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Back in the 80s, when Star Wars was all the rage, the US military was caricatured as read too much science fiction. Now their killer robot has turned against its masters and they are acting surprised, it looks like they are reading too little science fiction.

When will they get the balance right?

This is a pretty dumb caricature of psychology, if I ever saw one.

I think you're thinking of sociology, ignoramus.

Ok, let me put it this way for you. The Abiogenic Theory is essentially the geological equivalent of ID theory. Almost all evidence supporting it is specious at best.

Those in the oil industry do not reject these theories because they want to play up market fears of peak oil, but because they don't lead anyone to find oil. There is no vast conspiracy theory to drive up oil prices by subscribing to these theories. Independent oil and gas companies that have absolutely no control over the price of their product use the very same theories in their search for oil as the majors do. Biological origin theories, though, can account for finding just about every drop of oil ever produced. These aren't just a public face. Oil companies actively use these theories in the study of the Earth's geology to find oil reservoirs.

Also, your understanding of the biological origin of hydrocarbons amounts to a caricature, the way you would explain it to a 4th grader. Hydrocarbons do not just come from Dinosaurs, they come from all life forms. The vast majority of hydrocarbons are produced from plant matter, not animal.

No, the idea that you don't have to understand something to recognise silliness is fallacious. How can you dismiss an idea which you do not grasp?

If a child says gravity is silly because he can't see it, you would argue that he simply doesn't understand it and therefore can't make a valid judgement. If a caricature theist without any formal scientific education says evolution is silly you would argue that his view is similarly invalid on the grounds of ignorance. Why then can Dawkins make dogmatic declarations on philosophical matters which fall squarely outside his field of expertise?

Dawkins has no background in philosophy whatsoever, let alone theology. He can't even give you a workable definition of "truth". He is universally dismissed by philosophers the world over as an amateur upstart without the faintest clue about that against which he rants.

Was: "Researchers Create an Automatic Backup Band for Singers"
Correct Version: "Researchers Create a BAD Automatic Backup Band for BAD Singers"

OK. That was silly of me. But, I do have to say that if all music in the future was created like this, I'd probably stab myself in the ears. It's early in this game though... I suspect that once the concepts of the software are ironed out, the addition of more interesting chord progressions will happen. I'm still wondering how real musicians would wind up finding any use for this?

I've been using computer based music sequencers since the mid 80s and I think the last thing any real musician wants to see is "Microsoft Composer". I can see it now, instead of Clippy, they'll have "Wolfy" which will be a horrid caricature of Mozart appear every time you start to create a song:

1. You make something using minor 7ths and 9ths and Wolfy shows up, "I see you're writing an 'unhappy' song, would you like to make your song happy"?
2. You start sequencing something very abstract and atonal and this is the way you've worked on music for nearly three decades, up pops Wolfy, "It looks like you're having trouble getting started, would you like me to show you how to do a basic major C chord progression"?
3. You start inputing some heavy polyrhythms, and Wolfy butts in again, "Your song appears to be too rhythmically different, do you need help with a standard 4/4 beat"?

Ugh... more and more reduction to the lowest common denominator. Back in high school a friend and I came to the conclusion that all highly popular music would eventually be one note surrounded by 4/4 beats and grunts for lyrics. This software certainly seems to be taking things in that direction.

I keed I keed.

Again, it depends.

Some games are parodies and not to be taken seriously in the first place. Sure, go ahead and spam them with "for a few ducats your member could be as big as the Spanish Armada" ads, for all I care.

Some games were not parodies in the first place, and it would trip suspension of disbelief majorly. A lot of MMOs and generally RPGs went through a lot of effort to write a convincing backstory for their world, with lore quests, and everything.

E.g., much as I thoroughly disliked that game anyway, "ye olde Coke" ads would look thoroughly out of place in EQ2. They'd look equally out of place in Oblivion, or Neverwinter Nights, or Lord Of The Rings Online. There are mountains of lore about those games' universes, and Coca Cola or McDonalds ads, or for that matter _any_ ads, just don't fit there.

Again, I see basically a split between games where ads could work, and games where ads wouldn't work.

And honestly, I don't see it as any better if suddenly all games become Knights Of Xentar, Superhero League Of Hoboken, and other such fine parodies.

There's nothing wrong with them as such, but I quite like some variety anyway. I don't see anything particularly thrilling about a future where whole settings and genres go the way of the dodo, or are turned into caricatures of their former self.

I'm not sure you're aware of this, but Wright was actually quoting the comments of a former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq in that soundbite. How dare a pastor quote a leading expert on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East when discussing a consequence of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East...

Really? That ambassador said that white people in the US government invented AIDS to kill black people? That same ambassador said that the white led US government invented crack so that they could lock the black man up? That ambassador said that Hillary Clinton can't be president because she's never been called a ni... well, you get the idea.
Sorry, that excuse is full of shit! It may explain one comment, but it does not explain what lack of class it took to say it the first Sunday after 9-11. People needed comforting, not to be accused.

McCain does want to stay in Iraq for 100 years subject to a specific condition (that it's within U.S. interests as he sees them).

OK, I have to call bullshit on this one... again. Why in the Hell would McCain WANT US forces in Iraq or anywhere else in the world? If it serves US interest, sure, he'll keep them there but he doesn't WANT them there. Just like doing the dishes serves my interest in getting laid, but that doesn't mean I WANT to do the dishes. Sorry, your stretch is pretty pathetic and well... it's bullshit. You have made yourself look stupid for even trying it. It even made me look stupid to respond to something so idiotic!

Being a Muslim isn't a position, and this portrayal of Obama as a Muslim is a misrepresentation of an immaterial fact meant to foment a bigoted response. He's never said anything to the effect that he is a Muslim and, if he were, it should have no impact on his suitability as a candidate to lead our country through a period of great domestic and diplomatic hardship.

Uh, he went to a Muslim school as a child and fucking name is Barak Hussein Obama! No, he's not a Muslim, but it is a fair question to ask.

Do you actually watch Fox news?

I pretty much watch all the network news outlets. Fox is the only one that shows two sides to a story.

In most of their attempts to "represent all sides" that I've seen, they put on some minor player on the "other side" with little or no experience in TV commentary and yell at them. Their purpose isn't to serve as some reasonable counterpoint, but to be lampooned and caricatured in order for the fringe right-wing audience to feel comfortable in their disdain of the center and left.

Uh, do YOU ever watch Fox News? May I recommend Hannity and Colmes. Maybe Geraldo's show where he calls Bill O'Reilly a racist bigot.
As for liberals that look like jackasses on national TV, it is either because their position is indefensible or they are just not used to being challenged. They are not challenged on any OTHER network. We must also consider the possibility that maybe they are just jackasses.

Oh, and did you know that Rupert Murdoch donated to Hillary Clinton's campaign? Also Harold Ford Jr, Charles Schumer, John F. Kerry, Max Cleland, Edward J. Markey, Edward Kennedy, Bill Bradley and other Democrats. That right wing BASTARD!

Pray tell which "opposing view" has some traction in the non-crackpot scientific community, makes a distinction that is important to present, and can be clearly conveyed and properly qualified in a 2 minute dissent interview? Just because some wingnut disagrees with the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community doesn't mean he deserves national airtime, especially on a show like 60 minutes.

See, you've already set up your response. In your mind, any scientist who does not buy into GW is automatically a crackpot in your view. It doesn't matter if they were on the IPCC board like Chris Landsea Ph.D (here are some of his

You didn't say it directly, but you did compare Obama's preacher, Rev. Wright to Jerry Falwell. Obama and Wright were clearly buddies. Falwell and McCain are not.

Neither is misrepresenting someone's position ("McCain wants to stay in Iraq for 100 years" or "Obama is a Muslim")

While you may not disagree with them because they are not as far left leaning as the rest of them, they do go out of their way to represent all sides and have never celebrated the deaths of Americans in Iraq.

60 minutes for example just did a puff piece on Al Gore and global warming. They did not post an opposing view, and there is plenty to choose from.

Many elites are other peoples' masses. Slashdot-types (or at least a caricatured stereotype of them that might have some kernel of truth to it) might think of themselves as a kind of cerebral elite for certain types of technical-scientific abilities. For people with a strong background in the arts and literature, Slashdot tastes are very much of the masses, often naive and vulgar. Athletic types see the distinction between the elite and the masses in different terms, as well.

Stephenson, among others, clearly plays to the the geek version of what makes elitism. I find him one of those authors whose generally mediocre work is peppered with intriguing ideas and even flashes of clever writing. He is a geek writing for geeks, satisfying their desire to have their own view of the world confirmed. I put Orson Scott Card in that category, too.

There are alternatives to that: writers who unsettle and shake up frameworks of thought. Among my favorite of them, in SF at least, are Thomas Disch and Samuel Delaney.

I'd be the first to agree that it is partly intellectual snobbery. But *only* partly.

As an educator you know about 'learning styles' (or whatever they're calling it this week). I wouldn't hand in a piece of work with pictures of dolphins swimming through the paragraphs, every fourth word in blue, and with the first line of every paragraph highlighted except for vowels. Partly because it would be tricky in LaTeX but mainly because it would be impossible to read and detract from the content (at least, to my eye).

It may be caricature of HF books, but it's not that far off.

I'm sure a lot of people find the HF style fun and approachable. But as a student, if you can't approach a dry text book (pain or no pain) then ... well. Also GOF isn't *that* dry...

whenever such a thing happens, someone comes up with the 'extreme case' and 'exception' excuses.

its ALWAYS exceptions. the millions rioting in middle east because of caricatures constitute exceptions, someone criticizing what islam does constitutes an exception because s/he is a "right wing extremist", muslim youth cutting throats of 3 christians in center of turkey because they were just guilty of publishing bible and handing them out to whomever asked for one are an exception. so it goes.

i live in turkey. EVEN here, a secular country which does most of its business with the west and lived with the west for the last 60 years, there is much hatred against west now. it wasnt so 15 years ago. for 15 years sources that are openly funded from middle east have been doing hatred propaganda against west, and u.s. to the extent that mainstream newspapers here are openly propagating hatred towards west, and even christians with or without a relevant cause every day.

dont tell me about problem. i live IN the problem.

Excession seems to be the lightest of the Culture novels: the hyperintelligent Minds are played as a bunch of squabbling aristocrats, and the obligatory cruel aliens are so over-the-top that they come across as caricatures of fox-hunting Brits rather than the moral horror of the Azad apices in The Player of Games or the outright threat of the Idirans. When the Culture ambassador chooses to join the Affront, it comes across as a rather goofy case of "going native" rather than a morally culpable decision to choose cruelty.

But as a result, I can't imagine it would work very well as an introduction to the setting: it's almost a self-parody of the setting.

All in all, the only Culture novel I haven't yet been willing to re-read -- because it's too disturbing -- is Use of Weapons. I don't think there's a single reference anywhere in fiction that gives me the same sense of revulsion as the word "Chairmaker".

I agree.

I have played and even worked with a previous winner of the Loebner price: Alice
http://www.alicebot.org/

This isn't an Artificial intelligence (at least in my definition). This is a chatterbot. It is purely based on pattern-matching mechanism. It doesn't "learn" by itself. Most of the time the chatterbot owner dig into the log files, track the illogical chatterbot answers and change them in its database. Basically chatterbot have no "real" memory. They can't associate ideas to make their own. Don't get me wrong, this is really a nice concept...It may even work on a very limited subject but that's all.

Something else...The thing about the baby: A baby has instincts. He/she cries to get attention. He/she has various instinctive behaviors. Mothers and fathers are also extremely receptive to those signals (Seeing a baby in danger is unbearable for most people).

There are also gestures that are totally instinctive, like smiling, etc so even if the baby is just few months old, he/she can already have a basic communication with his/her social peers.

The real issue is that we are social sexual being. We are "all" programmed in some way to procreate. You try to get the best position in the society in order to reassure/seduce potential partner (That's a caricature...But well), you take care of your body to look healthy (thus reliable).

So you can say that we have a purpose. Our intelligence is developped around that purpose: We first have to survive and then we have to procreate.
The real intelligence is all the complexity we have built around it.

Now...What should be the purpose of an artificial intelligence? What should it accomplish in its lifetime? Why should it be curious? What are the fundamental set of communication tools it needs at the beginning. How could it learn things in order to accomplish its destiny? That's the real problem IMHO. If something has no purpose you can't make it intelligent...There is nothing to do.

Well, interestingly enough... before I'd even gotten to your comment I had visualized my father in the GP's post.

He's a home-inspector and a caricature of this comment exchange. He's well aware of the details to take into account when inspecting a home, when he wanted renovation or construction done in the house he did it himself.

In front of the computer, where he communicates the results of his inspections I had to teach him how to left click, right click, and double click. How to manage windows(minimize/maximize/close). How to open files, save files. He originally hand-loaded the printer 5-10 pages at a time(It was an ancient and slightly broken printer, but this was as recent as 2002). He would then fax them to the customer, again, 5-10 pages at a time(also ancient). So I had to teach him how to send an e-mail, scan notes and diagrams into .pdfs and attach them.

Now the other home inspectors are using template documents to speed up their reports instead of starting with a blank form for every house. Now he needs to compete with other home inspectors who are taking pictures of homes with digital cameras and including them in the reports.

He taught himself home inspection through self-study until he could pass license exams. After which he was required to take classes to get 6 credits of inspection courses a year as part of the license requirement.

But I teach him everything he knows about computers. He doesn't want to explore. I taught him how to open a file in MS Word, but he doesn't know how to open a file in the .pdf program. I didn't know how either, but I did it anyway because I knew how to open files in MS Word and just took a shot at the same method in the .pdf program. File -> Open. However, my father had to call me up to teach him how. I'm not saying I'm better, I'm in the same situation reversed. I know jack-squat about homes and had to ask him for help when I do any work around the home. As a result of the informaion I got from him I was able to renovate the basement without paying for someone else to do it.

These unknown fields are scary, but there was valuable payoff for both of us in the end for exploring these things.

It's not prejudice, it's what I see every time I look at a magazine or web site or news article about video games. It's what I hear almost every time I listen to coworkers or friends talk about the games they play. It's nearly all about adolescent power fantasies.

For the recored, I didn't miss out on Zork, because that was back when the game industry was still new, and hadn't bored the hell out of me with adverts for 200 shoot-em-up titles, and before it descending into its current explosion-rendering fetish. Oh, and you missed Myst in your standard list of exceptions to the rule. But those exceptions aren't going to make me a "gamer" any more than "Stranger Than Fiction" is going to make me a Will Ferrel fan.

By the way, that's a rather narrow definition of "all demographics" you're using there. The fact that gamers are of biologically different ages doesn't change the fact that most of the titles being produced and sold are written for the psychological equivalent of a 13-year-old boy. Apparently lots of 40-year-old men are still in touch with their inner teen; good for them. As for "a lot of women too"... that's nothing more than wishful thinking. The gaming market is male-dominated, and trying to claim otherwise just undermines your case.

Accusing me of being "lazy" because I don't want to work to find entertainment is bizarre. You sound like the Comic Book Guy types who sneer at someone for not investing the time and energy to follow byzantine X-Men continuity, or who expect a woman to wade through the racks of "racks" to find the 2% of superhero books in which women are characters instead of caricatures. Game producers clearly are not reaching out to me; that's not my fault.

"the monklike state of existence of many scientists, to investigate and research in silence, and then the looking down disdainfully upon the common man and his mispercetions: this is part of the problem. this anti-populist attitude of many scientists is part of the problem. an arrogance, a classism, an us-versus-them way of looking at the world. it is the lack of communication efforts of scientists themselves that leads to the dangerous and stupid ideas many common people swallow in the first place"

That's quite the caricature. I've been employed as a scientist for going on a decade now, and your depiction of John/Jane Q. Scientist works for only a tiny minority of the people I've worked with. I've worked with a hippies, hipsters, single moms, Norman Rockwell-esque family types, religious people, nonreligious people, sports fanatics, geeks, barflies, rednecks, people of all different races, colors, creeds, nationalities, and in general a wide, wide slice of humanity. Maybe you ought to not paint a group of people with a wide brush until you've at least met one or two of them first.

Is evolution falsifiable? Here's how I understand evolution:

Evolution is based on the idea that billions of years ago there was nothing, then it exploded into the universe.

It then proceeded to condense into stars and planets, some of which managed to end up spinning the wrong way.

Earth somehow got a huge moon without messing up its orbit,

and then chemicals washed from rocks managed to spring into bacteria that could reproduce.

These got more and more complex over time,

and thousands of dead animals got fossilized (except for the transition forms, which apparently aren't allowed to fossilize).

If the transition fossils are missing, then they didn't exist.

2. We get to believe in punctuated equilibrium, where not only did those random helpful mutations occur, but they all happened at the same time!

Personally, I think the whole things is bunk. Until you show me some half-this, half-that fossils

But people want to believe it so badly that they still excuse the total lack of fossil evidence for evolution.

I think the series is scripted to provoke exactly the kind of conflictual emotions you have mentioned - it's an old trick and it works well for retaining viewer interest. The interesting thing is that you feel the writers haven't considered these issues - I don't think they show the humans in an uncritical light at all, in fact many of the worst acts in the war are committed by humans (rape, torture, etc), I think you're feeling exactly what you're supposed to feel - i.e. 'Hang on a minute, that's not right'.

By showing both sides of the conflict, they're shedding light on the tricks we play on ourselves to make warfare acceptable. Rather cleverly, they've cast the robots as more human than the humans in many ways (religious, questioning, constantly seeking resolution), and difficult for the viewer to tell apart from humans. People are being tortured right now in the name of the US and the UK, so I think it's rather apposite that they show humans trying to justify this by dehumanising their enemy - now perhaps they still show torture working sometimes, and they fail to show the effects it has on the torturers in terms of twisting their moral sense, but torture does happen in most wars, and they're right to show it. Nicknames like toaster etc are very common in times of war (see names for Germans or Japanese used in the states in WWII)- it's the first step in preparing to wipe out an enemy; suppress empathy. I'm sure you could find people who applauded the fire-bombing of Dresden, because of being dehumanised by war.

Now the scripts are far from perfect, and in many ways it's a standard sci-fi pot-boiler, but there are elements which are definitely interesting, and I don't believe for a minute that the writers are not aware of the buttons they are pushing, or that they somehow feel all the actions of the humans are justified. Much time is spent discussing whether in fact these actions are correct or acceptable in any circumstances, and the introduction of several cylon characters into the human fleet is designed to bring home this distinction - personally I don't agree with their justification of torture, but it's not as naive as something like '24' at least, where jack gets out his pistol and whacks evil super-villains on the head with it a few times till they give up the secret code to their nuclear weapons. They've also played with insurrection and when/whether it is justified, which I thought was a very useful topic to examine right now in the west.

I agree the politics can be caricatured at points, though the revolt of workers was not unusual in its outcome - If you look at the history of industrialised nations, you will see many cases of exactly this behaviour - the 1848 revolutions in several other european countries fizzled out before they got going, and the earlier frame breakers/luddites have even become a byword for stupidity, even though their grievances were real and their movement brutally repressed. When workers are not organised or allied with the middle classes they're going to have a hard time fighting a heavily armed government determined to impose order, and often the best option is to give up and bide their time.

I just wish they based more of their scripts on historical events, to give it a bit more grit and a bit less of the trite pablum which passes for political discourse in America at the moment - at times I felt like I was watching the first episode of the West wing, particularly when that president opens her mouth, or they had that journalist woman being defused by being allowed access to the military (a nice idea, and stylistically quite fun with the grainy footage, but again came out a bit trite). I finally got bored with it all after the 3rd series, and gave up on it - it turned into a soap opera, and not a very good one, and the mixture of shallow political/social analysis and faith was just too much for me. There's a lot there that could be good, but unfortunately they went for the easy options too many times, and felt it necessary to add lots of trite filler and romantic stuffing that didn't really belong. But perhaps that's why they didn't get cancelled and Firefly did.

I don't feel the show is encouraging xenophobia though, quite the opposite, it's encouraging you to think about it.

I'm constantly frustrated by these exact issues on battlestar galactica. When the workers rebel in a classic Marx revolution, the stupid president just brushes them off, and never really addresses their concerns.. somehow the problem just sort of goes away and the workers happily go back to working dangerous, repetitive jobs 16 hours a day, every day for years with no weekends. Mhm. Also I hate how they constantly abuse the cylons.. I mean yeah they're the enemy but they're obviously intelligent and sentient and they're not even given basic human rights. A Six is currently shackled to the floor in one of their small cells. The humans call the cylons obscene caricatures of real people and refer to them as "mechanical" and "machines"... they're entirely biological and indistinguishable from humans, at least some of them. There's some serious xenophobia going on here and it's hard not to sympathize with the cylons, especially the Six is custody who's constantly told that she's a worthless pile of bolts.. that must be causing some serious psychological damage, and I can't help but keep that abuse in mind when watching the "light" parts of the episodes.. as if I'm supposed to sympathize with the humans? They're more vicious than the cylons..

The Earth simulator is the equivalent of an engineer's work of art.

The 360 is the engineer's equivalent of a caricature you have drawn at a carnival for $5.