You'd be amazed to know that none of the above has anything to do with teachers but everything to do with clueless school administrators, idiotic legislation and lawyer-happy parents.
So I assume you never went to an Irish catholic school then.

As hard as it is to use the term 'Paradigm Engineering' with a straight face, isn't it way past the time when somebody started working on a system that ISN'T just about mapping, tracking, categorising, labelling and snooping on people for the benefit of the first bunch of market researchers to reach your door waving a billion-dollar cheque?

What's next? 'The Dollhouse' by 2015?

I swear, I'm going to have to start investing in tinfoil hats soon.

...it's a Sudden Outbreak Of Common Sense. How come no-one else tagged it thus?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_crucible/If you don't learn from the mistakes of the past, you risk repeating them. Although I think that Norman Mailer alone can't change millennia of basic human cognitive dissonance. If you're not a witch, you must be a communist. If you're not a communist, you must be gay, or a paedophile. You must be those things because the mob demands something to beat down so it can reinforce its model of 'normal' and 'right'.

...before we have to remind our worthless government of our revolutionary (distant) past.

What if they had a closed-source proprietary product of comparatively inferior quality fiercely guarded by the capricious and draconian rules of a corporation which transparently wants to conquer and control the I.T. media world, and nobody could be arsed to develop anything for it?

What if media developers weren't so damn greedy and shortsighted and none of them rushed to stake a claim in Apple's walled garden?

There're plenty of reasons (for example: http://www.boingboing.net/2010/04/02/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-you-shouldnt-either.html/) why noone should be bothered with Apple but in all the whining and sounds of dismay everytime Apple does something anti-consumer and anti-developer, I don't hear a lot of people saying they're going to give away their iPhone or go to Android or whatever.

It's just a gadget, people. Your life was fine before you got it and it'll be a lot finer after you've forgotten about it. Assuming Jobs doesn't rule the world by then....

Which means it will only last as long as the console machines it runs on, will last.
Even Hollywood didnt get away with that one.

Also in a similar self-important whiny voice of proprietary authoritarianism....
Think Of The Children!
Your Country Needs You!
The War On [Insert Topical Cultural Demon Here] Must Go On
Burn The [Insert Topical Cultural Demon Here]!!

There are of course loads more. Anyway, it all sounds as if no-one has moved on since the 11th century so let's remind those that order soldiers around that you can't always get what you want and usually, you regret what you wish for.

REAL power???
If someone - anyone - came into my home and told me how ,y children should live, how I should live, and what I'm allowed to say, I'd assume they were mentally ill. If it turned out that they weren't, I'd kill them.
If I did anything less I'd be a slave.
How difficult is that for anyone to understand?

Amazing - because so was I! In fact, apart from trying to understand why these human-being-things (of which I was supposed to be one of) were actually the most stupid fuckers I had ever seen outside of the zoo, I was looking forward to my ninth birthday party.

Customs Officer: "Anything to declare, mate?"
Educated liberal-minded international traveller: "Why, as Oscar Wilde once said: 'I have nothing to declare except my genius!'"
Customs Officer: "OSCAR WILDE?? He's a slim-hipped pillow of a pommie quincie bastard! Get 'im!"

Traveller is beaten, tasered and dragged off to a sideroom by six large men.

Customs Officer: (Glaring at a line of nervous children) "Awright, who's next? Any of you little ankle biters carrying computer games, eh?"

I think it was about 15 years ago that I downloaded 'the cookbook' from a warez site.

It was a TOTAL disappointment. Most of it was outdated (how to phreak public payphones and hack Yahoo! email circa 1998) or overrated. Lots of stuff about how to make pipebombs or pick locks but nothing really interesting, like how to set up and manage a pirate radio station, or how to grow marijuana or how to build an engine and generator or a list of your legal rights.

Fuck it - there wasn't even anything on rifling the barrel of a firearm. And I bet there wasn't much like that in these guy's downloads either.

But do you know where you could learn these secrets of self-empowerment??

In the science section of your local library.

Sadly I don't think you can apply the term 'moron' to the real people behind this mess - the programmers who built this codec. As someone who met more than a few middle and senior managers, take it from me that they tend not to be technically skilled.

I'd like to know the names of the team who were handed this idea and instead of refusing pointblank to have anything to do with it, ran with it. Because now we're all sorry for the indifference or just plain collusion of those fucking Jobsworths.

Anyone who's old enough to remember playing tabletop roleplaying games in the 80's and early 90's is likely already aware of Games Workshop's track record. They set boardgaming back by twenty years.

After establishing themselves as the dominant games publisher in the U.K. and having formed a network of like-minds in the 'White Dwarf' magazine and Citadel Miniatures staff, GW merged with Citadel c1989 and White Dwarf became the house publication. Actually, I'll re-word that: It became a monthly advertisement for all things GW.

White Dwarf was almost the only source of games news in those pre-internet days and it had the kind of persuasion and disinformation powers Rupert Murdoch could only envy. The letters page (what they had in place of forum posts in those days, kids) was first neutered (only GW fanboys got printed) then dropped altogether. Presumably because GW wanted to remove all traces of thinking from their fans. Only Games Workshop published games were reviewed - and always only every favourably - and only Games Workshop events were publicised. By 1992 it wasn't even covering anything outside of GW's current catalogue.

Citadel Miniatures had also been co-opted. Their range of miniatures became so much a part of the GW product line that older miniatures were often renamed to suit GW's revised history.
(E.g, a range of 1986 Elric of Melnibone characters became generic GW Elves and an early line of Lord Of The Rings characters were all dispersed to generic 'warrior' or 'wizard'. Even the White Dwarf himself was later redesignated 'Imperial Dwarf'.)
As well as this, the style of the miniatures became ever more 'cartoon' and a lot of the earlier sexuality and violence was purged. Citadel used to have miniatures of slave-girls being roasted over open fires, nude Goblins and Ogres carrying sacks of bloody body parts. Now, every miniature is relentlessly (Christian) family-friendly.

However Games Workshop's corporate policies are hardly 'friendly' in any sense of the word. Endlessly re-releasing the same core games as 'new' releases with (barely) altered rules, unreasonably overpricing miniatures (currently, a 5-man Space Marine squad costs £20. Twenty Pounds Sterling! for five plastic toy soldiers you're meant to paint yourself.), delaying deliveries and payments to competitors, endless recycling of illustrations and ideas, it goes on.

A lot of gamers will point and say that GW has some great games and awesome miniatures but in fact, nothing GW does is original, their best work was pre-1993 and they don't make a single item that isn't designed specifically to shift large amounts of overpriced, crap, miniatures paint. Even the pulp fiction they churn out. There are good, cheaper miniatures made by their competitors. There are also far superior boardgames available (see http://www.boardgamegeek.com//).

It's pretty obvious at this stage that Games Workshop have no respect for their customers or fans. Most of their fans are teenagers and although teenagers with a Games Workshop habit need pretty well off parents to pay for their fix, GW clearly expects them to 'grow out of it' at some stage and piss off. Just as long as there's another generation of saps in line, GW doesn't care.

And that, ladies and gentlegeeks, is why Games Workshop are bastards and why should anyone be surprised at anything they do?

I agree with you there. Stalker also had some annoying crap where if you ignored the wide open road ahead of you and decided to turn 90 and head off towards the faraway hills, you immediately ran into intense radiation zones suspiciously placed between unclimbable hills and large bandit camps.

I think the main problem I have with this is that it belies the promise the game made when you bought it. 'Action! Adventure! Advanced AI! A Free Open World Where YOU Are The Hero!'
Free and open my arse.

Everyday, politicians in the real world lie to people and tell them that they're free and they live in a free world where everyone has the same opportunities. Bullshit. They're prisoners of an economy, free only to compete ever more ruthlessly amongst themselves while small groups of power elites sell the planet from under them. So when I buy a game promising freedom and heroics - I WANT THAT!.

I don't want to be treated like a fucking errand boy ('Clear the rats out of that cellar, newbie.'). I don't want handholding help messages, I don't want the developer's assuming that I'm an idiot adolescent, I don't want North American culture influencing my heroics, I don't want to be forced to conform and I don't want to be punished for noncompliance.

Why the fucking hell can't game developers understand that?