D&D and AD&D had several versions alongside each other (they were separate games developed in parallel by TSR). After Wizards of the Coast bought TSR, they merged them into a single line that was named D&D but was more like TSR's AD&D rules. Consequently there are 2 different things called D&D 3rd Edition, D&D 4th Edition--to avoid confusion, Wizards of the Coast refers to the old TSR-released ones as "D&D Version 3" and reserves the name "3rd Edition" for the post-WotC merged game. But historically the TSR one was also called D&D 3rd Edition.

The timeline was something like:
D&D 1st Edition/Chainmail rules
D&D 1st Edition/Greyhawk rules
D&D 2nd Edition
                                                    AD&D 1st Edition
D&D 3rd Edition
D&D 4th Edition
                                                    AD&D 2nd Edition
D&D 5th Edition
(Wizards of the Coast buys them out here)
                    D&D 3rd Edition
                    D&D 3.5th Edition
                    D&D 4th Edition

Wizard of the Coast's D&D 3rd Edition and later are evolutions of the AD&D rules more than of the D&D rules
Unofficially the later years of AD&D 2nd Edition are called the 2.5th edition sometimes.

The original 1st edition of D&D you had to have the Chainmail table-top game rules to resolve combat; that changed when the Greyhawk supplement was released, giving D&D its own combat rules. So a lot of people consider the change from Chainmail to Greyhawk rules to be as significant as an official new edition.

As an ancient D&D player, I must say you are wrong. The Three Sided Die is shaped like a football with three ridges. The football shape keeps it from standing on either end, and you read the top ridge.

The ones I saw were all a football shape where you read the number off the bottom of the roll (similar to how you read a 4-sided die). No ridges or top reading.

They were always pretty rare, though, and don't give you any advantage over the d6. I'd say after the d4/6/8/10/12/20, the only other ones that were somewhat common were the the d30, and the d100, though a couple of my European friends had d34 that are apparently used for some bingo-type game over there.

Aside from those the only other one I've seen that got much traction was essentially an opaque d10 nested inside a transparent d10: another attempt at a d100.

I've seen at least log-shaped d5/d7 and more normal d14, d18, d24, too, but those are all basically novelties.

And then obviously all the dice with other stuff printed on the sides, but that's a whole other conversation.

You're absolutely right that there's strict differentiation between classes in D&D compared to other systems (or at least there was, before 3E's skills and feats). There are pluses and minuses to both mechanisms, IMO, but forgetting that distinction is why the post 2nd-Edition D&D rules have all sucked: either you want to play Dungeons and Dragons, in which case you want strong class delineation, or you want a skill-based game a la GURPS. 3E tried to blend the two with just plain ugly results.

Everyone I know played 3rd, 4th but eventually consolidated on Pathfinder.
.
Really? The 3rd Editions's the one that accelerated level advancement a lot; the game works best and is most fun for low-mid level characters, and that one change made it much tougher to run an ongoing regular campaign for more than a year or two. And the skills and feats changes made it feel less like D&D and more like a generic GURPsy fantasy RPG. Almost everyone I know settled on the 2nd Edition eventually.

Hmmm... another recently created account with no comment history bashing Google in a long first post (or close to it).

Knock it off. The only thing you're accomplishing is making slashdot's admins look useless.

If its not availbale for sale in my region, its not theft. If they wont sell it to me, they cant claim lost sale.
Want Game of Thrones outside the USA?? hahahahahahahahaha, only one way to get it.

Game of Thrones is available on DVD in regions 1, 2, and 4 (Basically North & South America, Europe, Australia/Oceania, and much of Africa and Asia including Japan, the Middle East, Egypt, and South Africa). It's available on Blu-Ray in Regions A and B (North and South America, Western Europe, Africa, Australia/Oceania, Japan, Korea, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia).

And the US wasn't even the first DVD release; region 2 was released before region 1.

Movies like the Avengers will tend to do well vs. Piracy, because these high effect movies, look really good with all the sound, and large screens... If you pirate it, you get a shaky little display with perhaps stereo sound.

You're understating the state of piracy. For big releases like the Avengers, Telesync bootlegs come out essentially as soon as the first screenings; they're shot with high-def cameras on tripods mounted in the projection booth directly over/under the projector, with the complete Dolby Digital (5.1 or even 7.1) soundtrack ripped directly from a sound source (not recording it from playback).

Game of Thrones has dialogue that's almost exactly the same as the books; most scenes are directly from the books, and just changed a bit because of the change of medium.

That was kind of true in season 1 but is very much not the case in season 2.

For instance, last week's episode had 7 major storylines; of those, 5 are pretty much created entirely for the show with little resemblance to exact scenes from the books. 1 of them (Sansa/Cersei/Hound period scenes in King's Landing) is very close to the book, and 1 of them (Theon chasing Bran and Rickon) is parallel to book scenes but rewritten because some of the major characters don't exist on the show. The show's doing a remarkable job of staying relatively true to the overarching story without really following exact scenes all that closely in season 2.

Breakdown:
Theon chasing Bran and Rickon: These scenes are altered greatly from the books because major characters are omitted. The escape is led by Meera and Jojen Reed in the books and they drive all the conversation about Bran's dreams. They don't exist at all in the TV show.

Jon Snow/Ygritte: The whole "wandering alone with Ygritte in the cold" storyline is the show's fabrication, it never happens in the books (there, Jon frees Ygritte and remains with the rangers until they're captured by Rattleshirt).

Arya/Tywin: These scenes are fabricated entirely for the show, as Arya never serves Tywin in the books. They're awesome but brand new dialog.

Sansa/Cersei: These scenes are pretty close to the book.

Daenerys in Qarth: These scenes are completely fabricated for the show; the whole dragons-getting-stolen plot doesn't exist in the book.

Rob Stark: These scenes are completely fabricated for the show; the books never show the western campaign at all and never have Rob-POV chapters. The character of Talisa seems maybe based on Jayne Westerling, but it's tough to know for sure because we never see Jeyne until after a major SPOILER event happens in the books. Catelyn is certainly not out west in the books, and her book version would never let things develop between Robb and Talisa.

Jaime Lannister: Again fabricated completely for the show, he never has any escape sequence like this in the books (he does have an escape sequence but it's nothing like this and certainly doesn't have nearly identical dialog).

Oh, you don't need to tell me. Liberal, Conservative... doesn't matter. It's just a plaque on an office door when the entertainment lobby comes calling.

Yeah, well, apparently going after pirates is more important than saving Canadians from pedophiles...