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Iron Man's New Villain — an Open Source Terrorist
An anonymous reader writes "In a recent interview on Comic Book Resources about his new continuation of the Marvel comic-book series 'Invincible Iron Man,' Matt Faction provides information about the the new series (debut will be May 7). The villain is Ezekiel Stane, son of Obadiah Stane (the villain of the new Iron Man movie opening on May 2). Whereas Obadiah was a ruthless billionaire who fought as the Iron Monger, Zeke 'rejects the strategies of his father as being the crude tactics of Attila the Hun.' Instead, he will be 'a post-national business man and kind of an open source ideological terrorist.' As the author puts it, 'Windows wants to be on every computer desktop in the world, but Linux and Stane want to destroy the desktop.' The concept has gone over well on the CBR forums."
Since 9/11, every goddamned thing is considered terrorism. Shoot a gun downtown? Terrorism. Drink someone's milkshake? Terrorism. Ship cocaine from Colombia to the U.S. Yep, terrorism.
No! It's not! There are proper terms here, and by calling any crime terrorism you insinuate that the crimes are perpetrated by terrorists. That's giving a whole lot of credit to idiot criminals.
Installing Linux on the computers of unwitting Windows users may be a dumb plot, but it's hardly terrorism. If it were, every goddamned user on Slashdot would be a terrorist for trying to wrest Windows from Granny's warm, wet hands.
I'd like to see this OSS terrorist face the CEO of Nerv (from that other forgettable hacker movie a few years back). Geek Terrorist. Coming soon to a basement near you!
The FSF has announced Richard Stallman will be engaging in a speaking tour of comic conventions to demand they be called free ideological terrorists.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Sharerman!
He will share global economy to it's knees!
His nefarious plan of... sharing stuff, has to be stopped!
As the author puts it, 'Windows wants to be on every computer desktop in the world, but Linux and Stane want to destroy the desktop.'
What part of that sentence did I understand?
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
Just because the movie is sponsored by SCO, Microsoft and NVidia does NOT mean that it is prejudice. Honest, gov.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
I can see Comic books and open source uniting, working together to keep geeks around the world from getting laid.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
We need to stop Doctor GPL! he wants to allow everyone to see everyone else's privates, and give them a way to directly modify them! His perversion of source code everywhere must be stopped, but who...
Great Intellect...
But we already have Linux Super Villian.
If i had one dollar for every brain you dont have, i would have $1.
If you ask me, the plot is ripe for a twist ; Stark discovers that Stane is actually the good guy, and that the massed legions of commercial software are colluding with the hardware manufacturers in a plan to take over the worlds computers by putting secret encryption keys on the motherboards and only permitting "approved" software to run.
I find it hard to look at the concept as menacing.
"We're going to provide Linux free of charge to anyone! MUHAHAHAHA!"
"Beware my open source laser! Powered by the distilled tears of Microsoft execs, it will cut you out of vendor lock-in!"
Or better, Stark teams up with Microsoft to combat the 'threat', then, during a battle as Iron Man powers up his blaster, the HUD flashes..
WinIRON.sys
The driver is attempting to access memory beyond the end of the
allocation.
Stop: 0x000000D6
(0x89781000, 0x00000000, 0xBF82683F, 0x00000000)
WinIRON.sys address BF82683F base at BF80000
First they make him the mastermind of the whole Civil War saga, for sending Hulk into space(which admittedly was a cool series, but it made Iron Man the bad guy), and responsible for Captain America's death, and now this?
Iron Man was my fave character (A smooth but smart dude), but he's gone to shit in the past few years.
Thanks, Marvel.
Iron Man will be renaming himself "Palladium," fighting to keep your computer trustworthy against open terror!
;^)]]
I will be smelling stale milk for weeks after putting it out my nose laughing. I guess the "Heroes Happen Here" stuff isn't taking off?
--
Toro
(Note: I believe this article was about a new comic book, not the movie, which features "Iron Monger" (Jeff Bridges as Obadiah Stane) as the enemy.)
[[UAC warning: Someone is making a schizoid post! mod Funny or Informative? Yeah, you should probably just click "ignore"
I'm sure if the movie was sponsored by Red Hat, Sun and IBM, Iron Man would get his arse kicked by Big-Iron Man - who runs Linux of course.
I don't therefore I'm not.
Doesn't the ridiculous labelling of open source software as "terrorism" call into question all the other things that get labelled terrorism? Examples:
The ANC anti-Apartheid movement under the white South African government was labelled a terrorism. Nelson Mandela was public enemy number 1, the Osama Bin Laden of his time and place. White South Africa bought into their government's propaganda.
The White Rose organisation was labelled terrorist, and its leaders beheaded. for their non-violent anti-Nazi position in pre-WWII Nazi Germany. The German body politic bought into their government's propaganda.
Today, the word terrorism gets thrown around like some Muslim / Arab / Islamist (whatever that means) is hiding in the bushes outside your house with his AK-47 pointed at your door just waiting for you and your kids to step out so he can vent his hatred of your freedoms. The American people buy into their government's propaganda.
When you hear the label "terrorist" used, you should think about who is doing the labelling, and what exactly their agenda is rather than just taking their word for it that you are in danger and need their protection.
I hate printers.
Still, we have ATi (AMD) specifications at least. For many users, closed drivers are as good as no drivers.
For a few ideological zealots, closed source drivers are as good as, or worse than, no drivers. For "many users", closed source drivers make the product work and thus are fine.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Assuming those binary blobs even work on your chosen operating system and processor, or the versions thereof.
how to invest, a novice's guide
Not that I don't agree with you that all that is bad (extortion, blackmail, etc.), but they are not "terrorist patterns" in any way shape or form: they're not really producing terror, in the name of a political agenda (that is what I understand terrorism to be).
</pedantic>
Tie two birds together: although they have four wings, they cannot fly. (The blind man)
Yeah, I run Damn Fickle Linux on my underclocked MC68000 with 256KB of RAM. I didn't engineer a PCIx slot into my setup just to have nVidia spit in my face like this!
which is totally what she said
"No ambiguity in the term"? When a roadside bomb attacking military vehicles is "terrorism", the word has lost all meaning.
Property is theft.
Apartheid is always going to be a touchy subject, so I have to watch my words here, but... Nelson Mandela was a terrorist. That his cause was noble is beyond doubt, and his leadership of the post-Apartheid South Africa was magnificent, but the fact remains that he was the leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe, which carried out bombings of civilian targets and which was therefore a terrorist organisation.
They say that one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist, and I agree with the parent post that we have to be very sceptical whenever somebody uses the term "terrorist" because they usually have an agenda in doing so. But we also have to be careful not to condone acts that are genuinely terrorism just because we don't think the perpetrators are bad people. The world isn't made up of saints and sinners, and sometimes even good people cross a line.
-- Note to Mods: There is a good reason there's no "-1 Disagree" option. --
...farmers often shot their farmhands just to make a point to the others...Serious citation needed here. You can't make such a sweeping statement (*often*?!?) without giving at least some proof. I paid quite a lot of attention to the hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and I don't remember hearing any such thing.
...the average white South African treated blacks as slaves...That's a gross exaggeration. The average white South African was more or less indifferent. They played no part in actively oppressing blacks, but were happy to accept the advantages that the systemic oppression brought them, so long as it didn't cause too much trouble. It's hard to get people to stand up when other people's rights are being trampled, isn't it? Not a lot of Americans complained about the Trail of Tears either.
The trouble with politics is that it's the extremists who are most likely to be politically active. Decisions are made by those who show up, and those tend to be the people with strong views. Very few Russians in 1916 were enthusiastic communists; the rest were just prepared to go along with it. And very few South Africans in 1948 were hardcore racists; but they were OK with the fact that their government was made up of scumbags and that is their guilt.
-- Note to Mods: There is a good reason there's no "-1 Disagree" option. --
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
When a roadside bomb attacking military vehicles is "terrorism", the word has lost all meaning.
"Terrorism" was originally defined as violence against civilians to affect politics. How are actions against soldiers in any way considered "terrorism"? Yet the American government called the barracks bombing (pre-911, under Clinton IIRC) "terrorism" and the present terrorist-in-chief (if military actions against soldiers is terrorism then?) considers roadside bombs to be "terrorism", then as you say, the word has lost all meaning.
It is now just a propaganda ploy.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Once you've had the experience of a system software upgrade rendering hardware unusable, and the manufacturer flat doesn't want to provide new drivers for old equipment, you will immediately see the value of open source drivers.
A working closed driver is nice when it supports your system. An open driver means that if more than four or five hardcore geeks out there run a similar system as you, you WILL have a driver.
So no, for day to day use on current consumer desktops that are free to update and reinstall whenever, closed drivers aren't a big deal. That isn't the only type of system out there.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Once you do this, then explain how the US would not be a state sponsor of terror, based on our confirmed historical support of right-wing paramilitaries in Nicaragua, and our more recent involvement funding warlords in Somalia, and violent separatist groups in Iran.
For extra-credit, justify the US's refusal to prosecute perpetrators the My Lai massacre, or our WW2 era concepts of total war, or even better, the African National Congress's tendency to or Irgun.
After you finish with the mental acrobatics necessary to do such a thing, then apply these new and broad standards to Hezbollah, Hamas, or the Mahdi army.
The point? Things are not black and white, and we do not possess any moral high-ground upon which to condemn others. Terrorism is just a tactic, one used for good and bad. And at the same time, a tactic that kills far less people then organized war.
In the comics recently, Iron Man has contradicted some of your statements somewhat.
... because Tony has very much become Microsoft. In fact, I can't read comics where Iron Man appears anymore, because every time the character opens his mouth I can't understand why they are still calling him a hero, when he seems to really have become little more than a smarter, more modernized version of Doctor Doom.
Marvel recently had a big crossover plot line called "Civil War," in which it was decided that superheroes were too dangerous to have running around without government oversight. They were all required to register with the Federal government. If they failed to do so, they were subject to imprisonment in one of SHIELD's top-security prisons designed for supervillains.
Who was the main man responsible for hunting down his fellow heroes and former comrades? Tony Stark, the invincible Iron Man.
In fact, Tony went on to become the head of SHIELD, the government's most ultra-secret spy organization (think more oversight than the FBI, more freedom than the CIA). In most respects, they've taken the "Tony is a billionaire industrialist" angle and spun it into "Tony is an arch-conservative storm trooper of the old guard of manufacturing wealth, using the power of the government to enforce a neo-facist agenda that goes contrary to 50 years of Marvel Comics philosophy."
It's interesting that they are portraying the latest villain as an "open source" one
Breakfast served all day!
If a civilian in the US were to attack our government troops it would be an illegal act.
Kind of like when civilians fired on British troops during the US Revolution? The winning side's "freedom fighters" are the losing side's "terrorists".
If you target civilians for political purposes it's terrorism. Calling anything else "terrorism" is propaganda, and a lie to boot.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest