My Vizio is so old that I doubt the thing would even receive updates if I did connect it to the Internet. I just have a raspberry pi connected to it instead. Works great.

I haven't paid under $4 in YEARS!!!! so whatever. More importantly though, we still have the option to buy gas, even if it's expensive. Go read my link, they don't even have the option to buy at any price and there are many restrictions in place so the countries don't run out. That's not a good spot to be in.

I never said I bought it. It was freely given. Turns out, I hated cigarettes and had a healthy use of alcohol where it never ran my life or was required. When I turned 21, it was no big deal that I could drink because my family let me have a single drink whenever I wanted. Turns out, I didn't see the big deal at all and it never was.

Of course, I don't really have all that much of an addictive personality type and I made sure to stay away from hard drugs because duh, I bet they would of been fun and addicting. Given all the folks that I saw using hard drugs, I decided it wasn't for me.

But like I said, we likely grew up differently. I had a ton of freedom to do whatever I wanted and yet, never got into any trouble. Breed boring I suppose :)

Yeah, everyone said that about Star Wars episodes 1-3 also. They were still entertaining.

I do agree with you they were departures from the books though. Big time. The original LOTR were much closer and even they departed from the books as well.

I'm just not THAT big a fan of the books. Sure, I've read them all but that was twenty years ago. I do however completely understand your position and can also totally understand why you feel precisely the way you do.

It's how I felt when amazon did what they did with Wheel of Time.

You know 18 is teenage AND an adult that could sign up to e-harmony.

I guess we grew up differently because it was never that hard to get any of that stuff.

It would be painfully easy for a website to request a credit card number (which you only have if your 18) and then immediately delete it after your account was made. Now you could always say, well I don't trust them with my credit card. Fair enough, but guess what, at least a billion people do trust websites with our credit card and everything is working out just fine.

The real problem we have is a complete lack of data collection laws.

As others have said though, this is all just a push to de-anonymize the Internet so they can control what you say and do Online. It's all about control, not safety.

Shame the movie totally left out that Sam was employed by Frodo. It literally got one line in the second movie when Faramie says"Are you his body guard?" Sam replies "I'm his gardener." The original LOTR had a lot more of the worker class and capital class conflicts in it.

Oh, and Bert and Ernie were gay too, right? Of course, from a kids perspective, they were kids themselves and kids have sleep overs and *gasps* share the same bed. Guess they are all gay. It's just hogwash.

I swear you just about described what the Hobbit movies were.

The entire volume was an allegory of West versus East, despite Tolkien claiming otherwise. I enjoyed it, overall.

I'll admit I had a really hard time accepting the original theatrical release as I had just finished the books. They cut out a decent amount. The further I got away from when I read the book, the more entertaining the movies became. I really enjoyed the extended versions as well.

If you are married to a given book series, no film will ever do it justice. If you read the book 20 years ago, you probably forgot half the book(s) anyway.

My best example would be The Wheel of Time series. It's far to large to ever properly be done and it's best to not touch it. Amazon's desecration of the IP is precisely what I figured would happen and I barely finished the first season. I had to drag myself through it. It was excruciating and I complained the whole time.

Possibly if you took the Wheel of Time and maybe a 14 seasons, with at least 10 hour long episodes, you might do it justice. It will never happen unless we get to the point where we can literally just feed the book into an AI-movie maker. Maybe in 50-100 years...

And just like star wars, we can stop watching. I have the original 3 movies, extended versions of course, and I have the 3 hobbit movies (not as good but still decent enough). I agree that amazon's content was shallow and just abusing the IP. It was entertaining enough, but only because I was less familiar with that part of the lore.

Even though I'm a big LOTR fan, I'm happy to ignore future releases. I do the same with Star Wars. As far as I'm concerned, only 6 movies were made and I'm not missing anything else. It's like how they only made two Terminator movies.

Since it's just the fleecing of the IP and it's purely suppose to be for entertainment, it won't hurt me any to ignore it.

Though we are not actively at war with China, this war with Iran has put immense pressure on all of Asia, as they get the majority of their oil from the Straights of Hormuz. Mean while, my gas prices in San Diego haven't even gone up a full dollar yet. I just paid $4.99 yesterday and a month ago I was paying $4.29.

Asia, on the other hand is totally screwed right now. https://www.bbc.com/news/artic...

Now, China is doing better then most, but even they have cut off their exports to reserve oil for their own country's needs.

This whole energy "crisis" should bring into clear focus why self sustainability is so important for a country all the way down to the individual. When shit hits the fan, as it always does eventually, you don't want to be left reliant on foreigners that don't have your best interest at heart.

When the thing explodes in the launcher, you'll know where that extra money went.

A well regulated militia is not government sponsored. That's the entire point. It's a check on government power.

See, our founding fathers just got done fighting a war against England for our independence. Had we been unarmed, we could not have revolted.

Given we are a free people, we have the right to defend ourselves. A firearm tends to be a very good equalizer.

Where you want to ban guns because you don't trust me, I want to go after people that abuse guns with maximum penalties of the law. As a gun owner, I take this responsibility seriously. I'll be the first to sign on to mandatory prison time for anyone convicted of a crime while using a firearm. No wiggle room. Thing is, then the DAs would have to prosecute these assholes that are shooting people with guns and that doesn't tend to line up nicely in blue state policy. They'd rather hand wave away the criminal behavior. That's a dereliction of duty and makes us less safe as a society.

We need our guns precisely because you can't always trust the government. What are you going to do when Nazi Trump really ramps up the persecution? Oh right, sit back and protest and hope the government doesn't murder you all, ie just like Iran did to it's protesters two months ago.