fwiw, I've always held a similar or same position, (GPLv3 and AGPLv3 are too restrictive) but could never make the case as strong as you've made it. I wouldn't have bothered to say this had it not been for the assholes needlessly insulting you. When the argument is bulletproof, the weak-minded will resort to personal attacks.

Aren't mutually compatible GPLv3 and AGPLv3 both strong copyleft licenses? Apple Preview is proprietary software, so how could it have used Ghostscript without distributing Preview source code?

If Preview uses Ghostscript code, licensing would be a reason for Apple to drop support of ps and eps, but Apple also tends to drop support of things in advance of their decline. Since commercial printing switched away from EPS and PS to PDF over 20 years ago, I'm not sure where PS and EPS has been used popularly, other than maybe PS being used to write printer drivers.

Preview isn't the only way to generate PS files in macOS. PS can be generated through print dialogues, but I don't have Ventura to confirm whether that functionality has also been removed.

Your troll is pathetic. RoP had about 30M domestic viewers, a little more than three times the ratings of HotD, and roughly 10% of the total US population. They're not remotely in trouble, but poised to become the most popular television show of all time. Time to hand in your troll card.

I am a little but annoyed at the title, "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power," which is quite a mouthful and mildly pretentious. Tolkien didn't have a title for LotR; it was added by the publisher. And it is an annoying long title. Should have been simply called, "Rings of Power," no qualifier and no definite article.

This is true, but not comprehensive. Amazon acquired the rights to Jackson's LotR and Hobbit films, and along with these also those books, because New Line had those rights. Yet what we have seen so far in RoP is inexplicably entirely based on Jackson's five minute Prologue to The Fellowship of the Ring, that early synopsis of the forging of the rings of power and the Last Alliance, and which Cate Blanchett narrates as Galadriel.

Again, though they have those rights, they have not much bothered with the material in the Appendices. It is Jackson's Prologue they have massively expanded. And it annoys me also they didn't just purchase partial rights to The Silmarillion. those regarding the Second and Third Ages, regarding Galadriel and Sauron in Middle-Earth, the forging of the rings of power, and regarding Númenor and its destruction. With the massive investment they made, it could have been better just to get some of the finer details correct rather than invent and embellish.

Just as I was thrown off by Halbrand's ears, I could be wrong here also, but the Ithryn Luin also arrive by swan boat to the Grey Havens about TA1000, wear robes of sea blue, go with Saruman into the East, and, of course, there are two of them and they arrive and travel together.

Círdan gave Narya to Gandalf at the Grey Havens when Gandalf arrived in Middle-Earth c.TA1000. So Gandalf always wore Narya from his arrival and afterwards. Bilbo's 111th birthday was TA3001, about 2000 years later. The Quest for Erebor was in TA2941. It is thought Gandalf had some proclivity with fire without Narya, but only to warm and kindle hearts, nothing as expansive as what we've seen in RoP so far.

Since they apparently dispatched with Annatar and made Halband, a human, Sauron, I think it is likely the Stranger is Gandalf. In the early episodes the rune he was carving over and over in the dirt and on that fallen tree trunk was the digraph "gh," which happens to be the mirror image of the "g" he carved on Bilbo's door at Bag End, and signed his letter with to Frodo at Bree. But how would he know his name was Gandalf if that was given to him by men? He hasn't yet met any men. RoP either screwed up or are taking massive license, bringing him in thousands of years too early, by meteor, with incredible powers over fire, both anachronistic, but the Stranger is too powerful not to be Gandalf. If the Stranger was one of the unknown number of lesser Istari, and not one of the five chiefs, how could he be so powerful? So it's Gandalf and we just have to deal with the fact that the writers ignored the details Tolkien gave, and they exaggerated.

Amazon apparently failed to realize that opposites attract. Regardless, we are all the Children of Ilúvatar.

Honestly, with the exception of Nori (and, separately, those with the Stranger), I also found the Harfoot scenes annoying at first, as a bone thrown to children, and even out of respect for Tolkien's reasons for composing The Hobbit, I didn't care for them. But over the series, as the Harfoots rich culture was revealed, these scenes became less annoying, more interesting, and at times pretty funny. I think it is a shame Sadoc was lost, as his character was one of the more developed of the Harfoot characters, and I found his accent and pronunciations interesting. I think Lenny Henry was very well cast.

This is a matter of personal taste. You, in your opinion, do not find the characters interesting, for reasons unknown and not given. Not everyone is you and not everyone lacks taste.

This has been claimed often, inaccurately so on its face, coming from a misunderstanding of what a Mary Sue is, as is evident by your statements that are entirely unsupportive of whether Galadriel'a depiction is a Mary Sue or not. A Mary Sue is a female character who is depicted as unrealistically lacking in flaws or weaknesses. But the RoP Galadriel is anything but flawless nor omnipotent. She is depicted as all too human, when elves are distinctly strange creatures, Galadriel is not nearly weird enough. Elves are weird, and this is underscored many times especially by Orlando Bloom's Legolas, but also Liv Tyler's Arwen, both Hugo Weaving's and Robert Aramayo's Elronds, Cate Blanchett's Galadriel, and Craig Parker's Haldir. Morfydd Clark's Galadriel is likely depicted as more human than usually elf-like to make her more relatable to the audience, as she is the hero of the show. Rather than showing weird elven qualities, she will be shown with heroic qualities, and the hero is never perfect and thus can never be a Mary Sue, not the least reasons for which Galadriel was rescued separately by Halbrand, Elendil, and Míriel. A Mary Sue would never need rescuing.

Gil-Galad was the uncontested last heir of the kings of the Noldor in exile and acknowledged by all as High King of the Elves of the West. Galadriel not only supported him, Gil-Galad only became king due to Galadriel's influence, so it would have been against her character and hypocritical if she did not follow his commands.

Not so much. Galadriel was not a control freak nor a tyrant, and humility and obedience, except on rare occasion, were among her ordinary qualities.

Minorities have had more opportunity for education and training, and more professional opportunity to land roles in film, but I fail to see how this is social commentary instead of simply casting the best fit for the role. If it was one way before and it is different now, then this somehow whispers, "racism is systemic?" I think you're bizarrely suggesting that simply because minorities are cast, then social commentary is inherent in the production, that the set designers and makeup artists and casting directors are somehow giving commentary regarding systemic racism, which is absurd.

Your complaint is very specifically indicative of Black racism as opposed to, say, antisemitism. Tolkien, however, never explicitly writes anywhere in his work, "there are no Black elves." In fact, he strongly suggests that Black elves existed through his Silmarillion character Eöl by going out of his way to describe Eöl's son Maeglin as, "...tall and black-haired; his eyes were dark, yet bright and keen as the eyes of the Noldor, and his skin was white." There would be no reason for this description of skin color unless Eöl was not white, and in fact Tolkien explicitly writes that Eöl is a Dark Elf, even if Silmarillion illustrator Ted Nasmith depicted Eöl as white. This counter-example proves your argument is invalid, and makes it abundantly clear that your racist criteria was not Tolkien's criteria.

Beyond this, your racist conclusion, which itself you've left entirely unsupported, does not follow from your premises. The complaint is not that RoP invented characters and backstory outside of Tolkien's work, which they did profusely, but that they cast a Black actor as an elf. The complaint is explicitly racist. And since Ismael Cruz Cordova in fact indisputably portrays the most accurate elf on the series, if not the most accurate depiction of an elf ever portrayed anywhere, the choice of casting was most likely due to his talent rather than his skin color.

Merely casting minorities itself is not commentary, social or otherwise. And in highlighting these choices you have indeed ostracized whatever woke television and film that may exist, even while implicitly admitting the RoP story itself is not woke.

Explicit in your argument is that Black actors have artificially landed roles they have not deserved through their seriousness regarding their profession, their professional drive, training and talent, and only landed any roles due to a reaction to historical racism, when there where white actors that would have been more deserving. Yet the white elves in the series barely hold a candle to the compelling and accurate portrayal of an elf by a talented Black actor. And entertainment itself was avant garde in ignoring skin color more than a century and a half before the Civil Rights Era, so your premises are in stark error to reality in the first place. If the premises are false and the conclusion is false, then the argument must be invalid.

Don't you think it's possible someone who does not see themselves as racist might not be able to comprehend that their ideas and words are, in fact, racist? Racism need not be intentional, and that is what woke is about, waking up to that fact that one did not realize their ideas and words were racist because they did not intend to be. This is the trouble with any with a strong and unsupported bias against and resistance to the fact that racism is systemic and extant, and especially any that use "woke" pejoratively. When a television show is inaccurately labeled with having a conscience of acknowledgement of systemic racism in society as an insult, the racist has exposed themselves as such, and who gives a shit whether they're a nazi skinhead or merely a mindless and insensitive bigot, they're both racists.

This is either a bandwagon argument or a sweeping generalization. But I do not subscribe to the proscription of trying to sympathize with the racist, "hey were all the same," crap.

Let me rephrase that for you, "hold on now, the racists have a point! There are more minorities on the TV, and there wasn't before, and that must be woke."

I'm not sure who you think you're speaking for, but you can only speak for yourself, and you certainly do not speak for me. I have a problem with the OP's comment, was offended by it, and the best I could do for everyone is to call him out on being racist specifically because he refuses to entertain being conscious of systemic racism. I don't empathize with them, I fuck racists over by calling them out every chance I get.

All I'm saying is that you're apologizing for racists and racism, and not nerds. Nerds have imagination, and nerds have some idea of what it is like to be singled out for being different, so I could only guess that nerds would appreciate it if you would immediately cease equating them with racists.

Your comment is a straw man. I was only responding to the GGP post regarding a bizarre complaint about the show suffering from wokedness. Anyone that has watched RoP would know and can confirm there is no social commentary within it regarding systemic racism. For one to incorrectly believe RoP is woke only requires two things, namely, not having watched it and knowing that Black actors had been cast. On the other hand, regardless of the fact that systemic racism is unaddressed in RoP, ignorantly denying that racism is systemic in the US is a racist position, fundamentally.

You think she has an excessive or erotic interest in herself and her physical appearance? Or you're suggesting she has symptoms of narcissism? If the latter, then least 5 of the following symptoms must necessarily apply to her: exaggerated sense of self-importance; expects to be recognized as superior even without warranting achievements; she exaggerates her achievements and talents; she believes herself to be superior and can only associate with others that are equally superior; she monopolizes conversations and belittles, berates and looks down on others; she exhibits entitlement; she takes advantage of others to get what she wants without guilt or shame; she expects special treatment and favors and unwavering compliance with her expectations; she requires constant admiration; she is terrified of criticism and responds aggressively and lashes out if criticized; she is hypersensitive and easily offended reacting in rage, she is a bully and a coward with deep-seated anxieties and insecurities; she experiences major problems and stress when adapting to change; she enjoys humiliating others; she is unable or unwilling to recognize the needs and feelings of others; she is envious of others and believes others envy her; she behaves arrogantly, conceitedly, boastfully and pretentiously; she insists on having the best of everything; she is preoccupied with fantasies about success, power, brilliance, beauty or the perfect mate.

I can see maybe one of these symptoms, possibly two at the very most, could apply to Morfydd Clark's portrayal of Galadriel, but not any five of them.

In contrast to a narcissist, a hero very often has the qualities of: bravery and courage; conviction and determination; helpfulness and honesty; inspiration and moral integrity; protective and self-sacrificing; selflessness and strength. More of these characteristics apply to Clark's Galadriel than symptoms of narcissism.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that perhaps your issue isn't with Galadriel at all. Does she... remind you of anyone?

Describe in single words only the good things that come into your mind about your mother.

Harfoots were quite obviously especially for the children in the audience, so there would even be something in it just for you, SuperKendell.