Iron Man's New Villain — an Open Source Terrorist 361
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."
Epiphany and Switcheroo (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Juh? (Score:5, Interesting)
What DVD work?
I have 400+ movies on my Linux file server with any computer around the house being able to work as a proper media player (with a proper IR remote and everything). You also can use a bog standard fanless and diskless thin client for this. No noise, nothing.
Wanna try this with Microcrap Media Center Edition? Dream on...
DVD is actually an area where Linux reigns supreme. I have tried many HD upscalers and I actually play my movies on a Linux box using VLC and Nvidia (with Nvidia drivers). It simply works better than any commercial upscaler I have seen so far. In fact it works so good that I do not see the point of buying and HD media for at least the next few years.
You simply need to chose the _RIGHT_ drive or play off the hard drive. The problems with playing DVDs are usually not with Linux, they are with the DVDs being massively bastardised by Macrovision. As a result if you got the "wrong" DVD drive it will fail to read under anything - Windows, Linux, MacOS, etc.
If you rip it all problems disappear. All my DVDs are actually stored on a file server in the loft. I got tired of dealing with scratches, dirt, Macrovision or simply trying to find the right DVD to watch.
In (still) other news (Score:5, Interesting)
I will be smelling stale milk for weeks after putting it out my nose laughing. I guess the "Heroes Happen Here" stuff isn't taking off?
--
Toro
(Note: I believe this article was about a new comic book, not the movie [imdb.com], which features "Iron Monger" (Jeff Bridges as Obadiah Stane) as the enemy.)
[[UAC warning: Someone is making a schizoid post! mod Funny or Informative? Yeah, you should probably just click "ignore"
Re:Open Source Terrorism? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Open Source Terrorism? (Score:5, Interesting)
The ANC anti-Apartheid movement [wikipedia.org] under the white South African government was labelled a terrorism. Nelson Mandela was public enemy number 1, the Osama Bin Laden of his time and place. White South Africa bought into their government's propaganda.
The White Rose [wikipedia.org] organisation was labelled terrorist, and its leaders beheaded. for their non-violent anti-Nazi position in pre-WWII Nazi Germany. The German body politic bought into their government's propaganda.
Today, the word terrorism gets thrown around like some Muslim / Arab / Islamist (whatever that means) is hiding in the bushes outside your house with his AK-47 pointed at your door just waiting for you and your kids to step out so he can vent his hatred of your freedoms. The American people buy into their government's propaganda.
When you hear the label "terrorist" used, you should think about who is doing the labelling, and what exactly their agenda is rather than just taking their word for it that you are in danger and need their protection.
Sounds like MS "Evangelism" to me. (Score:3, Interesting)
Ironic, really. One would think Steve Ballmer [wikimedia.org] would be the ideal anti-hero.
Re:People! Not everything is terrorism! (Score:3, Interesting)
The following decade of comics will be known as the Bomb The Shit Out Of Third-World Countries Era.
Re:Open Source Terrorism? (Score:3, Interesting)
In fact, the US definition of "enemy combatant" is deliberately designed to allow civilians to be targeted by military action.
Re:People! Not everything is terrorism! (Score:5, Interesting)
Incidentally, i find it very interesting that in a country like Sweden where there is practically no threat of terrorism, the government is redefining the crime of rape.
Before 2005 (or 06, 07 i'm not sure exactly which of those years it came into place), we had a law that basically said that sex with a minor is "abuse of minor". Now a later law rewrote that so sex with a minor is no longer "abuse of minor" but plain "rape". That is, even if the sex is consentual, there is no legal difference. There's a dillution of terms. Sure it's abuse, but is it rape? No. Rape is forcefully having sex with someone. Abuse of minor is abuse of minor and not rape. They've now changed the definition of rape to be "forcefully having sex with someone, OR having sex with someone who's younger than ".
From what can be discerned in current debates, the next step is widening the definition further by defaulting that sex without proven consent is rape too. The idea is to put part of the burden of proof on the "criminal" by forcing him to prove that the "victim" wanted to have sex and did not protest. The excuse is that too many rapists go free. (If the girl gets plastered, then gets fucked, and then regrets it, was it rape?
They've already widened the definition of child porn to encompass drawings and something that's being debated is the possibility of writing in another exception in the child porn law that would
1: Set a definite 18 year old limit on porn (currently the definition is "if she looks sexually mature, the porn is legal")
2: Set a secondary limit defined by her looks that goes beyond point 1. That is, "if she does not look sexually mature the porn is illegal even if the girl is proven to be over 18".
The widened definition of child porn is, not entirely surprisingly, supported by the man who is also one of sweden's most vocal opponents of filesharing (Thomas Bodström). The same person is also a supporter of the swedish child porn filter which has previously been used to block The Pirate Bay (and some site about bonsai trees). Coincidence?
My personal belief is that the US fight on terrorism is inspiring those with a desire for more power into finding scapegoats. In order to create more scapegoats that can be used in order to expand oppressive laws, they widen the definitions of existing crimes. After all, if drawings are child porn, then surely the amount of child porn has suddenly seen an increase and then the supporters can come out and say "Well look even if we're fighting THIS HARD against child porn it's not doing anything good so we must fight even HARDER". And as mentioned before, this also works wonders as they can use the same weapons they use against child porn against file sharing.
Re:Open Source Terrorism? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Open Source Terrorism? (Score:5, Interesting)
-mcgrew
Re:Open Source Terrorism? (Score:2, Interesting)
I always had the feeling, they open their specs, because they can't hold up with nvidia and closed source driver development...
and until today, I still prefer nVidia with closed source drivers over ATi with open drivers on my desktop...
even if nvidia has glitches with rects/shadows in opengl sometimes, and leaves nice grey stripes on my desktop with compiz (something which happened in windows too some time ago), the 3d, playback, 2d and so on work greatly and fast!
The closed ATi drivers don't offer everything, and the open ones cause Xv+kaffeine to crash my XServer from time to time, or have mouse cursor problems, and I have to tweak around all the time... so with ATi I can switch between performance+bugs and slowness+stability, in nvidia i have to install closed drivers from time to time but it is fast and stable... I prefer second option.
But that might change in future, of course.
But I wouldnt depict nVidia as evil, just because ATi (which was less supportive to linux) now opens its driverbase.
Re:Thanks for ruining Iron Man even more (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, he was a lot more of a good guy when he went around forcefully disabling other super heroes' suits because they maybe might have some sort of Stark-designed equipment in them, especially when he accidentally kills someone in the process. Or that time he decided to kill the Supreme Intelligence even after the Avengers as a team agreed not to. When you have to pretend you're not your regular guy alter-ego just to stay on your super hero team, you're far from a good guy in the traditional sense. Iron Man has always made ethically questionable decisions. Personally, I think he's right on some and wrong on some but that's just the way he's always going to be. The down side to that is that he'll always be a much more effective character in team-based series than in an individual series because he really needs to play off of a peer.
Re:Thanks for ruining Iron Man even more (Score:1, Interesting)
Iron Man is interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
Marvel recently had a big crossover plot line called "Civil War," in which it was decided that superheroes were too dangerous to have running around without government oversight. They were all required to register with the Federal government. If they failed to do so, they were subject to imprisonment in one of SHIELD's top-security prisons designed for supervillains.
Who was the main man responsible for hunting down his fellow heroes and former comrades? Tony Stark, the invincible Iron Man.
In fact, Tony went on to become the head of SHIELD, the government's most ultra-secret spy organization (think more oversight than the FBI, more freedom than the CIA). In most respects, they've taken the "Tony is a billionaire industrialist" angle and spun it into "Tony is an arch-conservative storm trooper of the old guard of manufacturing wealth, using the power of the government to enforce a neo-facist agenda that goes contrary to 50 years of Marvel Comics philosophy."
It's interesting that they are portraying the latest villain as an "open source" one
Re:meh (Score:3, Interesting)