How do you even pronounce an asterisk??

I think Rory really developed nicely, actually. If you look at his first adventure away from home, he's kind of like, "Why the hell am I here in this crazy place?" But later on we have some nice "crowning moments of awesome" like Rory the Roman, his time with Flesh Jennifer and his involvement in the raid on Demon's Run. He probably was never entirely comfortable going on dangerous adventures, but he learned to deal.

The 1990s X-Men animated? I loved that show. When they showed the first episode, then left us waiting for like six months before showing us anything more, I watched the first episode over, and over again. Then when the series finally landed I gobbled it up. Well, I kind of got tired of it after a couple years, and lost touch.

I rewatched the whole series recently. It was kind of painful, actually. Any time Gambit or Storm started talking, I immediately wanted them to shut up.

Don't forget, this supernova was threatening the whole galaxy!

I hate to admit it, because this kind of weakens the argument that one can make a good sci-fi movie work in theaters...

But I never heard of that movie.

I love the old Star Trek films, but a lot of them are kind of crap. I mean, there's a lot I like in those films but a lot that I think just went really painfully wrong, too. I love how "Star Trek: The (Slow-)Motion Picture" tried to give us a little 2001 vibe and put the crew against something so vast as to be almost incomprehensible - but it was the recycled "Nomad" story, with too much wanking over the (admittedly beautiful) new model, and various problems due to production time running out or whatever... Trek 2 was pretty solid but "super-intelligent" Khan couldn't read through the simplest of secret codes, and they copped out on Spock's death before they even got to the credits. Trek 3 was like Trek 2's leftover baggage getting resolved, Trek 4 was like a big series of self-deprecating jokes, Trek 5 was.. I don't know, just kind of painful, I thought. And Trek 6 had its strengths but also a lot of stupid stuff - and the crew was getting pretty long in the tooth by this point. "Generations" was kind of dull and a bit unfocused, broken up into a bunch of sub-plots like a TV episode, featured the unnecessary return and then re-death of Kirk, and then the Enterprise getting brought down by a Klingon BoP of all things... (With the same BoP footage they'd been reusing since Trek 3!) - though it's got some pretty nice Galaxy-class eye candy (if you can look past the 4-footer dressing applied to the 6-footer) First Contact couldn't decide which of two movies it really wanted to be, and lowered itself to some action movie catch phrase moments... Insurrection - I'd have to see it again. And Nemesis, I think it's fair to say it wanted to be another "Wrath of Khan" rather badly. A lot of motivations didn't seem to make any sense, and... more telepathic rape. Yay. It is impressive how Ron Perlman can throw himself into all these roles without need for much make-up, though.

If the best one can say about Trek 2009 is that it's better than that sorry lot, then that's really unfortunate.

I frankly wouldn't know one style of sword-fighting from another. But they did go out of their way in the dialogue to bring up fencing...

Sulu: "Let me go on this awesome suicide mission. I'm trained in hand-to-hand combat."
Kirk (later on): "What kind of hand-to-hand training did you have?"
Sulu: "Fencing."

Somewhere close enough to Vulcan that you can see it clearly with the naked eye, but far enough away that it doesn't get drawn in and destroyed when Vulcan turns into a black hole...

I think they made the whole "reboot" thing way too literal, and that IMO hurt the movie. The story doesn't really work the way it's told, "Nero goes back in time, changing history and that's why everything is different now" - it's just excess baggage that gets dragged around for the whole movie.

No, it really wasn't. Almost every Star Trek movie ever has been deeply flawed, admittedly, but I don't consider the Abrams movie to be any kind of exception.

Well, if they're aliens instead of mutants doesn't that make it TANT? Or is it Teenage Mutant Alien Ninja Turtles (TMANT)?

I think the origin thing I could handle. The bigger issue is Bay himself. After what he did with Transformers I don't want to watch another of his movies.

And, let's be fair - a lot of people enjoyed Bay Transformers. Just, I didn't. By all rights I should have, Transformers (the franchise, I mean) is awesome. But after the first one I was unwilling to see either of the sequels in the theaters. If they show up on Netflix, maybe then I'll watch 'em - assuming I can find some time to watch it alone, so I don't have to subject my wife to it...

Hah, good point. :)

They can love the money, as long as it's me they have sex with.

It's the price you pay for having F-22's in your picture.

What I want from Linux is not a system that necessarily could compete with Windows or Mac, or attract large numbers of "average" users to use it.

What I enjoy about Linux is that it's a system that suits me. I like that it doesn't patronize me, or get all in my face about things I'm trying to do, the way Windows does. And every time I see a Linux app that behaves in a way that I associate with Windows (for instance, warning me when I change the extension of a file from ".jpg" or ".jpeg", or ".htm" to ".html") I get annoyed, and wish people writing Linux software wouldn't fixate themselves so much on creating software that suits the "average user".

I am a computer hobbyist, and that is awesome. Linux is an operating system in which a lot of the development effort has been centered around making it a great system for computer hobbyists. And that is, frankly, a bit problematic. There's no clear direction or leadership, and as such some really basic things have taken a really long time to materialize and/or stabilize. But I can work with that, and I choose to work with that, because most of the system is set up to support me in the way I choose to interact with the computer.

Not quite.

I create PDF files pretty regularly, as the GP poster said, via "print to PDF"-type features. I never edit PDF files. So not all the PDF files out there were created by a PDF editor.

(Of course, a more complete PDF editing system would mean being able to do things like create a table of contents - so yeah, it can be important to have real PDF software.)