Are you kidding me? The prequels had so much potential, a great subtext for plots and whatnot. Think about it. The reason Lucas made the films in the first place is because everyone was curious about how Darth Vader became Darth Vader. If that's not a good setup to a story, I don't know what is. The corruption of Anakin Skywalker is an amazing setup for a good story. Instead, it was Lucas that bogged down the prequels with useless CG, pointless Senate meetings and a Jedi Council that really wasn't anything more than a showcase for Yoda. Lucas was the one that felt the need to recycle every character from the first films.

Put a talented writer like Joss Whedon on a project with such clear boundaries and he would have made an amazing film. We could have seen the slow moral corruption of an innocent Jedi. The seduction to the dark side by the emperor. A realistic romance between Anakin and Padme. Several brand new characters that would have depth to them and interesting plot twists could have been made all around. Instead we got a train wreck full of discombobulated stories about characters that no one finds interesting. In short, the story was set up well by episodes 4-6. Lucas just blew every advantage he had in Episode 1. He had three fat pitches down the middle and he swung and missed every one.

Compare that to the setup for this series. You have an already evil Darth Vader hunting down Jedi. Somehow, the emperor is going to show his evilness to the world such that rebels will start rising up. You think senate hearings are boring? How else are you going to show any protest by rebelling planets? Remember that the emperor doesn't dissolve the senate until ep. 4. What about action? The Jedi are mostly already dead. Yoda and Obiwan are supposed to be hiding. What can you anchor the story around? Some Jedi that's running away? A planet that keeps getting oppressed (how exactly? through trade embargos)? It's not obvious and not easy to tell a good story in such a setting. This is like a slider away that you have to hit. A single is possible. A strike is more likely.

if by depth you mean CG animation in the background, yes, it will.

if by depth you mean actual storytelling, i'm afraid this won't. if episodes 1-3 proved anything, it's that lucas just doesn't know how to tell a good story unless he's ripping off kurasawa.

Really? Just those three things? Let me point out why the movie really sucked.

In IV - VI, we find the story of a character who's very evil who finds redemption. We also find out that he used to be good.

That should have been the heart of the story. Why and how did Darth Vader become so evil? How did he get seduced to the dark side? The films hand-waved through the most important question that everyone had. He thought his wife was going to die and started killing children or something.

The flaws weren't that there were too many characters. The flaw was that there just wasn't a coherant story.

Do you know how many lotteries there are for charter schools? Clearly, the parents care the same whether they get in or not. But the student performance is vastly different. Sure, parents have a lot of responsibility, but that's not really something a government mandate is going to solve.

I can tell you as a parent that it's horribly difficult to get a teacher fired. Seriously, have you tried? You may say all you want that if parents demanded it, they could get rid of the teacher, but that's simply not true. There are tons of bad teachers that can't get fired because of the protection that unions provide.

And really, the material that charter schools teach isn't the problem. Parochial schools and religious schools do just as well as many charter schools. Why are they better than the standard school? It's because they have better teachers. There are many kids that get free rides to these charter/religious schools (due to some service the town can't provide for example) and they do just as well, so it's not about the parents per se.

I stand by my statement, real education reform means better teachers. Better teachers require better motivators and that means getting rid of or heavily reforming the current teacher's union systems.

Blaming the DoE, standardized tests and zero tolerance for education failure is like blaming extra paper cups for the bankruptcy of Enron. It might contribute, but it isn't the big problem.

There are tons of other countries with bigger standardized tests, even less tolerance and bigger departments of education with more heavy-handed bureaucracy that produce way more scientists per capita. Look at any east Asian country, for instance.

The big problem is really obvious. It's the quality of teachers. And it's not that the teachers are bad per se, it's that they're unmotivated to do better. Teacher's unions make it so that you get paid on years on the job and tenure, not how well you teach. Decoupling rewards with results in this way has been the single worst decision in education in this country.

Look at most charter schools. They flourish. Why? Because the teachers are motivated to teach well, not just do well until they get to tenure status.

Well, this is the essence of what the future of the Record industry is, isn't it? You have two distinct businesses that are finally getting separated. On the one hand, you have the music sales group which makes money based on sales of the actual music. On the other, you have a marketing/promotion group which makes money off of concerts and the like. The former is a dead business model that'll go away with services like the one mentioned in this story. The latter is something that an agent or a marketing company or a PR firm can do. Really, this is what a record company will eventually evolve to.

I wonder how much of this increase in "traffic" is just Nigerian scammers trying to get you to ship your item overseas.