James

It seemed pretty clear to me that they think he's unjustly admired. He's treated as the hero by the other characters, yes, but that's half the joke of the thing. It's no coincidence that they always give Hayek the last word. EDIT: OK, that's pretty excellent. It's conceptually vaguely reminiscent of Trash Panic, in that it's a physics-based falling blocks game, but in practice it's quite different. Also, perhaps I was being thick, but I didn't gather from the video how difficult the controls are. I thought the player was just spinning the blocks continuously for effect, not because they have rotational inertia.

HEY GUYS WHAT'S GOING ON IN THIS THREAD I HOPE NOBODY IS TRYING TO USE ANY SUBTLETY MAN I CAN'T STAND THAT SHIT

The Internet does weird things to people. A related phenomenon which particularly irritates me is the following: Person A: I have problem X with program Y. I suggest it could be solved by making improvement Z. Person B: Problem X doesn't affect me, so I don't think the developers should bother with improvement Z. Person A: Thank you for your input. I don't know how common that is, but it's something I've seen several times and it really winds me up.

http://cryingwhileeating.com/

Episode six: Poundworld. I recognized you from the clippy bit at the beginning. I MET THAT GUY ONCE AND NOW HE IS ON THE TELLY. This changes everything.

Perfect. What is game? How is babby formed? In conclusion: Scrobbs is a pretty cool guy.

Fuck, it's anarchy.

Don't make me angry. I'll turn green and evasive.

While I don't endorse the whole army-and-rubber-bullets thing, I think this comparison isn't entirely even. Behring was one man who was apprehended after three hours. The damage he did in those three hours was, of course, absolutely horrendous, and human life is obviously infinitely more valuable than property, but I presume the reason people are suggesting such extreme measures is that they feel that there's no clear end in sight for this. Had Behring been one of hundreds, or had he continued his abhorrent rampage for several nights, I'm sure there would be very few things the Norwegians wouldn't turn to to stop the madness. Still, the overall point of the quote is fair: let's not abandon our values. I found discussing the riots at work today pretty draining, particularly with one co-worker who flat-out refuses to accept that society plays any role at all in the development of such destructive attitudes; in his words, "they're just idiots". I agree that they're idiots, but that can't be all that there is to it. I was so fed up that by the end of the day I decided to stay half an hour late rather than have to talk to him on the train. I don't look forward to having to endure more of that stuff tomorrow.

I think these two examples are probably the most relevant, as they deal with probabilities rather than qualities that can be individually measured; in other words, they are things that refer to some sort of statistical or presumed trend. I am not going to whine about the prospect of having to pay more for car insurance, partly because I know that overall I live a life of tremendous privilege, and partly because I don't have a car and have no immediate plans for getting one. For both reasons, it really isn't my place to say whether it is or isn't fair. My concern is where similar reasoning and generalization could lead. Would it be all right to also split car insurance demographics by race? By religious or political views? By personal interests? Who knows where a correlation might be found. Or had the statistics indicated the opposite of what they actually do, would it be sexist for women to be charged more for car insurance than men? It would have been an equally algorithmic calculation of risk. And then there's the point that Subbes appeared to be making: regardless of the reasoning behind it, the distinction serves to reinforce gender stereotypes, and that reducing people into demographic generalizations encourages us to think in terms of those generalizations. (Please correct me if I've missed the point, Subbes.) Anyway, to reiterate what I've already said: I'm not about to moan about car insurance, or anything like that. There's every likelihood that I will get far more from life than I'm owed, so I really have no cause to complain. I'm just interested in whether this sort of thing could in its own way be damaging.

That's a fair point, but is there any reason why they couldn't have used default female Shepard for their marketing instead? It's a little bit like the affirmative action thing: in theory it shouldn't be an issue, but in a world saturated with male leads, would it have hurt to have taken a tiny step towards equalizing things somewhat? It's not like playing as female Shepard is the rubbish second choice tha they want to brush under the carpet or something. I wouldn't necessarily call it sexism, but certainly a missed opportunity. I wonder whether the previous games would have sold less had they had female Shepard on the cover. I'd like to think not, but perhaps I'm being too optimistic. Finally, I think probably my biggest problem with female Shepard, both new and old, is all the eye liner/mascara/whatever. I like how it looks, sure, but it doesn't seem very authentic to the role. I toned it down on my custom Shepard. There's no time for makeup; she's busy saving the universe! (And mining every single planet she encounters completely dry of all remotely valuable minerals.)

I have no idea whether people will have read this or not, but it encapsulates quite effectively what I've often found to be quite a patronizing portrayal of what strength in female characters is. I must admit my interest is partially selfish: it's obviously counter-productive to blow off appeals for equality by pointing to some supposedly empowering bullshit, but beyond that, they're just bad characters and therefore less interesting to watch than good characters. Fantasies on legs don't make for good drama. Still, it genuinely does concern me that people are either getting confused or being deliberately misleading about what the purpose of this whole effort is. Not that I claim to know precisely where things should be headed. I just know it's not Megan Fox in hot pants draped over a motorbike. Society is where things always get difficult for me. Taking every situation in isolation, I think it's generally pretty clear what's proper and fair: if you don't deliberately injure anyone (be it physically, emotionally, intellectually, or whatever), and take all reasonable measures to avoid doing so accidentally, and if you don't unduly restrict anyone's freedom, it seems that things should be OK. But once you consider the system of society, and it's infinitely complex network of connected subsystems, and all of the emergent phenomena it generates, it suddenly becomes difficult or impossible to properly predict what secondary and tertiary effects an action will have, and to demarcate who is responsible for what, and where free will does and doesn't lie, and so on. Perhaps I'm being dense, but that's where all my thoughts become much less concrete, which is something I always find very disheartening, and something of a barrier to further analysis. Bloody society. And free will (or "free will", if you prefer). Bloody that too. Complicating everything. I don't know. I hesitate to say too much, because I'm not very well-versed on the subject, and because I know I'm by no means the model of progressive thought and equality and all that. I'm not immune to hypocrisy. Admitting it doesn't excuse it, of course. I mainly don't want to appear stupid. This is all interesting stuff, though. Hopefully I can learn something from it.

Sorry, I was being overly brief. I meant people who take scare stories about having to refer to Christmas as "holiday season" or similar at face value (rather than it actually being some entity, usually corporate or public, and therefore having a much greater stake in being universally relatable than an individual has, electing to do so as a voluntary gesture of sensitivity, sincere or not). I'm sure you've encountered the mindset: "It's having an opinion gone mad! We can't even call it Christmas any more! Whatever next?!" It's paranoid nonsense; that was my point.

Subbes is running very late for an awful lot of appointments.

I thought it was pretty good, if fairly bleak. It's not quite what you were talking about – the character is a convicted child molester, so he has acted on his desires – but he's portrayed as a man who knows his impulses are harmful, and is struggling with them. I found it a much more realistic depiction than the idea of the inhuman monster after our kids, but all the more depressing for it. Can a facet of an otherwise unobjectionable person's nature push them so hard to do something so unspeakable? If your complaint is that there's no linguistic distinction between sexual attraction to children and a criminal who acts on such desires, then I concede that it may be preferable to make a "paedophile"/"child molester" distinction. I was just saying that I don't see much of a linguistic reason that the word "paedophilia" couldn't refer to the latter (other than that confusing the terminology, I guess). In conclusion: you're probably right. You're probably right. Sorry for cluttering the thread, everyone!

Hey Miffy, have you seen The Woodsman?

I agree entirely that such people exist, but I propose that a significant portion of them are also the kind of people who object to having an opinion outright because they object to some outlier examples of PC thought (renaming Christmas, for example). I don't think the word is the main thing riling them; I think it's the ridiculous stories they hear about how it's no longer permissible to make eye contact with women, or whatever.

This is the problem with all you non-native English-speakers: you expect the language to make sense and be consistent. Pure folly. I don't really have much of a problem with either term. The English word "love" has long been used in some instances as a euphemistic term for "sex" (although it might be seen as quite a tasteless equivocation in this instance), and feminism is a struggle for equality for a specific group: women. I can see why you might object to the terms, and I don't begrudge you doing so, but I don't really see them as particularly egregious or any more etymologically loose or imprecise than large portions of the rest of the language, or the languages that came before it. That said, IANALinguist. Also, yes, Toblix's English is excellent.

A friend of a family member lost his wife to lupus many years ago. Also, this.

I must be lucky – I barely ever even have to chose between one girl. Sounds about right to me. I don't envy your position – particularly having to break the news to your brother – but my impression is that if this is a problem now, it's only going to get worse. You obviously care what your brother thinks because you care about him to some degree, but you can't spend all your time worrying about that. Moving out seems like the most logical solution (provided everyone can manage it financially and so on). And rather do it now than wait until everyone hates one another. DISCLAIMER: I may not know what I'm talking about.

Fun fact: shortly after rejecting Toblix's kind invitation yesterday, my 360 died. It probably serves me right or something.

I should probably actually play some Magicka sometime. I did a bit of the versus the other day, and it seemed to be something similar to fun. And I have other games. But I'm pretty terrible when it comes to actually turning up for things.

It's like a skateboard gone wrong. Brilliant!

Yeah, I've been introduced to jQuery through my job, and it seems pretty cool. If you wanted to go further in the web direction, I'd suggest giving a server-side scripting language a try. The problem with those, though, is that getting set up is less trivial than simply having a browser – it can be tricky to find free hosting that will meet your requirements. Anyway, I personally use PHP, but I'm not enough of an expert to say that it's definitively preferable to the alternatives. The learning curve might be a little more tough, but I don't think it's by any means insurmountable. Provided you start off with fairly simple goals, you should be able to get going quite quickly, especially if you already have some experience with JavaScript. The basic control structures are pretty much the same among most things, and most of the syntax is very similar for the C-like languages (of which JavaScript is one), so you're already some of the way there. There are lots of freely-available guides online you can use to get you started, too. On the other hand, it may be a matter of taste. Most programming and scripting languages deal primarily with text and numbers, and handling images requires working with layers of abstraction that can be quite tricky to get your head around. If you're hoping to work with graphics (such as your map thing), this could be a little frustrating at first. If you were really dead-set on trying different for your map project (which it sounds like you aren't), I would almost suggest using something in Visual Studio, if it weren't so un-free. Alternatively, another way to feel more engaged with what you're doing is to try something with an interactive mode, like Python. I never got too far with Python (more for lack of time and focus than anything else), but getting immediate feedback from the interpreter can make it easier to understand precisely what each line of code is achieving, rather than having to write the whole program, run it, then go back and work out which bit isn't behaving as expected, or whatever. Anyway, good luck. I hope you find something that suits you. Or, failing that, are able to develop your skills in the things you already know.

Things aren't usually too bad when I go, but there have been some absolutely disgraceful behaviour on occasion, and on such occasions I do wish there would be a Scrobbs around to pull that proverbial plaster off – a short sharp pain rather than a pointlessly drawn-out ache. Sadly, I'm too much of a coward to actually confront people about that sort of thing. These days my friends and I generally sit in the very front row. One of the upsides our local cinema being a soulless multiplex is that the front row isn't actually too close for us, and it means we have as much leg room as possible and there's no chance of seeing anyone texting. Another benefit is that I can't accidentally jostle the row of seats in front – on more than one occasion I've been told off by people who seemed to think I was wilfully kicking their chair, rather than absent-mindedly shifting my weight and brushing up against the apparently incredibly sensitive seating structure. That said, I've since discovered how annoying it is to be subject to such jostling, so it's a relief to remove the risk of bothering somebody else and not to be racked with anxiety and guilt over the whole damn subject. Anyway, I still enjoy the cinema, and would like to go most weeks. Sadly there's often nothing worthwhile on. Perhaps I should make the trip into London for artier things more often.