Iron Man's New Villain — an Open Source Terrorist

An anonymous reader writes "In a recent interview on Comic Book Resources about his new continuation of the Marvel comic-book series 'Invincible Iron Man,' Matt Faction provides information about the the new series (debut will be May 7). The villain is Ezekiel Stane, son of Obadiah Stane (the villain of the new Iron Man movie opening on May 2). Whereas Obadiah was a ruthless billionaire who fought as the Iron Monger, Zeke 'rejects the strategies of his father as being the crude tactics of Attila the Hun.' Instead, he will be 'a post-national business man and kind of an open source ideological terrorist.' As the author puts it, 'Windows wants to be on every computer desktop in the world, but Linux and Stane want to destroy the desktop.' The concept has gone over well on the CBR forums."

People! Not everything is terrorism!

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Since 9/11, every goddamned thing is considered terrorism. Shoot a gun downtown? Terrorism. Drink someone's milkshake? Terrorism. Ship cocaine from Colombia to the U.S. Yep, terrorism.

No! It's not! There are proper terms here, and by calling any crime terrorism you insinuate that the crimes are perpetrated by terrorists. That's giving a whole lot of credit to idiot criminals.

Installing Linux on the computers of unwitting Windows users may be a dumb plot, but it's hardly terrorism. If it were, every goddamned user on Slashdot would be a terrorist for trying to wrest Windows from Granny's warm, wet hands.

I'd like to see this OSS terrorist face the CEO of Nerv (from that other forgettable hacker movie a few years back). Geek Terrorist. Coming soon to a basement near you!

As I said on my LUG mailinglist

[pembo13]

... let this one go.

meh

[wizardforce]

'Windows wants to be on every computer desktop in the world, but Linux and Stane want to destroy the desktop.'

he seems to be operating under the assumption that Windows *is* the desktop. Even in that case, he is disasterously wrong. Linux isn't out to destroy Windows as in the words of Linus himself: "Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect."

Re:People! Not everything is terrorism!

[orzetto]

1. Wait for large terrorist act that scares the crap out of the nation
2. Pass draconian terror laws suspending civil rights and allowing torture ("But just for terrorists!")
3. Extend definition of terrorism to include any activity you want to persecute; if met with complaint, answer "Why do you hate Freedom so much?"
4. ...
5. Dictatorship!

Re:People! Not everything is terrorism!

[arivanov]

Wait for large terrorist act that scares the crap out of the nation

The Burning of the Reichstag?

Pass draconian terror laws suspending civil rights and allowing torture ("But just for terrorists!")

The protection of the state laws voted by Germany in 1934, Bulgaria, Hungary and other German allies in the 1934-1939 interval?

Extend definition of terrorism to include any activity you want to persecute; if met with complaint, answer "Why do you hate Freedom so much?"

Yavol, mein Fuhrer!!!

...

Dictatorship!

Zich Heil!!!

Re:Join us now and share the software...

[Anonymous Coward]

Goddamn, I'd rather be Rick-rolled.

Re:Epiphany and Switcheroo

[Gideon Fubar]

This supports Marvel's "what a twist!" plot generator perfectly. Tony will be forced to choose between his loyalty to his industrial forbears and the good of all humanity.

Of course, his character is a raging, womanizing alcoholic who regularly gets blackmailed for things he's actually done.. Hold on.. which one is the good guy again?

Re:meh

[TuringTest]

After I RTFA, is more like he assumes that Iron Man is Windows. He uses the Windows/Linux comparison as a metaphor of the kind of fight than Tony Stark will have to face in this story arc:

He's the open source to Stark's closed source oppressiveness. He has no headquarters, no base, and no bank account. He's a true ghost in the machine; completely off the grid, flexible, and mobile. That absolutely flies in the face of Tony's received business wisdom and in the way business is done. There are banks and lawyers and you have facilities and testing. Stane is a much more different animal. He's a much smarter, more mobile and much quicker to respond and evolved futurist.

Carefully choosing words

[BRSloth]

From the article:

Whether in the boardroom or on the battlefield, most of the opponents Iron Man confronts usually have some sort of ties to society and politics; ties which Stark has often used to his advantage. But Zeke Stane is a very different sort of enemy than what Stark is used to. "Zeke is a post-national business man and kind of an open source ideological terrorist," explained Fraction, appropriately putting the contrast into software terms. "He has absolutely no loyalty to any sort of law, creed, or credo. He doesn't want to beat Tony Stark, he wants to make him obsolete. Windows wants to be on every computer desktop in the world, but Linux and Stane want to destroy the desktop. He's the open source to Stark's closed source oppressiveness. He has no headquarters, no base, and no bank account. He's a true ghost in the machine; completely off the grid, flexible, and mobile. That absolutely flies in the face of Tony's received business wisdom and in the way business is done. There are banks and lawyers and you have facilities and testing. Stane is a much more different animal. He's a much smarter, more mobile and much quicker to respond and evolved futurist."

Yeah, it sounds bad. But then you find "he's the open source to Stark's closed source oppressiveness. [...] He's a tru ghost in the machine; completely off the grid, flexible and mobile." Makes you almost like the guy already.

Who's the terrorist?

[Wiseman1024]

The ones who have consistently followed terrorism patterns - extortion, blackmail, revolutionary tax, digital restrictions malware, mafia-controlled monopolies, forcing to upgrade, forcing to sell together with other products, etc. are those behind "Windows wants to be on every desktop". The only thing Linux advocacy does is helping people having a choice Microsoft would never give them.

But what else could you expect from stereotyped cartoons from the United Corporation of America?

RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

If you actually RTFA he is just using open source/closed source as metaphor.
Do you really this the world of entertainment really gives a fuck about the tensions between open and closed source?
Slashdot - News for nerds detached from reality.

Re:Open Source Terrorism?

[compact_support]

Still, we have ATi (AMD) specifications at least. For many users, closed drivers are as good as no drivers.

Re:Open Source Terrorism?

[fractoid]

For a few ideological zealots, closed source drivers are as good as, or worse than, no drivers. For "many users", closed source drivers make the product work and thus are fine.

Re:Open Source Terrorism?

[Jesus_666]

What's the point of having the world's best military if you don't use it to stomp on some evildoers now and again? ;)

Not being one yourself. When you put the world's most powerful military and the world's most powerful corporations together and add one of the world's most important resources in an area occupied by people easy to label as evil, you end up with a very nasty situation in which it's hard to unambiguously define anyone as the "good guy".

These kinds of things frighten me

[Anonymous Coward]

These kinds of things frighten me because:

a) The people involved seem really adamant about something
b) You read the link, in it's entirety and you have no idea why
c) Worse, when you read it rationally, it makes no sense what they're talking about. It's like a random jumble of words
d) No, I'm not joking.
e) An open source terrorist? Sit down, deep breath. That's a random collection of words. Were there only closed source terrorists before?
f) People really are frightening after all.

I'm speechless

[bersl2]

Gut reaction: lynch mob time.
Read TFForumPost: Wow... I thought I got nerdy with my fandoms...
Read more: Damn, they moved on quickly. lol @ suggestion of hero/villain alignment switch
Read the /. comments: ...

I got nothin'.

Re:Open Source Terrorism?

[chromatic]

For a few ideological zealots, closed source drivers are as good as, or worse than, no drivers.

Assuming those binary blobs even work on your chosen operating system and processor, or the versions thereof.

Re:Who's the terrorist?

[utnapistim]

Not that I don't agree with you that all that is bad (extortion, blackmail, etc.), but they are not "terrorist patterns" in any way shape or form: they're not really producing terror, in the name of a political agenda (that is what I understand terrorism to be).

</pedantic>

Re:Open Source Terrorism?

[mqduck]

"No ambiguity in the term"? When a roadside bomb attacking military vehicles is "terrorism", the word has lost all meaning.

Re:Open Source Terrorism?

[nguy]

If it wasn't clear to you that governments love to use "terrorism" to demonize inconvenient political, social, or economic movements, you really haven't been paying attention. This has been going for as long as there have been governments.

For a stupid and corrupt movie script writer to do this really is only the tip of the iceberg.

Re:Open Source Terrorism?

[totallyarb]

Apartheid is always going to be a touchy subject, so I have to watch my words here, but... Nelson Mandela was a terrorist. That his cause was noble is beyond doubt, and his leadership of the post-Apartheid South Africa was magnificent, but the fact remains that he was the leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe [wikipedia.org], which carried out bombings of civilian targets and which was therefore a terrorist organisation.

They say that one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist, and I agree with the parent post that we have to be very sceptical whenever somebody uses the term "terrorist" because they usually have an agenda in doing so. But we also have to be careful not to condone acts that are genuinely terrorism just because we don't think the perpetrators are bad people. The world isn't made up of saints and sinners, and sometimes even good people cross a line.

Re:People! Not everything is terrorism!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law [wikipedia.org]
I never actually thought I'd actually see it unfold before my very eyes.

"The rule does not make any statement whether any particular reference or comparison to Hitler or the Nazis might be appropriate..."

Re:People! Not everything is terrorism!

[Paul Jakma]

What about a 17 year old male and a 15 year old female? Where they meet in the pub, where she's drinking with her father, says she's 16 and they later have consensual sex? Is the 17 year old male a rapist, to be sent to prison for years and branded a sex offender for life?

That's no hypothethical. That's actually what happened under Ireland's statutory rape laws [www.rte.ie] (age<16 == rape). So, sorry, but I have nothing but contempt for your mindless "you must not be a parent" drivel that results in politicians placating you and your ilk with "statutory X" and "minimum sentence" laws. You make this world a *worse* place for your children and mine.

Thankfully, the Irish law was eventually ruled unconstitutional, but not before the young man concerned had, wrongfully, spent 6 years in jail.

Re:Open Source Terrorism?

[sm62704]

When a roadside bomb attacking military vehicles is "terrorism", the word has lost all meaning.

"Terrorism" was originally defined as violence against civilians to affect politics. How are actions against soldiers in any way considered "terrorism"? Yet the American government called the barracks bombing (pre-911, under Clinton IIRC) "terrorism" and the present terrorist-in-chief (if military actions against soldiers is terrorism then?) considers roadside bombs to be "terrorism", then as you say, the word has lost all meaning.

It is now just a propaganda ploy.

Re:Open Source Terrorism?

[Mr. Slippery]

the fact remains that he was the leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe, which carried out bombings of civilian targets and which was therefore a terrorist organisation.

If bombing civilians makes an organization terrorist, then any government which has engaged in mass aerial bombardment or artillery strikes is a terrorist.

Not that I disagree with that conclusion. It's all about who writes the history.

Re:meh

[hey!]

Here's an elementary principle of story telling: you can't get your hero to win against impossible odds, if the villain is stupider and weaker than he is. It follows that a hero must be at a disadvantage when facing his enemies.

Part of the Marvel formula, of course, is the neurotic, conflicted hero. Following the principle of heroic disadvantage, it follows that it helps to give the villain clarity. And there is nothing that promotes clarity like a mad, Utopian vision. What makes the vision mad is not its lack of feasibility; what makes it mad is that getting there requires subverting the things the vision is supposed to accomplish. Dr. Doom is certain that if he makes decisions for people, they'll be better of in the end. In practice that means enslaving them. Real life examples include right wing terror groups who rob banks in the cause of non-interference with individual liberty, or left wing extremists who run kidnapping and extortion rackets in the name of human dignity.

Heroes in comic book universes tend to be conservative. Not necessarily politically so, but they always act to preserve the status quo. In part, this is determined by the need to reset the universe story after story after story. The superhero might not know what he wants, but whatever it is, it does not involve change. Superman does not fight to make America a better place, he fights to preserve the "American way". Batman crusades against crime, but in his wealthy playboy alter ego he does not crusade for education, which would ultimately be more effective.

Tony Stark, arguably, has the worst plan for using his super abilities of any comic book hero.

Stark's super-ability is engineering. A physically super-powered character like Spider-man can only accomplish things that require him to be on the spot; Stark's potential super-deeds can be mass produced. Even a moderately talented engineer could do hundreds of times more for humanity than Spider-man, and Stark is not an ordinary engineer; he is prodigiously talented. He could use his unique engineering prowess to cure heart disease, or to provide mobility to paralysis victims. Instead he chooses to pursue a quixotic crusade against villainy which could be left to dozens, if not hundreds of other costumed superheroes. He's brought himself down from the level of engineering genius to the level of a mere superhero. Instead of designing mass producible solutions to humanity's problems, he designs combat technologies that threaten humanity when they are reproduced. Indeed he spends a great deal of superhero energy trying to put the technology transfer genie back in the bottle.

In short, in the comic book universe it is never the superheroes who have a vision of a better world. It is the supervillains who are agents of change. Their vision, of course, is insane, otherwise they'd be super-philanthropists, not super-villains. But if it weren't for supervillains, superheroes wouldn't have the imagination to put their powers to any productive uses. Superman, by spending an hour a day or so on a super-treadmill, could provide enough power for Metropolis to shut down all it's coal fired power plants, improving the economic life and health of everybody in the city. Instead he wastes his out of costume time playing absurd games with secret identities.

Re:People! Not everything is terrorism!

[Chandon Seldon]

Was it really the *terrorists* who had that goal?

Re:Open Source Terrorism?

[cold fjord]

"No ambiguity in the term"? When a roadside bomb attacking military vehicles is "terrorism", the word has lost all meaning.

The original post's line "No ambiguity in the term" reference was to Islamist, not terrorism. I'm not sure how that was confusing. But since you bring it up....

Do you think most people could go out on a limb and agree that suicide vest attacks at funerals [mnf-iraq.com], car bombings of schools [mnf-iraq.com], mass kidnappings [mnf-iraq.com] (where the victims are likely to end up in mass graves [mnf-iraq.com] ), and roadside bombs targeting children [mnf-iraq.com] are still terrorism? What about attacking worshipers at a mosque with rockets [mnf-iraq.com]? What about when they try to destroy an entire village [michaelyon-online.com]? What about poison gas attacks on city government [mnf-iraq.com]?

The fact that terrorists attack military and police units doesn't mean they aren't terrorists. The presence of a few police or soldiers at a site being attacked doesn't mean that the attack isn't terrorism.

The word terrorism hasn't lost its meaning, but some people seem to lack the ability to discuss it in a meaningful and reasonable way.

Mods on crack

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

How is the parent a troll? Sigh. The moderators must be smoking up again.

Linux would never have become what it is today if it hadn't been for widespread documentation of hardware-software interfaces. "The next Linux" will need the same. It boggles the mind how many Linux users refuse to understand that.

Re:Open Source Terrorism?

[colmore]

Once you've had the experience of a system software upgrade rendering hardware unusable, and the manufacturer flat doesn't want to provide new drivers for old equipment, you will immediately see the value of open source drivers.

A working closed driver is nice when it supports your system. An open driver means that if more than four or five hardcore geeks out there run a similar system as you, you WILL have a driver.

So no, for day to day use on current consumer desktops that are free to update and reinstall whenever, closed drivers aren't a big deal. That isn't the only type of system out there.

Re:Open Source Terrorism?

[DavidShor]

Then please, give me a definition of terrorism that does not make the US military a terrorist organization(And remember not to use intent! Governments do not have feelings, and the slain do not care about the motivations of their killers).

Once you do this, then explain how the US would not be a state sponsor of terror, based on our confirmed historical support of right-wing paramilitaries in Nicaragua, and our more recent involvement funding warlords in Somalia, and violent separatist groups in Iran.

For extra-credit, justify the US's refusal to prosecute perpetrators the My Lai massacre, or our WW2 era concepts of total war, or even better, the African National Congress's tendency to or Irgun.

After you finish with the mental acrobatics necessary to do such a thing, then apply these new and broad standards to Hezbollah, Hamas, or the Mahdi army.

The point? Things are not black and white, and we do not possess any moral high-ground upon which to condemn others. Terrorism is just a tactic, one used for good and bad. And at the same time, a tactic that kills far less people then organized war.

Re:Open Source Terrorism?

[DamnStupidElf]

Some of the groups labeled as 'terrorist' are vile, evil, and deserve to be wiped off the Earth.

I'm assuming you mean the groups need to be wiped off the face of the earth, since after all it is presumed that the people in the groups still have their human rights and deserve fair trials, right?

So if you mean an entire ideology should die out, then doesn't that require a form of thought police?

Actions should be punished, not beliefs.

Re:Open Source Terrorism?

[sm62704]

If a civilian in the US were to attack our government troops it would be an illegal act.

Kind of like when civilians fired on British troops during the US Revolution? The winning side's "freedom fighters" are the losing side's "terrorists".

If you target civilians for political purposes it's terrorism. Calling anything else "terrorism" is propaganda, and a lie to boot.

Re:meh

[Iambic Pentametor]

Dean Kamen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Kamen [wikipedia.org] has taken the path you suggest Stark should take. Robotic arms for veterans, water purification with no consumables, mobile dialysis, insulin pumps, and wheelchairs that can climb stairs. A true Hero!