Could your cellular provider "turn on the mic" for the FBI?
This is what I find odd about this story. Is the roadside assistance equipment designed such that they can listen in at any time? Forget FBI, can't the "operators" just listen in on random people for the fun of it? That alone is a scary thought to me, kinda like someone putting a camera in your house to watch you without you knowing.
But I don't understand why the 'mic' isn't hooked up to the 'on' switch at the user's end. Just install a simple 'on/off' switch on the mic so that it can only be used if you switch it on. I'm surprised this hasn't been designed into the systems (including cell phones).
Additionally, I find surveys that show that music pirates buy more CDs to be useless.
Your argument against the survey would apply to any survey that has self-serving interests, yet they are used regularly. Sure, they shouldn't be weighted as heavily as more objective analysis, but is there any realistic analysis method that could possibly convince you that file-sharers do buy CDs that they wouldn't have had they not used file-sharing. Surveying the consumers is the only viable method. Big Brother isn't so integrated yet that we can track who's downloading what AND know what CDs they've bought AND know what's in their brain for why they bought it. So if it's a real phenomenon, how could we ever tell other than these surveys?
As for the "you're just wrong" comment, you've taken it out of context. It was following evidence of the fact that you were wrong, not a solitary statement. So it was appropriate.
I appreciate the cudos, but I'm hoping you can at least see there are credible reasons for the beliving that the RIAA's claim of P2P ruining CD sales is a load of crap and shortsighted on their part.
I guess I wasn't thorough enough in my explanation (it was written quickly). The benefits we gain from HIV do not require that the human race be infected by it. We can both eradicate the virus from humans AND gain the benefits of HIV research. (However, once it is eradicated, there'd be less incentive to research it.)
In addition, the knowledge gained is a side-effect of the fight against HIV. It is not an independent incentive for keeping humans infected by it. It is therefore not hypocritical.
The RIAA cannot both eradicate P2P networks AND gain from their statistics, and the business usage of the statistics is an independent incentive for maintaining the existence of P2P networks, while at the same time trying to eliminate them. That makes it hypocritical.
Your analogies don't really fit the situation. True, if someone said it was hypocritical for the RIAA to benefit from something they are trying to destroy, then your analogies do fit this exact wording.
However, in the examples you use the "benefit" is knowledge on (a) how better to fight the phenomenon, or (b) how to fight off similar phenomenon. There is no net benefit to humans in this example, but rather information on how to reduce the likelihood of bad effects from these phenomena. For example, learning how to better fight viruses has no inherent value other than to fight viruses. We'd much prefer that they just go away, then there'd be no use of such information.
In the RIAA case, the information they are gathering is not to better fight P2P, they are gaining information that would be useful independent of whether or not P2P existed. In other words, if P2P did not exist, they would have a good business reason for wanting it to exist.
That's not a very good analogy. The parent post was talking about leaving it in a shared drive that is publically accessible. It's more like leaving that paper in a public photocopier (that is free to use). Even then, it's not exactly the same. I believe there is precedence that making something available on the internet constitutes "publication" (as is obvious if the material is text such as an article or blog, but is still true if it is music or video), and similar for distribution (making available for the public to access).
Now that brings up a question of intent. You might not be prosecuted if you accidently put it in a shared drive (or the paper in a public photocopier), but that's separate from the issue of the parent post which was that putting an original work in a shared drive is not copying and therefore not copyright infringement. The point is that copying doesn't have to be involved to make it copyright infringement.
So, I'm not sure where you're coming from with your "apparently quite rare" statment. The evidence shows otherwise.
Well, despite you anecdotal evidence, better evidence suggest that downloaders do indeed increase sales. So in short, you're just wrong.
This is also a straw man for a couple of reasons: first, CD sales are hurting, so any "benefit" to the industry or artists is being swallowed up
Wrong. You are assuming loss of CD sales is due to filesharing. As the above linked evidence shows, that's not true. In fact, following this one (and there are others), CD sales might be even worse without the gain from the "try before you buy" effect of filesharing.
Additionally, almost any illegal act, civil or criminal, has a "well, it COULD have a beneficial side effect" argument.
Except that this illegal act is illegal for the reason that it is assumed to harm sales, which the evidence above doesn't support. If it's not harmful, there's no need for it to be illegal. (I'm not advocating making it legal, but a different model is at least necessary.) Whatever other acts you are referring to are illegal for the harm the do cause. (If they don't, then perhaps they shouldn't be illegal either.) Also, the point is that the industry seems to be missing the concept (and evidence), that filesharing can be (or perhaps is) >helpful to them.
... if the goal is to feel better about what you're doing
You are making yet another assumption, that I am illegally downloading songs. In fact, I have never illegally downloaded a single song. I have nothing personal to rationalize. I am simply someone cursed with a love for logic and reason, not blind reactionism.
Well, actually, I had forgotten about that change. Thanks. Mind you, it still requires a significant threshold (>$1000 retail value distributed over 180 days). My point was that are certain thresholds required to make it criminal, copyright infringement isn't automatically criminal as implied by the parent post I was responding to. For most infringement by file sharers, it would only be civil law.
Well, I don't know about finest, but according to
Wired magazine it is the biggest, and its success help start a collaboration revolution even outside software.
There are many criminal laws against attempted acts and conspiracies to commit certain acts
Yes, and copyright infringement is not one of them. Also, those laws require overt intentional acts to break the law. The example you are responding to, of accidently having it shared, would not apply even if there was a such thing as "attempted copyright infringement".
Your second point is a little more useful. Yes, someone should read the proposed law before commenting on situtations it might not actually apply to.
Um, I don't believe an overt act of copying is necessary for copyright violation. Distribution or publication without permission is a violation. Simply making a version (copied or not) available for others to copy counts, so it'd still be copyright violation.
Except that is actual stealing, not copyright infringement. Stealing from a store deprives the owner of the property, represents a loss of the money the store paid for the item in the first place, and represents lost income (from the sale of that item).
Online sharing, at worst, only represents the latter case if (and only if) the downloader would have paid for a copy had they not been able to get a free download, and that case is apparently quite rare. It also doesn't take into account the actual increase in sales due to sharing (try before you buy), increased exposure to artists, and access to music that you could not otherwise buy or find in stores.
No, only in very specific instances is copyright infringement an offense, above some thresholds. Most important of them is making profits off the sale of illegal copies.
File sharing is not even in the same league. No profit is gain, and more specifically, there is no credible evidence of lost income from file sharing. (Sale of illegal copies means that someone is willing to pay for it, hence it represents a lost sale.)
As much as I love Linux, I have to agree with the parent post. I tried to install Opera and it told me there were some dependent files need. It didn't say where to find them or how to install them at all. After some searching (notably at rpmfind), I found some other applications that appeared to filenames very close to the required ones. I installed those (which had their own dependencies I had to track down), but Opera still wouldn't install and claimed it needed these files. Whatever I installed also screwed other things up. All sorts of errors came up when I logged in. Keep in mind this isn't some ancient version of Linux, it was SuSE 8.1 and 8.2.
I eventually had to re-install SuSE and gave up trying to install Opera.
Most Windows software installs and runs properly, even on my Win98SE. If there are missing files, a quick search on the internet will find them and quickly, and only involves copy 1 or 2 files into a specific directory. If it was that easy with Linux, I might consider tossing my dual-boot for Linux only (and if I could get Matlab to run well in Linux).
Um, all fuel cells use hydrogen. Methanol fuel cells just extract the hydrogen and the rest becomes waste carbon dioxide (albeit not as much as an internal combustion engine). The only real differences are the emissions (CO2+water versus just water) and the method of fuel storage.
...oscillators to store the energy (which are more like a flywheel than a spring, to continue the mechanical analogy)
Technically, it's both. In system modeling (e.g., Bond graphs, which is an excellent way to compare different domains), an inductor is analogous to a mass (stores energy in motion/flow) and a capacitor is analogous to a spring (stores energy statically). (Note that gravity acts like a non-linear softening spring.) Oscillators tend to make use of both.
This is irritating. This slashdot vs. the Bush admin stuff.
This had me curious. I didn't see anything in the articles or parent posts against the Bush admin. What I saw was complaints about removing or hiding information. In one case, yes, the White House was involved, and the other was time magazine.
Sure, there are implications that this all has something to do with Bush admin propaganda, but that hasn't been stated in the articles or parent posts. It sounds like you are complaining against general comments made following other articles at other times, not in these articles or at this time.
Oh yeah, and Bush is a moron and his administration is evil. Vote Quimby!
Not the way I read it. The argument you refuted is if someone had said "My boss will not allow me to go to vote." That argument would have no grounds, but I don't think that's what the parent post meant.
You do not get paid for the missed time, it doesn't change your deadlines, and it doesn't change how much work you have to get done. In other words, you have to make up the time somewhere, and if you have a close deadline it'll have to be soon. Taking 5 minutes to vote online versus taking a few hours to fight traffic and lineups and delaying your work means that a lot more people would likely vote.
It however doesn't mean that we should not pollute.
Um, not to kill the joke, but the moon doesn't have zero G, it has 1/6th of Earth's gravity. Zero G sex would best be done on the ISS in low Earth orbit, so it's not a good reason to go back to the moon.
How about to get away from SCO and use Linux in peace.
The reason I ask is because I think you underestimate the difficulty of what you're asking for.
No, I think you overestimate it. Showing a correlation is not that difficult. If greenhouse gases are causing a global warming trend, then they must, by definition, correlate well. It appears quite clearly that they don't. Correlations doesn't necessary prove causality (though it is a start), but certainly a lack of correlation strongly suggests against such a causality.
No, I imply no such thing.
My apologies if you did not intend to imply such a thing. But your response is still along the same lines. You are assuming that "reliable objective data" requires a second planet to test with. Not true at all.
Really, you seem to be trying to sound like it's a hypothetical question (what if), but applying the hypothetical to a real situation. Whether you realize it or not, this is an old debater's trick. You say "What if objective data is unknowable?" and we get to some sort of agreement about how to act in such a situation. But you've connected the question to a real situation (e.g., global warming), so the agreement on the hypothetical gets connected to an act on the real situation. This misdirection trick often works, but relies on the "audience" (including the second debater) not realizing that it was never agreed the hypothetical situation applies to the real situation.
In this case, I don't accept the premise that reliable objective data is unknowable, so arguing about that hypothetical situation is a misdirection.
Your global warming Jews analogy is not a good one.
No, you are misusing the analogy. They are analogous only in the sense that objective evidence is required before acting on the claim. In that respect, it is a good analogy. You're arguments are about the degree to which plausability is sufficient evidence to act upon, which is a different topic from the intent of the analogy. Yes, greenhouse gases are more plausable as a cause, but that doesn't mean they are and it certainly doesn't mean we should act without understanding the consequences first.
In such cases we choose to attack the most plausible problems, not sit around doing nothing on principle until evidence can be provided.
Aha. Here's the problem. This is a typical line of reasoning of activists, but it's a straw man argument. You assume that not enforcing Kyoto is "sitting around doing nothing". The issue here is where should our environment efforts be. There is demonstratable harm, with clear objective evidence, from a variety of pollutants that are not greenhouse gases. And in fact, depending on how greenhouse gas reduction is performed, it may actually increase these pollutants. Many scientists, including me, think we should spend our environmental efforst cleaning up demonstratable problems, not hypothetical ones, and certainly without understanding the consequences. It's not a matter of "doing nothing", but doing the right thing.
...very few believe that Bush pulled out because of legitimate scientific concerns. Do you?
Actually, I'd bet quite heavily that it has nothing to do with legitimate scientific concerns. Honestly, I think Bush is a moron. But whether the U.S. ratifies it or not, or Bush's motives, are completely irrelevant as to whether Kyoto is the right thing to do or not.
Absolutely. For instance, showning that it isn't a part of a natural cycle, that it correlates with greenhouse gas emissions and doesn't correlate with natural occurances.
But the implication of your question is the problem. You imply that it is safer to assume that it is true so we should act on the assumption. Perhaps an analogy would show the fallacy of this reasoning. Suppose someone suggested that global warming was caused by the existence of Jews, and that Jews should be exterminated to fix the problem. If anyone questions this assertion, would your response be "Can this be proven to your satisfaction without a spare planet to experiment on?"
That's an extreme example, but the point is valid. Insert any explanation, and use your question as a justification for acting on it. If we just assume a cause and act on it, we are more likely to cause harm than good.
I think that The Matrix is nothing more than a big marketing hype.
I really doubt that. When it first came out there wasn't much marketing hype at all, at least not that I saw. Certainly not before it came out, like most over-hyped movies. It was generally word-of-mouth at first, and I wasn't expecting much when I went to see it. But it blew me away.
You are entitled to your opinion that it sucked, but I'd strongly disagree. It combined some very cool concepts (true, not entirely original, but at least interesting philosophical ideas) with good action, very cool style. Separately, these are mediocre. Other movies have used the "what is reality" them (Total Recall, Thirteenth Floor) but weren't as cool or action packed. Other movies have been action packed but without a good plot or style (e.g., bullet time). Other movies have been very stylized, but without a good plot or action.
The first Matrix combined all these elements into one cool movie. Reloaded was partly not as good because there wasn't much different or new in it from the first one, but the plot also could have been better. I suspect this might be partly why you didn't like the first Matrix, you only saw it a few months ago so you've already seen or heard much of this stuff over the last few years, or perhaps the fact you waited so long to see it means it just isn't your type of genre.
My hope for the third was (and still is) that there are some significant plot twists again on the "what is reality" theme -- like Zion and the "scorched Earth" are not the true reality or something like that. But from the sounds of it, the plot is unfulfilling so I don't expect much there. I can still hope, until I see it.
Slashdot Mirror
This is what I find odd about this story. Is the roadside assistance equipment designed such that they can listen in at any time? Forget FBI, can't the "operators" just listen in on random people for the fun of it? That alone is a scary thought to me, kinda like someone putting a camera in your house to watch you without you knowing.
But I don't understand why the 'mic' isn't hooked up to the 'on' switch at the user's end. Just install a simple 'on/off' switch on the mic so that it can only be used if you switch it on. I'm surprised this hasn't been designed into the systems (including cell phones).
Your argument against the survey would apply to any survey that has self-serving interests, yet they are used regularly. Sure, they shouldn't be weighted as heavily as more objective analysis, but is there any realistic analysis method that could possibly convince you that file-sharers do buy CDs that they wouldn't have had they not used file-sharing. Surveying the consumers is the only viable method. Big Brother isn't so integrated yet that we can track who's downloading what AND know what CDs they've bought AND know what's in their brain for why they bought it. So if it's a real phenomenon, how could we ever tell other than these surveys?
As for the "you're just wrong" comment, you've taken it out of context. It was following evidence of the fact that you were wrong, not a solitary statement. So it was appropriate.
I appreciate the cudos, but I'm hoping you can at least see there are credible reasons for the beliving that the RIAA's claim of P2P ruining CD sales is a load of crap and shortsighted on their part.
In addition, the knowledge gained is a side-effect of the fight against HIV. It is not an independent incentive for keeping humans infected by it. It is therefore not hypocritical.
The RIAA cannot both eradicate P2P networks AND gain from their statistics, and the business usage of the statistics is an independent incentive for maintaining the existence of P2P networks, while at the same time trying to eliminate them. That makes it hypocritical.
However, in the examples you use the "benefit" is knowledge on (a) how better to fight the phenomenon, or (b) how to fight off similar phenomenon. There is no net benefit to humans in this example, but rather information on how to reduce the likelihood of bad effects from these phenomena. For example, learning how to better fight viruses has no inherent value other than to fight viruses. We'd much prefer that they just go away, then there'd be no use of such information.
In the RIAA case, the information they are gathering is not to better fight P2P, they are gaining information that would be useful independent of whether or not P2P existed. In other words, if P2P did not exist, they would have a good business reason for wanting it to exist.
It's a subtle, but important, difference.
Now that brings up a question of intent. You might not be prosecuted if you accidently put it in a shared drive (or the paper in a public photocopier), but that's separate from the issue of the parent post which was that putting an original work in a shared drive is not copying and therefore not copyright infringement. The point is that copying doesn't have to be involved to make it copyright infringement.
Bullshit. CD sales drop do appear to match the economy, the correlation isn't right to blame sharing, their own numbers suggest the drop in CD sales is better attributed to CD prices, reduced production (and here), organized crime, and a bunch of other reasons. All of these analyses suggest CD sales losses are not due to filesharing.
So, I'm not sure where you're coming from with your "apparently quite rare" statment. The evidence shows otherwise.
Well, despite you anecdotal evidence, better evidence suggest that downloaders do indeed increase sales. So in short, you're just wrong.
This is also a straw man for a couple of reasons: first, CD sales are hurting, so any "benefit" to the industry or artists is being swallowed up
Wrong. You are assuming loss of CD sales is due to filesharing. As the above linked evidence shows, that's not true. In fact, following this one (and there are others), CD sales might be even worse without the gain from the "try before you buy" effect of filesharing.
Additionally, almost any illegal act, civil or criminal, has a "well, it COULD have a beneficial side effect" argument.
Except that this illegal act is illegal for the reason that it is assumed to harm sales, which the evidence above doesn't support. If it's not harmful, there's no need for it to be illegal. (I'm not advocating making it legal, but a different model is at least necessary.) Whatever other acts you are referring to are illegal for the harm the do cause. (If they don't, then perhaps they shouldn't be illegal either.) Also, the point is that the industry seems to be missing the concept (and evidence), that filesharing can be (or perhaps is) >helpful to them.
You are making yet another assumption, that I am illegally downloading songs. In fact, I have never illegally downloaded a single song. I have nothing personal to rationalize. I am simply someone cursed with a love for logic and reason, not blind reactionism.
Well, actually, I had forgotten about that change. Thanks. Mind you, it still requires a significant threshold (>$1000 retail value distributed over 180 days). My point was that are certain thresholds required to make it criminal, copyright infringement isn't automatically criminal as implied by the parent post I was responding to. For most infringement by file sharers, it would only be civil law.
Well, I don't know about finest, but according to Wired magazine it is the biggest, and its success help start a collaboration revolution even outside software.
Yes, and copyright infringement is not one of them. Also, those laws require overt intentional acts to break the law. The example you are responding to, of accidently having it shared, would not apply even if there was a such thing as "attempted copyright infringement".
Your second point is a little more useful. Yes, someone should read the proposed law before commenting on situtations it might not actually apply to.
Um, I don't believe an overt act of copying is necessary for copyright violation. Distribution or publication without permission is a violation. Simply making a version (copied or not) available for others to copy counts, so it'd still be copyright violation.
Online sharing, at worst, only represents the latter case if (and only if) the downloader would have paid for a copy had they not been able to get a free download, and that case is apparently quite rare. It also doesn't take into account the actual increase in sales due to sharing (try before you buy), increased exposure to artists, and access to music that you could not otherwise buy or find in stores.
File sharing is not even in the same league. No profit is gain, and more specifically, there is no credible evidence of lost income from file sharing. (Sale of illegal copies means that someone is willing to pay for it, hence it represents a lost sale.)
Most Windows software installs and runs properly, even on my Win98SE. If there are missing files, a quick search on the internet will find them and quickly, and only involves copy 1 or 2 files into a specific directory. If it was that easy with Linux, I might consider tossing my dual-boot for Linux only (and if I could get Matlab to run well in Linux).
(With apologies to Moe for stealing his bit.)
Um, all fuel cells use hydrogen. Methanol fuel cells just extract the hydrogen and the rest becomes waste carbon dioxide (albeit not as much as an internal combustion engine). The only real differences are the emissions (CO2+water versus just water) and the method of fuel storage.
Technically, it's both. In system modeling (e.g., Bond graphs, which is an excellent way to compare different domains), an inductor is analogous to a mass (stores energy in motion/flow) and a capacitor is analogous to a spring (stores energy statically). (Note that gravity acts like a non-linear softening spring.) Oscillators tend to make use of both.
In Soviet Russia, you watch Big Brother. No, wait, that doesn't sound right. It should be "In run down trailer park, you watch Big Brother."
This had me curious. I didn't see anything in the articles or parent posts against the Bush admin. What I saw was complaints about removing or hiding information. In one case, yes, the White House was involved, and the other was time magazine.
Sure, there are implications that this all has something to do with Bush admin propaganda, but that hasn't been stated in the articles or parent posts. It sounds like you are complaining against general comments made following other articles at other times, not in these articles or at this time.
Oh yeah, and Bush is a moron and his administration is evil. Vote Quimby!
Not the way I read it. The argument you refuted is if someone had said "My boss will not allow me to go to vote." That argument would have no grounds, but I don't think that's what the parent post meant.
You do not get paid for the missed time, it doesn't change your deadlines, and it doesn't change how much work you have to get done. In other words, you have to make up the time somewhere, and if you have a close deadline it'll have to be soon. Taking 5 minutes to vote online versus taking a few hours to fight traffic and lineups and delaying your work means that a lot more people would likely vote.
Um, not to kill the joke, but the moon doesn't have zero G, it has 1/6th of Earth's gravity. Zero G sex would best be done on the ISS in low Earth orbit, so it's not a good reason to go back to the moon.
How about to get away from SCO and use Linux in peace.
No, I think you overestimate it. Showing a correlation is not that difficult. If greenhouse gases are causing a global warming trend, then they must, by definition, correlate well. It appears quite clearly that they don't. Correlations doesn't necessary prove causality (though it is a start), but certainly a lack of correlation strongly suggests against such a causality.
No, I imply no such thing.
My apologies if you did not intend to imply such a thing. But your response is still along the same lines. You are assuming that "reliable objective data" requires a second planet to test with. Not true at all.
Really, you seem to be trying to sound like it's a hypothetical question (what if), but applying the hypothetical to a real situation. Whether you realize it or not, this is an old debater's trick. You say "What if objective data is unknowable?" and we get to some sort of agreement about how to act in such a situation. But you've connected the question to a real situation (e.g., global warming), so the agreement on the hypothetical gets connected to an act on the real situation. This misdirection trick often works, but relies on the "audience" (including the second debater) not realizing that it was never agreed the hypothetical situation applies to the real situation.
In this case, I don't accept the premise that reliable objective data is unknowable, so arguing about that hypothetical situation is a misdirection.
Your global warming Jews analogy is not a good one.
No, you are misusing the analogy. They are analogous only in the sense that objective evidence is required before acting on the claim. In that respect, it is a good analogy. You're arguments are about the degree to which plausability is sufficient evidence to act upon, which is a different topic from the intent of the analogy. Yes, greenhouse gases are more plausable as a cause, but that doesn't mean they are and it certainly doesn't mean we should act without understanding the consequences first.
In such cases we choose to attack the most plausible problems, not sit around doing nothing on principle until evidence can be provided.
Aha. Here's the problem. This is a typical line of reasoning of activists, but it's a straw man argument. You assume that not enforcing Kyoto is "sitting around doing nothing". The issue here is where should our environment efforts be. There is demonstratable harm, with clear objective evidence, from a variety of pollutants that are not greenhouse gases. And in fact, depending on how greenhouse gas reduction is performed, it may actually increase these pollutants. Many scientists, including me, think we should spend our environmental efforst cleaning up demonstratable problems, not hypothetical ones, and certainly without understanding the consequences. It's not a matter of "doing nothing", but doing the right thing.
Actually, I'd bet quite heavily that it has nothing to do with legitimate scientific concerns. Honestly, I think Bush is a moron. But whether the U.S. ratifies it or not, or Bush's motives, are completely irrelevant as to whether Kyoto is the right thing to do or not.
Yes, I wish somebody would shed a little light on the subject.
But the implication of your question is the problem. You imply that it is safer to assume that it is true so we should act on the assumption. Perhaps an analogy would show the fallacy of this reasoning. Suppose someone suggested that global warming was caused by the existence of Jews, and that Jews should be exterminated to fix the problem. If anyone questions this assertion, would your response be "Can this be proven to your satisfaction without a spare planet to experiment on?"
That's an extreme example, but the point is valid. Insert any explanation, and use your question as a justification for acting on it. If we just assume a cause and act on it, we are more likely to cause harm than good.
I really doubt that. When it first came out there wasn't much marketing hype at all, at least not that I saw. Certainly not before it came out, like most over-hyped movies. It was generally word-of-mouth at first, and I wasn't expecting much when I went to see it. But it blew me away.
You are entitled to your opinion that it sucked, but I'd strongly disagree. It combined some very cool concepts (true, not entirely original, but at least interesting philosophical ideas) with good action, very cool style. Separately, these are mediocre. Other movies have used the "what is reality" them (Total Recall, Thirteenth Floor) but weren't as cool or action packed. Other movies have been action packed but without a good plot or style (e.g., bullet time). Other movies have been very stylized, but without a good plot or action.
The first Matrix combined all these elements into one cool movie. Reloaded was partly not as good because there wasn't much different or new in it from the first one, but the plot also could have been better. I suspect this might be partly why you didn't like the first Matrix, you only saw it a few months ago so you've already seen or heard much of this stuff over the last few years, or perhaps the fact you waited so long to see it means it just isn't your type of genre.
My hope for the third was (and still is) that there are some significant plot twists again on the "what is reality" theme -- like Zion and the "scorched Earth" are not the true reality or something like that. But from the sounds of it, the plot is unfulfilling so I don't expect much there. I can still hope, until I see it.
Even better are the "Teen Girl Squad" episodes in the "Shorts". It was started from a StrongBad email.