that reason, it's often written as "F/OSS".

Congratulations, you got me there. I just wish that the sort of effort that goes into these debates over language would go into efforts to actually achieve more widespread adoption. In other words, the point behind FOSS. If you want to keep FOSS a totally academic idea with no real impact on the world, be my gues

I'm just so trigger happy itching to see the legal court cases that smash the publishers of frequently changing textbook editions. If they refuse to sell older editions, there is a legitimate argumentative claim that they have abandoned the intellectual property claims of those older editions. If they are not actively trying to make a profit on older textbook editions, then you couldn't ask for a better caricature of a Scrooge to burn in effigy.

Textbook publishers are going to take some crushing public relations blows. This is going to expose vast swathes of the innards of the inherent contradictory structure of copyright law. It's utterly laughable to watch some academics advocate the forced artificial scarcity of knowledge. Maybe we will see some nice collateral damage occurring in some prestigious institutions of higher education, who by their tacit consent are violating their mission charters to advance knowledge. If they aren't careful, they will expose the very churn and burn business nature of the paper degree pushing Union Cards they are bestowing upon us peasantry.

These are exciting, exciting, almost Revolutionary, times! If copyright law is eliminated, humanity will be freed from the chains of artificial scarcity ignorance. The textbook account of the elimination of imaginary property is being written in our time. Hahaha. I just love it!

I think it is more that women get women but don't get men, men do not get women or men. Thus we find that more people understand what a female is thinking. Women like to think they get men but really do not - they just "get" that many men want sex and do not go past there (and then proceed to live really shallow and fulfilling personal lives).

Dropping hints doesn't work - never has and never will. If you think they do I can assure you that you do understand the average male mind. Males almost never notice them (some do, but most do not) and while you are dropping said hints you aren't being yourself. If a male is to get them then chances are you have to be yourself. This is why the vast majority of female "hints" end up with something they don't remotely want - we are doing what you are overtly saying you want.

If you want to be understood by the vast majority of the people be forthright and honest - it rarely fails. Hints go awry even amongst the same peer group - "I hate you" rarely is misunderstood. Not very many do this be it male or female but then you don't need hints or to try and figure out the decoder ring for the other person. You have to accept you will get more people to dislike you this way (and is why few do it) and it can be for silly reasons (how dare he like chocolate and not understand why someone would prefer coconut! I hate them but will pretend I like them!), however the ones that would dislike you only like some false caricature of you they have built up because the didn't understand your hints females use or outright falsehood most males will project instead. Nor do you appear to be subservient to the other person (and I think this is a big one there), people in general do not seem to handle this very well.

See being fairly blunt is easy - I'm not too hard to understand. However I bet I tick a number of people off. Further I bet most that have some nice platitudes to offer believe most of the above but just will not say it or will try and put it "nicely", it still boils down to the same thing once you use the secret decoder ring. It is just I can fool myself into thinking a female that tells me I am "heavy" doesn't think I am fat if I really want too, however one that tells me I am fat leaves no wiggle room.

Again, this is an imagined "feminist" position. The spread of opinion within feminism is much, much broader than your caricature would suggest. I get the feeling you've not actually discussed much of this with anybody self-identifying as a feminist.

Helloooo...

Dungeon Master = God

Why do you think religious buffoons get so worked up about D&D? It's not because of the witchcraft and polytheism, but because it represents a revealing caricature of religion.

There are many many places where one group sets a strategy, and another sets the tactics.

why should I bother making a fool of myself by making rediculous suggestions that I know little about

Strategy is an easier to understand game since studying history does well to suggest what works and what doesn't. The effectiveness of strategy changes very little over the centuries, unlike tactics.