Both you and abigor point me to two competing chrome extensions pages. Which one is the official one? (Although I'm guessing it's abigor's link)
I was not aware that Chrome had extensions. (I gave up in frustration back in Chrome version 1.5)
Oh, and does it have a proper grownup "Favorites" menu yet, or is it still reliant on that retarded kiddy "bar" concept? (I fucking HATE fav/bookmark bars. I always disable FF's IMMEDIATELY after a fresh install.)
If Chrome has become more grownup I might just give it another try. If it's still using that stupid "blue plastic" style interface with the dumbed-down optionless unconfigurable UI then no thanks, I'll pass.
Adblock blocks ads that NoScript doesn't. I may want Java script to generally run on a specific website. So i would whitelist that site in NoScript. Without Adblock I would then get ads while on that site. With both I can allow scripts while still enjoying an ad-free browsing experience.
I'm sorry, but unless and until every browser has the "extensions" feature that FF has (Specifically including Adblock Plus and No Script) then NO browser will EVER be a true "Firefox Killer".
Chrome is OK, but without extensions it's nothing more than a runner-up. The same for Opera and IE#. Safari is nothing more than a side-show.
I would further suggest that having the average homeowner's power subject to remote third-party shutoff is unacceptable from a customer-service point of view AND a security point of view.
Seriously, who the hell wants power service that can be just randomly shut off any old time OUTSIDE of the times one might expect it? (storms and other natural disasters)
Frankly, if communities don't want to deal with brown outs, instead of wasting money on "smart" technology, they should either band together and create a community power company, or maybe ALLOW A POWER COMPANY TO BUILD A PLANT.
Damn Eco-Hippies and Yuppies get NIMBY laws passed banning Nuke Power (and most other kinds of power too) and we all end up in the dark with no AC or heat like the fucking third world. And now the stupid "smart" meters are easily hackable. What a fucking JOKE.
I'm just glad I live in WNY near the second largest natural power supply in the USA, Niagara Falls. At least I know THAT isn't going to shut down anytime soon.
He's talking about buying it yourself. Not going through your employer.
Your comment also shows just how uninformed many people are of the true costs of health insurance. It's expensive stuff, and the only reason most people can afford it is because they can get it through their employers.
The funny thing is, the health care changes passed yesterday are DEPENDENT upon all the young people not currently under insurance buying into it. That's not gonna happen, and all the extra costs that insurance companies will incur by covering all the people they don't cover now will simply sink the companies.
Then the predictable "Capitalism failed! We must nationalize the health care industry. It's for the health of our children!" cries will follow.
Of course, just like the housing market, the auto market and EVERY market that the Socialists meddle in, it's not Capitalism failing, it's the government meddling that weighs down and collapses the system.
And with the nationalization of the health care industry, the last beacon of Freedom in the world will go out, with the entirety of the population of the planet oppressed under Socialist Oligarchies.
While I really do think the touch-capable tablet PC is the wave of the future, is anyone else here just ever-so slightly disappointed that the future of PC's didn't turn out to be the Chobits "persocom"? (or persocon, if you prefer)
I mean, a thin little tablet is cool and all, but it's not a sexy female android who calls you "Master".
Although, I suppose that means the robot apocalypse is a bit further off now. Maybe it's a wash.
(Obviously I don't REALLY think this twat of a politician is being intentionally Anti-Semitic, but it makes for a nice club to crush this bad legislation with.)
Palm's WebOS has had FULL multitasking for ALL apps since Summer 2009. Go check out a Pre or Pixi on Sprint or a Pre +, Pixi + on Verizon. All the "Oh look at the cool multitasking things we can do" on the latest 3Gs commercial? WebOS had it out of the box last summer.
Oh, and then there is the remarkably simple development platform (Web standards! Yay!) and the vibrant non-official apps catalog available in the free PreWare and WebOS Quick Install applications that work in perfect sync with the Official WebOS Catalog.
(Palm has actually been helping the community integrate the sideline catalog, and encouraging mods and patches to the base WebOS setup. Imagine that!)
For all the hype about Apple (and Droid) NEITHER of them can yet do what Palm has already accomplished in less than a year.
Stop dicking around with Apple slaveware and Google's multiple personality disorderware. Go get a Pre or a Pixi.
Disclaimer: I do NOT work for Good technology, but was recently asked to research the use of iPhone, WebOS and Droid in my company's enterprise environment and Good is pretty much the very best of the best out there from what I could tell.
That sounds like a neat thing for the Adblock Plus guys to do. Find some way to NOT download the content, but make the webserver THINK the user downloaded the content so that the website owner still gets paid.
Best of both worlds for both the website owner and the user. The great thing about it is that neither the owner or the user can be held liable, and the only people screwed are the obnoxious ad companies.
As an IT guy I spend far too much time cleaning up infected machines due to malware gotten from bad ads.
Frankly, I simply cannot trust ANYONE anymore. Understand that I have seen infections start after people visited CNN.com, Foxnews.com, MSNBC.com, ESPN.com, Facebook, Amazon, and MANY MANY MANY other major news/social/other sites that serve banner ads from 3rd party vendors. (or from a poorly secured internal ad server)
At this point I simply block all ads everywhere. I use Firefox with Adblock Plus and No Script and my surfing is safe.
I'm sorry Ars, but until you make a solemn and public oath (permanently posted to your front page) to only serve static image content using only html (no flash, no javascript, nothing but plaintext html) then frankly I can't trust you with my PC.
I understand that this is preventing you from making money, but you haven't earned my TRUST yet. You have to earn that BEFORE you get to earn money from me.
I'm sorry if that upsets your business model, but that's just too damn bad. You don't get to make money from me while putting my machine at risk.
The problem with this whole "ageist" or "sexist" or "whatever-ist" arguments, particularly when you are talking about patronizing a business, is that they always seem to leave out the rights of the OWNER. It's always "Well they can't NOT do business with ME, that's *ist!"
How about: "They can do business with (or NOT do business with) to ANYONE THEY WANT and it's not the government's business to tell them otherwise."
If someone doesn't want to do business with young people, fine. If someone doesn't want to do business with unmarried couples, fine. If someone doesn't want to do business with gays, Jews, Muslims, Blacks, Asians, Redheads, people with "outie" bellybuttons, WHATEVER. Fine. The only people they are hurting by denying themselves sources of revenue is THEMSELVES.
Now, does this mean that I think we should return to the days of "whites only" lunch counters and Jim Crow laws? OF COURSE NOT. (and the fact that I even have to state that shows how sick our society is with grievance-mongering) But by the same token we have gone WAY too far in trying to legally enforce "fairness" and "equality" on society.
So, should these laws apply to the government? YES. Anti-discrimination laws should apply to anything public. We all pay taxes, we all should have equal access. But private property and private businesses? No. The govt. shouldn't be interfering with those.
Let the *ists be what they are. That kind of crap isn't really acceptable anymore and they will eventually either:
A) Ruin their own businesses with their *ism B) Change their minds and hearts and drop the *ism C) Learn to suppress their *ism and do business with anyone.
But in trying to force what cannot be forced, we have reached an absurd situation where people can't even have control over their own property for fear of offending someone. That MUST stop.
There is NO right to NOT be offended, and the sooner we all learn that the better off we will all be.
I think you are misunderstanding. We aren't talking about the initial download of the.torrent file. We are talking about an already active torrent client running. So there is no http-download request, that was already done.
No. If you RTFA you will see that they actually set their DNS to point to a "fake" tracker that was hosted locally and served up a rick astley video.torrent regardless of the.torrent requested.
So the client would request say, the mininova tracker and would be returned an IP by the DNS. The IP was actually the local spoof server. The spoof server would receive the request for (insert random torrent file here).torrent from the torrent client but would actually return "rick_roll_video.torrent" renamed to whatever the client was actually requesting.
The problem with doing it this way is that the fake torrent would fail the hash check, causing the client to re-request over and over and never actually download the "Rick roll". Of course, in the end the Admin got what they wanted; A reduction in traffic from torrenters. Personally I think they would have been better served to simply null route the IPs of any and all known trackers, but that doesn't have the poetic justice and sheer fun of a Rick roll.
It's a creative and funny (if ultimately pointless) way to deal with someone being an asshole and sucking up gratis bandwidth at a learning function with bit-torrent.
Well, I'm glad to see that. I am using a genuine copy, but I will still make sure NOT to install this as I don't want to be nagged for no good reason once my Key shows up in a keygen. (And it will, the keygen guys are good.)
Of course, making it optional completely invalidates the reason for even DOING this, as now that this news is out anyone with half a brain will simply skip this update and not ever install it.
So this entire thing is nothing more than a masturbatory exercise for someone at Microsoft.
Looks like SOMEONE has forgotten the last time Microsoft tried this and hundreds of thousands of XP users were suddenly declared "non-genuine".
The problem is not that people don't want to pay. If they didn't Microsoft would already be broke. The problem is that the pirates have already figured out the algorithm that MS uses to make the keys and are already distributing keygens. These keygens are making LEGITIMATE KEYS that may or may not be out "in the wild" already. If MS chooses to block these keys, the keys already released in real Win7 packages are ALSO blocked.
Can you imagine buying a brand new copy of Win7, peeling off the shrink-wrap, going through the setup, and then having your own PC tell you that the copy of Win7 you JUST BOUGHT is "Non-Genuine"? Good luck trying to take it back to the store once you've opened it.
So tell me, genius, who suffers when MS pulls a stupid stunt like this? The pirates? HELL NO! They just re-gen another key and go on their happy way. It's the LEGITIMATE CUSTOMERS that suffer 100% of the time. They are the ones who have to sit through Microsoft's interminable hold times and be treated like criminals. Not the real pirates. A system like this is pretty much custom-made to piss off the customer base.
Say hello to Yet Another PR Disaster(tm) from your friends in Redmond.
You'd have plenty of framework to make a political commentary on the war on terror
NO. JUST. NO.
Half of the problem with Ep1 was Lucas's infantile far-left obsession with the American politics of the day. ("Nute Gunray" as a bad guy? Good God that was LAME!) Watching it now just makes the "political commentary" look dated and silly.
There have been PLENTY of films that have made "political commentary" on the WOT. ALL of them, save Avatar, have been complete and utter FLOPS.
Why? Because Americans of the political center-left, center, center-right and right persuasions DO NOT want to watch a movie where the far-left preaches to us about how horrible America is and how stupid/greedy/racist/bigoted/homophobic/ugly/bad hair-ed/smelly and generally bad all Americans are. (except the "enlightened" far leftists, of course)
The only reason Avatar is getting away with it is because it's such a special-effects extravaganza that people are able to overlook it's inherently stupid storyline. (That, and apparently WAY more Americans are into Furry Porn than anyone guessed.)
If Lucas tries to pull this with the Star Wars series, it will end BEFORE the first season is done because NOBODY but the far-left Star Wars fans will watch it. Sorry, but that's not a large enough base to support a Star Wars sized series.
Nothing against Far-Lefties. They are entitled to their opinions just like the rest of us. It's just that pretty much nobody else wants to watch those opinions squeezed out like shit-icing all over a perfectly good franchise.
Keep the politics of the day OUT of Star Wars. It has it's own politics to deal with, no need to layer over our own (of ANY persuasion) on top.
I NEARLY did what the alt-text on that one says. I stopped before actually watching it though. I just burned it to DVD, labeled it and stuck it on the shelf.
Episode 2 is largely a waste like Episode 1. Ep3 is MUCH better, mostly because you get to see the lightsaber battle between Obi Wan and Anakin, and you get to see Anakin turn evil.
To be honest, the "love story" arc between Anakin and Padme that starts in Ep2 and finishes in Ep3 with Anakin's "Darthing" and Padme's death in childbirth is actually pretty good. Sadly, Lucas leaves the full story unexplored and manages to fuck up what he does go into with shitty dialog and wooden actors.
About the only emotion that the Anakin actor (can't even be bothered to remember his name) pulls off beleivably is (surprise!) Anger. This serves him well as he is becoming Darth Vader, but up until that point he is wooden and dull as dishwater.
Natalie Portman's performance, while massively improved since Ep1 (someone got acting lessons!) really only shines at the end as she is giving birth, a truly painful scene that is utterly destroyed by a "nursebot" that says (I shit you not) "Oooba Dooba" to Padme as she is giving birth . (Apparently the Ooompa Loompa hospital was the only one within reach at the time.)
But if you can overlook some of that (sadly typical) Lucas stupidity, Ep3 is worth the watch.
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Interesting.
Both you and abigor point me to two competing chrome extensions pages. Which one is the official one? (Although I'm guessing it's abigor's link)
I was not aware that Chrome had extensions. (I gave up in frustration back in Chrome version 1.5)
Oh, and does it have a proper grownup "Favorites" menu yet, or is it still reliant on that retarded kiddy "bar" concept? (I fucking HATE fav/bookmark bars. I always disable FF's IMMEDIATELY after a fresh install.)
If Chrome has become more grownup I might just give it another try. If it's still using that stupid "blue plastic" style interface with the dumbed-down optionless unconfigurable UI then no thanks, I'll pass.
Adblock blocks ads that NoScript doesn't. I may want Java script to generally run on a specific website. So i would whitelist that site in NoScript. Without Adblock I would then get ads while on that site. With both I can allow scripts while still enjoying an ad-free browsing experience.
I'm sorry, but unless and until every browser has the "extensions" feature that FF has (Specifically including Adblock Plus and No Script) then NO browser will EVER be a true "Firefox Killer".
Chrome is OK, but without extensions it's nothing more than a runner-up. The same for Opera and IE#. Safari is nothing more than a side-show.
Reparations, up to and including dividing up and annexation of Japan as wholly owned territories of the allies?
It could have EASILY been much worse for the Japanese. Thankfully for them, America and her allies were gracious in victory.
I would further suggest that having the average homeowner's power subject to remote third-party shutoff is unacceptable from a customer-service point of view AND a security point of view.
Seriously, who the hell wants power service that can be just randomly shut off any old time OUTSIDE of the times one might expect it? (storms and other natural disasters)
Frankly, if communities don't want to deal with brown outs, instead of wasting money on "smart" technology, they should either band together and create a community power company, or maybe ALLOW A POWER COMPANY TO BUILD A PLANT.
Damn Eco-Hippies and Yuppies get NIMBY laws passed banning Nuke Power (and most other kinds of power too) and we all end up in the dark with no AC or heat like the fucking third world. And now the stupid "smart" meters are easily hackable. What a fucking JOKE.
I'm just glad I live in WNY near the second largest natural power supply in the USA, Niagara Falls. At least I know THAT isn't going to shut down anytime soon.
He's talking about buying it yourself. Not going through your employer.
Your comment also shows just how uninformed many people are of the true costs of health insurance. It's expensive stuff, and the only reason most people can afford it is because they can get it through their employers.
The funny thing is, the health care changes passed yesterday are DEPENDENT upon all the young people not currently under insurance buying into it. That's not gonna happen, and all the extra costs that insurance companies will incur by covering all the people they don't cover now will simply sink the companies.
Then the predictable "Capitalism failed! We must nationalize the health care industry. It's for the health of our children!" cries will follow.
Of course, just like the housing market, the auto market and EVERY market that the Socialists meddle in, it's not Capitalism failing, it's the government meddling that weighs down and collapses the system.
And with the nationalization of the health care industry, the last beacon of Freedom in the world will go out, with the entirety of the population of the planet oppressed under Socialist Oligarchies.
Welcome to the New Dark Ages.
While I really do think the touch-capable tablet PC is the wave of the future, is anyone else here just ever-so slightly disappointed that the future of PC's didn't turn out to be the Chobits "persocom"? (or persocon, if you prefer)
I mean, a thin little tablet is cool and all, but it's not a sexy female android who calls you "Master".
Although, I suppose that means the robot apocalypse is a bit further off now. Maybe it's a wash.
Ah. I did not know that.
Still, my overall point stands.
(Obviously I don't REALLY think this twat of a politician is being intentionally Anti-Semitic, but it makes for a nice club to crush this bad legislation with.)
Palm's WebOS has had FULL multitasking for ALL apps since Summer 2009. Go check out a Pre or Pixi on Sprint or a Pre +, Pixi + on Verizon. All the "Oh look at the cool multitasking things we can do" on the latest 3Gs commercial? WebOS had it out of the box last summer.
Oh, and then there is the remarkably simple development platform (Web standards! Yay!) and the vibrant non-official apps catalog available in the free PreWare and WebOS Quick Install applications that work in perfect sync with the Official WebOS Catalog.
(Palm has actually been helping the community integrate the sideline catalog, and encouraging mods and patches to the base WebOS setup. Imagine that!)
For all the hype about Apple (and Droid) NEITHER of them can yet do what Palm has already accomplished in less than a year.
Stop dicking around with Apple slaveware and Google's multiple personality disorderware. Go get a Pre or a Pixi.
Isn't it a requirement of Kosher meats that they be Salted as a part of the preparation? No Salt, no Kosher.
So, this idiot is saying that Jewish people can't have their religious and culturally required diet? Yeah, like THAT's gonna fly in NYC.
(Not Jewish myself, but I love gefilte fish, and lox is my favorite bagel topping. I would be seriously pissed if I couldn't get them anymore.)
Two words: Good Technology.
Works on iPhone, Android and WebOS.
Disclaimer: I do NOT work for Good technology, but was recently asked to research the use of iPhone, WebOS and Droid in my company's enterprise environment and Good is pretty much the very best of the best out there from what I could tell.
Of course, your mileage may vary.
No, the worst is number 3.
By picking number 2, at least if they die later they still aren't stealing from the taxpayer at large via their corrupt government connections.
I would have just gotten the power screwdriver and a screw and permanently fixed the damn thing.
Then I would have chucked your ass overboard. But that's just me.
That sounds like a neat thing for the Adblock Plus guys to do. Find some way to NOT download the content, but make the webserver THINK the user downloaded the content so that the website owner still gets paid.
Best of both worlds for both the website owner and the user. The great thing about it is that neither the owner or the user can be held liable, and the only people screwed are the obnoxious ad companies.
I'm with wolffenrir.
As an IT guy I spend far too much time cleaning up infected machines due to malware gotten from bad ads.
Frankly, I simply cannot trust ANYONE anymore. Understand that I have seen infections start after people visited CNN.com, Foxnews.com, MSNBC.com, ESPN.com, Facebook, Amazon, and MANY MANY MANY other major news/social/other sites that serve banner ads from 3rd party vendors. (or from a poorly secured internal ad server)
At this point I simply block all ads everywhere. I use Firefox with Adblock Plus and No Script and my surfing is safe.
I'm sorry Ars, but until you make a solemn and public oath (permanently posted to your front page) to only serve static image content using only html (no flash, no javascript, nothing but plaintext html) then frankly I can't trust you with my PC.
I understand that this is preventing you from making money, but you haven't earned my TRUST yet. You have to earn that BEFORE you get to earn money from me.
I'm sorry if that upsets your business model, but that's just too damn bad. You don't get to make money from me while putting my machine at risk.
The "Titty-Twister" (tm) option perhaps?
The problem with this whole "ageist" or "sexist" or "whatever-ist" arguments, particularly when you are talking about patronizing a business, is that they always seem to leave out the rights of the OWNER. It's always "Well they can't NOT do business with ME, that's *ist!"
How about: "They can do business with (or NOT do business with) to ANYONE THEY WANT and it's not the government's business to tell them otherwise."
If someone doesn't want to do business with young people, fine. If someone doesn't want to do business with unmarried couples, fine. If someone doesn't want to do business with gays, Jews, Muslims, Blacks, Asians, Redheads, people with "outie" bellybuttons, WHATEVER. Fine. The only people they are hurting by denying themselves sources of revenue is THEMSELVES.
Now, does this mean that I think we should return to the days of "whites only" lunch counters and Jim Crow laws? OF COURSE NOT. (and the fact that I even have to state that shows how sick our society is with grievance-mongering) But by the same token we have gone WAY too far in trying to legally enforce "fairness" and "equality" on society.
So, should these laws apply to the government? YES. Anti-discrimination laws should apply to anything public. We all pay taxes, we all should have equal access. But private property and private businesses? No. The govt. shouldn't be interfering with those.
Let the *ists be what they are. That kind of crap isn't really acceptable anymore and they will eventually either:
A) Ruin their own businesses with their *ism
B) Change their minds and hearts and drop the *ism
C) Learn to suppress their *ism and do business with anyone.
But in trying to force what cannot be forced, we have reached an absurd situation where people can't even have control over their own property for fear of offending someone. That MUST stop.
There is NO right to NOT be offended, and the sooner we all learn that the better off we will all be.
I think you are misunderstanding. We aren't talking about the initial download of the .torrent file. We are talking about an already active torrent client running. So there is no http-download request, that was already done.
No. If you RTFA you will see that they actually set their DNS to point to a "fake" tracker that was hosted locally and served up a rick astley video .torrent regardless of the .torrent requested.
So the client would request say, the mininova tracker and would be returned an IP by the DNS. The IP was actually the local spoof server. The spoof server would receive the request for (insert random torrent file here).torrent from the torrent client but would actually return "rick_roll_video.torrent" renamed to whatever the client was actually requesting.
The problem with doing it this way is that the fake torrent would fail the hash check, causing the client to re-request over and over and never actually download the "Rick roll". Of course, in the end the Admin got what they wanted; A reduction in traffic from torrenters. Personally I think they would have been better served to simply null route the IPs of any and all known trackers, but that doesn't have the poetic justice and sheer fun of a Rick roll.
It's a creative and funny (if ultimately pointless) way to deal with someone being an asshole and sucking up gratis bandwidth at a learning function with bit-torrent.
Well, I'm glad to see that. I am using a genuine copy, but I will still make sure NOT to install this as I don't want to be nagged for no good reason once my Key shows up in a keygen. (And it will, the keygen guys are good.)
Of course, making it optional completely invalidates the reason for even DOING this, as now that this news is out anyone with half a brain will simply skip this update and not ever install it.
So this entire thing is nothing more than a masturbatory exercise for someone at Microsoft.
Lovely.
Looks like SOMEONE has forgotten the last time Microsoft tried this and hundreds of thousands of XP users were suddenly declared "non-genuine".
The problem is not that people don't want to pay. If they didn't Microsoft would already be broke. The problem is that the pirates have already figured out the algorithm that MS uses to make the keys and are already distributing keygens. These keygens are making LEGITIMATE KEYS that may or may not be out "in the wild" already. If MS chooses to block these keys, the keys already released in real Win7 packages are ALSO blocked.
Can you imagine buying a brand new copy of Win7, peeling off the shrink-wrap, going through the setup, and then having your own PC tell you that the copy of Win7 you JUST BOUGHT is "Non-Genuine"? Good luck trying to take it back to the store once you've opened it.
So tell me, genius, who suffers when MS pulls a stupid stunt like this? The pirates? HELL NO! They just re-gen another key and go on their happy way. It's the LEGITIMATE CUSTOMERS that suffer 100% of the time. They are the ones who have to sit through Microsoft's interminable hold times and be treated like criminals. Not the real pirates. A system like this is pretty much custom-made to piss off the customer base.
Say hello to Yet Another PR Disaster(tm) from your friends in Redmond.
NO. JUST. NO.
Half of the problem with Ep1 was Lucas's infantile far-left obsession with the American politics of the day. ("Nute Gunray" as a bad guy? Good God that was LAME!) Watching it now just makes the "political commentary" look dated and silly.
There have been PLENTY of films that have made "political commentary" on the WOT. ALL of them, save Avatar, have been complete and utter FLOPS.
Why? Because Americans of the political center-left, center, center-right and right persuasions DO NOT want to watch a movie where the far-left preaches to us about how horrible America is and how stupid/greedy/racist/bigoted/homophobic/ugly/bad hair-ed/smelly and generally bad all Americans are. (except the "enlightened" far leftists, of course)
The only reason Avatar is getting away with it is because it's such a special-effects extravaganza that people are able to overlook it's inherently stupid storyline. (That, and apparently WAY more Americans are into Furry Porn than anyone guessed.)
If Lucas tries to pull this with the Star Wars series, it will end BEFORE the first season is done because NOBODY but the far-left Star Wars fans will watch it. Sorry, but that's not a large enough base to support a Star Wars sized series.
Nothing against Far-Lefties. They are entitled to their opinions just like the rest of us. It's just that pretty much nobody else wants to watch those opinions squeezed out like shit-icing all over a perfectly good franchise.
Keep the politics of the day OUT of Star Wars. It has it's own politics to deal with, no need to layer over our own (of ANY persuasion) on top.
Heh,
I NEARLY did what the alt-text on that one says. I stopped before actually watching it though. I just burned it to DVD, labeled it and stuck it on the shelf.
What can I say; I'm a collector.
Episode 2 is largely a waste like Episode 1. Ep3 is MUCH better, mostly because you get to see the lightsaber battle between Obi Wan and Anakin, and you get to see Anakin turn evil.
To be honest, the "love story" arc between Anakin and Padme that starts in Ep2 and finishes in Ep3 with Anakin's "Darthing" and Padme's death in childbirth is actually pretty good. Sadly, Lucas leaves the full story unexplored and manages to fuck up what he does go into with shitty dialog and wooden actors.
About the only emotion that the Anakin actor (can't even be bothered to remember his name) pulls off beleivably is (surprise!) Anger. This serves him well as he is becoming Darth Vader, but up until that point he is wooden and dull as dishwater.
Natalie Portman's performance, while massively improved since Ep1 (someone got acting lessons!) really only shines at the end as she is giving birth, a truly painful scene that is utterly destroyed by a "nursebot" that says (I shit you not) "Oooba Dooba" to Padme as she is giving birth . (Apparently the Ooompa Loompa hospital was the only one within reach at the time.)
But if you can overlook some of that (sadly typical) Lucas stupidity, Ep3 is worth the watch.
Wow. Maybe HE meant. I really have to proofread before I post.