Or would you prefer Star Wars be a bland story about absolutely good guys versus absolutely evil guys.

I dunno, worked pretty good for the original trilogy. Darth Vader is dressed in black and will blow up your planet if you cross him. And yet nobody condemns the original trilogy as bland.

The Senate is necessary. They were inept due to bureaucracy and corruption, and thus explained why some Jedi and others felt they had to do things outside the system. That was the point.

How do you know the senate was corrupt? When did any Jedi do anything "outside the system"? Seriously, work it through: how is the Republic corrupt, apart from the bare fact that Palpatine wins in the end? How is the corruption substantiated? It's pretty obvious that Lucas wanted the Republic to be corrupt, sclerotic, superannuated, bureaucratic, whatever, because that's the trope. But, he never really showed how it was, or why.

I mean like, when Amidala goes to the senate and demands justice for Naboo, Terence Stamp is going to do it but then someone else demands an investigation. OK. Why isn't the word of a Queen and two Jedi enough for Valorum? Why is an investigation corrupt? It's all "imputed qualities," we're merely told, by Palpatine of all people, that the senate is corrupt and bureaucratic. And despite this, Senator Jar Jar, with no real opposition is able to propose the creation of an army and the senate straight up and does it with no debate whatsoever. They seem to be really efficient when they want to be.

Right from the beginning, we are told that the Empire is evil and therefore the Rebels must be the good guys. We don't see that developed. We are just TOLD that and we must believe it.

Are you kidding? The Empire kills everybody on a little ship they easily overpower; Vader snaps the neck of a rebel subaltern just because he doesn't know what he wants to hear; the Death Star blows up Alderaan and nearly destroys the moon of Yavin. Tarkin flatly states that the fear of his battle station will oppress the entire galaxy, and orders the death of Leia's family, friends and planet right in front of her.

When does, say, the trade federation do anything of the type? They blockade a planet, but nobody on the planet actually seems to suffer. They demand a treaty signed, but we never actually find out what the treaty is for, or what it entails. And they're in cahoots with Sidious, but we have no idea what they actually have to gain from the dispute. I guess it stands to reason they have to gain something, but there are no stakes, there is no drama.

i stopped reading there. you're a hopeless moron

seizure in the usa is already way out of control

the recent federal review of asset seizure laws is welcome, but weak:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

worrying about banks seizing funds is the least of your problems

call it zuckerbucks

it's for zuckers

so you're ok with child porn and death threats?

can i take photos of you having sex with your significant other and put it on a billboard in your hometown? it's just free speech dude

everything has limits. including free speech. not because i say so, but because of simple logic and reason: it ends where it impinges on the freedoms of others. classic example: yelling fire in a crowded theatre

the fact that i recognize that freedoms are not boundless, but logically constrained by other people's freedoms, does not make me an authoritarian, it just makes me smarter than you

Point of order, the annual average humidity is lower in Dallas than it is in LA.

go to google news

type in "shooting"

and let's dip into the ocean today

http://www.newsday.com/news/ne...

http://www.post-gazette.com/lo...

http://www.ketv.com/news/omaha...

http://www.twincities.com/crim...

http://miami.cbslocal.com/2015...

http://www.whsv.com/home/headl...

etc.

etc.

tomorrow it will be another collection of dozens of shootings

every fucking day in the usa. oh it happens in other countries. at a much lower rate. because they make guns harder for douchebags to get

the usa enjoys no amazing lower rate of rape, robbery, assault, etc., because of owning lots of guns, as compared to our social and economic peers, we are no crime free paradise. so owning a gun doesn't confer magic anti-crime properties. it does confer something though: a massive increase in homicide. pointlessly. needlessly. every little confusion or altercation in the usa has to lead to death. and this is somehow better

completely unnecessary, completely fucking stupid, and completely ok according to my fellow countrymen who are fucking braindead douchebags

we need gun control in the usa badly

and we are going to get it

you can't ward off logic and common sense with stupidity, lies, and propaganda forever

if i read something, i expect it to have a fucking point. your post, for example, has a point. but if it's a meandering brain diarrhea dump, i'm going to complain. i don't have the right to do that?

Except, for me, watching the prequels makes all that unimportant stuff in the original series important. After watching how the Republic fell apart, you understand why there was an emperor and why Senate approval was still a thing.

Really? You know why the Republic fell apart? You know why the assent of the Senate was required? When did they explain any of that? The Republic didn't fall apart, Palpatine just lied to everyone and the entire senate just rolled over and accepted it, even people who knew he was lying did nothing to actually stop him, to tell others bout his misdeeds, or rally members of the senate against him. The Senate makes no sense. From the beginning of the trilogy to the end it serves no purpose and it could be completely excised without changing the actual stories a whit.

The Jedi oppose the Sith; the senate represents people we never meet, don't fight in the war, have nothing to lose from the war, and no matter what the senate does or does not do, the characters just do what they were always going to do anyway.

Given all the extra stuff that doesn't happen in the movies, you would think dedicated "fans" would put two and two together and think "hey, it may be answered outside of the movies, just like every other thing".

So what you're telling me is, yes, the movies make no sense, but I should give them a mulligan because maybe they'd be better if I knew stuff from the Expanded Universe? Doesn't the movie have to stand on its own? Understand, I'm talking about books, or Expanded media, or things that happen "outside the movies." All that matters is the movie; if A New Hope had the sort of plot mess that Phantom Menace did, there would be no books or expanded universe, there would be no Empire Strikes Back. Star Wars would have just been another bad sci-fi movie and Damnation Alley would have been Fox's big movie of 1977.

Did you ever think that it was the POINT that the Jedi's roles were confusing? That not even the Jedi knew what they were supposed to be as the Republic started failing?

This is an interesting theory. It's not given any treatment in the prequels. At no point does any Jedi say anything like "What's going on, why are we doing this?" They act like everything is business as usual.

I really question people who call themselves fans of Star Wars (me, not really being one myself), and fans of "intelligent culture" when they insist everything must be answered for them.

We can argue about the depth and consistency of the Star Wars universe until the cows come home, because for an inconsistency I find, you can just invent a plausible explanation and demand I accept it, because to do anything less would be "asking to be given all the answers." When, in fact, I'm not asking for "all the answers," I'm asking for a story that's dramatic and comprehensible, and characters that have actual motivations.

Are the prequel trilogy actual movies? Or are they just visual aides for a bunch of expanded universe novels? Cause that's how they play -- read the book to find out what's happening, then go to chapter 2 of the DVD to see what it looked like.

But then, I grew up on a steady diet of anime like Evangelion or Lain where nothing really makes much sense because they don't tell you everything and expect you to give your own interpretations.

Evengelion is endlessly compelling because it's clear that he's trying to say something. And Eva is deeply wrapped up in the inner lives and psychology of the characters, the giant robots are just props. When in the prequels do we ever get an inner monologue? Or any character express an internal state of mind? Anakin comes close, but we never really understand why he does what he does.

reverse engineering is allowed, and could be opening themselves up to legal action.

Just because reverse engineering is legal, it doesn't mean WhatsApp are legally obligated to provide their services to third-party clients.

The legal matter here is the blatant trademark infringement by WhatsApp Plus.

Right but none of that stuff in the original series is important. What "the Imperial Senate" is or Owen Lars's attitude to Kenobi aren't dispositve on the plot, if you simply removed those elements, the movie would still make sense.

But you can't simply excise the trade federation blockade, it's the entire conflict of the first movie, and it happens for effectively no reason.

The Jedi are more frustrating because we get alternate theories depending on George's convenience. At one point they're "keepers of the peace, not soldiers" and Quai-Gon "can't fight a war" for Padme, and through the rest of the movies they're effectively the generals of the Clone Army. Was there a conflict or some kind of contradiction there? Surely Yoda would have seen this as contrary to the Jedi code, but he was just as enthusiastic a soldier as anyone. It's werid. These questions go to the very core of the prequel trilogy, without resolution these movies make no sense, and thus they don't.

Seriously guys, this is fucking outrageous! I' writing my first post on my brand new tablet just a minute ago and you're abysmaly flaky mobile version double posts again. So it wasn't android 3.2 after all.

And why can't I turnoff ads in the mobile version?

Rob, what's going on? .... You guys need to get your shit together man - it's 2015, mobile web is standard now. Get with the effing programm. ... Do you need help?n

Perhaps you need help? I'll build a professional mobile version for credit alone.

(Please don't mod down - this needs attention folks. Seriously.)

Need to run special software tied to the OS? No? ... Install Linux.
Really, it's that easy.

Ubuntu can be a drag, in more ways than one, but it's worth a try - and it does look really cool. Seriously.
Suse and Redhat are hassle-free to install aswell. All three are definitly more hassle-free than any Windows installation you can do thesse days.

I've got Ubuntu 14.04 on my ThinkPad. And while it can be anoying (which OS isn't?), it is way ahead of Windows in usability and you can get tons of books and free info on the web for it.

Other than that I'd recommend Mac OS X or Chrome OS - but since you already have your laptop I guess that's ruled out.

Welcome to the camp. Enjoy.

Need to run special software tied to the OS? No? ... Install Linux. Ubuntu can be a drag, in more ways the one, but it's worth a try. Suse and Redhat probably are hassle free aswell. All three are way easyer to install than a fresh Windows.

in London, you get in a fight and you get a broken arm or a broken nose

in New York City, you get in a fight and you get a body bag

whenever the homicide rate of the USA is compared to other Western countries, NRA propagandized morons change the subject and counter about *violence*. as if *violence* is the same as *homicide*

frankly, i'd love the violence rate in the usa to go up and the homicide rate to go down. because a broken arm is not a body bag

and you get that with better gun control

but too many of my fellow americans of the low iq and propagandized variety believe for some fucking ignorant reason that every little misunderstanding or conflict has to escalate to death

and that's exactly what we get:

http://www.conferenceboard.ca/...

rape? robbery? violence? about the same as our social and economic peers

easy guns do not protect us from those things. they just mean tens of thousands of extra body bags every year

if anything, owning a gun increases the chance of mortality for you and your loved ones, because you've raised the stakes in every little act of confusion/ misunderstanding/ anger/ accident/ etc. to death