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Why? They're are both just body parts. It's not the human body that is at fault here, it's only the perverted minds that look at it. It's all about perception. Look at the foot fetish people. Just the sight of a woman with no socks and no shoes on is enough to get them breathing heavy. Should all females be required to wear boots at all times because of that?

Some of you are being seriously melodramatic. Not all games feature caricatures anyway, but for the ones that do, the men are exaggerated as well., Even though it's not the kind of thing that gets the average female all excited, it's only because women have different priorities. The fact is making an appealing character for the females takes a lot more because they're more complex.

The T&A only matter because some people are drooling over it. You're not required to drool. In fact, you could be concentrating on playing the game instead of sizing up the character the whole time.

Quit whining already. You don't have to buy any games which you find offensive.

It's not like their biceps are bigger than all of me curled up in a ball, with veins as thick as my fingers.

Sure, most characters are caricatures. But males and females aren't caricatured equally: There are all kinds of male stereotypes in games: Small fat ones, tall thin ones, big fat ones, ugly ones... There's only one stereotype for female characters.

It's not sexist because it's applied to both sexes.

Maybe you don't know what the word "sexist" means.

Ridiculous portrayals of females. Women have breasts. Get over it.

Yeah, because game portrayals of male characters are so lifelike. It's not like their biceps are bigger than all of me curled up in a ball, with veins as thick as my fingers.

Game characters are caricatures. It's not sexist because it's applied to both sexes.

A caricature is far to the left of the uncanny valley, precisely because it is a highly stylized representation of a human. We can identify with Mr Incredible not because he looks and acts exactly like a human but because he is an exaggerated notion of a human. We recognize the human characteristics in him the way we recognize them in a baboon. The differences are large enough that the similarities stick out.

Final Fantasy, on the other hand, uses characters that are intentionally realistic but recognizably nonhuman. Because they are more realistic, we notice what is "wrong," the details that make them fail the human test and slide into the uncanny valley.

Hyperbole is the key to realism only if you are modelling Jim Carey. Normal humans in normal activities do not move excessively. Or to be more accurate, normal humans are in constant but subtle motion. Those thousands of little details make an accurate and realistic representation very difficult, because the more details you get right, the more details you must get right to keep from breaking the illusion.

Actually, "the uncanny valley" kicks in when an animator does NOT push the motion hard enough. Look up "caricature" in any textbook on animation. There was a lot of very subtle animation (and very exaggerated animation) in THE INCREDIBLES, yet the figures themselves were highly stylized. The animators for FINAL FANTASY, on the other hand, shot themselves in the foot by muting all motion with "between-like" gradients (real animals don't move that way) and muting the lighting (no "modeling"). Hyperbole is what you want.

There is a hilarious send-up of Rand in the Illuminatus! trilogy, a great book I keep buying and lending and never seeing again. Here's a sample of the book-within-the-book:

Briefly, then, Telemachus Sneezed deals with a time in the near future when we dirty, filthy, freaky, lazy, dope-smoking, frantic-fucking anarchists have brought Law and Order to a nervous collapse in America'. The heroine, Taffy Rhinestone, is, like Atlanta was once herself, a member of Women's Liberation and a believer in socialism, anarchism, free abortions and the charisma of Che. Then comes the rude awakening: food riots, industrial stagnation, a reign of lawless looting and plunder, everything George Wallace ever warned us against-- but the Supreme Court, who are all anarchists with names ending in -stein or -farb or -berger (there is no overt anti-Semitism in the book), keeps repealing laws and taking away the rights of policemen. Finally, in the fifth chapter-- the climax of Book One-- the heroine, poor toughy Taffy, gets raped fifteen times by an oversexed black brute right out of The Birth of a Nation, while a group of cops stand by cursing, wringing their hands and frothing at the mouth because the Supreme Court rulings won't allow them to take any action.

In Book Two, which takes place a few years later, things have degenerated even further and factory pollution has been replaced by a thick layer of marijuana smoke hanging over the country. The Supreme Court is gone, butchered by LSD crazed Mau-Maus who mistook them for a meeting of the Washington chapter of the Policemen's Benevolent Association. The President and a shadowy government-in-exile are skulking about Montreal, living a gloomy emigre existence; the Blind Tigers, a rather thinly disguised caricature of the Black Panthers, are terrorizing white women everywhere from Bangor to Walla Walla; the crazy anarchists are forcing abortions on women whether they want them or not; and television shows nothing but Maoist propaganda and Danish stag films. Women, of course, are the worst sufferers in this blightmare, and, despite all her karate lessons, Taffy has been raped so many times, not only by standard vage-pen but orally and anally as well, that she's practically a walking sperm bank. Then comes the big surprise, the monstro-rape to end all rapes, committed by a pure Aryan with hollow cheeks, a long lean body, and a face that never changes expression. "Everything is fire," he tells her, as he pulls his prick out afterwards, "and don't you ever forget it." Then he disappears.

Well, it turns out that Taffy has gone all icky-sticky-gooey over this character, and she determines to find him again and make an honest man of him. Meanwhile, however, a subplot is brewing, involving Taffy's evil brother, Diamond Jim Rhinestone, an unscrupulous dope pusher who is mixing heroin in his grass to make everybody an addict and enslave them to him. Diamond Jim is allied with the sinister Blind Tigers and a secret society, the Enlightened Ones, who cannot achieve world government as long as a patriotic and paranoid streak of nationalism remains in America.

But the forces of evil are being stymied. A secret underground group has been formed, using the cross as their symbol, and their slogan is appearing scrawled on walls everywhere:

SAVE YOUR FEDERAL RESERVE NOTES, BOYS, THE STATE WILL RISE AGAIN!

Unless this group is found and destroyed, Diamond Jim will not be able to addict everyone to horse, the Blind Tigers won't be able to rape the few remaining white women they haven't gotten to yet, and the Enlightened Ones will not succeed in creating one world government and one monotonous soybean diet for the whole planet. But a clue is discovered: the leader of the Underground is a pure Aryan with hollow cheeks, a long lean body, and a face that never changes expression. Furthermore, he is in the habit of discussing Heracleitus for like seven hours on end (this is a neat trick, because only about a hundred sentences of the Dark Philosopher survive-- but our hero, it t

I've read The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, Anthem, and something else I forgot. It's a nice exercise in intellectual masturbation (like Niel Stephenson's "nerds are teh coolest. people. evar!" stuff), but it doesn't wash.

Check out Rand's life for one thing. She ruined her own marriage having a long-term affair; she started up her organization and it turned into a cult pushing conformist behavior on bright kids with little "common sense." Most accounts of her life acknowledge her personal brilliance but also her abysmal despair. The woman was sad beyond belief and ended up writing books that tore down strawmen arguments while arguing that true love means raping women strangers (because certain brilliant men can telepathically know that's what they really want).

After reading Nietzsche^WRand, I started looking out in real life and real people. Rand's completely wrong, she had no idea what makes people do things or *why* they want to. Try that: just where in *any* of her characters is a reason why. Why does Rourke like building things? Why did Galt study physics? "Because he wanted to." Why did he want to? Prime mover problem -- Rand can't come up with a reason to want things because there isn't one. At the heart of life is irrational exhuberance. Placing a pseudo-logical framework around that and trying to justify it doesn't work.

You'll find that nearly every major philosophy has considered Objectivist-type ideas and already rejected them. Buddhism, Taoism, and even Judeo-Christianity (Ecclesiastes) are better thought out than The Fountainhead.

Rand's characters and stories are meant to be larger than life and iconoclastic. They have heroic characters with heroic talents. But they illustrate the nature of man astutely quite often.

I feel sad that you can read about Galt and see heroic qualities in him. He was a stoic misanthrope incapable of happiness beyond intellectual elitism (when he laughs at the guards who can't figure out the torture machine). But I think it's much sadder still that you think Rand's automaton caricatures illustrate human nature "astutely".

A touch of realism would be nice. I'm getting tired of the enormous adolescent-fantasy boobs everywhere.

The unrealistic proportions I think are so far a function of the how primitive the graphics are- you had to make Lara exaggerated because you only had a handful of polygons to do it with on the PS1.

Or even going back further to low-res 2d graphics, you'd have to do something like this to show a female:

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And that's way unrealistic. Now, we can have thousands of polygons along with realistic skin tones, hair and clothing physics, eye movement, and everything else that makes a real person attractive to look at- they don't need to hit you over the head with caricatures.

Well, I agree with you that GTA feeds into a lot of pretty offensive racial caricatures. As for the "black community of the inner cities" being a "complete joke", I'm not sure what you mean. Economically depressed black communities in America have a lot of problems to deal with, but few of them are funny.

It's strange how many people are fans of Firefly. It's watchable and sometimes enjoyable, but I don't particularly like it compared to most other sci-fi series. The characters all seem immature and mostly behave like teenagers, which may be fine in some different setting, but as a crew of a spaceship, I'd find people who are a bit more organized, responsible and level-headed more believable. Or if they have to be goofy, make them out-of-this-world goofy (Farscape, Lexx), or let one character hold the others together (Andromeda), even if he is a caricature.

Firefly plots are also mostly kind of predictable (and I'd have preferred more continuity), although the episode where they find a community that worships Jayne as a hero is full of totally hilarious (and well acted) moments.

Microsoft know this; they frame the fight so that when they say "Linux" they mean all Linux-based distributions.

Someone with a good philosophy background might identify this better than I can, but I think the accepted term for this is a Straw Man argument.

ie. Microsoft creates a caricature to their own liking and calls it "Linux", even though it isn't. Then they knock it down by highlighting all of the flaws that their invented caricature has.

also, if you are a keen airsofter, or have just a passing interest in the sport, please support UK airsofters by signing this petition. The government is looking to ban the sale of imitation firearms, which will essentially be the death of the sport in the UK.

http://www.saveairsoft.org/

To respond to all of Karl Rove's sound bites would take up too much room and time. I would like to address the most inconsiderate ones, though. For starters, to get even the simplest message into the consciousness of what I call uneducated chuckleheads, it has to be repeated at least 50 times. Now, I don't want to insult your intelligence by telling you the following 50 times, but it's quite easy for Rove to bombastically declaim my proposals. But when is he going to provide an alternative proposal of his own? It is bootless to speculate on the matter, but it should be noted that one of the things I find quite interesting is listening to other people's takes on things. For instance, I recently overheard some folks remark that Rove plans to reduce us to acute penury. He has instructed his shills not to discuss this or even admit to his plan's existence. Obviously, Rove knows he has something to hide. Please don't misunderstand me; I'm not saying that the cure for evil is more evil. In fact, he does not merely subvert time-tested societal norms. He does so consciously, deliberately, willfully, and methodically.

Anyone who follows today's debates on Stalinism and, by happenstance, is also familiar with Rove's disgraceful contrivances, is struck by that old truism: One of Rove's favorite tricks is to create a problem and then to offer the solution. Naturally, it's always his solutions that grant him the freedom to seize control over where we eat, sleep, socialize, and associate with others, never the original problem. There are two things about Rove's criticisms that I find personally offensive, utterly unethical, and quite sad. One is that a critical reevaluation of some of Rove's undertakings would surely be beneficial. And the other is that Rove behaves as if he's been lobotomized. Regular readers of my letters probably take that for granted, but if I am to stop defending the invidious status quo and, instead, implement a bold, new agenda for change, I must explain to the population at large that I oppose Rove's ebullitions because they are judgmental. I oppose them because they are scabrous. And I oppose them because they will herald the death of intelligent discourse on college campuses in a lustrum or two. What demons possessed him to censor by caricature and preempt discussion by stereotype? The complete answer to that question is a long, sad story. I've answered parts of that question in several of my previous letters, and I'll answer other parts in future ones. For now, I'll just say that he is completely mistaken if he believes that a plausible excuse is a satisfactory substitute for performance. If you've never seen Rove rely on the psychological effects of terror to magnify the localized effects of his shenanigans so that, like a stone hurled into a pool of water, shock waves ripple from the epicenter of Rove's attacks to the furthest reaches of the Earth, you're either incredibly unobservant or are concealing the truth from yourself.

His hypocrisy is transparent. Even the least discerning among us can see right through it. As a general rule, Rove's lapdogs are too lazy to embrace the cause of self-determination and recognize the leading role and clearer understanding of those people for whom the quintessential struggle is an encompassing liberation movement against the totality of Marxism. They just want to sit back, fasten their mouths on the public teats, and casually forget that I once had a nightmare in which Rove was free to make widespread accusations and insinuations without having the facts to back them up. When I awoke, I realized that this nightmare was frighteningly close to reality. For instance, it's crapulous for Rove to borrow money and spend it on programs that squander irreplaceable national treasures. Or perhaps I should say, it's wicked. A few days ago, Rove actually admitted that he wants to spam the Internet with loquacious junk e-mail. Can you believe that? Perhaps Rove forgot to take his antipsychotics that day. An additional clue is that the gloss that his thralls put on h

An American kid grows up seing foreigners represented in movies as barbarians, caricatured creatures. Just watch blockbusters in the last 20+ years (the "communists", the Chinese, the Latin-Americans, more recently the Arabs - terrorists, invariably - the North Koreans (in Bond movies), just about any non-Anglo group has been depicted as "primitive").

gosh you are right, the mao, stalin, terrorists, and kim are all real bastions of civilization.

He grows up smug in comsumer land and mall strips, not reading a paper, uncultured. In school, by 8th grade and high-school he know very little about History and Geography. He will never have read the Communist Manifesto, even though it spurred changes and inspired millions - even though you might find it wrong. Because, well, it was "communist."


have you read adam smith's wealth of nations? the communist manifesto inspired millions of murders.

When finally he reaches adulthood, he most probably won't speak a foregin language, he is too lazy and without interest to do it. He most probably won't read a newspaper, even though he has a very high income.

40% of americans are hispanic. i think a lot of those people probably speak spanish. not to mention all the other groups that live here. ...ok really not sure why i bothered to respond to such an immature troll.

The UN bashing is a sympton of the brain-washing that goes on in the United States.

An American kid grows up seing foreigners represented in movies as barbarians, caricatured creatures. Just watch blockbusters in the last 20+ years (the "communists", the Chinese, the Latin-Americans, more recently the Arabs - terrorists, invariably - the North Koreans (in Bond movies), just about any non-Anglo group has been depicted as "primitive").

He grows up smug in comsumer land and mall strips, not reading a paper, uncultured. In school, by 8th grade and high-school he know very little about History and Geography. He will never have read the Communist Manifesto, even though it spurred changes and inspired millions - even though you might find it wrong. Because, well, it was "communist."

When finally he reaches adulthood, he most probably won't speak a foregin language, he is too lazy and without interest to do it. He most probably won't read a newspaper, even though he has a very high income.

This is America for you.
No respect for anybody, anyone, not caring about international law, other peoples, other cultures. Then, Anglos wonder why is it that somebody wants to blow you up.

Space Command is a relatively new command in the USAF structure. The guy in charge of Space Command is obviously going to be interested in making the Command look as important and useful as possible. However, the generals at the top of the pecking order in the US military are not the uneducated buffoons of Dr. Strangelove caricatures. These days they all have advanced degrees and are extraordinarily deft politicians in the corridors the Pentagon.

Military journals are usually obscure to outsiders, but they can on occasion be hugely influential within the military community. They can influence training, doctrine, and the consensus view of what a branch's mission constitutes. So there is some potential that in time this journal article will be looked back on as the moment when the ball started rolling.

The general in question (an airman, not a soldier) is doing what he's supposed to do - he's thinking ahead to the future and thinking of worst-case scenarios and how to prevent them. That being said, the higher-ups at the Pentagon still have to prioritize their spending needs, and they still have to get authorization from Congress before proceeding on any serious plans to take control of LaGrange Points.

Bottom Line: The cat is out of the bag, and some people in USAF are thinking about LaGrange Points. Whether control of them becomes a USAF goal, a Pentagon goal, or a US goal is, as you deftly pointed out, completely unknown.

It is impossible to do almost anything without betraying some part of ones world view. This is true in every day life, doubly so in things that people create.

Arguably, the entire point of fine arts is to explore someone else's worldview. While Video Games may have a long way until they can be considered "fine arts", they are just as much about allowing you to explore the author's worldview as a book or movie. Perhaps even more-so, because the author must craft a universe that is entertaining to be in.

To do this he may have to create a caricature universe that enhances certain aspects while de-enhancing others. For example, if I'm playing a Sci-Fi video game I expect everything to be Sci-Fi-ish. All doors slide, everything hovers, metal and plastics everywhere, etc. This is despite the fact that a more reasonable look at the future would conclude that swinging doors and wheels aren't likely to disappear at all.

Creative works are creative works. If you want to complain about simulations, go complain about an F-22 Raptor sim allowing you to an impossible barrel roll. ;-)

I'd also argue that Schulz understood, better than most, the human condition, while Wiley seems to only understand humans as caricatures. Peanuts is Bonhoeffer; B.C. is James Dobson.

I like the idea Terry Pratchett has expressed in his Discworld novels with the relationship between the two characters Havelock Vetinari - The Patrician of Ankh-Morpork - and Leonard of Quirm - an obvious caricature of Leonardo Da Vinci.

Upon discovering Leonard - who would draw utterly detailed pictures of roses and hands next to piece-by-piece numbered diagrams of how to build unbelievably destructive war machines, as a mental exercise - The Patrician locked Leonard up in a tower in the Patrician's Palace, with all the bits and bobs that Leonard wanted to keep himself amused.

See, if you punish the brilliant you twist them, and if you reward a brilliant man who's committed a crime against others using that brilliance then you risk giving out the message that you're advocating what they did.

The best thing would be to "lock'em up and throw away the key" as the public would like, in a highly technical facility with gadgets and doodads that they can use to experiment and create freely.

The government could get some tools out of this, and the people being "put away" would learn that although what they did was technically very clever, they shouldn't have done it in public.

It's less like prison and more like grounding I suppose.

Yes, "ooga booga" is what we see in the movies. It, aside from preying on our "racist" instincts to elicit the director's desired response, is a caricature of the psychological component of witch doctor treatment, which I would argue is a larger part of their treatment than in so-called "European" practices.

My experience with engineers is that they are much less likely to deal with psychological considerations than even "European" doctors. While the brain is physically linked with the body and has a measurable influence on it, any direct effect from the brain on an engineered item like a bridge is significantly less established. To say there are differences does not insult the doctors (any of them) or "deify" the engineers. Getting (willfully) involved with "less measurable" things is just more out of character for engineers - hence my reaction to this article.

There was no objective "before" and "after" comparison of the modifications in the article, no pictures or measurements showing that the audio reproduction was improved - that it was actually now closer to the encoded signal on the disc, let alone to the master recording. The author simply provides his own highly subjective evaluation of the results. The "reality" of this is indeed debatable. Did you see the author's description? "Robert McNeice is a business and information-technology consultant for the financial services industry. He is an audiophile and occasional tweaker." This is not even an EE relating an esoteric reality to the layperson. Aside from isolated talk of component specs and the generally expected effects of changing them, there is hardly anything resembling EE here.

A meaningful article could have been written based on real measurements and engineering - but that probably would have been too esoteric and never would have made Slashdot. Your expectations from this article should be no greater than they were for my initial post - they both appeal to popular notions and both make use of technically poor content. My post delivered the point that this article is questionable, albeit with some collateral damage to witch doctors, but hopefully it saved a few people from spending a few hundred dollars on something which may sound:
a) the same
b) worse
c) better, but no better than if they had fiddled with their equalizer
d) better because it "should be"
e) actually better
Basically, a 20% chance of getting an objective return on their investment.