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Sci-Fi Entertainment

Iron Man's New Villain — an Open Source Terrorist 361

Posted by kdawson from the engineers-make-good-terrorists dept.
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."
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Iron Man's New Villain — an Open Source Terrorist More

Iron Man's New Villain — an Open Source Terrorist

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  • People! Not everything is terrorism! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BadAnalogyGuy ( 945258 ) <BadAnalogyGuy@gmail.com> on Tuesday April 15, 2008 @01:44AM (#23074090)
    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!

    • Re:People! Not everything is terrorism! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 15, 2008 @01:53AM (#23074128)
      Agreed, people who use that sort of language must be branded stupidity terrorists, and treated accordingly.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      And before 9/11 every bad person was compared to Hitler. Even if they didn't kill nearly as many Jews as he did.

      BTW:
      "Drink someone's milkshake? Terrorism."

      You're my new hero for that one.

    • He's guilty of rant-terrorism. Don't let the terrorists win.

    • Re:People! Not everything is terrorism! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 15, 2008 @01:56AM (#23074150)
      Your argument sounds like something a terrorist would say.

      Don't you remember? 9/11 changed everything! If you break the law you are a terrorist because using the police to respond to your crime takes manpower and resources away from fighting terrorism. And if that doesn't convince you then it is obvious that *you* are trying to obstruct the fight against terrorism by not fully supporting every policy of the government.

      So stop hating freedom, terrorist.

    • Re:People! Not everything is terrorism! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by orzetto ( 545509 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2008 @02:04AM (#23074188)
      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: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Reed Solomon ( 897367 )
      Drink someone's milkshake? Terrorism.

      I drink your milkshake! I DRINK IT UP!! For great justice!

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Workaphobia ( 931620 )
      I miss the days when the word terrorist made people think of movies like Air Force One or Die Hard. I miss it being associated with ordinary secular goals instead of just religious extremism.

      I'd like to see this OSS terrorist face the CEO of Nerv (from that other forgettable hacker movie a few years back).

      Ava?

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by SomeoneGotMyNick ( 200685 )

        I miss the days when the word terrorist made people think of movies like Air Force One or Die Hard. I miss it being associated with ordinary secular goals instead of just religious extremism.
        You young whippersnapper.....

        Delta Force came before those, while Harrison Ford was between jobs galaxy hopping as a smuggler and finding lost biblical icons. Bruce Willis was just a petty Private Eye.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      This is because it is all a "1984" type plot. First you find something that most people dislike, like terrorism. Then you start a "war" on it. Terrorism is especially good here cause you cannot "win" against terrorism, it does not have an identifiable enemy. Anyway, then you start argue for your case, and ask "but do you really support the terrorists then ?" when people tell you this is a bad trend they are seeing, whatever arguments they may have. Then you go on by defining "everything" as terrorism. And t

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Jesus_666 ( 702802 )
      I think it's awesome to apply to comic-book storylines. Aliens attack the Earth? Terrorism. An evil scientist wanrts to blow up the sun for no apparent reason? Terrorism. Unicron eats a planet? Terrorism. Someone digs up an old bomb from the WW2 in his garden and dies? Terrorism! Hell, if Dr. Xavier gets a bedsore from sitting in his wheelchair all the time that's terrorism.

      The following decade of comics will be known as the Bomb The Shit Out Of Third-World Countries Era.

    • Re:People! Not everything is terrorism! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Kojiro Ganryu Sasaki ( 895364 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2008 @06:56AM (#23075288)
      The same thing that happened to "rape" has happened to "terrorism".

      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: (Score:3, Funny)

      by ecavalli ( 1216014 )
      What's wrong with your grandmother that her hands are both warm and wet?

  • In related news (Score:5, Funny)

    by dedazo ( 737510 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2008 @01:45AM (#23074094) Journal
    The FSF has announced Richard Stallman will be engaging in a speaking tour of comic conventions to demand they be called free ideological terrorists.

  • OpenSourceTerroristMan and his sidekick... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Thanshin ( 1188877 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2008 @01:52AM (#23074122)
    Sharerman!

    He will share global economy to it's knees!

    His nefarious plan of... sharing stuff, has to be stopped!
    • I thought it would be mortgage man and his diabolical schemes to give scam loans to poor people in order to drive himself into bankruptcy.
      Btw this would be accurate if they made the open source guy an elitist, self important, condescending, arrogant jackass like way too many Linux experts but I think Microsoft forcing everyone to use a horrible operating system is eviler.

      • Re:OpenSourceTerroristMan and his sidekick... (Score:5, Funny)

        by Jesus_666 ( 702802 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2008 @04:38AM (#23074814)
        Okay, how about this set of villains:

        The Open Sourceror: Wants the whole world to be covered by the GPL. Has a Shield of Arrogance labeled "RTFM" that can absorb the damage of any attack and turn it into a blast of pure rejection. Can use his package manager to quickly construct mostly-working devices for everything. Thinks the Free Initiative are his best friends.

        The Free Initiative: Don't want to be called "Freedom Initiative" because they don't want freedom, they want Free-as-in-freedom. Insist that there's a big difference. Hate the Open Sourceror, the non-Free world and each other, because they can't agree which variant of the BSD licence they want to put the world under.

        The Consultant: Sent by IBM manufacturer, the Consultant wears a heavy mechanized armor called the Z System. His goal is to destroy the world (except for IBM) and replace it with a virtual clone running on IBM mainframes. Attacks by throwing blade servers with deadly precision. Has the mysterious ability to drain cash from people's wallets at frightening speed.

        Sunray: Sent by Sun, this combatant lugs around a 500 liter canister of Java on his back, which e constantly drinks from by means of a straw. Insists that the caffeine in the Java makes him slower, despite the fact that he can barely move with the canister on his back. Has a on-again-off-again alliance with the Open Sourceror.

        Emmessdeeann: This mysterious alien was hired by Microsoft to ensure that every single person on the planet has a valid licence for every product Microsoft manufactures, plans to manufacture at some point or doesn't manufacture but wish they did. Has a Cash Launcher, which suffocates his enemies under wads of Dollar bills, then sets them alight. Also has a Crash Launcher, which causes his power armor to shut down until a service techician can fix it. Unfortunately, both are built into the same weapon. Insists on ending each sentence with ".NET" instead of a full stop. Has a son and a daughter, both called "hWnd".

        Google: Omnipresent and omniscient. Insist they aren't doing actual evil while using thir vast archive of footage of illegal activities to blackmail everyone into looking at their context-sensitive ads. Even though they are targetting the entire population of the planet, nobody could yet topple their "we only target evil people" argument.

  • Juh? (Score:5, Funny)

    by dancingmad ( 128588 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2008 @01:54AM (#23074132)
    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.'

    What part of that sentence did I understand?

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by BadAnalogyGuy ( 945258 )
      Don't you get it? Stane is obviously a high profile journalist constantly declaring the current year to be "The Year of Linux on the Desktop", thereby getting hundreds of thousands of geeks to install Linux and waste their time trying to get their audio, DVD, and printing working. This results in millions of lost hours of work for their employers, driving up costs while providing no tangible benefit whatsoever. The economy is brought to its knees by this temporary reduction in productivity and Stane and his
      • Hmm.

        Getting DVD and audio to work? My media player asked if I wanted it to work, and behold, after I ticked and clicked, it did.

        Printer? A little research on http://linuxprinting.org/ [linuxprinting.org] another tick'n'click, and a setup wizard, and I was printing too.

        Perhaps Tony Stark sponsors Ubuntu?

        (oh, and any corporation mad enough to allow it's users to watch movies at work has more productivity worries than whether they have the right codecs installed or not).

      • Re:Juh? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by arivanov ( 12034 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2008 @02:39AM (#23074328) Homepage
        DVD work?

        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.

  • As I said on my LUG mailinglist (Score:3, Insightful)

    by pembo13 ( 770295 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2008 @01:56AM (#23074144) Homepage
    ... let this one go.

  • meh (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wizardforce ( 1005805 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2008 @02:03AM (#23074184) Journal

    '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:meh (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TuringTest ( 533084 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2008 @03:16AM (#23074466) Journal
      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.

      • Re:meh (Score:5, Insightful)

        by hey! ( 33014 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2008 @09:45AM (#23076636) Homepage Journal
        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.

        • Iron Man is interesting (Score:5, Interesting)

          by PCM2 ( 4486 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2008 @12:13PM (#23078636) Homepage
          In the comics recently, Iron Man has contradicted some of your statements somewhat.

          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 ... because Tony has very much become Microsoft. In fact, I can't read comics where Iron Man appears anymore, because every time the character opens his mouth I can't understand why they are still calling him a hero, when he seems to really have become little more than a smarter, more modernized version of Doctor Doom.

          • Re:Iron Man is interesting (Score:5, Informative)

            by hey! ( 33014 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2008 @01:10PM (#23079494) Homepage Journal
            I actually think this proves what I was saying.

            The evil twin theme is very common in comic books, whether the twin is in a parallel universe, or is a pretender, or just somebody who is awfully like the hero. The quest for more complexity and realism in recent stories means there is no better candidate for evil twin than the hero himself. It's an even match, no kryptonite needed.

            It's a very plausible and useful theme. What is a supervillain, but a superhero with a plan to drag the world, against its will if need be, into a better future? He starts by acting as if his undeniable superiority gives him the right to make decisions for others. In the end he finds himself using lesser people as expendable means to his ends. What I've argued is that the classic comic book hero is really not all that heroic. The villains are arguably more heroic, but only from the perspective of their severe moral short sightedness.

            If you want to take a superhero on a journey from being a muscle-bound enforcer of the status quo to being real hero, the straightest path cuts right across supervillain territory.

            Is Tony Stark really any different from Dr. Doom? They're both vain, armor wearing geniuses with a serious authoritarian streak. As bona-fide geniuses they have more reason than most to believe themselves qualified to decide what is in the best interest of others. However, Dr. Doom will never be a hero, because there is no end to his self-delusion of omniscience; there are no limits to what he will destroy today to build a better tomorrow.

            Sacrifice is essential to heroism. A hero has to give something up for the greater good. In the DC universe, Batman is a kind of neurotic fixation of Bruce Wayne; Wayne fights crime, but in a way that precludes him having normally satisfying relationships with other people.

            Clearly, the easiest way to make Tony Stark into a hero is to give him something he has to give up; you can't take away his genius, which makes taking away his money futile. So you have to give him something, namely the power and authority he not-so-secretly craves. The best way to show that Tony Stark is different from Dr. Doom in an essential way is for him to become Dr. Doom. Then turn back. And, since this is Marvel, he'll return from the trip with enough personal demons to flummox Dr. Strange.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by DDX_2002 ( 592881 )
          While this is undoubtedly true for the overwhelming majority of comics, there are bright spots where someone is thinking outside the box. The Ellis run of Stormwatch and its transformation into The Authority was revolutionary. Jenny Sparks said "There has to be someone left to save the world. And someone left to change it." As the opening panel of one ish asked, why don't superheroes ever go after the REAL villains - and what followed was the Authority invading Indonesia, deposing Suharto and leaving him t

  • Wow (Score:5, Funny)

    by kamapuaa ( 555446 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2008 @02:09AM (#23074202) Homepage
    I can see Comic books and open source uniting, working together to keep geeks around the world from getting laid.
  • Now they're making open source to look bad? I'll have to download this movie wearing my tinfoil turban.

  • We already have that (Score:5, Funny)

    by hcmtnbiker ( 925661 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2008 @02:16AM (#23074238)
    But we already have Linux Super Villian. [ubergeek.tv]

    • Re:We already have that (Score:5, Funny)

      by TheVelvetFlamebait ( 986083 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2008 @03:08AM (#23074428) Journal

      If i had one dollar for every brain you dont have, i would have $1.
      Let's see...

      In a theoretically infinite universe, there are theoretically infinite objects that could be considered brains. If I only didn't have one brain, then that means I have all but one of the infinite brains out there, which would imply, at the very least, that I would be much, much smarter than you.

      Where did you get that sig anyway? Some insult from some online forum?

      (Mods, this is the entertainment section. There's no great need to be strictly on-topic, right? ;)

  • Epiphany and Switcheroo (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dr_Barnowl ( 709838 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2008 @02:17AM (#23074248)
    If you ask me, the plot is ripe for a twist ; Stark discovers that Stane is actually the good guy, and that the massed legions of commercial software are colluding with the hardware manufacturers in a plan to take over the worlds computers by putting secret encryption keys on the motherboards and only permitting "approved" software to run.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Gideon Fubar ( 833343 )
      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: (Score:2)

        by mcvos ( 645701 )
        Exactly. Even TFA calls him oppressive for hanging on to his secret revolutionary technology that could change the world, for being unable to trust others with that technology. Tony Stark is proprietary technology personified.

        The only reason he's a hero at all is because he has his own comic book. Besides, I never liked Iron Man anyway.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Neoncow ( 802085 )

        Hold on.. which one is the good guy again?
        Get your stinking code away from me, you damned dirty nerd!

  • Some Villain (Score:5, Funny)

    by lusiphur69 ( 455824 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2008 @02:29AM (#23074290) Homepage
    I find it hard to look at the concept as menacing.

    "We're going to provide Linux free of charge to anyone! MUHAHAHAHA!"

    "Beware my open source laser! Powered by the distilled tears of Microsoft execs, it will cut you out of vendor lock-in!"

    Or better, Stark teams up with Microsoft to combat the 'threat', then, during a battle as Iron Man powers up his blaster, the HUD flashes..

      WinIRON.sys
      The driver is attempting to access memory beyond the end of the
      allocation.
      Stop: 0x000000D6
      (0x89781000, 0x00000000, 0xBF82683F, 0x00000000)
      WinIRON.sys address BF82683F base at BF80000

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jd ( 1658 )
      But your lasers are fitted to sharks on rocket-powered planes in the clouds with lightning bolts and... and... and I can't get the rest of the front page into this, damnit!

  • Thanks for ruining Iron Man even more (Score:5, Informative)

    by Mex ( 191941 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2008 @02:34AM (#23074314)
    First they make him the mastermind of the whole Civil War saga, for sending Hulk into space(which admittedly was a cool series, but it made Iron Man the bad guy), and responsible for Captain America's death, and now this?

    Iron Man was my fave character (A smooth but smart dude), but he's gone to shit in the past few years.

    Thanks, Marvel.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by hal2814 ( 725639 )
      "which admittedly was a cool series, but it made Iron Man the bad guy"

      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

  • In (still) other news (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Torodung ( 31985 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2008 @02:44AM (#23074346) Journal
    Iron Man will be renaming himself "Palladium," fighting to keep your computer trustworthy against open terror!

    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" ;^)]]

  • Carefully choosing words (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BRSloth ( 578824 ) * <julio&juliobiason,net> on Tuesday April 15, 2008 @03:19AM (#23074472) Homepage Journal
    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.
  • And his sidekick is WikiMan, disseminating forbidden knowledge everywhere for... free! Everyone knows that knowledge is power and by giving knowledge to everyone WikiMan is giving everyone power, thus destroying the foundation of capitalistic society and opening the doors to... Communism! Oh no, the Cold War is back!

  • RTFA (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 15, 2008 @03:36AM (#23074546)
    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.

  • Sounds like MS "Evangelism" to me. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anti-Trend ( 857000 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2008 @03:59AM (#23074634) Homepage Journal
    I can really only think of one company that would be "terrorized" by open source...

    Ironic, really. One would think Steve Ballmer [wikimedia.org] would be the ideal anti-hero.

  • Don't let your children watch or read crap (Score:3, Funny)

    by Tuqui ( 96668 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2008 @04:00AM (#23074640) Homepage
    Well, this is a good reason to prohibit your children to read comic crap.

  • I'm speechless (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bersl2 ( 689221 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2008 @04:19AM (#23074738) Journal
    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'.

  • Fact check on aisle 4. Fact check on aisle 4. (Score:3, Informative)

    by The Evil Couch ( 621105 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2008 @04:20AM (#23074742) Homepage

    "In a recent CBR interview 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 writer's name is Matt FRACTION.

  • Fights over shared source and free open source ter (Score:3, Funny)

    by SpaghettiPattern ( 609814 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2008 @06:17AM (#23075128)
    Imagine the FTF being founded with the idea to realize UNA (UNA is Not Al-Quada.)

    Blueprints are available on how to setup your own organization. Crash courses in setting up your own cell, free formats to document the cell meeting minutes, open and verifiable systems to elect cell and organization leaders, recommended lingo to hide intentions (although open, the message encryption works but people are left guessing as to what you are conspiring about.)

    However, a small but significant part is missing. There's no plan for the rocket. The base is there, the logistics, the whole organization, but no rocket. So reluctantly UNA uses rockets manufactured by evil corporations that do not allow you to modify them and only ause death and destruction with a very inferior sense of style.

    Until one day a youngster from South-Jemen comes that desperately needs a rocket but is highly disappointed by the commodity but closed source rockets. So he boldly builds one himself and calls it Afred (he himself is called Alfred.) And he starts deploying it for his own purpose but uses the available UNA blueprints.

    Before you know everyone is using Afred for the daily terrorism fix.

    Then the FTF founder quite rightly points out that a missile launching compound consists of many more things than a missile. The missile is a vital part and without it no devastation takes place. However, one should not underestimate the infrastructure provided by UNA.

    Compounds should not be referred to as Afred because that would not give sufficient credit to the FTF. Instead a more appropriate name is UNA/Afred. AT least so says the Saint of the Church of UNA, St. Ignitius (I bless thee missile.)

    ...

  • Editors! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Viceroy Potatohead ( 954845 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2008 @08:00AM (#23075684) Homepage
    Please use the full, proper name of the villain... it's "Ezekiel GNU/Stane". Thank you, RMS.

  • Open source man! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Laxitive ( 10360 ) on Tuesday April 15, 2008 @09:12AM (#23076302) Journal
    Open source man, open source man,
    Doin' the things that copyleft can,
    What's he like? It's not important.
    open source man.

    Is he a geek, or is he a terrorist?
    When he's on the internet does he distribute himself?
    Or does the internet distribute him instead?
    Nobody knows, open source man.

    Iron man, Iron man.
    Iron man hates open source man.
    They have a fight, iron wins.
    Iron man.

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