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Hasn't the whole MS/Bill Gates thing morphed so far beyond mere monopolistic, predatory practices to become a gargantuan, grotesque caricature unable to make any business move without begging the birth of myth? /. and Open source opposing the evil empire. Lord of the Rings ain't got nothing on this.

Do you even know what genocide is? There is no systematic attempt to *wipe out the Palestinian people* by Israelis. There are more Palestinians alive today than at any time in history. If you want to understand genocide, mr anonymous coward, go read "The Last of the Just" by Andre Schwarz Bart. You might, if you have the wit to understand the words, learn what real horror is.

How come you mention US atrocities and Israeli atrocities but have not a single word to say about atrocities in Algeria, Morocco and Jordan, to name but three countries? If you're going to blether about police states in the Middle East and repression, how about a word or two from you about Syria, Iraq and Iran? Which Middle Eastern country besides Israel has a democracy in which parties actually leave power and are replaced by other parties? How about a discussion of racist laws in the UAE? How about a discussion of the oppression of Afghan women? Why are you so keen to give Israel and the US a hard time when there are so *many* tremendous wrongs being committed by all these *other* governments in the Middle East? How about a discussion of funding of the PA by Arab states vis a vis funding of Hamas and Hizbollah (hint: lots of cash went to the latter, destabilising the former)? How about the fact that you will find the most horrendous antisemitic descriptions in Arab media across the Middle East, caricaturing Jews in exactly the same terms as used by the Nazis (indeed, often lifting material from Nazi-supported publications such as Der Sturmer)? Did you know that during Ramadan last year, Arab TV stations across the region screened a 30-part series entitled "Horseman without a Horse", based on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion? Can you even begin to imagine the response were an Israeli TV station to broadcast something remotely as offensive?

Your belief in the viciousness of Israel and the US as compared with the purity of its victims is not supported by the evidence. Next time you want to help some victims of an occupation out, surprise yourself and go to the Western Sahara. While you're there, you'll be able to find:
-- a victimised people living in refugee camps in other countries (the Sahrawis in Algeria)
-- a state violating UN resolutions ('75 as opposed to '67, I grant you)
-- extensive US support for that state including military aid and grants
-- a post-colonial history that partly created the mess in the first place (Spain rather than Britain in this case)
-- and a world that cares a hell of a lot less about what happens there than it does about what happens in Israel. So put *that* in your pipe and smoke it.

Saved Apple from what? I'm tired of revisionist computer historians telling me that Apple was all but doomed at some point or another in recent history, when it simply isn't true.

Sure, at the end of Amelio's reign, Apple had problems. Severe quality assurance problems... for Apple, but still no worse than your average wintel boxmaker. (At the time, our IT dept. was returning more than 15% of new IBM workstations for warranty service, and so decided to switch us all to Gateway.)

Apple had glut of models, yes, probably compounding QA difficulties and eroding profit margins. But so do modern US automakers. Are they doomed?

Apple had a marginal market share, yes. But what's new? Gee, you have 3% of domestic sales instead of 5%. You're doomed!

Clonemakers were taking the most profitable part of Apple's market, yes. (Hell, I bought a high-end clone, too... best Mac price/performace ratio in history. Well, until iMac maybe.) This was perhaps the most threatening problem. But it was because the clonemakers got greedy and didn't honor their licensing agreement. So Apple just didn't renew it. Problem solved.

They had many serious issues to face, and they knew it. Hell, that's why they brought back Jobs. But if he had refused, who knows what would have happened. They had a lot going for them, though: Lots and lots of cash in the bank, enough to fend off any sort of hostile takover attempt. A huge installed base supporting a horde of loyal, even fanatic, users. Mac zealotry was even more intense back then than it is today. They weren't automatically doomed.

Unless you count living in the margins ekeing out a profit on a couple percent share of the market as doomed.

What Jobs did was bring Apple back to the vanguard of personal technology, revitalized their marketing and R&D, gave them a leader to stand behind, and a caricature to present to the public and press. But he didn't "save them from the brink" of anything but mediocrity.

The first season was one of the best! Sure things were a little rougher, but the characters were much closer to reality than they are today - now they're just caricatures of themselves. I can't even stand to watch any of the episodes since "Who shot Mr. Burns?"

Anyone else actually remeber watching the 'holiday specual' on TV?
I was pretty young, but I do remeber thinking that the cartoon (great caricature of han solo with 1000 watt smile) was the only good part.

Your theory is oh-so-seductive. Shame it's absolute horse-hooey. If a company executive signs a contract on behalf of their company for, say, buying a supply of electricity for the next ten years, the contract doesn't become void if that executive leaves. The burden of paying for the electricity still falls on the investors, employees and hence must be passed on to customers. If it was a wrong decision, and the company's paying too much, well, it'll have to try to make more money. If it doesn't succeed, it'll go under. If the shareholders have bet their shirts on the company, the more fool them. There's no difference here with criminal acts. Canny investors look at a company in-the-round, assessing all risks to their money. Only prats who think they're owed a living don't look at potential criminal liabilities. Same goes for employees. As for customers...if the price goes to high, they'll simply shop elsewhere. That's the beauty of the market. You sound like a rightwinger's caricature of an anti-capitalist and a leftist, wanting to protect businesses from failure and individuals from the consequences of their decision-making--and wanting the taxpayer to pick up the tab.

... the first caricatures of Bill Gates with beard and turban start to appear.

Much more information about Alan Turing and the book is on the web page created by Turing's biographer, Andrew Hodges: The Alan Turing Home Page.

From the Amazon review:

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
[Five Stars]
February 17, 2001

One of the most important books I've ever read. Without this book, the real Alan Turing might fade into obscurity or at least the easy caricature of an eccentric British mathematician. And to the relief of many, because Turing was a difficult person: an unapologetic homosexual in post-victorian england; ground-breaking mathematician; utterly indifferent to social conventions; arrogantly original (working from first principles, ignoring precedents); with no respect for professional boundaries (a 'pure' mathematician who taught himself engineering and electronics).

His best-known work is his 1936 'Computable Numbers' paper, defining a self-modifying, stored-program machine. He used these ideas to help build code-breaking methods and machinery at Bletchley Park, England's WWII electronic intelligence center. This work, much still classified today, led directly to the construction of the world's first stored-program, self-modifying computer, in 1948.

Computers were always symbol-manipulators, to Alan, not 'number crunchers', the predominant view even to von Neumann, and into the 60's and 70's. He designed many basic software concepts (interpreter, floating point), most of which were ignored (he wasn't exactly good at promoting his ideas). By 1948 Alan had moved on to studying human and machine intelligence, as a user of computers, again with his lack of social niceties and radical thinking, some of his ideas were baffling or embarrassing until 'rediscovered' decades later as brilliant insights into intelligence. His 'Turing test' of intelligence dates from this period, and is still widely misunderstood.

Poor Alan; his refusal to deceive himself or others and "go along" with the conventions of the time regarding sexuality caused him (and other homosexuals then) great problems; early Cold War England was not a good time to be gay, or a misfit, especially one with deep knowledge of war-time secrecy (he was technical crypto liason to the U.S., and one of the few with broad knowledge of operations at Bletchley, since he defined so much of it, in a time of extreme compartmentalization). His sexual escapades eventually got him in trouble, and his increasing isolation and the fact that he simply couldn't acknowledge some of his life's work due to secrecy, probably influenced his suicide at the age of 42.

I first discovered Turing-the-person in A HISTORY OF COMPUTING IN THE 20TH CENTURY (Metropolis, Howlett, Gian-Carlo Rota; Acedemic Press, 1980), where I.J. Good wrote, "we didn't know he was a homosexual until after the war... if the security people had found out [and removed him]... we might have lost the war". This led me to look for books on Turing, and then the Hodges book magically appeared on the shelf.

I am grateful that Hodges researched his life as well as his work, as far as the data allows. Knowing the whole is always important, but I think critical in Alan Turing's life. Clearly, I rate this one of the most important books I've ever read.

-Tom Jennings

If you liked their Big Brother coverage, you should try the Survivor coverage, which continues even now into season three. I've read all of these, but I've never actually seen the show except the two season finales. It was funny to match up the characters to their lampooned caricatures from Salon.

They're at:
http://www.salon.com/ent/tv/survivor3/index.html
(The season three updates are at the bottom)

Here's one of my favorite parts:

Linda, the Cambridge woman who beat cancer, is a little peeved at some of the jokes -- someone had made a crack about an African word that sounded like "tampon." "This is mother Africa to me," she says. "They're so disrespectful. This is where is all started, folks, in Africa!"

In Linda's book, participating in a silly reality show for a million-dollar prize is an appropriately respectful activity in mother Africa.

(adding to what I wrote before, I guess)

I find it fascinating that lots of people seem to think that Debian is somehow beating its chest, stirring trouble, or being generally obnoxious.

I don't know if you read /. much, Chris, but this is par for the course. People prefer attacking straw men -- they don't fight back nearly as much.

And hatred, or at least distrust, of RMS and Debian runs fairly high here as well as most other Internet venues I've seen. You probably know the caricature, judging from your comments. If you don't, reading a few of the posts will give you a feel for it. It doesn't help that some of the more..uh..immature Debian *users* hang out here. [1]

Luckily, being in good graces with /. posters was not the reason I became involved with Debian, so I can remain mostly calm while reading a board such as this one. I've even managed to restrain myself from angrily shooting down every stupid comment here. (the 2-minute time limit is helping :) )

One thing I've always wondered is whether Slashdot is just being Slashdot, or whether the world at large despises us as well. But my impression is that this is limited to online discussion groups, which are in any event the Jerry Springer of the technical world.

(sorry, not in a good mood right now. I can't *always* keep my cool reading /., but it's a good exercise..)

Daniel

[1] if the shoe fits, wear it.

Also remember that those that depend upon the lynchpins of terror and horror to remain in self-justifying power over others force the hand of people that before may not of acted bravely, created beauty, or sought justice. Sadly, it is only when such unspeakable evil occurs that the forces of good rear their heads unified in defiance.

this is a true story: i have always held a special place in my heart for that story in wired, sir. back when i used to read wired, i would always skip the netizen bullshit. i wasn't sure why - it just fell flat. then i remember this funny caricature of Payne accompanying this article... The Father of the Internet and free speech and blah blah freeking blah and so I endeavoured to actually read this one. I remember plodding through the article over a course of a few weeks, finally finishing it, and thinking -
"what the fuck?"

Now I see why! It has always stuck with me - now when I hear that name "John Payne" I'm always reminded of that rambling, pointless, boring-ass 50 page article ... I think it is absolutely delightful that everything has come full circle. Everything makes sense now. Katz, no offense, no flaming anymore - just honest meat-and-pertaters from-the-heart advice: you really do suck!

30 years ago, science fiction was kid's stuff - only children wanted to watch it, only children liked it, etc.

30 years have passed, and the children have grown up. Now Sci-fi is a complex medium intended for the use of adults - it grew up with its fans.

No, 30 years ago, science fiction books, television and films had boatloads of adult fans. These fans bought books, went to the cinema, and attended conventions in *droves*. The "mainstream" culture just chose to marginalize and caricature them as part of a trend towards cynical materialism and "live-in-the-now" which characterized the 70's and 80's. I'm not entirely sure how fandom made the transition from "Spock-ears-wearing fat weirdos" (a minority in real life to be sure) to *everybody* watching the X-files, Enterprise etc. but I suspect it has to do with the entertainment industry realizing how much money could be made off of SF if they just tried a little harder to make it "cool".

Pot, kettle, black, friend. You were saying something about "tremendous support for evolution" in the fossil record. I refuted it. You selectively ignore it. I suggest that you take your own suggestion, and then maybe I'll consider this a credible issue.

calling evolution religious was cute at first, but its just old and tired now.

If you can think of a better phrase that accurately describes the religious faith known as evolution, I'll consider it. As it is, the evolutionist denies he is a fideist, but his framework is so utterly dependent upon faith claims -- and certainly not upon actual science, since it has never been observed or reproduced -- that it's really special pleading to do so.

Oh, and in any case, inference is a hell of alot better than believing what voices in my head tell me, which is what much of religion is founded on.

My apologies, but I'm unaware of a single religious tradition that is founded upon what the voices in your head tell you. ;-) Seriously, though - you have gone from "tremendous support in the fossil record" to "inference is a hell of a lot better" [than this caricature of theistic belief that you've invented for yourself]. That's quite a retreat you've just engaged in. Why not go the whole nine yards and just abandon it completely? You'll be a lot better off. ;-)

Of course this is self-aggrandizement to some degree, but Niven&Pournelle's Footfall features a military threat-assessment team for alien invasion composed of **VERY** recognizable caricatures of well-known SF writers, including the authors themselves.

what happened on 11th september was indeed a sad day. but its still not proven that the taliban was the cause. so its really sad that the whole fucking world is humping on afgahnistan now. sanction them, disallow them to use software and other crap. not to mention all these sick fucking jokes with retarded usama bin laden caricatures that i am forced to see when exploring the internet. i was really embaressed and shocked after reading that license... theres nearly every muslim country printed on that shit...

If the Constition says "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."--that's pretty self-explanatory. Congress shouldn't pass any laws regarding religions or churches whatsoever; it can pass no laws which restrict speech or writing; it can pass no law to prevent people from peacefully assembling. What's there to interpret?

Stupid is as stupid likes and uses.

You could argue that perhaps ml is the last advanced language, but few use it.

The last advanced language that people widely adopted would be C++. Java is a kindergarten caricature of C++, designed for kindergarten programmers.

Unfortunately, it's what I'm paid to write in. I wonder how much damage my brain is taking, though. I really would like to get back to C++ and civilization.

Satire: 1a) A literary work in which human vice or folly is attacked through irony, derision, or wit.
b) The branch of literature constituting such works. See Synonyms at caricature.
2) Irony, sarcasm, or caustic wit used to attack or expose folly, vice, or stupidity.

Nothing there that says satire can't be subtle.

RE: The point I was trying to make is that a Provo does more than speak out about the British occupation -- he lashes out. Where there are Provo's there are often explosions, and while this may be a stunning coincidence, I think it probably has to do with the fact that blowing things up is what the Provos do.

What I'm trying to say is, there may very well be Provo's who just practice law to defend other Provo's, or fundraise. Anyone conspiring to commit a crime or committing a crime should be deported on those bases and those bases alone.

RE: I guess I'm sort of weird in this, but I feel that when we permit people to enter the US it's because they will make a contribution, or at least try.

The flip side of the coin is that they are entitled (and should be entitled) to the same rights. Including freedom of association and freedom of speech.

RE: In either case, if someone takes an oath to kill Americans, this is more than a difference of opinion, and I think it's reasonable to ask them to go away. I don't think it's necessary to wait until a conspiracy to commit a particular act of violence can be proved

The flip side is rounding up all Arabs in a given area and deporting them as a "pre-emptive strike". Like it or not, until there's proof someone's a threat, it is wrong to consider it otherwise. Innocent until proven guilty means exactly that - not innocent until proven guilty if you're a middle class WASP, not guilty based on skin color, creed, race, political affiliation or anything else. Your style of speech indicates you are of British extraction (if I'm wrong please correct me): please don't fall into the "They tried to teach me subtle racism at 6 by putting all these racial caricatures in "The Beano"" trap or the stereotypical Briton "give em a thousand pounds and send em back to where they came from" trap. Because it's a trap. A dark one.