I have to stay more up to date on what Kim Jong Un is doing...

Kim Jong Un is exactly the type who would accept undeserved credit for a cyberattack. "What, who me? I did what? Uh ... oh really? Oh! OK, yeah everybody, I did it!"

I have the attention span of a housefly. I had heard and already forgotten about two of them.

We will never do major exploration of deep space where we get closer to another star than to this one. If we do, humanity can define two constants in file headers.

(I know, but whenever I see 'black and white' in a ST context, I reflexively go to Frank Gorshin.)

Historically, that is correct, but the term is still in use, and its meaning has shifted. To whit (sp?):

"B movie noun
: a movie that costs little money to make and that is usually not considered to be very good"

C'mon, it's just as likely that he's too fat to bend down that far if he drops the soap.

Wait, are you asking for a grim and gritty reboot of "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield"?

I thought you usually used your "CleverNickName" account?

Who are the others this time around?

And how is Keith Richards still alive again? Pre-embalming?

You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it does....

It's actually a tragedy and missed opportunity, that Jackson has so little talent as a director, and so little discipline in telling a story.

I was appalled by how little he regarded the audience - and proportionally insulted his actors - in "Desolation". Huge musical cues 'instructing' the audience of the drama or character development that was supposed to be on screen, at all times. This seems to be because he cannot elicit real performances from his actors.

I might muse that this is because to Jackson, they are not actors - but merely the armatures on which he templates his green-screen composited glory... But to assume that this is the root of his deficiency, rather than another symptom of of his artlessness, would be to succumb to curmudgeonly urges.

The lesson to be taken away is that Jackson should be designing games, not ruining popular cinema.

It appears that - despite the contempt it provoked in my teenaged self - Rankin and Bass actually produced the best ever adaptation of Tolkien, with the greatest respect and truth towards the source text in feel and substance. Perhaps, when we have destroyed the concept of copyright as a tool of corporate greed, another - more thoughtful - filmmaker might use this as a point of departure for a loving and well-crafted "Hobbit".

Incorrect. Threatening companies into doing immoral things is immoral, unjust, and undemocratic.

What's immoral about offering your users more choice?

If I can't access content without making a choice, then as far as I'm concerned, it's default on.

So that means any setup screen is censorship.

It's not about Hollywood! It's about freedom of speech.

It's a very important principle, especially in the US that speech is protected. Not just by the first amendment, but as one of the fundamental principles on which your country is based.

You do not silence yourself because the government tells you, or because a criminal tells you and certainly not because some foreign unelected dictatorship tells you. If that happens then you should not just speak, but shout!

Yes, torture is a problem. Would we know about it if people didn't tell us about it?

Do you actually care about the human rights violations in North Korea? You seem to. Raise awareness! Tell the world! You can, because your freedom of speech is protected. If North Korea threatens you people will fight and some will even die to protect your right to speak out against it.

Maybe not to companies looking to secure their bottom line, but it is a big deal when the government can just make threats as it pleases to subvert the democratic process and get companies to do whatever they want them to.

They were being threatened with the democratic process! The free press was promoting the idea. The Prime Minister suggested that the democratically elected government might legislate if they didn't roll over.

A default on filter is simply intolerable.

It's not default on! It's active choice! That's what the article is about. People are seeing the screen that asks if they want to enable the filters. They can literally do nothing else without making a choice.

It's easily worthwhile. You don't need to go after everyone. Even if something is indeed popular, that doesn't mean it isn't a social taboo.

If over 90% of the population do something it's not a social taboo!