You, sir, may be trolling for some epic battle of 'teh flames' but your points are valid. Star Wars had the makings of an epic tale, if only G-Lucas could have contrived a coherent delivery. In its current form, it's been nothing more than the wet dream of a DND Magic Missile D20...with blasters and midichlori-something-or-others in the end.

+1 Awesome.

God I wish I had mod points...I read that part of the article and I knew somewhere, subconsiously, I had heard that broken English somewhere before. Thank you for the translation from Rooskie.

Fortuantely for the parent, there is no -1, Wrong moderation option.

The cable companies do not encrypt the digital stream unless the channel is on a pay tier, or the content provider mandates it. My employer had been carrying ESPN HD, Discovery HD, History HD, and a few other national channels in the clear for almost a year. Contract renegotiations have come up, and those channels now must be encrypted for us to retain the rights to carry them. As a result, the cable co looks like the bad guy when we must tell our subs that they now must lease a converter box or CableCard to decrypt the channels we previously could send in the clear.

In regards to being forced into using the company's cable box, the FCC has mandated this to be illegal. Simply go down to your local electronics store and pickup a CableCard enabled converter...which according to the FCC, should be available nationwide. Oh wait...no manufacturer has started making them in the last 3 years. Go FCC! There's always TiVo, I suppose...