Well some companies have had legal action taken against them because they distributed something based on GPL'd code, because the modified the code and didn't distribute their modifications. I think those companies (its only happened a couple of times) just realeased their source (as required by the GPL) and the lawsuits were dropped. I believe these lawsuits were initiated by the FSF.

So yeah, companies have been sued over open source, but only because they didn't comply with the GPL.

Amazon recommends another book by Leonard Nimoy called I Am Spock

So I think he's cool with it now.

Well it would be kind of weird if Aragorn didn't go with Eowyn and then at the end this Arwen chick we never seen before just shows up out of nowhere and then he goes off with her. Also he'd seem pretty arrogant if he was all like "Yeah I'm the king, see this sword? yeah that makes me King so bow before me bitches!"

So they explained the love story between Aragorn and Arwen in the movies, they showed him as a humble guy who became king because he was needed by his people, show the reforging of the sword, etc during the movie. Because movies don't have appendices, so a lot of stuff doesn't make any sense if you don't stick it in there somewhere.

One of the first rules of making movies is "show don't tell". This is also why the star wars prequels sucked. They tell us that Obi Wan and Anakin are good friends, they tell us that Anakin has been trained to be a Jedi, they tell us that this Greivous guy is really important, but we never are actually shown these things.

Books and movies are different mediums. In a book you can go off on a tangent like Tom Bombadil for a chapter and its fine. With a movie there is a flow, and you don't want to interrupt the flow with things that don't really move the plot along or expose anything about the characters.

I'm not sure about the scouring of the Shire scene. When I heard about it being removed, I thought it was a mistake. But watching Return of the King in the theatre made me think PJ may have made the right decision on that. After Aragron was crowned king everyone was getting ready to go, satisfied with a good movie. Then when we see the boat sail to the east, once again everyone was once again starting to get their things together. But we see Sam back in the Shire and you see the audience all like "WTF? More?" And when we finally see "The End" on the screen people seemed to be relieved. Maybe if there was a scouring of the Shire it would have been like a surprise action scene at the end so having another wrapup scene would have felt more natural. But from what I could see people were a little annoyed that the movie kept going on longer when they'd already gotten what they paid to see. Most people would have rathered there be less endings rather than more.

So yeah, if PJ were 100% faithful to the books maybe the fanboys would have been happy, but 99% of the movie going audience wouldn't have liked it. They wouldn't have liked it because they just wouldn't have been good movies. PJ was as faithful as possible to the books while still making good movies from them.

And yeah sticking in some characters from LoTR in there that weren't originally in The Hobbit is a smart move. People like those characters and would be interested to see what they were doing in that time period. While reading The Hobbit I was interested in knowing more about what was going on with Gandalf and the Necromancer, so it'll be cool to see that. Similarly I was always interested in what was going on in Osgiliath in LotR, so I was glad to see that expanded on in the movies.

And even Tolkien didn't regard The Hobbit as holy. He rewrote the Riddles in the Dark chapter to make it fit in better with LotR. PJ is just making more changes to make it fit in even better, while also making the story work better as a movie.

And get sued by Oracle.

Uh some people have jobs and children in school and so simply moving is somewhat difficult. And sometimes "simply" moving 50 miles south means moving to a different country.

Also some people live in older houses that can be a bit drafty. My parents house is over a hundred years old and if its a cold and windy day "cranking up the heat by 5 degrees" has no effect. They have a wood fired furnace, and burning wood gives the most heat of any energy source but even with a full blaze going in the furnace, the fan running at full tilt pushing the hot air throughout the house, its still cold. This doesn't happen often, most times the wood furnace keeps the house nice and toasty even in the dead of winter, but it does happen occasionally. Of course its always cold in their house first thing in the morning because nobody stays up all night feeding wood in the furnace. So yeah, I understand not wanting to get out of bed early in the morning because its cold.

Its not the end of the world which would require a whole family to pack up and move and find new jobs and schools. Just an annoyance.

Yeah, the people who are nice get more work. Its pretty obvious when Directors are always casting the same actors in all their movies. How many Tim Burton Movies don't have Johnny Depp or Helena Bonham-Carter? How many Ridley Scott movies have Russel Crowe in them? On the other side, how many Steven Speilberg movies have Julia Roberts? Only one, because Speilberg Didn't get along well with Roberts.

Yeah if you're a big name Actor you'll still get work even if you're an asshole, but there will be some big name directors that will refuse to work with you. And thats not helping your career much.

The Awards shows are part of marketing the movies. If a movie wins an Oscar then it can be re-released and more people will go see it because it won an oscar. The movie studios spend a good deal of money lobbying members of the academy to vote for their movie to get an oscar so they can make this extra money. This is why they hated it when Return of the King won so many oscars because everyone had already seen it, whereas if a lesser known movie won those oscars it would mean a lot more money for that studio. But they sort of had to give a bunch of oscars to Lord of the Rings since New Line Cinema bet their studio to make it, ie. if LOTR flopped New Line would have gone bankrupt.

The awards ceremonies are just a part of marketing movies. And it works because a lot of people like to see the celebrities all dressed up (who are you wearing?) and so it gives some attention to some movies that the people who idolize the celebrities would otherwise not watch.

The Moon is capitalized because its a proper noun in this usage. In general usage we call the moon that is orbiting the Earth simply "the Moon". And since there is only one moon orbiting the Earth and it is referred to as the Moon, it is correct to capitalize it.

In the solar system there are many moons but there is only one Moon.

Uh they have RapiScan and enhanced pat-downs in Canada too. Just they ask you to go to a curtained off area of the airport to do it. Which to me seems even creepier. "Please step behind this curtain so I can see you naked or feel up your junk". The worst part is that none of the opposition parties have made any noise about this whatsoever.

It was CSIS that told the Americans that Maher Arar was a terrorist which resulted in him being tortured. And speaking of CSIS, they regularly tap people's phones without warrants. The entire point of CSIS is to spy on Canadians.

At least American citizens have some sort of protections from the likes of the CIA. Canadian citizens have no such protections and CSIS will gladly hand you over to them so you can be tortured.

Don't kid yourself, the Canadian government does whatever the US wants them to do. Read the wikileaks about Canada. Our government is a bunch of spineless cowards when dealing with the US.

I use chromium because I prefer the UI, it loads up faster, its more responsive than Firefox.

Its your opinion that Firefox is the best, and you may be shocked to find out that your opinion isn't shared by everyone. I have used Firefox previously, I tried Chrome and it worked better for me.

And since I use Chromium, I am still using a FOSS browser.

You said "almost" everyone you know. So there are some people you know that are still using IE. Of those people how many are aware that they have a choice?

Why exactly is it wrong to make people aware they have a choice?

But the Guardian Council gets to decide who is allowed to stand for election. You're a reformer? Yeah the Guardian Council says that you're not allowed to run for political office.

Iran is actually closer to how the Vatican is run. Yeah the Cardinals decide who gets to be Pope, but the Pope gets to decide who gets to be Cardinals. This ensures that there isn't going to be a new Pope with radical new ideas like allowing priests to marry, or promoting the use of condoms in Africa, even if most catholics might want the church to move in this direction.

The Iranian government isn't doing what the people of Iran want, as indicated by the protests there.

And add to that the intel the US gets from Israel and all the data about how to effectively combat asynchronous warfare tactics. This data is a lot more useful to the US if Israel is using the same weapons that the US uses.

And of course the dirty little secret of the Middle East is that most countries there like Israel. This has been confirmed by wikileaks. Israel actually does make the Middle East more stable and more democratic. Even Syria and Iran probably like having Israel around if only to distract their people about domestic problems.

For what the US gets from Israel vs. what they give to Israel, the US is getting a bargain.

Yeah I'd say India was much more democratic than the US, given all the anomalies (hanging chads?) in recent US elections, and all the influence of special interests in US politics.

The GNOME designers realised this and have a panel on the top of the screen which is always visible through which you can access all of your apps and files and folders. You can have lots of room to put app launchers across the top so you can open ythe apps you use the most in one click. There is a Places menu that lets you get to your most used folders in two clicks.

And everyone complains its bad UI design because its not like windows or MacOS.