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Just because you (and others) may not like MS does not mean they dont have tons of ingenious/creative people working for them.

You do realize, don't you, that it's possible for someone to like Microsoft, or to be neutral about them, and still to predict that they have tough times ahead? Building a caricature of everyone disagreeing being a pro-Linux anti-MS nut is both incorrect and offensive. I'm a Microsoft Empower member, my business does consulting largely for Microsoft SQL Server, and I continue to pursue Microsoft certifications, yet there isn't a chance in hell that I'd hold Microsoft stock right now, nor would I recommend that someone accept an employment agreement that relies upon options as the primary draw. Demand cold hard cash or look for work with a competitor.

Omni Consumer Products. And they were basically a caricature of American corporations at the time, bloated, plagued with internal politics, and more worried about quantity than quality (recall Dick Jones' rant about the ED-209. "Who cares if it worked?") In fact, by the later additions to the series (the terrible Prime Directives TV movies) OCP was facing a takeover by a Japanese corp.

Uh, the FBI doesn't have juristiction in Denmark.

Religious people do gamble, and big time.

The big gambles in book-bound monotheistic religion are usually of the 'pavlov's wager' variety. They gamble that His Sole Transcendence will intervene on this plane of shit and dust. There's also the risk of taboo (exposure), etc. The gamble of unswerving belief in the Book is taboo, however, because the Book is so authoritarian. Don't go poking around in there, it'll poke back.

Chaos etc. makes no sense to creationists only when applied to cosmology; other games of chance are understood. Yahweh's fine-grained meddling control over the earth and its goings on is the incredibly parochial story of some badass nomads, stretched to the point of breaking, little different from their neighbours at the time, except for that "only Me" statement. It's because this story is stretched so thin that people get so vicious about asserting its verity.

You're missing the big picture- and trying to use your worldview to explain somebody else's.

Slow down, kind and ambiguous sir, I'm not expressing my worldview, just pointing out the self-avowed roots of the LogosEaters with an irreverent tone. The Big Picture that I was talking about was the historical continuity of a line of thinking about origins--and the nasty political fallout of that thinking being given power over my life. I DON'T think people are simply too stupid to understand evolution. I have observed how any understanding of it is, however, supressed, using taboo, identity, and logocentrism.

And yet without them [late-paleolithic-cum-urban totalizing laws], stupid things happen- like kids raised without fathers.

Oh, give me a break. Like a kid raised without a father is more tragic than stoning a rape victim who won't marry her rapist. The people jumping on the neo-Xian theocracy bandwagon aren't reading their own book very well, they're listening to preachers and upstanding leading-citizens, whose identities need authoritarian beliefs to work. Driving across the midwest listening to late night talk radio is like living in a Philip K Dick novel. The feel-good cynical deception is palpable, caricatured. But the devil's best work is done on the temple steps, as they say.

Actually, I was thinking about the days before the white man came- but yes.

Yes what, it was better under the miscegenation laws, or the US is sinking because it isn't using a tribal ethos? I'll give you the benefit of the doubt...

Civilization is your problem, then, the reason for sinking into corporatism and revolt. Civil power pools and coagulates just like its miscarried twin, capital, and that's the city for ya.

I'm all for a tribal ethos. We'll just have to break up into groups of a thousand or so, and take care of a nice little patch of nature. The city dwellers will put an end to that pronto, though.

it's a pretty crappy educational system that teaches people that there's only ONE way to think.

Hear hear. It's a pretty big electromagnetic spectrum, and we only see a wee slice. Just sayin.

Just as you have substituted a crazy myth about reality for a diety.

Oh, now, you've confused this with some other thread. What reality? it's a contextual thing, moves when you try to pin it down, so obviously we're not very good at observing it. Still, I put my foot down on concrete and it stops, so there's 'good enough,' and then there's some unholy grail of the absolute called Fact. Doesn't matter if that concrete is jiggly mostly empty atoms, or aether, designed by Joe who was designed by Yahweh when He gave Adam balls. It's all fiction, stories to relate. But I can walk, today. And make better concrete by understanding the jiggly atom story, so it's good enough for sidewalks.

Deities, on the other hand, well, puny human, what do any of you really know about them? Does the ant understand the finger that flicks it?

IME most of the people whining about the death of the humor are those who stopped watching it years ago. In other words they have little actual current data to base their opinions on...they're just repeating the meme that the Simpsons is washed up.

I still watch it and think it's great. It's not as funny to me as the classic episodes, but then again, they weren't that funny the first time I saw them either. It takes at least two repetitions for all the jokes to sink in in my experience, and repetition enhances many of the "classic" jokes...anticipation of the joke adds to the humor, as does social reinforcement (i.e. all the cliches that get thrown around).

The Simpsons is still one of the funniest character-driven shows on TV right now, along with Earl and The Office. The Family Guy and South Park are gag-driven humor, more like animated Saturday Night Live sketches, or the movie Airplane. They make absolutely no attempt to make you care about the characters, who are simply broad caricatures for the gags to play out against. When it's funny, it's really funny. But that's all they have, and as a result each show has a lot of awkward misses (just like SNL).

The Simpsons on the other hand can swing dramatic and ratchet up the tension, which then allows for comic relief and added comedic release. The best example is the death of Maude, which was both an emotional and hilarious episode.

It's a real TV show as opposed to a collection of silly bits...I find it much more rewarding to watch on a regular basis. The Family Guy on the other hand I can drop in and out of whenever I want and there never seems to be any difference.

Btw. Slashdot, thanks for fixing that.

The remainder of US manufacturing jobs are either underpaid, or soon to be laid off because they dare to ask for above minimum wage, are unionized, or because a CEO needs to buy another yacht.

Yes, and the 'CEO' looks exactly like that 'rich guy' depicted on the Community Chest cards in the game Monopoly.

Your cartoon-comic caricature world is somewhat lacking in reality, dude.

Don't worry. When you graduate and get a job, you'll figure it out. Don't leave a long paper trail of your present opinions. And no, it's not 'selling out' no matter what a few idealists with trust funds tell you it is.

That's just more non-proof. I don't believe in any of them. They seem like caricatures made for selling something. I would consider Eric Cartman a more credible source, since at least he doesn't pretend to be real.

Of course, the flip side of that argument is what kind of god would be so insecure as to feel a need to prove himself? Any god that weak would be out of a job pretty quick. Then he'd just be some homeless guy on the street talking about what god wants.

Open source is about technology, not ideology. People in the real world choose it and use it to the degree to which it is superior and/or more economical. No one cares about the ideology of the developers.


Open source movement really is about ideology, even if they won't admit it. Why do I say this? Because even a BSD license is not public domain. If open source people were only about tech and nothing else, they'd release all their code into public domain. But they do not. They still retain copyrights. Now, historically, open source people have said that it's more effective to preach about technical merits -- that's true. But they are preachers just the same (e.g. ESR). So your statement I am quoting is either completely wrong or is a mere caricature of the real situation at best. Reality is that open source people do care about freedom -- they just believe it's more effective to support their belief via appeals to technological superioty of open source process.

But open source people still want freedom in the end, and not just superior tech. If they only cared about superior tech, why would so many pro-BSD people bash GPL so strongly? What would they care if some software was licensed under GPL, as long as the tech was great? And yet they do care! That's because they do care about freedom and not just tech.

And you completely overlook a huge, huge amount of free software. Free software movement really is 100% ideological. That doesn't mean it's not pragmatic. Freedom is quite pragmatic. Free software users get certain very pragmatic freedoms and they really DO appreciate and treasure them. Call this zealotry, if you want, but I don't think you'll win many ears that way. Calling people you disagree with "zealots" is really a cheesy way to discuss things. If you think some of the GPL freedoms are bad, you should discuss that in concrete terms, instead of making fuzzy appeals to "zealotry".


You hate Microsoft, well guess what, no one cares. The people who make decisions about how their IT budget will be spent don't give a rat's ass about your feelings.


You're wrong. We do care. And the people who make decisions about how IT budget will be spent is ALL OF US. Fact is, we bring real (not fake!) value into the company, and higher ups benefit greatly when they listen to us. If they ignore us, they can fire or outsource us, but that's not going to continue indefinitely. Why not? Because in the end many people will stand firm and decide that life of slavery is a fate worse than death. It's very hard to subdue this kind of mindset. Once this type of "Spartacus mindset" takes hold, it's going to change things. And from what I can tell, it's already taken hold and it's already changing things. People all over the world, right now, are standing up for themselves, without fear. Maybe some of those people get fired, but they are happy knowing they did the right things and can go to their graves without worrying "What if I said what I really felt like? What if I wasn't a coward?"

In the end, as people realize their innate power, they will marginalize the so-called "top" decision makers. Fact is, we all make decisions and we are all equally important. Even the janitor makes decisions and is important. We are all people and we all have very real impact on society. What we do counts! It's not just voting that counts -- that's junk. It's EVERYTHING we do that counts and changes the society.

It's really just bullshit disempowering propaganda coming down from the top layers that wants us to believe in our own impotence and insignificance. But all we have to do is to disbelieve it and we are free of that yoke! What we do matters. Even if I just say to my coworker, "Microsoft sucks, and here's why I think so... blah blah" it matters and it changes things. Everything we do has power. Every breath is power. And we all have it.

libs != common sense, so I fail to be suprised :-)

Obviously - the common American Liberal is a caricature in every respect. They're basically the modern bogeyman of the Neocons. Remember this: Just because Hillary Clinton is a ridiculous carpetbagger doesn't make every other democrat worthy of the title.

Kinda reminds me of this caricature of GWB standing in front of a canvas:

Iraq
    ^

Al Qaida
    ^

"This proves that Iraq has ties to Al Qaida."

> Gah! It angers me to see things like this

Truly, your post was hilarious, although I'm not sure if you meant it as a caricature of racism, or if it reflects real hatreds you have.

Original comment: It saddens me to see the media paint the billion arabs as evil, because a few fight back against the US, sometimes in hideous fashion

Your comment: But, they're almost all truly evil, because of what I see on the media, so how can you criticize the media?

Hehe, hilarious.

Oh, Jar Jar, why can't all minorities be as kid-friendly and happy as you?

-Eric

(e.g. "Everyone who drives a car is a guilty of ecological genocide!", "If you criticize car culture, you're with the terrorists", etc., etc.)

It's not libel, it's parody.

(from dictionary.com)

parody P Pronunciation Key (pr-d)
n. pl. parodies
1a. A literary or artistic work that imitates the characteristic style of an author or a work for comic effect or ridicule. See Synonyms at caricature.
1b. The genre of literature comprising such works.
2. Something so bad as to be equivalent to intentional mockery; a travesty: The trial was a parody of justice.
3. Music. The practice of reworking an already established composition, especially the incorporation into the Mass of material borrowed from other works, such as motets or madrigals.

It imitates the characteristic style of John Howard in order to subject him to ridicule (because he's not at all sorry for all the things he's done).

It is parody, according to the very definition of parody. We don't need cartoons with figures in sashes that are labelled "Economy" these days.

My point, although you only seem to be able to think 'war crimes, war crimes, all the time war crimes' is that the US forces bent over backwards during the 'heavy' phases of the campaign to avoid destroying civillian areas, which include Mosques. Even though the terrorists made a practice at times of specifically hiding in mosques.

You have a serious need to stop arguing against your personal caricatures instead of the real people in the discussion. Otherwise you run the risk of remaining forever mired in your fantasy world of black/white.

People like you have the same stunted view of 'NeoCon' as the birchers did/do of 'Commies.' Look in a mirror, dude.

(there are even bombastic Democratic senators these days that seem a lot like Joe McCarthy in their approach)

My left-wing heroes? You mean Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot? So who's drawing your caricatures of "the left" for you these days - Rush? O'Reilly? Puleeeze.

I'm an American and it's my solemn duty as a citizen to oppose incipient tyranny in America first and foremost. The fact that you can find historical figures in the world that were arguably greater evils than what the Republican party is serving up in the U.S. today is irrelevant.

when I was reading the "speech" I could hear it as the words of John Howard. Whoever wrote it did a great job in mimicking Howard's speech writers. It seemed spot on to me.

On the other hand, for the Aussies reading this .. my visions of John Howard were formed in the 80's from the radio comedy How green was my cactus where his character was "Little Johnny Howard". I'll never be able to shake that caricature of him :-)

But yeah .. it sucks not to have free speech.

Wesley Mouch, like most of Rand's characters in Atlas Shrugged, is a caricature.

Except that's not really at all like Mouch. Sure, the attitude is similar, but I don't think the OP is calling for ridiculous profit-sharing laws or requiring Google to sign over their IP to the government, etc, etc, etc..

Wesley Mouch, like most of Rand's characters in Atlas Shrugged, is a caricature.